A team is a mutual protection society formed to guarantee that no one person can be to blame for a botched committee job that one man would have performed satisfactorily.

Good times, though, are not the best times for a reporter.

Either possibility could account for a growing sense that the good times were behind me, and the serious times ahead.

The French fried potato has become an inescapable horror in almost every public eating place in the country. 'French fries,' say the menus, but they are not French fries any longer. They are a furry-textured substance with the taste of plastic wood.

When compelled to cook, I produce a meal that would make a sword swallower gag.

New York is the only city in the world where you can get deliberately run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.

Industrial-strength foolishness sets in-in males, at least-at about the age of 18. This is why the military prefers males in the 18-to-25-year-old range when there’s combat to be done.

In an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one’s beloved.

Notice, for example, that people who talk about “the joys of childhood” are always adults. Only an adult, utterly remote from the reality of childhood, could suppose it is time of joys.

Sending grown-ups up the wall is one of the things adolescence is all about. A few years ago it was done with rock ‘n’ roll music. Now at least they can do it quietly with a home computer.