Invitational Week 10: It's Our Birthday. Party Like It's 1993.

As the Invite turns 30, enter your choice of contests from our year of infancy. Plus winning jokes-as-poems.

A painting of a chicken crossing the road in the post-expressionist style of Belgian artist Floris Jespers, created on our demand in 20 seconds by the AI Dall-E 2 system.

Greetings. Fifty years ago, I entered the New York Magazine Competition, which was pioneered by the great Mary Ann Madden. It was a sophisticated weekly reader-participation humor contest. The challenge changed every week. When I was about 19, I entered for the first time. The challenge was to string names and names of things together in a 25-item list that would return to the original name through clever associations. “Bob Hope, Hope diamond, Marilyn Monroe, JFK, LBJ, Ezra Pound…” I sent one in that included the link “…U.S. Grant, Ford Foundation …,” which I thought very clever, because it was. It wound up getting published but attributed to someone else.

At that moment I bitterly and somberly vowed to myself, in a way only a teenager can, that I would someday steal Mary Ann Madden’s contest idea and run it in another publication, only in a version that was more rude and more naughty and objectively funnier. And thus, 22 years later, The Style Invitational was born out of anger, teenage revenge fantasies, pettiness, and blatant larceny. I was proud.

And now here we are, celebrating our 30th anniversary. The Empress doesn’t want me to say this, because she is a stickler for absolutely verifiable truth, but I will say it anyway: I believe the The Invitational is the longest-lived uninterrupted humor contest in American history. Pat worries that there might be some shmendrick contest out there in, say, some weekly shopper, that lived longer. True, and Abraham Lincoln might have once secretly married a Slovenian stripper, but, you know…. I will say that The Invitational passed the New York Magazine Competition for longevity long ago. That folded in 2000 after 973 contests. We, however, are on the equivalent of week 1,528.

On this day, we bring you back to yesteryear. You are invited to enter any of the contests from Year One. It will be easy to find them. We’ll tell you how below.

And now, a one-question poll.

Tucker Carlson has irrefutably revealed himself to be a liar and a hypocrite of immense proportion. This will: 1) be the beginning of the end of his career. 2) will hurt him, but not fatally. 3) It will only bother the people who already thought he was a lying a-hole.

But first, some old business.

On Tuesday a Gene Pool chatter dared me to come up with “Weingarten’s Law,” a maxim like Murphy’s Law, or, say, Cunningham’s Law: "The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question, it’s to post the wrong answer."

Here’s Weingarten’s Law: “To maximize humor, put the funniest word at the end of a sentence underpants.”

Lastly, A chatter said he would buy a Gene Pool subscription only if I wrote a limerick begging him for money, but using the word “potato” instead of “money.” I said I’d do it today. Here is the final version, edited by Pat Myers:

An angry old scrawler of print
Seeks just a small gift, not a mint.
Not $ with eight O's
Just a bag of ... potatoes
Nudge nudge nudge wink wink wink hint.

I await his or her subscription.

Oh, and this headline just happened in a newspaper: Kenya pastor who claims to be Jesus Christ runs to the police after community vow to crucify him this Easter so he could rise on the 3rd day.

On to The Invitational, by the Empress, Pat Myers, and the Czar, Gene Weingarten.

__

The modest debut on the front of The Washington Post’s Style section on March 7, 1993, seeking a new name for the Washington football team, a question that wouldn’t be settled (if badly) till 2022.

Winner of Week 10, euphemisms:  Vomiting: Unplanned reexamination of recent food choices (Erik Johnson) 

Winners of Week 19, change a phrase by one letter: “Beat me up, Scotty”: The last words of Commander James T. “Kinky” Kirk. (Joseph H. Engel; David J. Zvijac)

Winner of Week 39, new Crayola colors: Govern Mint.  Description: Please refer to specification Mil-Q-17983245, Rev. G, w/Appendix J, which details the hue, tone, shade, tolerance, refraction, reflection, intensity and brilliance of this color. (Paul Styrene)

Specifically:

For Week 10:  Enter any of the 43 Style Invitational contests from 1993 (exceptions below); see all the contests and previous results on the Losers’ Master Contest List at NRARS.org. (Click “Reverse Order” at the top of the page to see the 1993 contests at the top of the list; you can look at either plain-text versions or PDFs; obviously use the latter when you need to see a picture.)   That first year offered a great variety of what would become Invite perennials:  neologisms, cartoon captions, jokes, “joint legislation,” slogans, limericks, Ask Backwards. As always, you may enter a total of 25 entries.  Don’t pretend you’re living in 1993;  when a contest asks for, say, a new Crayola color for the 1990s, transpose that to 2023.

—For Week 5, “joint legislation,” use the last names of the current Congress  rather than the one listed.
—Don’t enter Week 25: The photos in the caption contest wouldn’t be clear enough to reprint. 
—For Week 33, given our breathtaking new independence, you can “quote” any writer, not just someone who writes for The Washington Post. 

Click here for this week’s entry form.    Please read the EZ formatting directions on the form, so we don’t have to blahblah them here. 

Deadline is 4 p.m. ET Saturday, March 18. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, March 23.

The winner receives some genuine vintage Style Invitational bumper stickers, above, which were awarded to honorable-mention winners until the Empress deposed the Czar in 2003 and switched to refrigerator magnets.   First Offenders receive the Fir Stink for their first ink: a smelly tree-shaped air “freshener.”                           

The results of Week 8 are below, but first, two paragraphs of boring but necessary boilerplate:

After the intro (which you are reading now), there will be some early questions and answers  added on –  and then I'll keep adding them as the hour progresses and your fever for my opinions grows and multiplies and metastasizes.  To see those later Q&As,  just refresh your screen every once in a while. 

As always, you can also leave comments. They’ll congregate at the bottom of the post, and allow you to annoy and hector each other and talk mostly amongst yourselves. Though we will stop in from time to time.

Cracks Poetic:  The Pokes (poem-jokes) of Week 8 

In Week 8, we took one of the Czar’s favorite pursuits – writing jokes in the form of rhyming poems:  pokes for short.   We’d invited all kinds of jokes as source material – old, recent, and original – and gave ink to some of each, but we soon realized the best jokes were those we hadn’t heard a million times before, jokes that, unavoidably through familarity, telegraphed the punch lines. We had to reject a few excellent poems because — inadvertently — they were too similar in subject, substance, meter, tone and punchline, to pokes Gene had already written and published.

Third runner-up:
A lad asked a pirate, “Please, sir, tell me why
you’re missing a leg and a hand and an eye.”
The pirate responded, “A peg leg thar be —
the work of a cannon that tore off me knee.
“The hook is a badge from our bloodiest raid,
I lost me poor hand to a scurvy dog’s blade.
“Days after, while watching the stars in the sky,
A seagull flew over and pooped in me eye.”
On seeing the lad give a quizzical look,
Said the pirate: “I wasn’t yet used to me hook.”
(Bob Kruger, Rockville, Md.) 

Second runner-up:
A weeping young woman, just newly a wife,
Told her dad, “Hubby's dandruff is spoiling my life!”
“Oh, just give Head & Shoulders — it'll work in a jiffy!”
But alas, the young lady stayed sobby and sniffy.
Her dad tried to console her, but sadly he failed —
“I just don’t know how to give shoulders!”  she wailed.
(Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.) 

