:

I killed someone yesterday. Again. Over the years, I’d already done in a novelist, a journalist, a comedian, an actor, a TV personality, a politician and a teenager with an eyepatch. This was my first playwright, though. As always, it didn’t feel entirely … good.

(Yes, this is the Weekend Gene Pool. You know the drill; we’ll get to your anecdotes in a minute. In the meantime:)

So, say you are a celebrity. I have never written about you before, and then I write about you, and then you suddenly die. I’ve called this The Weingarten Jinx. The Jinx been taking a well-deserved, and well-appreciated holiday for a few years, ever since I ended my column in The Washington Post. And now it’s back! Right here, in The Gene Pool.

Tom Stoppard wrote “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” one of my favorite modern plays, a masterpiece of absurdist, existentialist wit. Absurdist means the thing is absurd. Existentialist means that humans are mortal, and finite; we and we alone are responsible for creating meaning and purpose to our lives while adrift in a world without anchor, a world seemingly gone mad. This creates a sense of both urgency and freedom, coupled with sometimes overwhelming anxiety and despair. Our lives are a bracing, terrifying, often lonely race for love, happiness and intellectual achievement against the inexorable, inevitable yet unpredictable imminence of death.

Sorry. Happy Thanksgiving!

So. Just ten days ago, in this space, for the first time in my memory, I wrote about Tom Stoppard. It was in a trivial context, as these things usually are. In introducing a new poetry contest for The Invitational, I observed, in my very first paragraph, that Stoppard’s Rosencrantz was an example of “a play about a play,” which it was, and which neatly helped to explain the new contest, which was to write a poem about a poem.

Now, suddenly, Stoppard is dead. Sure, he was 88, but the timing was eerily familiar. The Jinx was back.

My first hit was Teddy Kennedy. It was also a trivial column, involving a crazy woman’s claim that he’d stolen her panties. And then, days later, Teddy was diagnosed with the brain tumor that would kill him in short order. Then, Tim Russert, whom I had cruelly made fun of for apparently farting on the air. Bam, dead almost overnight at 58. Then, Andy Rooney. (“What the heck is going on with all this dying, anyway?”) Then Gabriel García Márquez. Killed them all. You don’t even need to be technically alive for me to kill you. Topps bubble gum decided to terminate Bazooka Joe just days after I joked about the one-eyed king of the bubble-gum groaners. In the next column, I didn’t even write about my victim, but the column was illustrated with a caricature of Mr. Spock. Within four hours of it going online, Leonard Nimoy had been beamed up.

One day, I joyfully reported a welcome weakening in my power. I had written about Masahiro Tanaka, the ace Yankees pitcher, and afterwards he didn’t die! Alas, the very same day that my column came out, Tanaka blew out an arm and was out for the season. Afterwards, in another column, I postulated that this Tanaka thing might signal a step down in my lethality —that now, possibly, I could only maim. Unfortunately, in that self-same column, joking about my powers and how I might monetize them, I hypothesized this:

There must be a lot of celebrities, particularly those of a certain age, who might, you know, be hearing footsteps. Perhaps I might give them a call. It would go something like this:

Me: Joan Rivers?

Joan: Speaking.

Me: Ms. Rivers, this is Gene Weingarten. Have you heard of me?

Joan: My God, what do you want with me?

Me: Nothing much. It’s just that I’ve been feeling a few Joan Rivers jokes coming on. …

Joan: Forget them, and I will send you $47,000.

Me: Sold.

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Joan had been in excellent health, but was evidently doomed. She lasted three weeks, then died unexpectedly, during elective surgery.

So, I’m just letting you know. It’s back. So far, no one has given a cause for Mr. Stoppard’s death. Let’s just call it a fatal case of irony.

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Today’s Weekend Gene Pool challenge: Tell us how, in some way, your life has included something kinda … creepy. Can be trivial or mammoth. We’re looking for true, and funny and/or intriguing. As always, send it here:

Tales from the Creeped

And now, an extraneous Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Good.

And finally:

If you are not a paying subscriber to The Gene Pool, and become one right now, I promise not to write about you. Ever.

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From the Mailbag:

Q: Regarding your recent poll about foods at which we draw the line. Recently my spouse was reviewing his diet & such with his primary care physician. He told her he doesn’t eat any meat, and she replied, “What about organs?” He thought she had lost her mind, but she told him she has patients who say they don’t eat “meat,” because they only eat the organs. Apparently, in that world, meat has a very specific definition as the fleshy muscle stuff, not organs.

A: This sounds like Bill Clinton, during his Time of Troubles, hiding behind the adolescent redneck distinction that when it comes to marriage vows, eatin’ ain’t cheatin’.

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Q: Regarding that excellent, devastating piece written by your friend Peter Richmond. The piece refers to Narcan as “injectable”, or words to that effect. It’s actually a nasal spray, if you’re freaked out by needles. It’s available, free for the asking, at DC social services/homeless support centers. For example you can get it at the Bread for the City office on 7th ST NW from a vending machine on the sidewalk. — Tony Richards.

A: Thank you for that, Tony. You are a fine person. But I must issue a big sigh. Here it comes

SIGH

You are right that in the initial story, Peter referred to Narcan as an injectable, and indeed, its prime component — naxalone — is often administered intravenously. Five minutes after publishing the piece I realized that this might cause confusion, so I changed the headline to “Let Us Spray,” and I added a line in the intro to make it even clearer. Unfortunately, you obviously never read the change, because like other fine people, you sometimes decline to follow instructions.

So, again: The Gene Pool is a rarity among Substack newsletters in that it is — like the United States Constitution — a living document. I often make alterations after the initial email notification you get, based on reader response or changing news or my own self-editing genius. Sometimes, these changes are small; sometimes they are mighty. To best take advantage of this, I ask that when you get the emailed column, please do not just read it as is. Take the one second — THIS IS LITERALLY TRUE — to click on the headline. That will always deliver you to the most recent, most improved version. It also has much better display and reader interface.

Thank you. You are still a fine person, Tony. But shape up.

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Q: Your Charles Osborne’s hiccups cure can be explained by a social science phenomenon called the Hawthorne Effect in which behavior is altered because the subject knows it is being observed. As a social scientist, it is annoying. — Ward Kay

A: Yes, a few people mentioned this. Thank you.

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See you next week.