All I Need Is Glove. Glove Is All I Need.

An open letter to Mr. Harlan Crow, chief benefactor and bestower of munificence to U. S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Dear Mr. Crow:

I was leafing through the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue the other day and came across the item pictured above. It is a hideous genuine leather armchair in the shape of a Rawlings baseball glove. As a baseball fan and an aficionado of tasteless ostentation, I decided I had to have it. Alas, I then checked the price. It is $6,500, which is a little rich for my blood. That’s where you come in.

Now, just hear me out.

You are a billionaire real estate magnate whose reputation has been severely besmirched of late because of the disclosure of your 20-year-long hemorrhage of benevolent generosity and bounteousness to Justice Thomas. Your gifts to the judge over the years include purchasing his mom’s house and having architects and builders spiff it up, allowing the elderly lady to still live in it, in new opulence. Other gifts: commissioning a painting of Thomas and his wife and then donating it to the couple; subsidizing sumptuous week-long vacation trips for them in private jets; inviting them to island-hop on your superyacht; paying private-school tuition for the Justice’s grandnephew; and gifting the Justice a $19,000 Bible that once belonged to Frederick Douglass. According to a story breaking today in ProPublica, you got tidy tax breaks on the superyacht stuff.

Alas, chronically dyspeptic liberal critics contend that all of this largesse amounts to bribery — or, in a more polite term I believe I just made up — “incentivization of a public official.” Isn’t it time that we put this calumny to rest once and for all, Mr. Crow? I propose that you start giving lush gifts to total schmoes who are in no position to help you at all. It would establish you as a gift-giver, not a favor-seeker.

I happen to know just such a schmo. He lives in my house with my girlfriend and my dog.

You wouldn’t have to brag about this generosity. That would be unseemly. But I would write about it here, in The Gene Pool. Instant reputation repair! And maybe some more tax breaks for you!

Now, I don’t want to push my luck — the chair would be just fine. More than enough. Still:

On the Hammacher Schlemmer website, I also found another compelling item. Like the chair, it attracted me, and for similar reasons. Because I grew up in the Bronx, I am a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees. This is was the second item I saw in Hammacher Schlemmer:

It is a “museum quality” one-eighth-size replica of Yankee Stadium in 1961, a year the Yankees won it all! At roughly 60 square feet, we are assured it can fit in a big room or a spacious garage. Its light stanchions work! The Longines time is accurate to the millisecond! According to a photo in the catalogue, reproduced below, this item can apparently also be used as a commodious, businesslike desk.

Anyway, this item is only $115,000. If you see fit, you can just surprise me and have it delivered to my house. While your guys are there, my house could use some spiffing up, too, like Ms. Thomas’s. The floors are a mess because whenever my previous dog, Murphy, saw a newspaper on the floor — driven by some ancestral, atavistic wolfish impulse to mark her dominance — she would pee on it, and the pee would mix with the ink and seep into the wood and produce an indelible newspaper-shaped stain, so there will need to be some floor refinishing, is my point.)

Thank you for your consideration of this matter.

Before we leave today, I have an important thought to share on an unrelated topic. Here it is: An excellent headline for a newspaper story on best practices in vegetable gardening would be “Weed It and Reap.” I’m just throwing that out there.

Oh, wait, I have another thought: We are in Hell. Satan is literally burning the Earth into extinction, and snickering as he basically informs us he is doing this, while Republicans are standing there smelling the offensive smoldering sulfurous breath of Lucifer The Infernal Dastard, and are watching him suck the meat off Michael the Archangel’s bones, and are still denying this is the work of Satan at all, but is rather the invented hysteria of Henny Penny sky-is-falling liberal milksops with an agenda.

Also, while I’ve got you all here: The Gene Pool is successful. Many thousands of people are reading us for free, and many hundreds of people are paying a bit. We cost $4.15 a month. Might you consider leaping graciously from the first group into the second? Or even leaping from no group into the first? To help you in this endeavor, just click on this handsome orange button. It will help us be alive and thrive.

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Attention Veteran Gene Poolers: This is an odd week. Not only are you getting this unusual extra Monday post, but you’ll be getting our weekly humor contest, The Invitational, one day early. Wednesday, this week only.

We continue our entreaties for funny, interesting or poignant anecdotes about things you have experienced involving your neighbors. True anecdotes only. Send them here: