“I said it sounded ridiculous. They call it, ‘What’s Biting You,’ and one of the fellows was telling me about it. It seems that you can appear before the panel on the program with any sort of problem, any sort at all, and they guarantee to solve it for you. There’s some sort of bond posted—I don’t know much about the details, but this man assured me that the bond was only a formality; they never failed. Of course,” Doc finished, hearing his own proposal with a touch of doubt, “I don’t know whether they ever had any problem like this before, but——”
“Yeah,” said Ross. “What have we got to lose?”
They got into the program. It took the techniques of a doubler on an army chow line and a fair amount of brute strength, but they got to the head of the queue at the studio and wedged themselves inside. Doc came close to throttling the man who prowled through the studio audience, selecting the lucky few who would get on stage—but they got on.
The theme music swelled majestically around them, and a chorus crooned, “What’s Biting You—Hunh?” It was repeated three times, with crashing cymbals under the “Hunh?”
Ross listened to the beginning of the program and cursed himself for being persuaded into such a harebrained tactic. But, he had to admit, the program offered the only possibility in sight. The central figure was a huge, jovially grinning figure of papier-mâché, smoking a Smog and billowing smoke rings at the audience. An announcer, for some obscure reason in blackface, interviewed the disturbed derelicts who came before Smiley Smog, the papier-mâché figure, and propounded their problems to Smiley in a sort of doggerel. And in doggerel the answers came back.
The first person to go up before Smiley was a woman, clearly in her last month of pregnancy. The announcer introduced her to the audience and begged for a real loud holler of hello for this poor mizzuble li’l girl. “Awright, honey,” he said. “You just step right up here an’ let ol’ Uncle Smiley take care of your troubles for you. Less go, now. What’s Bitin’ You?”
“Uh,” she sobbed, “it’s like I’m gonna have a baby.”
“Hoddya like that!” the announcer screamed. “She’s gonna have a baby! Whaddya say to that, folks?” The audience shrieked hysterically. “Awright, honey,” the announcer said. “So you’re gonna have a baby, so what’s bitin’ you about that?”
“It’s my husband,” the woman sniffled. “He don’t like kids. We got eight already,” she explained. “Jack, he says if we have one more kid he’s gonna take off an’ marry somebody else.”
“He’s gonna marry somebody else!” the announcer howled. “Hoddya like that, folks?” There was a tempest of boos. “Awright, now,” the announcer said, “you just sit there, honey, while I tell ol’ Uncle Smiley about this. Ya ready? Listen: