Meet Long Island's newest and surely most unusual neighbor.
But it's surely not unusual for us to use a bit of retail therapy to cheer us up, especially when there are bargains around.
It is a pity, however, that we have to reach back almost four decades to find a writer willing to cater to desires that are surely not unusual but are, just as surely, unfashionable.
Cheering is surely an unusual sound at a financial company these days, but staff who gathered at the grand old Metropolitan Life building or dialed in from around the hemisphere had reason to roar.
And surely the most unusual, given that the applause in Norway comes at a particularly trying period of his presidency.
If it isn't the most beautiful voice, it is surely one of unusual splendor, especially bewitching in the upper register, where it suggests fragility but never breaks.
Unusual, surely, but so was the relationship between the 13-year-old Southerner Huck Finn and the escaped slave Jim in Mark Twain's extraordinarily successful and eternally enduring "historical novel".
But surely the most unusual solo performance of the evening was by Cristina Pato, a Spanish bagpiper, who played a wailing, trilling, fluidly microtonal line in "Alala," a traditional piece, and "Africa," a composition of her own.
What surely makes beans unusual and extraordinary is not in fact their starring role in history but rather that they have remained so humble, so unnoticeable, and indeed often so unpopular, a simple rustic food for the poor.
