At First Blush ...
Today’s Gene Pool will be largely themed, based on a Substack-wide callout I made on Monday for people to disclose their most embarrassing moments. There’s good stuff.
But first, a sour thought on current events, and the media.
Back in 2016, when The Washington Post (and other news sites) began publishing embarrassing emails from senior Democratic operatives, and throwing them on page one, I was uneasy. I actually communicated my unease to The Post’s executive editor, which I framed as a question for my chat. My point was that we didn’t know the source of the material, though it was clear it was stolen, and that the disclosures were blush-worthy but not exactly Earth-shattering — largely procedural and just mildly embarrassing, as some of our own.emails would be if exposed to the public. Thin gruel, mostly. The biggest impact was when right-wing conspiracy traffickers decided “pizza” was a codeword for “sex trafficking young children.”
The editor’s response was basically that the paper had confirmed the truth of these things, and they were interesting, and that’s all that really mattered. True and interesting = a story. I was surprised at my certitude about this because all through my professional life, I was the gung-ho guy, the print-it-print-it-print-it-goddammit advocate. The second thing that surprised me was that I was right — I so often am not. The leaks turned out to be the result of Russian hacking in a deliberate campaign to entice the media into over-covering it in order to throw the election to their man, Donald Trump. And it apparently worked.
Well, I think we’re making the same mistake with these leaked classified military documents. There doesn’t appear to be an organized campaign, just a 21-year-old baby-faced jackass trying to impress his online friends, a collection of racist gun nuts. But this stuff is also obviously stolen, and compromising to our country’s foreign relations, and is also vague, mostly summaries of military assessments, plans and worries, all of dubious news value. Some actual headlines: Jordan feared Chinese retaliation over Huawei; UN boss 'too accommodating' to Russia; Russian infighting over Ukraine dead; U.S Worries about Ukraine’s continuing military strength; Egypt secretly planned to supply rockets to Russia; Western special forces operating inside Ukraine.
That last one comes closest to being “news,” but also to being treason. We never publish details of troop movements in wartime; how is this different?
The whole thing stinks, in my opinion — it feels leprous — and I don’t think the news media, understandably delighted as they are by “secret” stuff, should traffic in it; not everything needs to be a story, even if it is interesting. Sometimes, getting “beaten” on news — especially news that is not your work product, but is handed to everyone simultaneously — is a noble bow-out.
I’m sure many in newsrooms disagree; a prevailing sentiment is that anything that illuminates dark corners in a big ongoing story is central to a newspaper’s role of informing the public. It’s a defensible position.
What do you think? Have at me as a wimp, if you wish.
—
Okay, we’re on to humiliation; your stories will dominate the questions and answers section below. I have edited some of them for clarity and to limit bloviation.
But first, you get to listen to my greatest embarrassment. (I wrote about it years ago, but it takes greater resonance in this format.)
I was walking my dog one day when a man greeted me in a friendly fashion. Clearly, he was a neighbor; he had dry cleaning in his arms. He said, "Hey, Gene, we've moved out of Kim's house to a place on Kentucky Avenue."
I was in a bit of a pickle. Clearly this man knew me, and knew me pretty well, but because of a problem I have recognizing faces, I simply could not place him. He did look familiar. My mind, such as it is, began taking a good, solid inventory of itself, and reached certain conclusions. After all, he had given me a solid hint. Then, a slap-to-the-forehead revelation! There had recently been a fire on my block, in the house of my neighbor, Kim. The house had been badly damaged, and everyone had had to move out. I remembered there were people renting the basement apartment! This must be the guy!
Yay! I was saved the embarrassment of not knowing who he was! And so I said, "Oh, that' s great! Did you know that Kim finally found a place across the street?" And I pointed cheerfully to the house she had just rented.
This man's face fell. An odd look painted his face. It was almost... anguish.
Cripes. Had he and Kim had some sort of painful falling-out?
Unbowed, I bulled ahead.
"It's good she found a place in the neighborhood, isn't it? We'd missed her for a while! But she's back!"
The man muttered something equivocal, and walked on. Rather unfriendly, I thought.
It wasn't until a couple of minutes later, when he was out of sight, that I realized the horrible mistake I had made. There had been two Kims in the neighborhood. I'd been thinking of the wrong one. HIS Kim was his ex-wife, my friend, the one who had died in a car crash about a year before. After her death, he had moved back into Kim's house to be with their two children. He'd been trying to tell me that they had finally moved away, to escape from memories, to another house in the neighborhood. And I informed him she’d merely moved across the street.
I will tell you that the phone conversation he and I had that night was one of the funniest ten minutes in either of our lives. "What did you THINK I was talking about?" I asked him. "I had no idea," he said, "but I just hoped the day was going to get better for both of us."
—
So, that’s it. Except I have another humiliating incident that I haven’t yet shared. It’s safe now, I think. Possibly.
But first, some boring but necessary boilerplate. I’ll make it quick:
After the intro (which you are reading now), there will be some early questions and answers added on – and then I will keep adding them as the hour progresses and your fever for my opinions grows and multiplies and metastasizes. To see those later Q&As, 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.
Okay, my second humiliation:
I was at Eastern Market, buying chicken wings. I have an obnoxiously specific preference in chicken wings: I don’t like the part that looks like a little drumstick; I prefer the other part, that looks like a large, meaty paper clip. So I was trying to communicate this to the man behind the counter, a genial man I’d done business with before; I told him I didn’t like the drumstick part as much as I liked the other part, but I didn’t know what to call it.
“It’s the frat,” he said. Or “fratte,” or whatever. We weren’t writing this out.
Cool. I now had a name! “I’d like more of the frat than the other part, if you can do that, I’d be grateful. More frat than drumstick.”
The man suddenly went silent and sullen; gave me my order wordlessly, rang me up, turned away.
As I walked home, I tried to puzzle this through. And then it hit me in the face like a stinking baggie filled with dog poo, flung by a catapult.
The man behind the counter was a recent Asian immigrant. He was telling me the piece of chicken was ”the flat.” Quite reasonably, he must have thought I was making fun of his accent.
I had no idea how to fix this, and eventually decided there was no way without making things worse. I avoided him for a while, hoping he would forget that I was the schmuck.
Okay, your questions and stories.
Q: Not a question, just a compliment: Nice touch in today's Barney and Clyde.
A: Thanks. There’s a small story behind it. This was written more than a year ago by David Clark, the cartoonist who illustrates Barney & Clyde. It was during the wretched fallout over my expressed distaste for curry, and I told him — wisely, I think — that it was too early and still too raw. David never forgets anything, and never throws anything out and a few weeks ago, he asked “how ‘bout now,” and I said, sure, what the f—-?
Q: Many years ago, when starting a new job and wanting to make a good impression, I decided to buy some new clothes. I went to the mall and found some shirts and pants that were on sale. The next morning, all spruced up, I walked into the office. Mike, a senior co-worker, was chatting with the secretaries. He gave me a startled look and said, “JP, what’s this?” Then he reached straight for my crotch, ripped something off with his fingers, and held it up. It was a fluorescent orange label that said, “AS ADVERTISED."
A: Hahahaha.
TIMELY TIP: 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, “At First Blush”) for my full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers. And you can refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post from about noon to 1 ET.
Q: I’'m a lawyer. Several years ago, I had a conference before a federal judge that ended up being held telephonically for reasons I don't remember. When the time for the conference arrived, I dialed the number on my speakerphone, and to my surprise the judge herself answered the phone. She confirmed it was me, and then asked me to wait until the other side called in before we began. So I sat back in my chair and waited.
While waiting, my secretary came in to my office to complain about a difficult client she'd just gotten off the phone with. I said something like, "yeah, sorry, that guy's a real butthole." My secretary was not a native English speaker, and asked me what "butthole" meant. I replied -- and I remember these words crystal-clearly -- that a butthole is "the hole in the butt where the poop comes out."
The brief bubble of levity was immediately popped by an icy voice from the speakerphone: "Counsel, I'm still on the line and can hear everyone."
A: Wow.
