A Much Better TikTok.

On the morning in which pundits are falling all over themselves trying to figure out novel and brilliant ways to analyze the historic events that are about to unfold, and expound grand sociopolitical theories, and place them in an appropriately historic perspective, we begin with a Gene Pool Gene Poll examining the only essential question about the previous president of the United States.

Okay, on to the important stuff.

I am not a spendthrift. I seldom go on vacation. The last time I bought a new suit was 1999. My car was made in 2007, and is held together by duct tape and rust. My girlfriend and I seldom spend more than about $7 on presents for each other. The last jewelry I bought her was at a pet store — it was a necklace in the shape of a bone, with her name and phone number on it, on the theory that she is an exuberant and impulsive traveler who tends to get lost.

There is one expenditure, and only one expenditure, upon which I splurge, and it will seem insane to you, but only because it is insane.

Every few years I purchase a clock. It is almost always a variation on the same clock, a Seth Thomas wall clock, three feet tall, crafted of sturdy wood and brass and steel in Connecticut sometime between 1858 and 1951, the longest continually manufactured mechanical clock in the world. It is called the Seth Thomas #2, and it is the best and most beautiful clock ever made by anyone, anywhere, and if you disagree you have no sense of design or mechanics or the value of life. It keeps time to within a minute a month using physics invented by Galileo and perfected by a Dutch astronomer and mathematician named Christiaan Huygens who not only had two consecutive a’s in his name, and whose father was best friends with Rene Descartes, but who actually discovered and mapped the rings of Saturn. I, however, am mostly known for having popularized the term “aptonym,” which applies to such persons as a gynecologist named Harry Beaver.

ST #2s tend to be worth about $2,000, but I buy them for less than half of that because I tend to buy them in disrepair. I can fix them. Fixing very old clocks is the only thing I can do competently other than write, and I will not debate you on the second point if you want to make an effing big deal about it.

I am a skilled amateur, but only an amateur, so I have backup. His name is Edward Compton, and he is the proprietor of Ecker’s Clock and Watch Shop in Bethesda. Sometimes if I have problems repairing one of these clocks, I will go to see Edward, and he will look at the clock, and look at me witheringly, and with great personal disappointment, and say, “well, the escape-wheel arbor is obviously impinging on the front plate at an angle of one-tenth of one degree, which is simply untenable,” and I will say, “well, I know that, you moron, but the bigger problem seems to be with a kink in the suspension spring,” and he will look at me as though I had diagnosed hiccups as cancer, and then he will go to the back of the store and bring out his parrot, Dr. Pepper, to calm things down, and Dr. Pepper will mount my shoulder and eat my eyeglasses and everything will be hunky-dory again.

Then I ask Edward what I owe him for his diagnosis, which is of course correct and will allow me to fix the clock, and he says I owe him nothing, because this was such a basic, obvious problem any imbecile could have solved it, and I say, no, I have to pay you and I offer $200, and he says “FINE,” like he is angry, and we settle up. and if you had a relationship like this with your auto mechanic, your life would be a lot better.

But I digress. For years I have had four Seth Thomas #2s working in my house, the oldest of which is photographed at the top of this page. It was made in 1858, when James Buchanan was president, and I also have this one from 1915,

when Bonar Law was Chancellor of the Exchequer in London, a name and date I cite only because I don’t want to keep doing the obligatory U.S. Presidential time-frame thing, and Bonar Law is a great name, and also he represented a Parliamentary constituency named “Bootle,”which apparently still exists despite being ridiculous. Also, Bonar Law might qualify as an aptonym and would also be an excellent name for a law firm.

My point is, to the extent I have a point, that the former president of the United States is going to be indicted today for being an utterly disgusting homunculus jackass nitwit horndog whose penis apparently resembles a shittake mushroom, and I am happy, and I want to tell you about something that recently happened involving my fifth Seth Thomas Clock.

Three weeks ago I bought it on eBay, which is always a risky endeavor because you are dealing with people whom you do not know, whose bona fides you cannot check, who are using the U.S. postal service to do it, which is always a risk. But I had to have this clock because when I saw it on eBay, and looked at the 17 photos of it — I am constantly looking at ST#2s on eBay — I realized something astonishing. It had a date imprinted on the back, in code only I and Edward and perhaps only 63,000 other elderly clock maniacs know — that gave the date it was sold. The date was October 1951, almost certainly (I can back this up with documentation on demand) on October 2. It was the day I was born. It was one of the last moments of production in the final year of the manufacture of the greatest clock ever made in the history of the world, designed by Galileo and perfected by Christiaan Huygens, who had hair so long it tailed down past his ass, which is even longer than my girlfriend’s hair, and when I showed her the clock, she said she would go halvsies with me so I could have it, and the heavens aligned, much as they had when Christiaan Huygens’s telescope first focused on Saturn, and I cried a little tear of joy and bought it. It cost $1,100.

