The Final, Glorious Journey of the Badwagon? (Plus, poop.)

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Hello. Welcome to the Weekend Gene Pool, where, today, we take extra advantage of both your good nature and your ill-concealed greed for an actual prize of some value. There will be three challenges, not just one. Stick around for the last. You’ll be sorry if you don’t. Your observations and anecdotes, as always, will be used as fodder for me in Tuesday’s Gene pool.

Challenge one: As a kid, or as a parent of a kid, were there any funny / weird euphemisms for bodily functions — or any other awkward subject matters — that your family used? Elaborate.

In my early youth, defecation was “making a puddle” and urinating was “making a siss,” or possibly “sis.” (So far as I and my older brother Don recall, this last term was never reduced to the written word.) I know why our parents chose these terms, but I shan’t further tarnish their otherwise sterling reputations here. I will disclose, with some shame, that “puddle” was also utilized as a derogatory noun for a person you do not like, as in “don’t be such a puddle.” When she was an infant, Rachel’s family adopted the following term to indicate passing gas: “Go beep beep beep.” There is little dignity or gentility in any of this, and I apologize.

Challenge two: Did you ever say or do something pretty darn insensitive, either by accident or on purpose? Explain, with details. Once, in 1987, in attempting to establish openness, rapport and start a lasting friendship with a young black associate of mine whose work I admired, I once told her a borderline racist joke. It did not work out well, nor should it have, and I regret it to this day. No, I will not tell it here.

I will not use your name for either of these challenges unless you specifically ask me to. Send your anecdotes about both of the above to this orange button:

Challenge three: The big one. Many, many weeks ago, I promised that if, on the last day of this baseball season, the Dreadful Chicago White Sox went into the game precisely one loss away from the glory of statistically becoming the Worst Team in Modern Baseball History, I would go to the game, which is in Detroit, and bring one of you with me. Thus was born The Badwagon, a rickety old metaphorical conveyance to transport die-hard aficionados of the glory of Losing. Get on the Badwagon, I urged. Root for this team to become a milestone, a lodestone for transcendent failure — a monument to the subtle, delicious beauty of badness. Something you can tell your progeny that you actually witnessed at the time it happened.

I believe at the time I wrote this column, I was the first journo to correctly predict the continual dismal fate of this team AND attempt to provoke a groundswell of joyful support for them. Now, other journalists certified as more important by virtue of having more prestigious employers have belatedly joined in on the transcendent subject of the Chicago White Sux. I am proud.

So, we are about to enter the final week of the baseball season, and the Sox are, stunningly, still in the running for historic Anti-Greatness. They lost last night to the Padres in a glorious fashion, tying the game 2-2 with a two-run home run stroked with two outs and two strikes on the batter! Then of course, inevitably, they blew it in the tenth. The game ended after midnight. I stayed up to watch it.

As of this morning, The Chicago White Sox’s season record is 36-118. They have eight more games to play. If they can manage to lose just three of them, they will become, officially, the most vomitaceous team in the modern era, the losing-est team, roaring into history past the famously inept 1962 New York Mets, which lost 120 games. (BTW, many members of the ‘62 Mets who are still alive now say they are rooting for the Sox to win out. They don’t want to lose their standing as the Worst of the Worst. I am not kidding. This also made me proud. My thesis is solid.)

Here is the contest:

It gets triggered after the early afternoon game played on Saturday, September 28th, in Detroit. That is the next-to-the-last game of the season, against the Detroit Tigers; the contest is triggered if and only if the results of that game have the White Sox at exactly 120 losses. To have a shot to win the contest and accompany me to the game, you must come up with the funniest sign that one might bring to the game, somehow urging the Sox to lose. Twelve-word limit. That’s it. IMPORTANT: I need time to judge and fight some daunting logistics. The deadline for entries is this coming Monday, Sept. 23 at 10 p.m. EST. In the event of identical winning entries, the first one to arrive wins.

I lamely came up with this sign: “Sox: Lose One for The Gipper.” You can do better. You’d better do better, because you have to. If there is no merit-worthy winner, I will have no companion at the game. (Yes, I hope to go, regardless.) To be clear: The winner of the contest can subsequently decline to participate in said trip; your goal is merely to be funny, and get your entry printed. It does not have to be to meet me halfway on this inane, overnight emergency journey with blinding quick turnaround. That would be cruel. But I’d love to have you, and will gladly finance your trip.

EVEN MORE IMPORTANT: You must include your name, email address, city/town and phone number IN THE BODY OF YOUR ENTRY, right at the end of it. I will not use any of these things publicly; I just have to be able to contact you in a short period of time. Making this game will involve last-second logistics that I’m still not certain I can manage. I will try mightily. It’s not about money — I am resigned to losing a lot of that, for what I consider the best of causes. It is about the difficulty of penetrating implacable airline bureaucracy for last-minute orchestration. I plan to do it.

Send your entries to Badwagon, here:

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And, finally, today’s timely Gene Pool Gene Poll.

As all of you no doubt know, a trove of ten-year-old old posts discovered on an Internet message board have revealed that Mark Robinson, who is running for governor of North Carolina, is a phenomenal racist and a misogynistic, antisemitic porn-addicted Nazi-worshiping scumbag. The question today is a simple one that I believe I asked once before. But now it has wonderful currency.

For the purpose of this poll, “hurt” could range from some embarrassment to job loss, or worse.

Obviously, you need not be anywhere near RobinsonLand to take this poll.

See you on Tuesday.