First runner-up:
A father was washing his car with his son,
Until, at long last, the boy said,
“The car’s much improved, but this isn’t much fun —
Could you please use a sponge now instead?”
(Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)   

And the winner of the socks that look like pedicured feet in sandals:
The portraits on the White House walls glared down on 45
As he patrolled the halls one sleepless night.
To Washington, he said: “Hey, George, if you could come alive,
What would you have me do so things go right?”
The hero squared his jaw and said, “Why, sir, you must not lie!”
But that advice was greeted with a sneer.
And moving down the hall:  “Well, let’s give Jefferson a try.
What would you have me do if you were here?”
The answer: “Help the common man, not just the well-to-do!”
And, scowling, 45 replied, “Hell, no!”
And down the hall to Lincoln: “Okay, Abe, now how ’bout you?”
— “Well, sir, perhaps go out and see a show …”
(Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) 

Verse and Verse:  Honorable Mentions

A dying man lay still in bed,
When suddenly he raised his head.
A lovely smell was wafting by –  
The fragrance of his favorite pie!
Transfixed, he stumbled to his feet
And went to find the tasty treat.
Into the kitchen made his way
Where, in a pan, the hot pie lay.
He went to slice it with a knife,
When all at once, in came his wife.
She slapped his hand. “For goodness’ sake!
You put that down – It’s for the wake!”
(Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore) 

The grizzly sniffles sadly as she slides into her seat.
She’s left all other bears behind — they’d mocked her mammoth feet.
The waiter comes to take her order; trying not to cry,
She tells him, “I’ll have salmon, please, and one — — blueberry pie.”
“Of course,” the waiter answers. “But what’s up with the big pause?”
"You too?!" she wails — and shreds the booth. “At least they come with claws!” 
(Coleman Glenn, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.) 

Mrs. Bullet was so filled with glee
To tell Mr. Bullet: “You see,
The doctor said soon,
Perhaps in late June,
I’m going to have a BB!” 
(Kevin Ahern, Corvallis, Ore.) 

Each day, Irv eats his lunch outside, sitting on a bench.
He shares with all who join him there, a quintessential mensch.
On one Passover afternoon, he offered to extend
Some matzo squares to someone who it seemed could use a friend.
The man was blind, and with the matzo placed upon his lap,
He ran his fingers over it and said: “Who writes this crap?”
(Judy Freed, Deerfield Beach, Fla.)   

“Just learned each hand has twenty-seven
Bones,” Ann tells her classmate Kevin.
“If I’m unlucky on a date, 
My hand,” says Kev, “has twenty-eight.”
(Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) 

A Pravda contest's asking folks
To write and send in Putin jokes.
But rather than acclaim and cheers,
The winners all get thirty years.     
(Chris Doyle) 

I thought he loved poetry — he seemed decent and mellow 
When I agreed to come up and see his “Longfellow.”
I collected my wits, saying, “This will not do —
I was expecting an epic, but that’s more like haiku.”  
(Jon Carter, Fredericksburg, Va.) 

I have good news and bad news,” the lawyer averred.
The collector of art asked him, “What’s the good word?”
“Your wife bought some pictures for only two grand,
But she says fifteen million is what they’ll command.”
Said the client:  “Sounds great!  But there’s bad news, you said?”
“Sir, the pics are of you and her sister, in bed.”  (Mark Raffman) 

The world began in darkness, but it didn’t seem quite right,
Which led our God to thunder out:  “And now, let there be light!”
The light was quite spectacular, which led Him then to say:
“I don’t know what you’d call it, but I’m calling it a day.”
(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) 

It is rare to spot an elephant hiding in trees—
Take a peek, as you stroll through the wood, at it.
Why is that a phenomenon one seldom sees?
It’s because they’re uncommonly good at it. (Duncan Stevens) 

Todd showed his wife how he felt:
He inked “Wendy” below his belt.
One day while in a urinal stance,
He saw something just by chance.
Next to him a wiener read “Wendy”
But looked all wrinkled and bendy.
When Todd said, “Your wife’s Wendy, too?”
He heard, “No, she’s Wenfendoyazoo.” 
(Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.) 

