Stories of Minor Interest

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Hello. Today will be a grab-bag of oddities.

Recently, the Yankees got a new starting pitcher named Cody Poteet, which is funny enough on its own, but it gets better. I looked him up on Wiki, just to see who he was, and learned this: As a minor leaguer, he pitched for the following teams, and only the following teams: The Greensboro Grasshoppers, The Batavia Muckdogs, The Jupiter Hammerheads, the New Orleans Baby Cakes, and the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. (team logo above.)

This delighted me, for a simple reason. The minor league teams can laugh at themselves for their famously schlocky crappiness and irrelevance. This sort of thing is in very short supply in today’s self-important, stick-up-your-butt world. Lauren Boebert couldn’t even muster a moment of self-deprecatory humor in explaining, and apologizing for, that ridiculous handjob. It would have helped, but it just wasn’t in her. Or in most politicians.

(Carmakers are particularly bad at self-ridicule. Most name their cars without any attempt at humor or self-awareness. They name them by meaningless alphanumeric combinations, like the ‘Rav-4” or the XKE, or meaningless sounds that pleased focus groups. I have called it the Elantra Effect. Someone should name a car “The Gutter Rat.” I contend it would sell.)

Anyway, I went searching for more self-deprecatory names of current minor-league teams. Here are a few. All are real:

The Fort Myers Mighty Mussels; The Montgomery Biscuits; The Lansing Lugnuts; The Binghamton Rumble Ponies; The Amarillo Sod Poodles; The Rocket City Trash Pandas.

This has been a long-term thing, in minor-league baseball. Here are some actual teams from the long-ago past, mostly from the early 20th century:

The Amsterdam-Gloversville-Jonestown Hyphens. The Walla Walla Walla Wallas. The Fargo Divorcees. The Hoqiuam Perfect Gentlemen. The Zanesville Flood Sufferers. The Schenectady Frog Alleys.

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Hey, send in comments and observations here.

Okay, Thursday is the first Presidential debate, one for which expectations are lower than the bar at a limbo contest for pregnant ants. I think everyone is expecting disaster on both sides, and hoping to see fewer gaffes from their elderly, confused guy than from the other elderly, confused guy. This got me thinking about the biggest substantive gaffe I have ever seen at a debate. You might not have been born — or fully sentient — yet, but you probably know of it. It happened in 1976.

It has to be seen to be believed. Gerald Ford was asked a straightforward foreign policy question by Max Frankel of the New York Times, an expert on foreign policy. Ford blew the answer profoundly, seemingly oblivious to the fact, or in denial of the fact, that much of Eastern Europe was under Soviet domination. When Frankel generously gave Ford room to escape, the president, with thudding insistence, instead doubled down. His feeble invocation of the Pope was particularly pathetic.

Sure, we tend to remember moments like “I knew Jack Kennedy” and Geo H.W. Bush conspicuously looking at his watch, and Dukakis declining to approximate a human being in discussing the hypothetical rape and murder of his wife, but these were errors in style and judgment. They did not suggest a lamentable ignorance and dangerous naivete.

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Okay now for today’s first Gene Pool Gene Poll. We’re all aware that Louisiana has required posting the Ten Commandments in every classroom in every school that receives public funding. Today’s question is: How many of these commandments have you broken, at least once? You may interpret them, and your actions, in any way that seems appropriate but honest.

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image 3. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain. 4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 5. Honor thy father and thy mother 6. Thou shalt not kill. 7. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 8. Thou shalt not steal. 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. 10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.

I will reveal my answers during the Gene Pool. They shocked even me.

Gene Pool Gene Poll II:

And lastly, I recently watched an old movie that included a colorful 1940s slang term for a woman, one I’d never heard of. It’s from “Knock on Any Door,” which stars Humphrey Bogart as a lawyer and a very young John Derek, playing Bogie’s client, “Pretty Boy Romano.” I could be wrong, but the term seems harmless and kind of poetic.

