"Hello. How Are You Doing Today?"

This is a stupid question, the obnoxiously revealing opening question that is uttered by a voice on the phone when someone is attempting to persuade you to cough up money because you are a man who wants to have sexual intercourse more mightily or a woman who desires a more slender physique or a man who wants intercourse with a woman with a more slender physique, or possibly just someone of any gender in need of more money.

I’m not sure how this has happened, but this six-word phrase, the headline above, has become the agreed-upon opening line for all retail phone scammers, even though we all recognize it instantly as bogus and hang up immediately. It is never delivered by someone with a reasonably believable name, given his or her accent, a name very much unlike the name they are told to give, an improbable name like “Linda”or “Jerry”. I don’t know what this is about or how this occurred because, frankly, I would be far more likely to deal forthrightly with persons with foreign-sounding names if I wanted a constant rock-hard Vesuvian erection and hoped for an honest, arms-length agreement based on trust. But here is “Linda” or “Jerry” on the line.

Hello. How are you doing today? Good, I hope. Click.

IMPORTANT: Federal law requires me to now insert some boring but necessary boilerplate here. 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, so, let’s move on. On Sunday, in my now-regular Sunday Gene Pool, I trawled you for questions that I would answer today. The Gene Pool posed the Riddle of the Day, promising a Huge prize, a $200,000 sports car, a promise I will legally back up. Here is how I laid it out: The following paragraph, right below, beginning with the words “This occurred” will contain all the information you need to solve Today’s Riddle, the answer to which I will reveal on Tuesday. (Today.) The first person to correctly guess the answer will win a 2023 Verde Royale Maserati Ghibli Modena Q4 AWD ZF 8-Speed coupe, just as soon as I can find a Maserati dealership willing to sponsor it. Again, the following italicized paragraph contains all the info I need to supply for you to solve the Riddle, which is to explain why what happened to me on Friday, happened to me. Here it comes:

This occurred on Friday, May 26, 2023, when I went into a Motor Vehicle Inspection Station in the District of Columbia, to get my motor vehicle inspected. It is a 2008 Honda Civic. I was six months late to this deadline for reasons I do not wish to discuss, but suffice it to say, I was a car-inspection felon. There was no line. There was no wait. They did not seem to notice or care that I was a felon. The guy asked me to step out of my car, and looked inside for 81 seconds. (I had a watch on, with a second hand.) He waved a wand around the driver side door frame. I do not know why. He did not look at the treads on my tires, which were frankly a little shallow. He did not inspect my brakes. He did not check any emission device. He did not connect anything in my car to anything that recorded anything, as near as I could tell. Then he told me to drive down to the next “station,” where a man with a scraper scraped off my previous inspection sticker, six months overdue, and replaced it with a new one and told me I didn’t need to come back for another two years The entire process had taken two minutes and eleven seconds.

That is the end of the paragraph you need to read. Can you win the Maserati? I discovered the answer when I called my car mechanic afterwards and asked what the hell had just happened. His name is Chris, in case that helps, but I must tell you it is irrelevant.

Then I went on to the business of the day, Sunday: Tell me the funniest story that ever happened to you, involving a car. Or, to add to the joy, tell me the dumbest thing you’ve ever done, car-involved or not. As a guide, I will link right here to a story I wrote about Rachel, long before she and I had become an item. Here it is.

Today’s Gene Pool will reflect your answers.

By the way, why is “answers” spelled “answers,” with the w?

I am going to give you the ansWer to the car Riddle right away, but first, this wonderful thing. It’s from a state legislator in Texas, James Talarico. it’s devastating.

Good. I’m voting for this guy for president. Now we start with your questions and my answers.

But first, a Gene Pool Gene Poll. It is a weird one. No specifics are needed.

Q: Just watched Marc Maron's stand-up special "From Bleak to Dark." I though it was boundary-pushing and outrageously funny (and unexpectedly moving) - just superb. Have you seen it? What are your thoughts?

A: It’s brilliant. He’s brilliant. He also looks a lot like me before I entered my 70s and got ugly. You should watch it, but not for that reason. It is edgy. For example, he says that the whole abortion thing gets bad media attention that could be solved with better marketing. Don’t call abortion mills “abortion mills.” Call them “angel factories.”

Okay, here is the ansWer to today’s Riddle: The entirety of the answer is summarized in the first sentence. I went for my inspection in the afternoon on the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend. Unplanned. The car dudes apparently wanted to get the hell outta there.

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, “Hello. How Are You Doing Today? “) 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.

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This car story, the one I am leading with,  is by my friend Barry Louis Polisar, who writes wicked songs for children.  We once conspired on a column. 

But this is a whole different story, by Barry:

On concert tour out west, I connected in Denver to a small 16 seater that was going to Gillette, Wyoming. After a short stop in Cheyenne, the plane was going down the runway when it came to an abrupt stop. The pilot announced that they encountered a mechanical failure and it was better to deal with it before they were airborne. Unfortunately, it could not be fixed and the next flight wasn’t until the next day. I had the first of a series of concerts that evening in a library in Gillette, but this was the land of wide-open spaces and no speed limits and I could make the show if I rented a car and drove there.

Without thinking, I announced to the other passengers who were also stranded in Cheyenne, that I had rented a car, and had space to take anyone who wanted to make the 300 mile drive with me. Two men took me up on it and it wasn’t until an hour into the drive when I realized I was in the middle of nowhere, on a really empty highway with two total strangers in the car—one beside me and one in the back seat. This was before cell phones and I had told no one in my family that I was now driving to my destination...with two strangers I had met in the airport.

To put my fears at ease, I asked them what they did for a living. “We’re undercover cops,” one of them said, “we’re coming back from a major drug bust in L.A.” "In fact" the other continued, “you’re bringing in $80,000 of illegal narcotics in the trunk, to be used as evidence in a trial.”

Why were they bringing drugs from L.A. to Wyoming, I wondered? This made no sense. Was I in the car with drug dealers? Or worse, serial killers? What was I going to do at that point? We stopped for gas and coffee halfway on the trip, but there was no way I could change plans.

I knew nothing about police or drug dealers, but I had been a fan of Sidney Lumet’s film “Prince of the City” which was all about ethics and police corruption in the undercover drug world, so I started talking about the film. I was happy when one of the men said he was familiar with the movie and had actually taught it at a course on police ethics at the local community college.

I was satisfied.

We continued the drive and I dropped them off in town when we arrived in Gillette. I drove over to the library, told them all my tale and proceeded to set up for a week of concerts. Just before the last show at the end of the week, the library director called me into his office to sign some forms so I could be paid. The radio was on their local NPR station when the news came on. The announcer broadcast that police had just announced the arrest of two suspected drug dealers in town, posing as undercover policemen. “Police are still searching for a third suspect,” the report continued, “known to be traveling with them and seen at a convenience store. He is described as medium build with brown hair and a beard.”

I felt the blood rushing through my body as I said I have to call the police and explain. The director was calm and unperturbed. He said just do the last show and we can get you to the airport undetected. “What do you mean?” I said and it was then that I noticed the entire library staff had assembled by the door, trying to muffle their laughter.

Before he was the library director he had worked at the local NPR station and had the voice to prove it. You might expect to get pranked by a friend…but by a total stranger, working in a professional capacity? We had a laugh about that over dinner a few years later when he hired me for concerts again at another library show in Ohio where he was working. He picked me up at the airport for that show and there were no long distance drives with strangers.

Q: I've been a fan of the Style Invitational since its founding. A year or two ago, I started subscribing to the New Yorker. They have a cartoon caption contest on their back page, and it fascinates me. It isn't just that the finalists and winners aren't particularly funny-- it's that they're so consistently, crashingly, aggressively UN-funny. It's almost like the whole thing's a joke on the reader. What's wrong with these people? Or, perhaps, what's wrong with ME?

A: This is one of my best columns.

Q: My first car was a 1963 Volkswagen Bug, bought in 1973 when I was 18. It was exceedingly well-used, i.e., a shambles. I used it for seven more years, driving it all over the western US. One of its charms was it couldn't start itself, and I needed to push it and release the clutch when it reached the necessary velocity. My dates came to a point in which the girlfriend/date and I would push it, whereupon I would leap in when it was sufficiently mobilized and start it. I had some very cooperative and sturdy girlfriends.

A: “Sturdy girlfriends” would be a great name for a band.