Just before the 2020 election, I wrote a story that included a conference call involving a female Episcopal priest, a real estate developer, Donald Trump, and his lawyers, (I know, this sounds like the start of a joke. ) The meeting was about a women’s shelter run by the church located near a planned Trump tower. Trump didn’t like it there. The lawyers wanted to show the priest that Trump wasn’t a bad guy, that he could be reasoned with, even though he wanted to move the shelter. Apparently unaware he was on speakerphone, Trump told one of his lawyers that he didn’t want “those pussies anywhere near my building.” The meeting did not go well from that point on. The shelter stayed put.
Q: You said you have subscribers in 49 states. Which state is the holdout? If I know someone in that state, I’ll see if I can convince them to subscribe.
A: Good idea! I shouldn’t tell you this, but it can be a free subscription. Still counts. The state is Vermont. Oh, and the foreign country with the most subscribers? You ready? India.
Q: As a teenager, I went with a bunch of kids from my church to an ice skating rink in downtown Atlanta. I think maybe a few in the crowd had been ice skating a time or two, but most of us were complete novices. (This was Atlanta, duh.) I was concentrating hard, clinging to the wall, trying to get the hang of things, and failed to notice that after 45 minutes the Zamboni was coming out. By then I was on the far side of the rink, 180 degrees away from the one opening. (Weird design.) People were yelling at me to come in. I was yelling at them they'd have to wait for another 45 minutes, until I could work my way around to the entrance. Finally two employees--both young men, both nice looking, so TOTAL humiliation--came out, grabbed me by each elbow, and hauled me back to the entrance sort of the way a farmer would rescue a cow. This was not the most humiliating moment of my life; it's just the one I'm willing to tell.
A: Oh, you’ll tell the rest. It’s just a matter of time. But any story with “Zamboni” is perforce funny.
Q: My daughter was a good college swimmer. In 2008, my wife and I were in Columbia, Missouri to watch our daughter and her team in the NCAA Division II national championships. I woke early on Sunday, and went to the hotel lobby to check the results of The Washington Post Style Invitational. (Results: http://nrars.org/paperPDF/0756.pdf) As I scrolled past Jeff Brechlin’s winning entry, the night clerk scolded me, “You can’t look at porn here! If the cops came in, they could shut us down. Get out!” Fortunately, there was not a crowd at that early hour to witness my chastisement. It was no use explaining, so I just put my tail between my legs and left. I don’t mind at all if you want to use my name with this. Roy Ashley
A: Excellent. Look at the link. The contest was to create some art that fit the caption “I should have just stayed in bed today.”
Q: I went to CVS to pick up my prescriptions, usually a three month supply. My doc had taken me off one of my medications, so I had specified in the CVS app that I did not need that one refilled. Total cost: $50, after insurance. When I got home, I realized they had refilled the prescription I didn't request.
It wasn't the money, I told myself, it was the principle. But the money also counted. So the next evening after work I went to CVS to complain and request a refund.
I was mildly embarrassed to realize that a former student (I worked at a college) was working in the Pharmacy. He listened to my mild outrage and sheepishly told me that he did not have the authority to provide the refund, but his supervisor did, and she would be there the next night.
Remember, it's the principle, so now I feel like I cannot let this go. So the next night, I head once more to CVS to speak to the supervisor. She listened attentively, heard me out, nodded in understanding, and proceeded to open the cash register and hand me the 27 cents my prescription had cost, after insurance.
A: Yeah, you gotta pick your fights. Just yesterday, I ordered cod at a Safeway seafood counter, and was given tilapia, but charged for cod. I calculate that my overcharge was $4. I’m not sure I am going to even argue. The tilapia was good.
Q: My confidential embarrassment: I took a dip in a trout pond of the club I belonged to, it was a private 4-acre lake surrounded by woods. Totally innocuous and safe, it wasn't even the season but the summer. My intestines became active for an unknown reason and well, you know, I would have done anything to avoid it. A week later, there is a quarantine put on the lake for having found ecoli in a water sample. The spot happened to be the primary sampling spot. Didn't last, wasn't really a problem except the spot. Still humiliating though no one knows.
