The Invitational Week 103: Redoer's Digest — our 2024 retrospective, Part 1

A second chance to enter any of 24 contests from 2024. Plus winning 'X is so Y' jokes.

“It was the best of toms, it was the worst of toms … — A Tale of Two Kitties.”

That’s Jesse Frankovich’s winning caption from our Week 61 contest; this week you can give that contest — and 23 others — a second shot.

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Hello and welcome to our third week of time-travel Invitationals. Late last month, we went 100 years into the future. Last week, we went one year into the future. Today, it’s one year into the past.

If you are one of the thousands of new subscribers who’ve just recently dipped your toes into The Gene Pool, it’s likely you’re just now getting to know The Invitational, the weekly humor/wordplay contest that lent wit and subversion to The Washington Post’s Style section for 30 years and now holds court here, with the same two post-Post judges.

So for you newbies, as well as for the Greater Loser Community, we offer our annual chance to look back — and enter — the previous year’s contests, in their wide variety and dubious taste; this week we feature the first twenty-four, next week the rest.

For Invitational Week 103: Enter any, or several, of our 2024 Invitational contests from Week 53 through Week 76, listed below with a link to each contest; be sure also to click on the link from two weeks later to see the results so you don’t accidentally send a joke we already ran.) Be sure to read the directions on each contest itself, not just the mini-descriptions below. But you must use THIS WEEK’s entry form, not the forms for the old contests.

Week 53, short poems about people who died in 2023 (not 2024!)

Week 54, edgy rhyming “alphabet couplets”

Week 55, new words or phrases including the letter block D-U-S-T in any order.

Week 56, an anodyne “dad joke” paired with an edgier “grandpa joke” that the subversive grampa in the comic “Barney & Clyde” might say.

Week 57, bad ideas for books or movies

Week 58, clickbait headlines for unsensational articles

Week 59, humorous “why not” bold ideas

Week 60, diary entries by anyone from history or fiction

Week 61, photo captions

Week 62, how to stress yourself out

Week 63, write something funny using only the words in Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address.

Week 64, chains of names that link humorously together

Week 65, poems about specific works of visual art

Week 66, coin a new product whose name is an anagram of a real product

Week 67, move the last letter of a word to the beginning and define the result

Week 68, “breed” any two of the listed racehorse names and name their “foal”

Week 69, new replacements for old cliches

Week 70, “breed” any two inking foal names from Week 68 and name the “grandfoal”

Week 71, “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me”-style multiple-choice questions

Week 72, choose a line from a Beatles song and add your own rhyming line

Week 73, change a letter in a real headline and write a “bank head” based on the result

Week 74, song parodies on any subject you like, as long as you’re funny and clever. Videos welcome!

Week 75, write something using only certain small sections of the keyboard

Week 76, “good/bad/ugly” jokes

Deadline is Saturday, Dec. 28, 2024, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Jan. 2. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form.

*****Please also take a look at this link for a few extra (but important) directions, especially regarding formatting entries to the various contests.**** (Note: Some readers are being told “Access denied” to this Google Doc; if that happens, please click on “Request access” and we’ll make sure it will work for you.)

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to bit.ly/inv-form-103.

This week’s winner receives this fine wall art.

Runners-up get autographed fake money featuring the Czar or Empress, in one of eight nifty designs. Honorable mentions get bupkis, except for a personal email from the E, plus the Fir Stink for First Ink for First Offenders.

So Wit Goes: ‘X is so Y’ jokes from Week 101

In Invitational Week 101 we asked for fresh jokes in the venerable form “X is so Y.” That the form includes the revered Yo Mama joke was not lost on our entrants. One of them actually got ink.

Third runner-up:
Americans were so busy spending $10.8 billion on Christmas gifts on Black Friday, they didn’t have time to complain about the price of eggs. (Barry Sackin, Murrieta, Calif.)

Second runner-up:
He’s so obnoxious, he brings his own putter on a date for mini-golf. (Roy Ashley, Washington, D.C.)

First runner-up:
Ron DeSantis is so slimy, his 23andMe results say his great-great-great-grandparents were okra. (Judy Freed, Deerfield Beach, Fla.)

And the winner of the ornaments picturing three existential philosophers:
My son is such a straight arrow, he couldn’t wait to turn 21 so that he could legally serve on a jury. (Karen Lambert, Chevy Chase, Md.)

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

As always, if you think the best among today’s inking entries were unjustly buried in the honorable mentions, shout out your favorites in the comments.

These Mentions Are So Honorable …

Donald Trump loves this country so much that he’s vowed to screw it every day. (Deb Stewart, Damascus, Md.)