Important annoying boilerplate announcement:

After the intro (which you are reading now), there will be some early questions and answers  added on –  and then I'll keep adding them as the hour progresses and your fever for my opinions grows and multiplies and metastasizes.  To see those later Q&As,  just refresh your screen every once in a while. 

As always, you can also leave comments. They’ll congregate at the bottom of the post, and allow you to annoy and hector each other and talk mostly amongst yourselves. Though we will stop in from time to time.

Back to the clock. It took a seemingly interminable week for it to arrive. It was expertly packed in a giant cardboard box that appeared to be original. And on the outside of the box, it said — this is imprinted on my memory the way one remembers, say, the Kennedy assassination OR 9/11 — “MADE IN INDONESIA ELECTRIC GUITAR.”

My horror only lasted about 15 minutes, the time it took to gnaw open the package and discover it was, indeed, my clock, but I did get to talk about this fright with friends, who were aware of my clock insanity and were not appropriately sympathetic to my instant plight. Dave Barry, for example, wrote, omigod: “You mean it’s NOT an Indonesian electric guitar?”

You should buy the Gene Pool because it is cheap and because of its great writing and storytelling and expertise in antique clocks. . Here is a button to tell you how.

Did you not buy it? Do you not realize that we also tell jokes?

Here is a joke: A blond man calls the emergency room, in a panic. He says: “My wife is pregnant and her contractions are two minutes apart!”

“Is this her first child?”

“No, this is her husband!

On a similar note, the following conversation occurred Sunday night. It is not a joke, it is an actual event:

Me: Do you know my friend Maddy Blais?

Rachel: Yes.

Me: Do you know she is married to John Katzenbach, the novelist?

Rachel: I guess, yes.

Me: Do you know he is the son of Nicholas Katzenbach, the former U.S. attorney general?

Rachel: No.

Me: Well, he was, under Kennedy and Johnson. His middle name was ridiculous.

Rachel: HE WAS NICHOLAS RIDICULOUS KATZENBACH?

So, we’re about to segue into your questions and my answers, but first, this week’s episode of Fud, in which I present a great recipe I make that can be summarized in four sentences or fewer, in defiance of modern wordy online recipes that tediously go on for pages and pages in order to mine page views.

Macaroni and Beef, America’s greatest comfort food

Cook some kind of fatty ground beef in a pan with onions until the beef is slightly browned. Add some good quality pasta sauce — Rao’s is the best even if it costs a buck more, you pathetic cheapskate. Then throw in some uncooked macaroni, and let it cook with the other goop — do NOT boil it first. End of recipe.

Here we go.

Q: Is there a term for names that match the profession, but on closer examination appears to be the complete opposite? There is a lawyer names James M. Trusty. He represents Trump.

A: Yes, it is called an inaptonym, and I invented it. I invented almost everything in this regard. You are in the presence of creative genius. Wikipedia credits me with the term and supplies these examples: Samuel Foot a comic actor who lost a leg in a horse-riding accident in 1766, and Hudson Freeze, disdoverer of a bacterium that thrives in hot water, and Grant Balfour, a pitcher with extremely good control, and Frank Beard, the only member of ZZ Top not to have a beard.

Q: Patty from just outside Detroit asks: Why are you trolling so hard for questions? And do you still drive a manual transmission? How do you feel about the signs that manual transmissions are going away?

A: Hi, Patty.   I do believe I know who you are and it is good to hear from you again.   The impending death of manual transmissions is the worst thing in the world other than Trump, not so much because it is yet another example of the relentless march of soullessness but because it is yet another example of the fat-butted lassitude of America vis a vis the rest of the world, which is, when you think about it, also about Trump AND the death of beauty and antiquity and mechanical clocks. 

I keep trawling for questions because though I get a lot, I don’t get enough good ones.  

TIMELY TIP FROM GENE: If you're reading this right now on an email:   Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “A much better TikTok ” That way you’ll see my full column, and you’ll be able to refresh and see new questions and answers as I regularly update the post. And you will get really excited but probably not in a sexual way.

Q: I’m just assuming you’ll have something to say on the news of the day. If not, consider this a request to do so.

A: I have said all I wish to say, so far, however that doesn’t preclude a surprise emergency Gene Pool later in the day.  

Q: Do you sleep in the nude? 

A: That is a highly impertinent and personal question.  What do you mean, exactly, by “in”?  

Q: Who was the most influential person in your life? 

A: Probably Tom Lehrer.   It took me years to finally come to that realization but it was a factor of age.  I was ten and learned it was possible to be an adult and do shit like  this. 

Gene--here are a couple of polls that seem chat-appropriate: I am surprised to find myself in the cup-having minority.

A: I am just shocked that there is no “toilet slurper” option.  

Q: I asked ChatGPT to write an epic poem explaining why I should give you money. I suggest running it to encourage others to do the same.

In days of yore, when tales were told,

Of humor grand and laughter bold,

There lived a Czar, Gene Weingarten,

Whose wit did pierce like sharpest dart in.

He crafted words with artful grace,

And humor sprung in cyberspace,

A blog he penned, The Gene Pool named,

With laughter's bounty, it was famed.

