NEW YORKInstinctively lowering themselves into a defensive crouch while awaiting the return of the eerily absent audio cue, Manhattan residents reportedly remained on alert Thursday after a sunrise unaccompanied by languid clarinet music. Every day, as long as I can remember, I would roll out of bed to a soulful clarinet solo scoring the suns ascent over the Hudson, but today theres only silence, said longtime Hells Kitchen resident Robin Saunders, one of 1.6 million baffled Manhattanites who remained locked down at home as authorities investigated the musics mysterious absence, only briefly peering out of their apartment windows in the hope of catching a single trill or sustained seventh note to mark the return to bluesy normalcy. It didnt matter whether I was waking up from a long bender in the West Village or getting ready for my workaday job in Midtown: Hearing those reeds blow out a long, sleepy note, watching the sunlight dapple off the Flatiron, and Woolworth buildingsthats how you knew you were in New York. Now, though? Its like Im in some strange, alien world devoid of anything approaching syncopation. At press time, the city had declared a state of emergency after Brooklyn residents reported being unable to hear the sultry saxophone solo that typically soundtracks their lonely evening walks under neon signs. The post Manhattan On Alert Following Sunrise Unaccompanied By Languid Clarinet Music appeared first on The Onion.