Trump has promised so much to his billionaire campaign donors, he’ll be making the gravy trains run on time. (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

Gen Z is so careerist, their tattoos are QR codes to their LinkedIn profiles. (Karen Lambert)

Luigi Mangione is so ruthless, he gives “corporate headhunter” a new meaning. (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)

My office holiday parties are so wild, the boss hands out annual bonuses at the beginning of the night so we all have bail money. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.)

Jeff Bezos’s girlfriend’s breasts are so enlarged that it’s all he can do to be the biggest boob in their house. (Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)

I’ve hit so many deer with my car that buzzards send me Christmas cards. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)

RFK Jr.’s mind is so twisted, the worm has PTSD. (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.)

Rupert Murdoch’s estate lawyer is so sharp that he can split heirs. (Kevin Dopart, Naxos, Greece)

According to my teenager, that rizzler is so sigma, he’s got a skibidi gyat. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

My mother is so resigned to my singlehood, she keeps asking, “So when are you going to finally settle down and give me fur grandbabies?” (Karen Lambert)

Yo Mama jokes are so easy to make up that the only person in the world who can’t make one up is Yo Mama. (Tom Witte)

At this point, Biden is so unwanted, even the extended-auto-warranty people aren’t trying to contact him. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

Biden is so old, when he saw the movie it was just called “Yeller.” (Sam Mertens)

Donald Trump is such a huge ass, Sir Mix-a-Lot voted for him. (Jesse Frankovich)

Kimberly Guilfoyle is so loud that even her indoor voice will shatter Grecian urns. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.)

Matt Gaetz is so radioactive, he’s gonna name his autobiography “The Story of My Half-Life.” (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

Anti-Trump voters repressed their comments so much over Thanksgiving, they couldn’t unclench their jaws enough to eat dinner. (Mandy Worley, Rye, Colo.)

McConnell and Schumer are so old, their pissing contests are now dribbling contests. (Chris Doyle)

My humor is so sophisticated, you might say nothing could be farter from the toot. (Judy Freed)

Groceries have gotten so expensive that the farmer traded his golden-egg-laying goose for a hen that laid edible ones. (Kevin Dopart)

There are so many clowns among Trump’s Cabinet picks that they’d need a second car. (Barry Sackin)

Trump’s Cabinet nominees are so troublesome, Sen. Susan Collins is concerned. (Chris Doyle)

I’m so bad at following contest rules. I mean, REALLY bad. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)

And Last: I am so scared of Donald Trump reading my contest entries, I am putting asterisks in “F*cking Dipsh*t.” (Mark Raffman)

The headline “So Wit Goes” is by Chris Doyle; Judy Freed wrote the honorable-mentions subhead. “Redoer’s Digest” was a winning headline for Jon Gearhart last year.

Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, Dec. 21: our Week 102 contest for humorous predictions for a 2025 timeline. Click on the link below.

The Invitational Week 102: Next Year in Review

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Today’s Mortifying Mendicant Moment: The Gene Pool has been diving into this TOID (Time of Impending Doom) with countless extra posts and such. We are exhausted. We are impecunious, a word we implore you to look up. If you have it in your heart and wallet, please consider upgrading your free subscription to “paid.” It’s a one-minute process that relieves you of $4.15 a month. The process begins here:

Now we descend into the segment for Questions and Answers and Observations, where you will submit Q’s and A’s and O’s right here and I will respond to them with snark, cynicism, and the Wisdom of the Ages. For the second straight week of an ongoing experiment, we will not be doing this in real time: Anything you send in after 11 p.m. Wednesday will be dealt with next week, but with additional thought and care. WE NEED YOUR Q, A, and O’s: Here is the highly coveted question and observation button, of which you should avail yourselves:

Today’s Questions and Observations are mostly anxiously political, as are our lives right now. There are also beaucoup Q’s and O’s about your frustrations with technology.

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Q: An incredibly patronizing addition to the synthetic-voiced Customer Avoidance System I have experienced: After asking a question, the system plays a fake "keyboard typing" sound during the voice recognition. This turns my dull anger at being forced to talk to a bot into white hot rage at being told, essentially, “We think you're an idiot.”

A: This awful bit of clumsy, comical unnecessary deception reminds me of “The Horsey Horseless,” a very early motorized car that was equipped with a phony horse head in the front, so horses on the roads wouldn’t be spooked by seeing a Model T chug up beside them. Below is an engineer’s sketch of the planned car, which appears never to have been manufactured. Just as well. The car was designed to have its gas tank in the phony head, exposed, vulnerable, right out there, daring to be crashed into and explode.