I spotted a baseball—it arced through the night—
Asked a pal, “Hey, bud, if you’ll permit me,
Why’s it seem to become, in the course of its flight,
So much bigger?” And that’s when it hit me. (Duncan Stevens)  

A pastor, priest, and rabbi made a bet,
Their proselytic talents to compare.
The pact was sealed, the challenge to be met:
Go off into the woods, convert a bear.
The three came back, and first declared the priest:
“I gave the bear Communion – host and wine!”
The pastor, next: “I, too, have saved the beast.
He’s baptized in the river, now he’s mine.”
The rabbi, bruised and battered, offered this:
“I wish I hadn’t started with the bris.”   (Mark Raffman)

Everyone gasped at the beautiful girl – 
To gaze upon her took no urgin’.
She gets her good looks from her father, it’s said:
He's a famous top-notch plastic surgeon.  
(Rick Bromberg, Fairfax, Va.) 

Our town Romeo reminisces
The giving of hundreds of kisses:
The guy always fretted
That he might get wedded,
So there are a lot of near-Mrs. (Kevin Ahern) 

Cassandra knew: being a seer can stink.
No one listened, and folks threw debris at her!
Just like her, I once shouted, “Titanic will sink!”
Then they ushered me out of the theater. (Duncan Stevens) 

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---

A manager was in a bind. His CEO said, “Yes,
We have to cut our overhead. You need one worker less.”
“Oh, what an awful quandary. And such a bitter pill!
I have to let a good soul go. Will it be Jack or Jill?”

The manager decided that he’d leave the ax to fate:
He’d bid farewell to one of them, whichever came in late.
But both came bright and early, so the boss his task he nursed:
He’d let the awful deed befall the one who clocked out first.

At close of day, they’re both at work. Jill caught her boss’s eye:
“You’ve seemed upset all day today. Can you please tell me why?”
“I must lay you or Jack off now.” “And that’s why all the fuss?
You’ll simply have to jack off, as I’m late to catch my bus.” 
(Nan Reiner, Boca Raton, Fla.)  

---

A C-section baby of yore
Had a habit that grew into lore.
Every time he left home
He tended to roam
Through the window instead of the door.    
(Leif Picoult) 

Why must our matey walk the plank?
He’s irked the captain with his stank.
But it’ll be a problem nevermore,
As he’ll soon just wash up on shore. 
(April Musser, Georgia)

I’ll donate my body to science.
I think it would really be cool.
My parents, you see, had a passionate wish
That I’d end up in medical school.   
(Jonathan Jensen) 

A naked woman robbed a bank,
And cops arrived to build a case,
But witnesses all drew a blank
When trying to describe her face. (Chris Doyle) 

Zombies are a fearful sight, they’re called the Walking Dead;
They love to cozy up and eat the brains out of your head.
They might invite their friends to come and have a little taste,
Because as they so often say, a mind’s a terrible thing to waste.  (Beverley Sharp) 

My grandpa: “Life today: it sucks! Time was,” the oldster said,
“We’d hit the store with two, three bucks, and walk out with some bread,
And milk, perhaps, a cup of joe, whatever might enamor us.
No matter, now, what place we go, they’ve rigged up those darn cameras.”
(Duncan Stevens)

It took me years of “sit up straight,"
“Please close your mouth while chewing,”
“No burps" and “do not lick the plate”
At meals, as he’d been doing.
Then just when I’d taught right from wrong
To Hubs, our first kid came along. (Chris Doyle)

I abhor all body shaming
And I’m a lover, not a hater,
But Yo Mama so fat
Her belt size is “Equator”! (Jon Carter) 

I received a request at work today; 
It was really quite bizarre.
"Sign up now for a 401K" —
I could never run that far!  
(Karen Lambert, Chevy Chase, Md.)     

The man showed up quite promptly at the doc’s
Wearing merely plastic wrap (and socks). 
The psychiatrist – a quack and a putz – 
Declared, “I can clearly see you’re nuts!”
(Richard Franklin, Alexandria, Va.) 