It’s real. I looked it up. In the film, a gangster-type guy (Derek) is informed by his gangster-type friends that there is a “twist” waiting downstairs to talk to him. You understand, by context, that this refers to a young woman.

It seems kind of sweet and not particularly disrespectful. There is some disagreement online as to the source of the term, but it may be from Cockney rhyming slang (Girl = “twist and twirl”). It also might just be an admiring comment on a woman’s gait.

Let’s get it back into use.

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In the weekend’s Gene Pool Gene Poll, I asked people if they knew and could define the color “mauve.” The results were as I expected and interesting. Some men knew it and some men didn’t, but virtually all women knew it.

I contend it’s about genetics. We are descended from lower species, and indebted to their genes. In animals, the male is has the most colorful plumage and such, so, to find the best mates the ladies of the species have to have a better color wheel.

It reminds me of a moment from my past. As I wrote at the time:

One day some years ago, I complimented my wife on a new shirt she was wearing. "I like that shade of pink," I said, to pitiless laughter. My daughter was quickly summoned. "Dad thinks this is pink," the wife said, and more hilarity ensued.

The consensus of the women was that the shirt was "coral," although some sentiment was expressed for "persimmon." But there was agreement on the utter incorrectness of "pink." It was as though I had pronounced a watermelon to be a kangaroo.

Undeterred, I summoned my son. Men see colors differently, I said; there are separate but equal truths.

Dan glanced at the shirt, looked back down at the book he was reading, and grumbled, "It's salmon."

The women agreed: He’d nailed it! I regarded my son with disappointment, gender traitor that he was.

"LOOK," he snapped, "I'M NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT EITHER, OK?"

I had forgotten: The poor schmo worked in a paint store.

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We have reached the point in The Gene Pool where we enter into the real-time segment, where you submit real-time questions and I respond. As always, send them to this awful orange button.

Today’s stuff is heavily influenced by my Weekend request for petty peeves, small things that bug you nonetheless. Also, weird body events.

Please remember to keep refreshing your screen to see new questions, and responses.

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Q: It does just bug me a bit that instead of submitting these irritating items via orange button, people who are smart enough to be Losers continue to use the comments section. If it doesn’t bug 🪳 you (Pat or Gene), why should it bother me, you may ask? Type A? Control freak? Kinda. Just more the orderliness of following directions in groups. Part of being on the spectrum, maybe 🤔 that certain amount of order is comforting? Anyway, it does indeed bug me.

A: It used to bother me more than it does now. “Comments” are a robust Substack feature, and I have come to accept that some people just want to be in the comments — for one thing, it guarantees that their offering will be published; I only respond to about half the orange-button stuff. The downside is that comments are less likely to be read. They reach fewer people than are reading The Pool itself. Also, I don’t get to respond, fulminate, make fun of the person who posts, etc., thus drawing more attention to it. But I’m reluctantly okay with it. If it keeps people reading, it’s fine. I am not “bugged” by it. Bugs are slimy and creepy. I am a little bit mosquitoed by it.

Oh, hey, here is something I AM bugged by. When you have had an appointment and / or interaction somewhere, and then they send you an email asking you to rate the service, with an elaborate checklist of yes-no answers and room for comments. And then they bug you when you haven’t yet answered.

Sorry, but FU. Pay me if you want that service. Yes, I am a curmudgeon.

Q: Was your forbidden aptonym a sex criminal or a Nazi?  

A: Neither. You are referring to the aptonym that I mentioned last week. I said it was great, but that I could not publish it because it was in bad taste.   It was a situational aptonym, involving a good man who died in a tragic and horrifying accident, but an accident weirdly and wickedly implied by his name.  Several readers found it on their own, and reported it to me, and they were right. 

Achenbach demanded to know it, and I told him, and he agreed, yeah, you can’t use that. He isn’t even sharing it with his wife. And we’re talking Achenbach here, the guy who wrote the article about jacking off at a sperm bank.

I’m still not publishing it. Maybe in a year or so.

