Overheard In New York

Archive for 2010

…Would You Like Some French Fries?

Mid­dle aged lawyer #1, read­ing news­pa­per: Child­hood obe­si­ty is an epi­dem­ic? Amer­i­ca is the on­ly coun­try where poor peo­ple are fat.
Mid­dle aged lawyer #2: Cheap food is fat­ten­ing.
Mid­dle aged lawyer #1: Maybe so, but if they’re fat, they can’t be starv­ing, right? No­body ever starved to death while they were fat.
Mid­dle aged lawyer #2: The rea­son they’re fat is that they can’t af­ford to eat healthy. Your com­ment is shock­ing­ly racist, hate­ful and ig­no­rant.
Mid­dle aged lawyer #1: Oh, now be­ing fat is a race is­sue? Ever been to Dis­ney World? They have white peo­ple there who could cause an eclipse.
Mid­dle aged lawyer #2: Our agri­cul­tur­al pol­i­cy en­cour­ages the poor to eat cheap, un­healthy calo­ries. A Big Mac might make you full, but it al­so makes you fat!
Mid­dle aged lawyer #1: Mc­Don­ald’s sells sal­ads too, ya know. Who’s forc­ing the poor to or­der Big Macs? Or to eat twelve of them?
Mid­dle aged lawyer #2: If you be­lieve you’re cor­rect, why don’t you try liv­ing on a re­strict­ed bud­get and food stamps?
Mid­dle aged lawyer #1: If my bud­get was so re­strict­ed, I might stop at the first Big Mac in­stead of or­der­ing a dozen. And nice way to di­vert from the is­sue, which is that Amer­i­ca’s poor are ob­vi­ous­ly not starv­ing.
Fe­male court re­porter: That’s right. It’s the mid­dle class that’s starv­ing be­cause they’re not get­ting gov­ern­ment checks and food stamps.
Mid­dle aged lawyer #2, with air of con­de­scen­sion, shak­ing head: How com­pas­sion­ate of you.
Mid­dle aged lawyer #1: I’m very com­pas­sion­ate. I’m just not an en­abler. I’m mak­ing a sim­ple log­i­cal ar­gu­ment: fat peo­ple are not starv­ing.
Mid­dle aged lawyer #2, shak­ing head: Mere words do you no jus­tice.
(the door to the room opens, and in comes the wit­ness, an obese black teenag­er hold­ing a Mc­Don­ald’s bag. The smell of french fries fills the room).
Mid­dle aged lawyer #1: Were you lis­ten­ing out­side the door?
Con­fused teen: No.

–Court Re­port­ing Of­fice, Brook­lyn

Over­heard by: Big Lar­ry

AC/DC: Nuh-Uh!

White-haired la­dy #1: She’s gay. Did­n’t you hear her say, “I can tell by the look on your face you’re gay”?
Friends: What?
White-haired la­dy #1: You know, gay! AC/DC. She goes both ways. She’s gay.
White-haired la­dy #2: No. (pause) She said “I can tell by the look on your face you’re a vir­gin.”

–Broad­way Show

Over­heard by: drew­bear