Still Yet Even More Additional Questions and Answers
First published 4/29/1999

Questions, questions, questions. Every week, they arrive via email, fax, telegraph, semaphore, stock ticker, Aldis lamp, carrier pigeon, smoke signal, xmodem and pneumatic tube. I’ve sifted through this mammoth pile of urgent questions and I now present the answers, in plain, easy-to-understand English sentences.

Q: Paul, I like Tae Bo . . . but I also like Feng Shui. What’s a fella to do?

A: They should combine Tae Bo and Feng Shui. That way, you could run around the room rearranging furniture really fast while listening to pounding music. You’d get a good workout and the energy would flow better in your room. They could call it Feng Bo. Or Tae Shui.

Either way, after Feng Bo (or Tae Shui), some shiatsu and tofu would be okay.

Q: Paul, do you ever read that magazine, Us Magazine?

A: Look, they call that magazine Us, yet every week on the cover, they have some celebrity like Tom Cruise or Cher. Tom Cruise? Cher? That’s not us. They would never put "us" on the cover, because nobody wants to read about us. They should call that magazine Them.

Q: When’s my wife coming back?

A: This is the only actual question anybody ever submitted to me and I promised to put it into a column although I have no way to turn it into a joke. In fact, the question kind of makes me uncomfortable and sad. So, instead, let’s talk about train conductors.

I wonder if train conductors and orchestra conductors ever get together and just talk. Sure, there are some differences there and maybe there’s some resentment too. But there’s also a lot of love and if they could get over this silly professional rivalry I think it’d be good for both professions.

However, the main thing I’d like to know is whether either kind of conductor actually conducts very well, when hooked up properly to an appropriate power source.

Q: You know that post office commercial where the people throw stamps to the wind as opera music plays in the background? Its slogan is "nothing says it better than a letter." Does nothing say it better than a letter?

A: Nothing says it better than a letter . . . except for a fax or an email. That’s why those people are throwing their stamps away.

Q: Okay, you know that movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer? The year after it came out, they made a sequel called I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. But, if it’s a year later, shouldn’t that be I Know What You Did Two Summers Ago? Or, I Know What You Did The Summer Before Last? Or, does the guy know what they did last summer, meaning the summer of the original movie, not the summer before the original movie, which is the summer that was last summer last summer? If so, why do they "still" know that? Did they know it last summer (the last summer that was this summer last summer, not last summer’s last summer)?

A: I haven’t seen either movie, so I don’t actually know what they did last summer. But I do know this: what they should do is combine I Still Know What You Did Last Summer with Tae Bo, then you could get a good workout and listen to pounding music while you run around getting murdered by people.

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