A: I like how much poop is in this thread. It gives me joy.
Q: In spite of working in intel for 10 years, or maybe because of it, I am always loath to say "keep it all secret!" But you are correct on this point - much of it is dangerous to let out into the world. We were not the "publish anything" media and now? Who cares, right? Well, the people out in the field will care, especially those in the line of fire. Damn, this has been incredibly upsetting to me, and thanks for bringing it up. When they allowed Cheney to out Valerie Plame, ruining her cover and career, we knew it was over this idea that some info should remain behind the walls.
A: I feel a bit like a weenie for feeling as I do, but I do. Feel. As I do.
Q: Gene and Pat, are you going to Dave Barry's reading this Friday at Politics and Prose? I'm thinking about going, but it will likely be super crowded. Is there an Invite secret code word we can use at the door to get in and find a reserved seat?;-)
A: I will be there. Not sure about Pat. Pat is off judging the horse names, which is basically an entire career rolled up into a couple of days. My best advice is to show up early.
Q: I believe you said somewhere that you had gotten a second booster shot, but it was before it was approved. How did you do that? Didn't they ask to see your vaccination card? If you had not had one, they would have given you the initial shot, not the booster. If you showed them the card, wouldn't they have refused you since booster 2 was not yet approved at the time?
A: It was actually booster 4. My pharmacy declined. So I went to another pharmacy, part of a big chain. The pharmacist told me that their policy is “to put vaccines in arms, period.” He said he’d give me a booster if their computer system okayed it; I had to fill out an online form. I told the truth on the form.. The computer passed me through. Why? The pharmacist had implied that the computer, by design, was lenient. Apparently the computer also just wants to distribute jabs into arms. I got the shot; the pharmacist didn’t even ask to see my card. Do I recommend that you pharmacy-shop? No. But I also don’t recommend against it. I do believe that the felicity of timing helped make my bout with Covid remarkably mild.
Q: When I was in college I was chatting with an ex-girlfriend for whom I still had feelings. I offered to fly out to visit her the very next day, and she accepted. I called her when I landed, and she said something like: What? What are you talking about? I guess she'd thought I was joking, since it would be pretty crazy to visit someone who lived across the country on a total whim. Or maybe I misunderstood something she'd said? I'd have never gone without what I thought was the all-clear. But anyway, luckily she was able to pick me up from the airport because her boyfriend had a car.
It was pretty awkward and I went home the next day (via bus because I couldn't get a flight) but not before I got diarrhea from some chicken wings in her friends' dorm room.
I like to think of myself as a decent and kind and reasonable person, but for a certain number of people out there (three, including her, the boyfriend, and the friend, plus whoever else they've told, so probably a couple thousand) I'm the guy who showed up uninvited to woo a woman who was already dating someone else and then made a big mess in their bathroom. --Carl with a broken heart and loose bowels.
A: Thank you. This needed the last development to work.
Q: I have been reading some of your old chats (currently I'm up to 2005). I am kind of depressed by your discussion of W's incompetence, and your speculation that he might eventually be considered the worst president of all time. I just keep thinking, "You ain't seen nothing yet!" What do you think of W now?
A: I think he was a dreadful president because he failed test number one: He marched us into a war of discretion – not necessity – based on phony, ginned-up evidence, without a reasonable rationale. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The results were disastrous in terms of loss of life and limb and a hemorrhage of national assets, with awful geopolitical ramifications. He was incurious, inelegant, and an assassin of the English language. Trump made him look like Lincoln. When the historians’ verdicts on Trump start rolling in, in about four years, especially if he winds up in serious legal jeopardy, they will place him dead last, even conservative historians. James Buchanan will be so happy in his grave.