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TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: JUST CLICK ON THE HEADLINE IN THE EMAIL AND IT WILL DELIVER YOU TO THE FULL COLUMN ONLINE. Keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

Also, if you love freedom and your family, send me money. If you love neither and love yourself more, and masturbate too frequently, don’t.

This is Gene. Okay, my answer to the Commandment poll is: 5-7, and possibly 8, depending on your definition of “kill.” I cannot elaborate on that last issue, for legal reasons.

I know, I know.

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Q:  I have an idea for a media stunt:  the Golden Hiney award.  The trophy would have a pair of naked, gold-plated butt cheeks with a scarlet lip-print, and it would be presented to whoever "wins" the spot as Trump's VP pick by doing the most self-abasing job of publicly kissing his ass.  Not sure about the name, though.  I suspect we could do better than Golden Hiney.

A: I like it.  But hasn’t Tim Scott already won the award? 

Q: Petty Peeves, driving: My father liked to say that he was the number one driver in Massachusetts. Everyone would raise a single digit as he drove by. – Gregory Dunn

A: Excellent.

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Q:  I tried to find the full sperm donor article, but couldn’t, so I searched for the doctor. I'm pretty sure this is her obit. She sounds like an amazing doctor -- Pat Benatar music in the delivery room ... The long nails on an ob/gyn though. That scares me.  

A: This is, indeed, Dr. Carol Schlamowitz, the only doctor, to my knowledge,  for whom Joel Achenbach spilled his seed.  

She was a pistol.   I was sad to hear of her death.  

I will say that I have seen women with very long nails do amazing things with their hands, nonetheless.  I once saw a lady with two-inch nails typing 90 words a minute.

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Q: Since folks have been relating their bodily anomalies:

These three old men are talking about what they most want at their age.

The 80-year old says, “What I most want is to have a good pee. Now I stand there and dribble and it hurts.”

The 85-year old says, “What I most want is to have a good, solid  BM. I’ve tried every laxative on the market; none of them do any good.”

The 90-year old says, “I don’t have those problems. Every morning at 6:00 I pee like a firehose. At 6:30 I have a great BM – perfect size, perfect texture. But what I most want is to wake up before 7:00.”

A: Indeed, one of my favorite jokes.

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Q: Hi Gene. I'm  32, a spry young'n compared to most of those here. I started to feel old when I was watching baseball games and the sons of players I once saw play are now playing themselves. And remember Darren Baker, the wee son of Dusty Baker who almost got run over at home plate and seriously injured (or worse) while retrieving a bat as bat boy during the 2002 World Series? He's  been playing in the Nationals organization for the past three years and is currently at Triple-A Rochester. 

A: When I was a kid, I went to Yankee Stadium with my pa.  It was 1960.   I was nine.   At one point, Casey Stengel, the Yankees’ manager,  toddled from the dugout to replace a pitcher.  Casey was antediluvian, a wizened old man.  He limped like a grandpappy.   My dad said to me, no irony intended: “I remember him  as a player!”   

That’s when I realized MY DAD was old.   

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Q: A weird thing about my body:  I always know what time it is, give or take about 5 minutes.  Without looking at a watch or a clock, I just always know.  My wife thinks I unconsciously see clocks during the day and adjust my thinking to the last time I saw.  But I can wake up in the middle of the night and, without opening my eyes to check the alarm clock, know it's 3:25 or 4:08 or whatever.  Also, although I set an alarm clock, I always wake up 1-2 minutes before it goes off and cancel it so it doesn't disturb my wife.

A: Check.   I have a more anxietous skill.   When I have to get up early in the a.m., I always set an alarm, but never have to use it. I always wake up before it dings, even if it is 5 a.m., to catch a plane.  I usually wake up a half hour early.

