January 11, 2005

I believe you'll find they do have recorded messages out in the hinterlands

An item from today's Cindy Adams column (with awkward verb tense change from the first to the second sentence and dramatic font formatting left intact):

So this lady's phoning her friend. After she dialed the number, the cutting edge, sharp phone company interrupted her call with the recorded message: "The number you are calling has been either changed or disconnected."

Only in New York, kids, only in New York.

Is this a blind item? If it is, it's one of the most boring blind items in history. ("What film star was recently seen eating food...and washing it down with water?") And if it really is, as it seems, just a random anecdote, what in the world makes it worth reporting? Am I missing something here?

Posted by Francis at 11:56 AM | TrackBack
Comments

I guess I'm primed for the MIT Mystery Hunt because it looks like puzzle flavor text to me.

Posted by: Doug Orleans at January 11, 2005 12:57 PM

Well...if it actually interrupted her call, that is, if she was already talking to her friend when suddenly a recorded voice told her that the number was no longer in service, then that's newsworthy. (For sufficiently small values of "worthy", or perhaps "news", but I suspect both of those are true in general of Cindy Adams. Worthier, anyway.) But certainly "after she dialed the number" makes it sound like she hadn't been connected.

Posted by: Lance at January 11, 2005 01:13 PM

New York seems like a magical kingdom of wonders.

Posted by: Billy Joel at January 11, 2005 02:19 PM

Between the typos and the grammar in the Post? Oy vey, don't even get me started. Let's talk about the drunkenly-dictated-into-a-tape-recorder rantings of Steve Dunleavy and the Gorgonesque ravings of trying-too-hard-to-hate-all-women Andrea Peyser. To say nothing of Cindy Adams' word-salad-meets-just-ate-bad-egg-salad... All the linguists at MIT couldn't begin to make sense of her syntax.

Posted by: Col at January 11, 2005 02:30 PM