Q: So, I am on the planning committee for one of these conferences and had been asked by the chair to bring my very fancy pants camera and snap some photos through the day so we could put them up on the web: site before we get the professional photographer's photos back. I, like most engineers, am an introvert. But I agreed. Well, I needed a people break and went outside where there were cherry trees blossoming and I started to snap a few photos for myself when i realized that there was the most beautiful lizard sitting on a branch in the tree. It was iridescent in the dappled sunlight through the blossoms and I just had to get the perfect shot. I crept closer, I framed it perfectly, the lizard noticed me and ran around the trunk. I was not to be dissuaded. I was soon hopping around the tree gleefully instructing the lizard (as i've seen photographers on those silly modeling competition shows do) to "freeze right there," "give me your best pouty lips," "Now a playful pose," because honestly, I was cracking myself up treating this lizard like some kind of fashion model. I turned around triumphant, having captured my shot. to see a man I did not know standing there looking at me as though he wasn't sure if he should be afraid of the woman talking to the tree or if he should offer her assistance. Later, it turned out he was a main speaker at the conference, the president of the top society in my field of engineering, a man I had to get close to to photograph. As I lifted my camera to snap a few shots, he looked at me, smiled and says, "pouty lips or a playful pose?" I realized I had to explain myself and so I said, "I wasn't talking to a tree! I was talking to a lizard!" as if this made it less weird.
A: Nice.
Q: I’m away to the auto repair shop to get new tires. I’ll be cross-dressing so I don’t get “treated like a woman” as happens ALL THE TIME, e.g. talked down to, overcharged, advice/insight ignored. Your suggestions, please, on how to get better service as a real girl.
A: For our book, “I’m with Stupid,” Gina Barreca and I set up a competition. In separate cities, we would each try to get the lowest price on a new Mercedes – same model, same year. (Uh, we never completed the sale.) The theory was that men are harder bargainers than women. I won, but just by a little, and through cheating. Gina did great. I asked her what she did. She said she dressed and acted like “Helga Von Shtupp” – essentially a concentration camp matron. In short, I do not advise you to act like a real girl. Misogyny in auto dealerships is here to stay. Helga is what you want.
Q: Hi Gene - Since you have ruled on such critical household etiquette questions as TP, over or under, I was hoping to get your opinion on this one. Glasses in the cupboards - rim down or rim up? I assume the rim downers are trying to prevent dust from collecting in the glass, and the rim uppers are trying to prevent the part of the glass which touches your mouth from touching a potentially unclean or rarely cleaned surface. I am a rim upper myself. Thanks. Dabug
A: Should be rim up. I figure if there is still some moisture in it, rim down will trap in there. Also, it’s toilet paper under. I know that is a minority view, but I have courage to buck the tide.
Q: If you had an idea for a Movie (probably a short story or a book first) and you didn't care if you got credit for it or not, who would you tell about it to give it the best chance of becoming a reality? I have had an idea floating around in my melon for quite awhile but can't focus long enough to put it into story form myself. Honestly, I don't have the skills to do it properly even if I could focus.
Jon Gearhart, Des Moines
A: I would tell David Simon. You would tell me.
Q; Humiliation? How about this one. My husband was watching a video on his computer. I came up behind him, shirtless, wearing a bra, and kissed his neck. Yeah, you have likely figured it out. He was on a Zoom call with his office.
A: Elegant.
Q: I'd just gotten a new job on the Hill with Tom Petri [Alexandra's pop] and ran into him between escalators in the underground that bustles between House buildings and the Capitol. I shook hands with him and exchanged "Can't wait to start" - "Can't wait to have you" and turned to catch the "UP" escalator with a big smile on my face. Those things move at extra-fast speed, BTW, and as I grabbed the moving handrail, I tripped on the sharp edge of the step. Boof! Fell forward but still hung onto the handrail, since those sharp teeth of the steps were moving in front of me and I had a nice dress on I didn't want to rip up. But the handrail was moving faster than the steps! So my skittering feet couldn't get a purchase behind me. It was a nightmare. People were staring at me from the "down" side as well as those behind me who were powerless to help. Eventually the damn machine deposited me like a beached whale onto the metal platform and I had to quickly roll to the side so those behind me weren't delivered onto my backside. I just prayed Congressman Petri hadn't seen any of this. He never mentioned it - and once I got to know him, I was pretty sure he'd have said something! - but it was humiliating.
A: This one made me laugh out loud.
This is Gene. Before I forget, Check out this tweet. It is a brilliant and disturbing observation.