Windmill 1: “Hey there, Joe, wanna go to a show?
Black Sabbath is coming here, man.”
Windmill 2, with a grin: “Awesome! Score! I’m so in!
You know I’m a big metal fan.” (Duncan Stevens) 

“To be or not to be” was not the question.
“To be” was off the table; on it, her friends
Who fed a man, his fingertips a mess, chin
Just dripping with the juice of fellow hens.
What dreams might come did not disturb her sleep;
Her mortal coil was doomed to be off-shuffled.
Whatever fate the afterlife might keep
Was not a cause for getting feathers ruffled.
The challenge: with a minimum of harm,
If not to win, to make the farmer lose.
A busy highway ran beside the farm.
En route to chicken heaven, she could choose
To fatten or be flattened when she died.
She crossed the road to reach the other side. (Coleman Glenn)

And Last: 
The Empress walks into a bar,
Where she sighs as she sits by the Czar.
“Well, if golf were their game
All these ‘pokes’ would win fame:
Every one of them’s well below par.” (Coleman Glenn)  

The headline “Cracks Poetic” is by Chris Doyle;  Duncan Stevens wrote the honorable-mentions subhead. 

Still running – deadline 4 p.m. Saturday, March 11:  Our Week 9 contest to use all the letters in a movie title to make a new movie.   Click here or type in bit.ly/inv-week-9. 

Sunday, March 19: Ingest foodstuffs with genuine Losers!  This month’s Loser Brunch will be at the Spanish Diner, José Andres’s home-cooking place in downtown Bethesda, Md. (free parking in the garages). The Empress and Royal Consort plan to be there.  More info and RSVP at Our Social Engorgements  on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org.     

Banter and share humor with the Losers and the Empress in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook; join (tell them you came from The Gene Pool) and the Devs will anagram your name every which way. And see more than 1,000 classic Invite entries in graphic form, also on FB, at Style Invitational Ink of the Day.

STARTING NEXT WEEK, you’ll have to be a paid subscriber to The Gene Pool to enter the Invitational. Sign up (just $5/month or $50/year for an Invitational plus a second Gene column every week) at GeneWeingarten.substack.com.

And now on to your questions and my answers.

Q: Gene --- Who knew ? Apparently there's a "free-the-nipple" trend in fashion. Making a "clean breast of it" is now evidently all the vogue among fashionistas (at least among those not preoccupied with gravitational pull).

A: I have no opinion on that but hereby introduce you to Bridget Everett, a comedian with one of the best teat-related performances. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=696586768443600

Q: Did this Candorville hit a home run, or am I crazy?

A:  Hm.  I like Candorville and I like Darrin Bell.  I love that he got on this right away and the drawing is great.  I think this might be a victim of speed, though.  The last panel kind of stops me – the joke doesn’t seem crisp.  I’m not sure why Dilbert is drawing that conclusion, instead of a pithier one that is more parallel to the heinous drivel Adams wrote.  It created a “wait, what?” reaction in me, which is never good.  I confess I might not be quite getting this.  If you disagree, please pipe up. 

Q: If they put a 20 second clock on you to deliver an answer to a question or be charged with a ball how many of us inquisitors would get a walk?

A: None of you.  I am a competitor.  But all my answers would be, in their entirety, either “Yes” or “No.”

TIMELY TIP: If you're reading this on an email:   Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “The Invitational, Week 10” for my full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers, and be able to refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

Q: Hey, this is Gene. Send in questions. If you are not yet a subscriber and don’t intend to be, that’s fine but this is your last time to have at me through questions or comments. Questions are better — they get my attention.

Q: Have you considered breaking up Substack content into three days rather than two? So you could do your chat on Tuesday and Thursday while running the Invite on Wednesday? It seems a bit overloaded to cram both the Invite and your chat into Thursday's offering. And if doing two chats a week becomes too burdensome, you could bring in guest chatters -- PtheP, Dave Barry, Tom the Butcher, Joel Achenbach, Gina Barreca et al. Also, would you consider making Chatbot a regular part of the Invite proceedings? So, for practicable contests, include the best response to that week's ask from the various AIs out there? Sort of like The Uncle of old.  They would represent a limitless source of unintentional comedy.

A:  Your last idea is great, and Pat and I are going to do it.  I won’t take AI nominations: Will ask the chatbox, and publish the answers.  The Uncle was a staple of the Style Invitational – a clueless fuddy duddy who chose his favorite entry, which was generally painfully earnest and wholesome and reliably funnily unfunny.

As to the previous question: Have you considered working 6 days a week?  Breaking the Gene Pool into three parts would essentially translate into a mega-full time job.   I know the Gene Pool seems like a slapdash, disorganized project run out of treehouse in Guatemala, but it’s a lot of work.  The Invitational is a joint effort by Pat and me, and we take it seriously.  You’d love to be a fly on the wall when we debate, sometimes heatedly, whether, say, the best rhyme for ““vomit” is “bomb it”  or “palm it”?  I have to be there on all days, to take questions and abuse.  As to guest hosts, it’s unlikely – this is very complex to run, technically.  

I will run material by other people.  The first will happen on Tuesday, from an unlikely voice who wrote a very good piece. 

Q: I'm a staunch liberal and I've been in favor of a national divorce for a long time. My reasons basically boil down to: sometimes, people make better neighbors than roommates. When I look at the US, I don't see one nation, I see several, which have very much grown apart. We have incompatible values and increasingly distinct cultures, but we share a government, and as a result we're making each other miserable. If Red States and Blue States were people in an unhappy marriage, now really is the point when I'd be telling them—sure, with years of counseling and an awful lot of compromise, maybe you guys could patch things up, but maybe not, and is that even something you want to do anymore, anyway?

Caveat: I don't actually think the US is two nations, I think it's five or six, and I suspect a six-way fracture along regional lines would work better than a two-way divorce. I've come to believe that democracy works best in relatively small countries. A lot of the US's problems stem from its sheer size. Your vote matters a lot less when it's one of 160 million than when it's one of 30 million

We can't justify a system where, after every presidential election, nearly 60–80 million people end up bitterly unhappy—largely thanks to the votes of people who live hundreds or thousands of miles away and share none of their values and concerns. Who would ever design a system like that? No one. It's just been grandfathered in. The US's component regions are populous enough to be viable as independent countries. As a liberal, obviously I think that the blue-leaning regions would do just fine, and I can grudgingly admit that the red-leaning ones would do okay as well. I wouldn't want to live in any of them, but I don't think they'd collapse or do anything truly intolerable, like reimplement Jim Crow. To address the practicality of all of this: I don't envision this as a sudden, dramatic split. It would take decades to finalize, with lots of time to haggle over thorny policy questions and to apply the brakes to the whole thing if enough people got cold feet. And that's key—I only support this if it has broad popular support from everyone. A mutual divorce, not unilateral secession.  – 

That's my (apparently treasonous) opinion. Sorry.A treasonous person, I guess. 

A: Okay, I chose this, as long as it is, simply because it best articulated what a number of you have written in.  It’s very interesting, and wrongheaded. 

The simplest refutation?  So, some liberal living in, some liberal enclave in a sea of red, say, Austin, Texas, are suddenly totally screwed, literally overnight, even though their views align with a majority nationwide?  They have to either pay for private school or send their kids to public schools that proselytize Christianity?  Or … move to another state?   That’s just the beginning of a myriad of insurmountable, potentially catastrophic consequences. 

Q: The Style Invitational’s first contest asked for new names for the Redskins, but I don’t remember there being a similar contest in 2020 after they actually did retire the name. I could find no other publications asking either, to my surprise and disappointment. So give us another shot at it, huh?

A: I don’t know what that contest would be. But you did give me an idea for and Instapoll. Hang on a minute.

See how fast Substack is?