This Czar of jest, of wit and guile,

Didst forge a realm in merry style,

Inviting all to join the fray,

To jest and jape, and laugh away.

Within his court, The Style Invitational,

A contest grand, of wit most palpable,

A challenge rose, for minds astute,

To spin their words and win the loot.

Oh valiant reader, heed this tale,

And venture forth, set noble sail,

To offer coin, a worthy fee,

To gain admittance, and to see.

For in this pool, the Gene Pool hallowed,

The sum of humor's wealth is wallowed,

And with each coin, thy laughter grows,

In tales that set thy mind aflow.

But wait! There's more, a prize, a chance,

To win the Czar and Empress' glance,

In their great contest, side by side,

They judge, they weigh, your wit to guide.

To enter this grand contest, see,

Your offering shall set you free,

And in return, you shall be blessed,

With laughter, joy, and humor's jest.

Oh reader, wise and full of cheer,

The path is clear, the choice is near,

To render coin, unlock the door,

To humor's trove, forevermore.

For in this realm of wit and glee,

You'll find yourself in company,

Of Czar and Empress, lords of laughter,

And wit, and mirth, forever after.

A: This might be the worst piece of crap ever written.  If you buy the Gene Pool based on this I will return the money, keep tabs on you, and, if you predecease me, urinate on your grave.  Okay, I’ll keep the money, but still do the grave thing. 

Q: Hi Gene, this is your mother. When are you coming home for Passover?

A: I’m not, ma.  You are a skeleton and probably really disgusting to look at.  

Q: Did Marjorie Taylor Green clean Lesley Stahl’s clock in the “60 Minute’s” interview?

A:  Speaking of clocks, yes, she did.  The American media is simply incapable of blinking when talking to a person who has been elected to something, and say, “Okay, this interview is over because you are a complete lunatic.”   Ms. Greene said Democrats were pedophiles.  Lesley kinda said, “Whoa. Really?”

I am kinda sweet on Lesley, though, because she really helped me in the writing of a chapter in “One Day,” about Ed Koch. She had done an interview with Koch on the day I was writing about, and I interviewed her about about and asked her, essentially, “was he being as big a schmuck as I think he was?” and even though hizzoner had just died, she said, basically, “yes.”

Q: There is a club called The Chief that [allegedly] promotes women in business but its members are already executives as a prelim to membership. Thus creating what I would term a parallel "boys club" for girls. This seems stupid. We need to change the culture, right, not feed into the nepotism/favoritism that already curses the corporate culture! Sheesh.

A: I once wrote a column about a Black Leadership Committee that was entirely composed of white people. In his book Lying Liars, Al Franken devoted an entire chapter to it.

Q: I see that your brother is participating in these chats a lot. Is that a new feature, or did he participate anonymously in the old one as well?

A: I don’t actually have a brother.

Q: If you normally use two squares, you are not going to use just one, no matter how thick it is. If yI'm sure you've seen toilet paper packs that claim that, because the paper is thicker, one roll is equivalent to two normal rolls. The problem is that thickness is not the only parameter; you also need a certain amount of area.

If you normally use three squares, you are not going to use one and half. You might use two, though.

So a roll of thick toilet paper might be equivalent to one and a half normal rolls, but not two!

A: This is a very important observation and I thank you for sharing it.   I do recall Michael Ramirez’s a Pulitzer prizewinning cartoon that came out after Sheryl Crow said she only used one square.  Here it is.  https://www.facebook.com/ramirez.politicalcartoons/posts/10162981585165532?paipv=0&eav=AfbV5lcFDIklJEPP7BfiDpVvGVY4AlVvpnpb768n1jPEsSeW5NM-OJNPnS_g8YVht1o&_rdr

Also I am less toilet-paper involved since making this purchase.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/gene-weingarten-the-unsung-mvp-of-quarantine-is--the-bidet/2020/06/12/19670310-a125-11ea-81bb-c2f70f01034b_story.html

Q: So-called "artificial intelligence" is the greatest scapegoat invented by man since we came up with "God."

A:  That’s an interesting notion.   I would also nominate “Jews.”  

Q: If you could banish any one word or phrase from the English language, what would it be?

A: “Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

Q: Are you as stupid as you seem?  

A: No, I seem much stupider than I am.   And this might be the smartest observation I ever made.

Q: Have you ever been clinically depressed?

A: Not, clinically, I think. I have known despair. It usually doesn’t last that long because when part of your job is to be funny, you have an excuse not to drown. I mean this seriously, as you probably know.

Q: Will this chat end soon?

A: We’ll have to see. It’s time for me to dip down into the Comments.

Q: Does the fact that Donald Dump flushed secret evidence of his crimes down the toilet in a building with several dozen fireplaces prove he is totally incompetent?

A: Well, we didn’t need that proof, but yes, it does. Also, since he has no bidet, his behind smells bad, but I don’t want to kick the guy when he is down.

Okay, I am calling us down. Please keep sending in questions and comments because as I tell you truthfully every week, I will answer them in the next Gene Pool.