This is a long story, but quite amusing, with an excellent kicker:
Q: Almost every guy has a sports story. Here's mine. I SWEAR it's true, because I can't make this stuff up. Back in the 1970-71 school year, I was a freshman in high school and made the Freshman basketball team. Mostly, in hindsight I think, because my older brother was a basketball legend when the brand new school opened in 1965.
The freshman basketball coach was rather, eccentric. I was the 12th man on the bench. And I was on the bench, a LOT. Now, being 1970, even at the average age of freshmen high schoolers, there was a group that, well, toked up. At least one of whom was a starter on the team. Let's call him, The Toker. About midway through the season we had a home game. Somehow, The Toker didn't have his sneakers. How he made it through gym class that day still boggles my mind. So in the locker room before the game, the coach looks at me asks me MY shoe size and can the The Toker "borrow MY shoes."
Well, me being the team player that I am, I gave them up. I asked the coach what I should do. As in, get dressed for the game or not. He looks at me like I'm the crazy one and says to get in uniform. Well, he's the coach and I'm just a freshman kid, so I do it, because I trust he knows what he's doing. Now this was home game. We come running out of the locker for warm ups and there I am, full uniform, in socks but no shoes. Like, I'M the idiot that forgot. So, pretty much EVERYONE noticed.
I will say that my shoes scored a bunch of points that night. I sat on the bench, shoeless, the entire game.
There IS a kicker. The next game was an away game. My best friend was also on the team. We had to wear ties to away games. As we were lining up to get on the school bus, my friend and I were right behind The Toker. The coach grabs The Toker by the tie, and says, "Do you have your shoes?" The Toker says yes. The coach makes him open his bag to prove it. The Toker gets on and we get on and sit right behind him. Like all of us, The Toker put his gym bag on the floor under his seat. As we're riding along, my friend starts sliding down in his seat and I can see his legs moving around. I say "What are you doing?". He just shushes me and then I realize he's reaching under the seat with his feet and pulling The Toker's gym bag to us. He grabs the gym bag and TAKES OUT THE TOKER'S SHOES, puts them in HIS gym bag then calmly slides it back under the seat. We get in the locker room and the look on The Toker's face when he opened up his bag was priceless. The coach looks at me and I just nod my head and say, "Nope!" It was 100% worth it.
Q: In your journalist hat, I'm curious as to how you think the media ought to cover climate change. Since this is now accepted science, anti climate change views should not be referred not as "controversial" or "opposing points of view", right? There's no longer any reason to weasel about this, just say they're wrong.
I also think that we approach the PR side of this all wrong. People talk about "saving the planet" all the time, this is both incorrect and ineffectual. It's incorrect because regardless of what human beings do, the planet is going top survive just fine. There won't be any humans on it, and we'll take a few million innocent species along with us, but the planet will still be here, though in a drastically altered form. It's ineffectual because it sounds do-goody and hides the very real, very selfish motivations we ought to have for saving our own skins. Tell people we need to save ourselves, and I think you'll gain many more converts.
A: Yes, I think it has passed into the gay marriage area, or the “was the election stolen” issue, where it is no longer a legitimate public issue. The media would take flak from the right on this, but we have to take a stand sometimes. And I think you are dead right about “save ourselves.” It’s kind of a brilliant tweak.
Hey, I am calling us down. I’ll be lurking a bit in the Comments.
PEASE KEEP SENDING QUESTIONS IN. IT’S YOUR BEST WAY TO GET THEM ANSWERED ON THURSDAY. SEE YOU THURSDAY.
Since we're discussing toilet paper, remember that The Invitational has that TP Art contest going on right now -- deadline Monday. Anything with the TP or rolls; just take a picture of it . Details in last Thursday's Gene Pool, bit.ly/inv-week-17.
My grandparents were at some kind of church meeting where congregants were asked to reveal their most embarrassing moments, so my granddad told, in great detail, about the time he attended a rodeo and a bull charged at the porta-john, sending it flying. While he was on the throne. You can imagine what transpired. My grandmother’s turn was next. She said, regarding her worst humiliation , “I believe it was the last five minutes.”