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Q: My parents sold my boyfriend their 1981 Volkswagon van, which was chocolate brown on the bottom and a dark tan on top. At this point, it was 16 years old but still going strong. He was driving it down to New Orleans with his best friend, and I was along for a day so he could drop me off to join my parents on vacation in Iowa. It was sleeting on the highway and as he passed a big rig, he caught a guest of wind, and spun out of control and into the median, where the van tipped on its side and back upright, popping out the windshield. Police and an ambulance show up, but we were all fine. My boyfriend was sitting in the cop car to stay out of the rain, answering questions, when he hears a report of a horrific accident, clearly just south of where we were, must be multiple casualties, blood everywhere. He's about to ask the police about it, when he looks over to the van and sees the windows are smeared all over with our spaghetti bolognese leftovers from the night before, freaking out all the truckers calling the accident in.

- Death by pasta in Minneapolis

A: Thank you.

There are very few alternative realistic endings better than SNL’s original ending to “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with forward by Shatner. I encourage everyone to watch.

A: This is spectacularly good. 

Re Pet Peeves: Here is one I didn’T think about until this morning when I received an advertisement from some company which read, “Happy Memorial Day!” Memorial Day is the only holiday (other than Yom Kippur) for which “happy” must NEVER be used!

Bill P.

A: I once proposed a special food section at the Miami Herald with the headline “Yum!  Kippur!”   Recipes for the High Holy Day.   It got considered until I explained why it was a joke.

Q: Don here, bro:

(This is my older brother, this story is true, and I have written about it at least twice, once in an as-yet unpublished book — Gene)

You requested both a funny story about a car and the dumbest thing I ever did, which is good, because the same story fulfills both requests:

When I was about 18, recently having learned to drive, I was attending City College of New York, at its uptown campus, which is at 137th Street and Convent Avenue, in Manhattan. I was living, at the time, in our parents' home in Yonkers, something like 15 miles away.

I saw an ad on a college Bulletin Board  from a fellow student who was selling a car for - fifty bucks, as is.  I desperately wanted a car, because having one, I would no longer be dependent upon borrowing the family car, which was not always available, and which necessitated pop knowing where it, and I, was at all times, which was a condition of borrowing the car.  I did happen to have fifty bucks of my own money, and leaped at the opportunity for unbridled freedom.

I made a phone call, spoke with the seller, and, on something like 15 minutes notice, arranged to meet him on campus.  The car was a 1954 Dodge, which I knew was drivable, because he drove up in it.  I climbed in and we went for a test drive.  The car seemed to drive perfectly. I was very young and naive, and didn't actually take the wheel; I let him drive. And what the hell?  How wrong could I go for fifty bucks?  I handed him the money, he handed me the pink slip, and the keys, and off he went. I was delighted.  I got behind the wheel of MY car - my FIRST EVER car -, put the key in the ignition, and noticed something odd: There were TWO brake pedals, and an odd kind of stick coming up from the floor.

I froze.

From somewhere, deep in my consciousness, I realized, with a certain frisson of horror, that I had heard of things like this.  They were called manual transmissions.  And I had only the vaguest notion of how they worked. Pop had taught me to drive on HIS car, which was an automatic.  I did know the general theory; you had to depress the clutch, at which point you could shift gears, which was what the lever was for.  But I had never done so before.

When I was younger, pop had had a 1934 Dodge, with a stick shift, but I had only watched him, of course.  Helpfully, the handle at the top of the shift lever had a little diagram on it which showed the gear positions. What I should have done, of course, was phone someone who knew how to drive a stick and ask for help. I did not do this, because I was consummately ashamed of my stupidity.  

This all occurred at around two PM, immediately after my last class of the day.

At about 6 PM, I, and the car, arrived in Yonkers.  Relying heavily on the fact that this was a fluid drive, which was very forgiving on novices, stalling frequently, racing gears, I had manged to make it.  By the time I got to Yonkers, I could drive a stick.

I still can.

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Q: My first car was an old 1966 Renault R8 that my father donated to me. It had a 48 hp motor in the back and came with a crank (which you could use for starting if you were Charles Atlas, but was more for fiddling with the timing). It was an ill-favored deathtrap, but mine own. 