Q: In order to answer the first poll I'd have to be able to understand how the so-called mind of the MAGA work, and I comprehend nothing they do. Tucker's future is in the hands of a mob of mad idiots. Couldn't happen to a nicer schmuck.

A: Well put.

Q: What's still on your bucket list?

A: Making enough money to retire on. 

Q: Who is your favorite U.S. President of all time?  How about during your lifetime?

A: All-time is Lincoln.  Whenever presidencies are ranked, customarily there is a pantheon of “greats,” and, generally, it’s three guys, the same three.  Washington, Lincoln and FDR.   But really there should be a super-pantheon of one. In my lifetime,  it would depend on whether you consider Truman in my lifetime.  I was one year and three months old when he left the presidency; I was not fully aware of anything, even the functioning of my own appendages.  With him out of the mix, I’m left with JFK and BHO.   Forced to choose, Obama.  

Q: Carlson now using footage to prove Jan 6 was just a film shoot for Josh Hawley's new exercise video, Running on the Hill.

A: I assume you are shitting me, but these days you never know.

Q: I just reminded myself of an old joke. Seagull swoops down , grabs a you worm. Eats it. Worm starts crawling down the aliminentary canal, sticks his head out the bunghole. Calls to the bird: Where the hell are we? Bird says “800 feet in the air.” Worm says, “You wouldn’t shit me, now would you?”

---

Q:  Regarding Clarke’s Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Somewhere I read a proposed extension: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced"

A: They go together well. 

Q: What’s the worst typo you ever made? (Personally, not by spell-check. I’ve already seen the possibly worst spell-check typo ever. It was a to-go menu for a local Chinese restaurant. “Hunan” was replaced by “Human” in every instance. Enjoy thinking for yourself what disastrous dishes were named.) 

A: I’ve been writing for 50 years, so I’ve gone through plenty.  Definitely “pubic” for public, which is a classic.  I once wrote that someone had pleaded “guilty’ instead of “not guilty” but that was caught by the copy desk.  My biggest gaffe did not get into print, but almost did, and it would have been a disaster.  I was write an extremely snarking critique of what another writer had written, and I wrote that on a certain issue he “doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”  I came within a second hitting “Enter” before realizing my grievous error-to-be.  The guy I was writing about was a quadriplegic.

Q: Can we fax in our entries for this week's SI?

A: For the first few months, they all came in by snail mail!

Q: I have a third category of crossword answers I would rather not see: ones that make me feel vaguely racist. For example, crossword constructors like to point you to the word "Arab." I don't appreciate it if the clue refers to humans rather than horses. 

A: I don’t see a problem with Arab!  One I don’t like is “Afro” as in the haircut, which The Times used to do all the time, a generation after there really was such an ID.  They used it because the placement of the two vowels in a four letter word is convenient, for crosswords. 

Q: I say Buffalo Bob Smith was the greatest actor of his generation.  What say you?

A: No.  But I will say that he was the scariest-looking children’s show host ever.   I just read his Wiki profile, and it is great: Howdy Doody was created to be the spittin’ image of Buffalo Bob’s sister.  The greatest actor of the 50s was Howdy Doody, who transcended his facial deformities and perpetually bad haircut to become a sex symbol. 

Q: The Candorville/Dilbert strip - Maybe I AM crazy, but beyond the timeliness I saw it as very Dilbert-esk logical extension to absurdity beyond White people simply "getting away" from Black people.

A: To me, it didn’t seem to really follow crisply. Like, he could have gone to more devastating directions that better illustrated what was happening.

Q: ​​“The Times said they’d decided the [acrostic]  ‘is best solved in a printed format.’ “.

Did the perpetrators have an internal contest to see who could come up with the most blatant FU response? Shame on them. I hope Cox and Rathvon take a cue from you and the Empress and take their act to Substack. 