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Q: Here is a quote from Thorstein Veblen, an American economist and sociologist from the early 20th century, who was remarkably prescient about the moral weaknesses of modern media. He wrote:

"The first duty of an editor is to gauge the sentiments of his readers and then tell them what they like to believe. By this means he maintains or increases the circulation. His second duty is to see that nothing is said in the news items or editorials which may discountenance any claims or announcements made by his advertisers, discredit their standing or good faith, or expose any weakness or deception in any business venture that is or may become a valuable advertiser. By this means he increases the advertising value of his circulation. The net result is that both the news columns and the editorial columns are commonly meretricious in a high degree.”

It’s all in here.

A: Elegant, delightfully cynical, and disturbingly familiar. Imagine what old Thorstein would write while watching the cornucopia of cowardice in the media of today. His old screed didn’t even mention, or anticipate, political subservience.

Q: I appreciate Timothy Snyder’s call to resist the tyranny of Trump and his illegitimate cabinet picks, but he provides no examples of HOW to resist. As a former congressional aide to Rep Porter Goss, I tallied emails, letters and phone calls to the office on every subject under the sun. So We can contact our reps and Senators today, but if we know they’re afraid of Trump reprisals, what’s the point?

Other than picket the Capitol, what else can we do? Write letters to the Editor? Attract wrath from MAGA on social media? I really want to know!

– Christy Kelly

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A: It’s a good question and others have asked it. I’m no expert, but my first advice is simple, and internal: Stay outraged. We need all of us to be outraged, and willing to be vocal about it. We need never to take a step toward normalizing, or sighing and accepting as inevitable the multiple depredations of this guy and his band of useful idiots.

Second: Yeah, protest. Peaceful resistance. It worked for Gandhi.

Third: Do whatever you, personally, can do, based on who your are, what your skills are, and what your limits are. Are you good at fundraising? Organizing crowds? Are you a high school or college teacher, willing to provoke debate? Me, I can be nasty in public. I do.

Also, to quote Hippocrates: First, do no harm. Do not dismantle the rule of law to protest the proposed dismantling of the rule of law.

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Q: Regarding that Broadway musical “Assassins”: Got to give credit where credit is due: The musical is Stephen Sondheim's. But the book of the musical — and the lines you've quoted about Giuseppe Zangara shooting Roosevelt — were by John Weidman.

And if you don't agree that his libretto for Assassins is the best book of a musical ever written, then grant at least that his final scene at the book depository is the best straight scene ever written for a musical.

— Scott Ableman

A:

1: On point A — true enough. I used Sondheim because he is most readily associated with Assassins, a great play I fear too few of us have seen. But Weidman did write the book, meaning the non-sung narrative, and it was phenomenal.

2: On Point B — And I say this reluctantly because I like to school my readers, never fully agreeing with anything they say, offering alternative theories to re-establish my obnoxiously dominant role in the Gene Pool pecking order — yes. Sigh. You are right.

I tried to come up with other straight unrhymed, unsung scenes that were more powerful / funny / elegantly crafted, and came up empty. Hamilton’s genius was expressed mostly in the songs. The Book of Mormon? The same. Ditto, Sweeney Todd. A Chorus Line’s non-sung moments were abysmal. And, yes, the final lines of Assassins, spoken at the Texas School Book Depository, were revelatory as hell. I shall say no more.

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Okay, we have pivoted to music, which leads us suddenly to the second Gene Pool Gene Poll. You didn’t expect this, but The Gene Pool is a living organism, a Crazy Uncle, liable to pull any trick in any moment and for any reason.

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Good.

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Q: Regarding technology, my (86-year-old!!!) husband and I are long distance bicyclists. Recently we decided we no longer liked having to lift our increasingly heavy bikes into hubby's SUV, which he no longer drives. So I had a hitch rack installed on the rear of my Honda Civic. The rack weighs about 50 pounds and we ride our bikes all year -- so we keep the rack on the car all the time. But the backup camera HATES the rack. It recognizes it as an obstacle I'm about to hit. Unfortunately there is no way to permanently disable the backup camera. So I have to try to remember to turn off the camera every single time I start the car. That requires scrolling through a menu.
Sometimes, I will forget. The camera doesn't immediately react to the perceived obstacle until I have backed up about six feet, and gathered momentum, before it SLAMS on the brakes.

Recently I had to take my Honda to the dealer to handle a recall. As I was leaving the car with the service rep, I reminded him that he would have to turn off the backup camera. He had to ask me how to do it.

— Rita Zeidner

A: Thank you. This tale appeals to my dark little Luddite heart.

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This is Gene. We are out of here. Your responsibilities, however, never wane. First, it is your job to send us more Questions and Observations, upon which which Gene will cerebrate and then respond to next week with jaw-dropping honesty and wisdom, and might include a fart joke or two.

Avail yourself of the opportunity here:

See you on The Weekend.