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Q: I believe I will have to refrain from entering this week's Invitational competition about Ebenezer Pillsbury’s dementia. My mother had Alzheimer's and passed away in August of 2021. My father had vascular dementia and just passed away June 11th. 2024. I just don't think I can stomach it at the moment. – Jon Gearhart

Q: I understand fully, Jon.   We will miss you and see you back in a week.  But I have always lived by the supposition that there is humor in practically everything, however disturbing the subject.  That is the nature of life; tragedy and comedy are like matter and energy: Made of the same substance. My father died of vascular dementia at 92.   I loved him to the end.   It was awful.  But there was humor, if you found it.  And he knew it.

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Q: Here are a dozen of my ideal MiLB matchups (all real teams): Lansing Lugnuts vs. Wichita Wingnuts.

Batavia Muckdogs vs. New Britain Rock Cats

Charleston River Dogs vs. Portland Sea Dogs

New Hampshire Fisher Cats vs. Carolina Mudcats

Arkansas Travelers vs. Asheville Tourists

Norfolk Tides vs. West Michigan Whitecaps

Modesto Nuts vs. Montgomery Biscuits

Greenville Drive vs. Altoona Curve

Lake Elsinore Storm vs. Omaha Storm Chasers

Missoula Osprey vs. Richmond Flying Squirrels

Boise Hawks vs. El Paso Chihuahuas

— Richard from GR

A: Thank you.

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Q: What bugs me? Loud noises. Drivers who ride my @$$ when I’m already going over the speed limit AND there’s a car in front of me. People spell definitely “defiantly” (I teach. so I see this all the time). How every time I go shopping my cart seems to have the wheels that don’t work right. And lastly, getting texts all hours of the night. (There’s actually more, but this is a good start!)

A: I have written about “defiantly,” which is often a product of the dreaded autocorrect, but even more common is the simple idiocy of “definately.”

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Q: Since we are on the topic of pronunciation, people who don't say "button", but instead say "bu  un". 

A: Yes!  It is a plague that has befallen our yoots.   A horrific corruption of pronunciation.  Rachel says it is a Britishism, but I hear it everywhere from 20 somethings.   Including people on the ra io. 

Q: What bugs me is your recent item about urination always being 17 seconds.  You got me timing mine.  Not one was 17 seconds.  They've been 10 to (only one) 29 seconds.  Now per your hypochondriac theory, what horrible malady do I have?

A: Probably nothing, but possibly prostate cancer, unless you are a girl; not being an OBGYN, I cannot responsibly make irresponsible guesses about that.

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Q: People who tell an 83 year old like me who is struggling with a computer problem......."oh that's easy!" – Dan Shaughnessey

A: Agreed.  That is a biggie for me.  People will tell me:  “That’s easy! Just upload a new browser and adjust the functionalities so the dropdown menu shows …”

Q: What bugs me (I might say to an ex-editor) as I make my way across the internet anew each day is the evidence I find for the death of the unique objective case for the pronoun who.  And how generally unremarked upon this passing seems to be.

A: Isn’t the real problem with the people whom use it incorrectly?  

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Q: Something that really bugs me?  Experian has a whole lot of online ads right now, offering their service to cancel all the unnecessary monthly subscriptions you’ve signed up for and since forgotten.  To get this service, all you have to do is sign up … and pay a monthly fee.

I’m also bugged by the way these supposedly impartial arbiters of credit worthiness offer ways to circumvent their own system, I mean “improve your credit score with just a few clicks”.  But the way in which they’ve used the massive amount of data they collect to find another way consumers are ripe to be exploited, and then go ahead and do so, is especially galling.  – Sam Mertens

A: Don’t get me started on Credit Karma’s daily emails about how my credit rating has changed by three points. 

Q: I hate the names that are fashionable but mediocre or ridiculous.

Like Maeve or Siobhan.

A: Agree, obviously.   The only good use of Siobhan that I’ve seen was the vicious, backstabbing  daughter in “Succession,” because they all called her “Shiv.” 

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This is Gene. We are down. Please keep sending in Questions and Observations, because I will need them for Thursday and will give them publicity, including indiscreet photos of yourself, if I have them. Send them here: