From: "Alice K. Turner" 
Subject: (urth) Where have you read something very like this before?
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 20:29:38 -0400

"Ah, America! Every image of it from the films is true, I thought to myself
as my oily-featured driver sped through amber lights and babbled maniacally
into his radio. The familiar smell (for this was my third visit) of a place
near the airport called Queens came to my nose. Which queen, or queens, were
referred to, however, no one could say. Power and greed and grand
Machiavellian scheming filled the very air along the avenue we travelled
on--Jackson Avenue, I think it was, no doubt named after the famous American
pop star possibly born nearby. Ferret-eyed mafiosi, underaged prostitutes,
neighborhood drug runners, confidence tricksters, and dreary lumpen nobodies
swarmed at every crossing and roundabout. Lying back on the odoriferous
upholstery, I drank in the teeming totality through every pore."

                                                     --Ian Frazier, Shouts &
Murmurs, The New Yorker, July 7

Shouts & Murmurs is the regular weekly short satire department of The New
Yorker, and Ian Frazier is a prolific and excellent writer. The above is the
first paragraph of the new one, and, trust me, it gets better. Those of you
who pick up the reference (which seems pitch-perfect, though I'm sure it's a
coincidence) might want to pick up the issue, or at least skim through the
short piece at a newsstand.

-alga



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