Q: From Wikipedia: In "Yours, Isaac Asimov", published 3 years after his 1992 death, he wrote, "As it happens, I don’t... have time for hobbies. But I am a fiend at Crostics. Crostics don’t have the public that crosswords do, because Crostics seem hard. They aren’t, and they’re infinitely more interesting than crosswords."  – Joyce Hennesee

A: Isaac was right.  I feel bad for those of you who’ve never taken it on.  It’s gone now.  Others produce them, but so far as I have seen, not with same quality.  Happy to take nominations 

Q: This is the answer from the person who I savaged for what I described as a gratuitous mention of loving his or her daughter.  

Yes I love my daughter. Excruciatingly. She wasn't born till I was 45 and now she’s in college and both she and I will be going in different directions (relatively) soon.  Plus, unlike her brother she is interested in my opinion about things and listens to what I have to say (even if she chooses yo ignore it…she listens ). So when she says “Id like to see the PNW on spring break “ I book a couple of tickets and we explore.  And I take the opportunity when talking about my trip to express my affection. 

As part of my (currently continuing) tour of the Pacific Northwest, my daughter (who I love) and I drove through Neah Bay, home to the Makah tribe, on our way to the NW corner of the US. 

They are somewhat isolated…it’s an hour drive over one treacherous,, winding , coast-hugging road (adjective order again) to get to the town.  

I saw buildings on the reservation (can one say that?) like those that you described in your Savoonga article. (For example a community center). I wondered if they had the same problems you described in Savooka (other than cold-loving dogs).  Then when I stopped for a break on the way there, in the rest room there was a sign in 200 point font that declared “We have Narcan..” and I realized that all communities have different similar problems. 

A: Your first point does not answer my criticism but you anecdote is elegant and poignant.  Yes, isolated, indigenous communities are suffering mightily from substance abuse.  Here is my story from Savoonga.  Save it for later.  It is long. 

Q: Kevin McCarthy, bending his knee in seven places, has appointed MTG as what amounts to "Speaker Pro Tem." Is there anything he could possibly do that he would actually be ashamed of? I weep for our nation.

A: There are several things he could do that would be worse, but I won’t name them here because maybe he hasn’t thought of them, yet.

Q: So here I am, a bona fide Subscriber and a one-ink wonder who has unaccountably entered the Invitational whose results will be announced today, Thursday. The odds of getting ink (ink? should I say "pixels?") are not great. But here's the beauty part. I can put my non-winning entries in the comments section for all to ridicule! Totally worth the $50 a year. Famous forever, or for as long as SubStack holds out.

A: This was sent before the Gene Pool published. Did you get ink?

Q: Last week, in response to a posting on the community bulletin board of the National Enquirer of the internet (Facebook), i responded to a post describing a dog looking for a new home. She and 74  (!) of her mates were rescued from local puppy mill. She had crooked teeth and doggie boobs and lived in a cage. I responded.  Last I checked she was lolling on my wife’s lap, apparently watching Telenovelas, although I am unsure if she (the dog) speaks Spanish (I know my wife does). 

A: You know how to get published on The Gene Pool. 

Q: Were you aware that Beavis and Butt-Head almost shares an anniversary with The 'Vite?  3/7/1993 vs. 3/8/1993.  

A: I wasn’t.  Heh-heh Heh-heh. 

Q: And on the subject of spell-check errors. My oldest son once wrote a paper in college on Moby Dick. Of course, this was written at the last minute, following an all-nighter, and was due early in the morning. The novel begins "Call me Ishmael," since Ishmael is the name of the narrator. The name occurs numerous times in the paper. AFTER finishing it, and AFTER turning it in, he realized that spell-check had replaced each and every instance of "Ishmael" in the paper with "fishmeal." I am told the professor was merciful, though quite amused.....

A: Best anecdote today.

Okay, folks, I am calling us down. Thanks again for a fine chat. Please keep the comments and especially questions coming in. I will mine them for next week, and next week, depending on you, you may not be able to ask them. I will hate that, but it’s the way this works.