One day my girlfriend and I went visiting museums downtown. We parked on Constitution Avenue. When the museums closed that afternoon and we started walking back to the car in the direction of Foggy Bottom, we couldn’t help but notice fleets of tow trucks hauling away cars. We hadn’t observed the signs saying this would happen during rush hour. (We were teenagers, so how were we supposed to know.) Anyway, we broke into a run along Constitution Avenue hoping to get there in time, but nope. There was not a single parked car on the street for blocks. However … there was a small white car parked on the grassy verge on the mall side of the sidewalk. Sure enough, it was the R8, still locked and in gear. We got in and putted off. 

So why did the authorities go to the effort of towing my car out of the way and then just leave it? We figured it must have been the parking sticker on the windshield that said CIA. My father put it there when they were in New York visiting my brother at the Culinary Institute of America.

A: Thank you.

Q: My parents sold my boyfriend their 1981 Volkswagon van, which was chocolate brown on the bottom and a dark tan on top. At this point, it was 16 years old but still going strong. He was driving it down to New Orleans with his best friend, and I was along for a day so he could drop me off to join my parents on vacation in Iowa. It was sleeting on the highway and as he passed a big rig, he caught a guest of wind, and spun out of control and into the median, where the van tipped on its side and back upright, popping out the windshield. Police and an ambulance show up, but we were all fine. My boyfriend was sitting in the cop car to stay out of the rain, answering questions, when he hears a report of a horrific accident, clearly just south of where we were, must be multiple casualties, blood everywhere. He's about to ask the police about it, when he looks over to the van and sees the windows are smeared all over with our spaghetti bolognese leftovers from the night before, freaking out all the truckers calling the accident in. 

A: Thank you.

Q: Are you related to the Canadian comedian Johhny (Weingarten) Wayne of Wayne and Shuster?

I am not, to the best of my knowledge. They were a spectacularly mediocre duo, though. Here might be why, pulled from Wikipedia:

In 1954, they finally agreed to host a regular comedy show on CBC.^[3]: 145 In 1955, on one of their shows, they presented a Shakespearean spoof called "Rinse the Blood Off My Toga",^[9] which they also presented on British television the same year.^[2]: 20 A literary mashup of William Shakespeare and Mickey Spillane, the sketch features a hard-boiled Roman private eye hired by Brutus to investigate the murder of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March. As with many of their scripts, "Rinse the Blood Off My Toga" assumed the audience had a working knowledge of history, Shakespeare, and sometimes even Latin. In 1958, in response to the opening of the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, they created "A Shakespearean Baseball Game", written in iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets, and featuring lines lifted from Hamlet and Macbeth. ("O, what a rogue and bush league slob am I!... O, curséd fate, that I, who led the league, should bat .208.") In later years, they considered this their favourite script.^[

Q: I don't think locking your keys in the car with it running was all that uncommon back in 2011. My MIL did it in 1999, under embarrassing circumstances (it was early in the marriage, and she didn't know my parents all that well yet, and she had driven them to an event only to emerge afterwards fairly late at night and discover the mistake.) She called AAA and the first thing they asked was, is the car running? This struck her as absurd and she said no, of course not, but then took a closer look and realized it was (and had been for hours, ofc.) It was a rental car and much quieter than the (older) car she was accustomed to driving. The AAA guy had seen this many. many times.

A: To me, this is kind of stunning!

Q: Hi, Gene. If you were running Biden's campaign, what lines of attack would you write for Biden as he goes up against Trump, DeSantis, and others? As a Democrat, I'm surprised at how weak our political attacks are when there's so much fodder. Regarding abortion and gun control, how about "The GOP will protect your child in the womb, but they don't give a damn if your child dies after that"? What about "DeSantis says he hates groomers, but he really grooms haters"? There are so many angles of attack: voting restrictions, trying to control women's bodies, protecting guns but not kids, taking the country to the edge of disaster with the debt ceiling talks, etc. The Cons are louts, but they are good at consistently hammering home simple messages, even if those messages are outright lies and smears. It's time for Dems to take off the gloves. 

A: You are very, very earnest.  I agree with you.  Also, slavery was bad and taxes are too high.   Something must be done!  Wake up, sheeple.  Enough is enough.   I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. 

Q: Ludmilla Tourischeva or Judy Geeson?  - BF

A: I don’t know who either of these ladies is, but I’m voting for Ludmilla.

Q: Is there a word or phrase for having a song come to mind that is actually inappropriate for the situation? The other day I realized that we’re coming up on the anniversary of the tragic death of a young family friend, but the song that popped into my head was Dylan’s “Forever Young.” When you look at the lyrics, the message contradicts what you wish the outcome had been.

A: Well, the obvious one is “Born In The USA.”  Also, “Hallelujah.” Also, not songly but literarily, “The Ugly American.” 

Q: Many years ago (probably during W's tenure) you opined that the Electoral College was a good thing. It's handed us two of the worst presidents ever. Have you changed your mind?

A:Yes,  I have.  I have lost all confidence in the American electorate. We have become a nation of dolts and bigots and dimwits, far removed from the era of Samuel Tilden, who ran for president, lost via electoral chicanery, and had engraved on his tombstone:  "I Still Trust The People". 

Q: There are very few alternative realistic endings better than SNL’s original ending to “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with forward by Shatner. I encourage everyone to watch.

This is spectacularly good. 

Q: Re Pet Peeves: Here is one I didn’T think about until this morning when I received an advertisement from some company which read, “Happy Memorial Day!” Memorial Day is the only holiday (other than Yom Kippur) for which “happy” must NEVER be used!

Bill P.

A: I once proposed a special food section at the Miami Herald with the headline “Yum!  Kippur!”   Recipes for the High Holy Day.   It got considered until I explained why it was a joke. 

Q: To your riddle I would ask: Did you take your car to a car wash instead of a vehicle inspection station? Also, I do not believe you were 6 months past your expiration of your vehicle's as (I believe) DC extended all expiration dates of inspections until 45 days after the official end to the COVID health care emergency. Therefore, you would have been safe from prosecution until June 25.

When I was a college student in Grand Rapids, MI in the mid-1980s, my first car was a $3,000 used Mazda 323. After I’d had it for a couple of years the exhaust pipe rusted away somewhere between the engine and the muffler, resulting in lots of loud, unmuffled engine noise. Because the car was too loud, I got ticketed by a cop for a “repair and report” citation, which required me to bring my car in to prove that I’d fixed the noise problem. Because I was a poor college student I didn’t have the money for a whole new exhaust system, so my roommate suggested a cheap fix that only required a pair of tin snips, a soup can with the top and bottom removed, and a couple of metal hose clamps to tightly wrap the tin can around the rusted section of the exhaust pipe. It worked like a charm, my car passed the noise inspection, and it ran quietly for more than half a year. One day I started to hear the familiar sound of unmuffled engine noise coming from under my car again, so I immediately drove to the grocery store and bought another can of soup.

A: Thank you. Great story.

Q: Dumbest Car Decision (Good Thing I'm Pretty) 

At the outset, I used to be terrible about filling my tank with gas. I liked to live dangerously. Drove everyone I know crazy. 

Once while in law school I was driving from Chicago to Wichita and kept putting off getting gas. I finally realized I was in a precarious situation and accepted that it was time. I took the next exit with a gas sign...and then ran out of gas across an intersection from the station. I thought for a minute, then decided the only reasonable course of action is that I would push the car by myself the 150 feet.

Did I mention I'm a 27 year old 5'3" woman in flip-flops with no idea how cars work? Or that I'm in an SUV I've named Napoleon? 

I stand outside the driver's side door and put the car in neutral. It immediately starts rolling backwards, because I'm on an incline. And my tires weren't straight, so the rolling is at an angle across a four-lane road. I run backwards in my flip-flops (losing one in the process), the car picking up speed, until I have to let go of the steering wheel and just watch what happens.

Miraculously, the car didn't run into any other cars, eventually coming to a stop by lightly broadsiding a pole and settling into a ditch. I immediately burst into tears and run to meet poor Napoleon. A nice older couple stops and checks on me, rescuing my flip-flop from the middle of the road and buying me a gallon of gas because "they have a daughter and they would want someone to take care of her." I thank them profusely. The car is still entirely driveable, so I get in and continue on my merry way.

15 years later I'm now a partner in a fancy law firm, and I never let my tank go below a quarter full. Just kidding, I still drive on fumes, living dangerously and driving everyone I know crazy.

A: I still like you.

Okay, I’m calling this one down. Please keep sending in questions, comments, kvetches. I will be answering them on Thursday. I love this stuff.