25 Comments

To the guy who would take loved ones out for dinner with the windfall, a story that is not hilarious but sweet: My dad had a job that he used to love but had grown to hate, was at retirement age, and announced his intention to leave. His bosses asked, what would it take to keep you until we can find your replacement? He said, part moonshot part joke, "double my salary." They did! A year later, still not having found someone with all the qualifications and also the willingness to do the job, same question same answer. They gave it to him again. (And they finally found a replacement after that.) He took his kids, grandkids, sister, and niece out to dinner. In Paris. It was **great** -- my dad is strange dude, but really sweet, too.

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I answered "Nothing" in the poll because I rejected the premise. There is no direct Amtrak rail service between Scranton and Washington DC. You have to take a bus from Scranton to Philadelphia first and then board a train.

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Ha. But for those who voted to alert the authorities....what, exactly, do you tell them? And which authorities? The scenario was okay, the premise of the actual question? I don't get it.

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Same. I answered "no" because, as much as I'd want to nail the guy, I wouldn't know who to contact. If I had secretly recorded the conversation, I would give it to the news outlets.

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this made me laff out loud.

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Wait, someone thinks the "majority" of people indulge in extramarital affairs? I think that may be projecting too much. My brief google says 15% of married women, 25% of married men.

As for politicians whose careers are derailed by them, I point to sad sap Gary HART! not Rice, who not only lied about the affair (big whip - most folks to have affairs lie about them) but then said to the press "if you think I'm having an affair, follow me! You'll see I'm not!" And so they took him up on the kind offer and *BLAMMO* got exact proof of the affair. He's an First Class Idiot not because of the affair, but because he told them to see if he was fucking around and they indeed found out, and rather quickly and easily if I recall.

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Did he marry Donna and I missed it?

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That's an oops!

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Did you consciously conflate Gary Hart and Donna Rice?

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Ha! Oops!

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Who was the last politician who lost an election because he/she had an affair? Ever since Marily Monroe sang Happy Birthday to JFK, no grown up has actually cared very much about the dalliances of hound dog politicians. Eliot Spitzer did not have to resign because he cheated in his wife; he had to resign because the escort said he retained his socks in flagrante . There’s no recovering from that.

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I hope at least one person wrote in response to this question that their first purchase would be a new identity.

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A comment.

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Thought I would share a smile (or what I hope will be one) in anticipation of the on-rushing holidays, when (unforced) smiles may be few and far between. It's the number "Tap Your Troubles Away" from Jerry Herman's "Mack and Mabel," a flop on Broadway but now (as is often the case), a cult favorite. The performance is from a BBC Proms concert featuring the superb John Wilson Orchestra, an ever-luminous Anna-Jane Casey of musical theater fame in Britain, and a talented chorus line. Some old fashioned razzmatazz as an antidote to possible creeping Grinchness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgPZU3YsMuw

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With regard to those mysterious texts. Did you happen to hear what faintly sounded like Rod Serling's voice. If so, the answer more likely than not is that you somehow are in the pilot for a remake of "The Twilight Zone." The only explanation.

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If you developed dementia it would not be prehensile, under any circumstances.

If you grew a tail, maybe.

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Yes, I am fully aware that by not submitting my email, I made myself ineligible for a prize; somebody else can have it. But I do like shrimp. (Also, look at the things people try to win in the Invitational. The ‘prize’ isn’t the point.)

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I like shrimp, too.

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I declare you are Roger S. Whoppersnapper of Cleveland, Ohio.

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Fair’s fair.

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It is my non-religious (Jewtheist?) Jewish bride's favorite food.

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Is it possible you "butt-texted" and the auto-complete feature made an incomprehensible message? Also, Google Forms is blocked where I am, so I can't pose this as a question.

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I don't know. Imagine how much worse it could have been! I was texting my girl! Anything could have happened.

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I thought something similar where Gene fat-fingered on his phone with the text and it cut and pasted into the doctor's phone, but that doesn't explain why he has no record of the text being sent. It's an odd one.

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Many pundits trace our (or at least the media's) fixation on the misadventures and peccadillos of our pols to Jimmy Carter's 1976 campaign when he famously remarked in a "Playboy" interview that he had "looked on a lot of women with lust" and had "committed adultery in my heart many times" --- predating the Hart/Rice scandal that supposedly changed what was considered fair game in political coverage once and for all. A separate NYT Magazine interview with Norman Mailer, also published during that general election campaign, added fuel to the gathering conflagration thanks to Carter's impolitic remark, "I don't care if people say f---."  The Times editorialized during the same period, the erosion of "the legitimate boundaries of [politicians'] private lives and intimate feelings" had begun.

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