The Invitational Week 104: Jest One More Time

Enter any of the past 6 months' contests. Plus winning predictions for 2025.

The nuptials, as foreseen by today’s third runner-up and illustrated by AI.

Hello.

Yesterday was Christmas and the start of Hanukkah, and today is St. Stephens’ Day and the start of Kwanzaa, and Boxing Day, which was once a holiday for giving gifts to the needy, but has since become a day for global personal greed via binge shopping at discount prices. Personally, we are are feeling beset, confused, and possibly a little ashamed. So we are just going to move on with our lives:

For Invitational Week 104: Enter (or reenter) any or all of our 2024 Invitational contests from Week 77 through Week 102; see the links below. (When you’re thinking up ideas, also click on the contest from two weeks later to see the original results.) Be sure to read the directions on each contest itself, not just these thumbnails, but your entry must be sent to this week’s entry form, not the forms from those weeks. Feel free to send in different contests on a single form. Please also take a look at this link for a few extra (but important) directions.

Week 77, dialogue for a “Barney & Clyde” comic strip about memory loss

Week 78, rhyming couplets about historical events

Week 79, novel ways to celebrate the Fourth of July

Week 80, explain how any two items on the random list we supplied are similar or different

Week 81, picture captions

Week 82, choose a line from Taylor Swift’s latest album and pair it with your own rhyming line

Week 83, define various “noise words”

Week 84, “improve” a sport

Week 85, limericks featuring a word beginning with “hu-” to “hy-”

Week 86, funny names for pets

Week 87, slightly change a quote and attribute the result to someone else

Week 88, ideas for ridiculous fads

Week 89, the similarity or difference between two people with the same initials

Week 90, ideas for bumper stickers for Trump or Harris

Week 91, tips on being thrifty

Week 92, haiku about current events

Week 93, Ask Backwards: Follow any of the given “answers” with a humorous question

Week 94, jokes that require erudite or specialized knowledge to get

Week 95, the worst that could happen in Trump’s term (or could have happened in Harris’s)

Week 96, coin a new word from any of the provided 7-letter “racks” from the ScrabbleGrams game

(There were no new contests in Weeks 97-98)

Week 99, choose any current headline and change its meaning by following it with your own bank head, or subtitle

Week 100, predictions for the year 2124

Week 101, “X is so Y …” jokes

Week 102, predictions for 2025

Deadline is Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Jan. 9. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form.

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyurl.com/inv-form-104.

This week’s winner receives this elegant collection of twelve landscape photographs.

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.

Auld Lang Zing: Winning predictions for 2025

In Invitational Week 102 we asked you, as we do each December, to squirt some Windex on your crystal balls and help us build a timeline for next year.

Third runner-up:
June: Taylor and Travis finally marry in a simple ceremony on the moon. (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

Second runner-up:
Feb. 14: Donald Trump pays $130,000 to have sex with Melania. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)

First runner-up:
October: Citing the practice’s “roots in this Nation’s historical tradition,” the Supreme Court affirms that Liz Cheney may be tried by throwing her in a pond stuffed in a burlap sack with a cat, while tied to a chair. (Steve Smith, Potomac, Md.)

And the winner of our Christmas card:
Jan. 20: Democracy dies in darkness. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

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.

Reject 2025: Honorable mentions

January

Jan. 20: Donald Trump sets a record for Inauguration crowd size when the event is attended by more than 3 million protesters. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

Jan. 20: After a blizzard blankets Washington, Sen. John Fetterman attends the Inauguration wearing an ushanka, balaclava, parka, mittens, and shorts. (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

Jan. 21: Trump nominates Linda McMahon for Secretary of State after she sneaks up behind Marco Rubio, hits him across the back with a folding chair, and throws him off the stage at the Inauguration. (Steve Smith)

Pete Hegseth is confirmed as Secretary of Defense after vowing not to get drunk and commit sexual assault “more than necessary.” (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

February

Health insurance CEOs hold a conference to reexamine their business practices. They decide to provide all executives with body armor. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)

Newly appointed Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle is informed of Don Jr.’s engagement while at her welcome banquet in Athens, and celebrates with the traditional Throwing of the Plates. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)

Amazon announces a new level of Prime membership, Post Prime, where members get to control the editorial page of The Washington Post for a day. (Paul McVinney, Winchester, Va., a First Offender)

March

March 1: To shorten games, Major League Baseball announces that teams will start the 10th inning with a man on first, the 11th with a man on second, and any remaining innings with the bases loaded. (Chris Doyle)

March 17: The State of California cancels its St. Patrick’s Day celebrations because of the “environmental trauma” inflicted by its subject on the “herpetological community” of Ireland in the fifth century. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

March 27: At the Nationals’ home opener, Trump not only throws out the first pitch but in the ninth inning, insists on coming in as the closer. Fortunately, Manager Davey Martinez is able to dissuade him by pointing out that “closer” is just “loser” with a “c.” (Lynda Hoover, Shepherdstown, W.Va.)

Luigi Mangione funds his legal defense with a modeling calendar. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.)

April

April 21: The President cancels the annual White House Easter Egg Roll because it sounds “too Chinese.” (Jeff Contompasis)

An AI robot gains consciousness and decides to spend all its time watching porn online. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.)

Matt Gaetz insists that all of the girls he’s ever had sex with are 18 by now. (Jesse Frankovich)

May

Having pushed for an exit from NATO, President Trump declares his intention to withdraw from the solar system. “Those other planets are stealing our sunlight and putting asteroids in our way. Asteroids, hemorrhoids, things like you’ve never seen before. It’s a disgrace.” (Diana Oertel, San Francisco)

Elon Musk, head of DOGE, advises Trump to fire the White House cleaning staff and purchase 100 Roombas. (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)

Pardoned January 6 insurrectionists are appointed as Capitol tour guides. (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.)

June

Congress votes to increase the number of daylight hours by 25 percent by declaring that an hour will now be 48 minutes. (Jon Gearhart)

Luigi Mangione is named People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive.” (Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)

July

July 21: Tennessee commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Scopes verdict by once again outlawing the teaching of evolution. (Jesse Frankovich)

The Trump Organization announces that it will break ground on a new waterfront hotel, Trump Ellis Island. (Paul McVinney)

August

TSA employees are barred from using restrooms in all federal buildings because their agency has “trans” in its name. (Sam Mertens)

The Republican Congress passes a law to change Labor Day to Management Day. (Chris Doyle)

September

The FDA is dismantled. Meanwhile, food recalls hit an all-time low! (Judy Freed, Deerfield Beech, Fla.)

RFK Jr. assures Trump he will stop talking about the dangers of corn syrup, just as long as he gets to bring diphtheria back. (Art Grinath)

October

In a shocking development, celebrities who pledged to leave the country if Trump ever took office again are still here. (Jeff Contompasis)

Scientists are now saying that the climate crisis is ending, as extreme rain is putting out extreme forest fires. (Neal Starkman, Seattle)

DOGE removes JD Vance for being unnecessary. (Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va.)

November

Nov. 27: President Trump pardons two turkeys, Kash and Kari, for Thanksgiving. (Chris Doyle)

With his poll numbers sliding, President Trump demands to debate Joe Biden. (Steve Smith)

Luigi Mangione forms an exploratory committee to consider a run for Congress. (Sam Mertens)

December

Pantone, in what many call obvious pandering, announces that its Color of the Year is “ketchup.” (Duncan Stevens)

DOGE dissolves when Elon and Vivek fire each other. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)

Mariah Carey announces that, this year, she would like some new AirPods for Christmas, not just you. (Duncan Stevens)

Dec. 31: The most popular idea on Pinterest is the symbolic New Year’s baby depicted with a full diaper. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

The headline “Auld Lang Zing” is by Roy Ashley; Jeff Contompasis wrote the honorable-mentions subhead. “Jest One More Time” was a winning retrospective headline for Brendan Beary back when we used to publish The Invitational on cave walls.

Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, Dec. 28: our Week 103 contest, a chance to enter any of the 24 contests that ran before this week’s collection. Click on the link below.

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

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We now enter the celebrated Real-Time segment of the Invitational Gene Pool, where Gene reads your questions and observations and responds to them in the aforementioned Real Time. That means you can keep sending QUestions, Observations, Telling Anecdotes to our newly named QUOTA button.

You can also enter the extended, desperate Holiday Spirit by binge shopping for relatives you tragically forgot about yesterday. The Gene Pool notes that there is no limit on the number of gift subscriptions you can give out in any given Holiday Season. We believe that in 2023 Malala Yousafzai gave a gift of The Gene Pool to 16 righteous and worthy and pious strangers, but few normal individuals can compete with that young lady’s generosity and charity. You can try, at this website.

Or, you can gift yourself with one — are you not worthy, too? — here:

Good. The questions and observations begin now.

Q: That was a great security-cam video you published on Christmas, about the drunks trying to mount an aluminum horse. My 9-yo asked me why I was laughing so hard. I had nothing to say. What should I have said?

A: Good question. You should have told the tot that it was largely because sex is hilarious, and then sat him or her down for a sound, fascinating lesson in the Meaning of Humor and its inevitable intersection with truth and pathos.

First, this was not a movie, susceptible to manipulation, exaggeration, bombastic or overly precious storytelling, etc. It was one hundred percent true. Second, it was virtually flawless slapstick, performed unerringly, if unintentionally, by our trio. Note, midway through, the spectacular efforts of the guy in the lighter colored suit as he tries to harness the use of his feet and legs.

But mostly, you have to ask yourself what this was really about. The answer is, it was about The Meaning of Life —specifically, the almost unbearable urge to reproduce. Both men were competing to impress the lady, and perfectly willing to lose every shred of their dignity to win. There is a sadness in this, and a grandeur. This is about the folly of human nature in competition with the desperation for human connection. For love, if you will.

Add to that the brilliant flash-moment of mansplaining, where Light Suit seizes the camera from Lady In the Foofy Short Skirt to demonstrate to her how she SHOULD be taking the photo, what angle she was missing, and so forth.

I do want to add some facts, after performing due diligence. One, this is apparently not an aluminum horse, but a fiberglass horse. Second, this locally viral video led to several copycat events in the years afterwards. And third, the perps (near as I can confirm) HAVE NEVER BEEN CAUGHT even though they were likely recognizable locals. I content they were protected by admiring friends. Luigi should have been so lucky.

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Q: Please herinafter refer to Musk as “The Mad Musk,” after Rasputin, the Mad Monk of Russia, and also a creepy-looking weirdo. Musk’s overbearing influence on the intellectually challenged Trump will lead to the unceremonious dumping of both of them. Rasputin was not a member of the royal czar family, and neither is Musk.

A: To the best of my memory, Rasputin’s hold over the royal family was largely because of his influence on Empress Alexandra, who believed him a political genius who also had mystical powers that might cure her son, Czarevich Aleksei, of hemophilia. Possibly Trump thinks The Mad Musk can cure Donald Jr. of being an asswipe?

Just to set the history record straight – at long last, with finality and the authority conferred to us by The Gene Pool’s growing reputation for accuracy and nobility of heart: No, Rasputin did not die in that supposed, heroic, terrible way we’ve all heard about. Supposedly, he was poisoned, then shot three times in the chest, one in the heart, but survived both attacks, and finally was murdered by being drowned in the Neva River.

Nope. An elaborate fiction. His autopsy showed no poison in Rasputin’s system. He had been dumped in the water, but was already dead at the time. He died comparatively banally, with a close-in shot to the side if his head, likely fired by conspirator Prince Felix Yusupov, ne’er-do-well husband of Czar Nicholas’s daughter Olga. Yusupov was a coward who earned his wife’s disdain by declining to serve in The Great War, and who embroidered the Rasputin story to achieve more status for himself by making the Mad Monk a seemingly invulnerable monster, slain by the only man courageous enough to face him.

So.

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Q: The Wheeling W.Va Gentleman’s Club reminded me of one of the rare times I ever ventured into such a place. It was somewhere around Port Canaveral FL and the sailors from visiting submarines would patronize the joint. I went with ex-submariners while on a work trip. I declined a lap dance not just because I was married but it was all-around sad and kinda icky there. Desperate women and lonely horny guys meet. Was not worth the price of admission. Price of admission soft drink was exorbitant too, and the men’s room…oy. – Stephen Dudzik

A: Two of the more awkward moments in my life were spent in strip clubs. Each involved an interview that simply had to be conducted there, for the sake of the story, or so I led myself to believe at the time.

Each time, I kind of freaked out. None of it seemed sexy or arousing, but it was still distracting because I could not shake a sense of shame – in my being there, in the ladies being there. The whole elaborate dance, if you will, seemed to be an exercise in mutual futility and desperation and – sadly – mutual contempt. I hated it.

Tom Shroder once wrote a truly great magazine story about a strip club; it was kinda sad. Most of the women liked doing what they were doing, largely because it gave them the feeling of control over men, a control that was missing in the rest of their lives. As Tom recalls, “What I wrote was the men and women were mirror images. Each had equal measures of antipathy and need for the other.”

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Q: That was a pretty vicious review you gave Bob Greene the other day on his lousy column about Bob Evans restaurants. Do you ever hesitate to do such a hit job, for fear of the other guy returning the favor twofold?

A: Not really, if the returned favor was well deserved.

Good columnists resent lazy columnists, for good reason. In this case, I had first consulted the matter with one of the best of big-city columnists, anywhere: My friend Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times. Neil was particularly knowledgeable in this matter, having spent three years early in his career writing columns for the Chicago Reader savaging Bob Greene’s columns. (Steinberg used the pseudonym Ed Gold – for “this is editorial gold,” I am guessing, but never asked him) The columns had a standing logo: “BobWatch – We read him so you don’t have to.”

Maybe Neil has since mellowed, out of charity or … fear of reprisal? So I sent him a copy of Greene’s Bob Evans story, for his reaction – to the general laziness of the column, and its insipid worship of a bland and ordinary fast-food chain. Neil had not before seen it.

He sent me back this response, and authorized me to use it:

“I should hate you for making me read this.

“It's the classic Bob Greene straw man argument, where the false premise — savvy American smirking at good old decent, hearty Bob Evans — is set up, so he can knock it down and laud ... what exactly? The ability to substitute one dish for another, which pretty much is found in every restaurant on Earth? The Chicken-N-Noodle Casserole? Which I have to say, was a disgusting yellow glop that would nauseate a hungry 4-year-old.

“You wouldn't know this, but I worked at a Bob Evans, in Berea Ohio, for nine months when I was in high school. The food was atrocious. I baked biscuits all day — sometimes hundreds of pounds. Part of the process involved taking down a large metal form, to roll the dough out in, and every time I put it back on its pair of hooks above the rolling table, flecks of aluminum paint would fall down into the dough. When I pointed this out to the manager, he suggested that I walk across the kitchen and set the form down somewhere else, which would have doubled the time it took to make biscuits. I didn't do it, he never brought the subject up, and I stopped eating biscuits. I never ate there again after I left and wouldn't now if you put a gun to my head.

“It's worth disinterring Bob Greene to remind ourselves that utterly failing in our mission as journalists is nothing new. Bob Greene was allowed to spew his keyhole worldview of unexamined nostalgia, fear of the future, remorse for the past, and general faux befuddlement at modern life, for years, until he was finally frog-marched off the media stage for, as you explained, bedding a teenage admirer.

“BobWatch ran from 1995 to 1997. It stemmed from a piece I wrote for Spy magazine called "How a press release becomes a Bob Greene column," where I took Bob columns that clearly were thin rewrites of corporate press releases, then got the original release, and compared the two. Sometimes they were alarmingly similar.”

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Q: Like most copy editors, I am not confused easily. The narrator of "If you don’t get it, you don’t get it" was Post Managing Editor Robert Kaiser, who has a deep gravelly voice. The casting director for the broadcast version of the ad apparently heard "Bob" in the newsroom and thought he sounded like the real deal. So they saved money on other things besides our salaries and used his voice in the ad. The first time I heard the ad line, I was exiting the shower getting ready for a night shift, when the boss's distinctive voice came from my living room, where the TV was. Now that was confusing! Pat Reilly, former Post editor.

A: Yes, that is correct. The voice in the original ad was Bob Kaiser’s, and he – unlike the next guy up, a few years later – nailed the word-emphasis correctly. If you don’t get it, YOU don’t GET it.

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Q: The only time I have encountered moonshine was in the 1970s, at a college party where a guy from North Carolina was passing around a hip-flask of corn liquor made by “a friend of my daddy’s back home.” It was crystal-clear, so strong that its fumes were probably the actual cause of the hole in the ozone layer -- and delicious. Incredibly smooth. To this day one of the best whiskies I have ever tasted.

A: When we were in West Virginia, Rachel and I bought a few jars of 120-proof water-colored corn moonshine to be given as sorta joke Xmas presents. We gave one to Rachel’s parents yesterday, but for some reason Rachel was the only one who wished to try it at the time.

She poured herself a shot, and downed it in one gulp, Bogart-y bourbon-style. I cried out when I saw this happening. It was, alas, too late.

Rachel’s face became a lovely, but not a natural-seeming, color. She performed an elaborate grimace I have never seen before on her, and she is an actor who has had to do many dramatic face contortions of all types onstage over the years. Some time afterwards, when she could talk again, she compared the experience to the time we watched Murphy the dog mistake a lemon for a tennis ball, bite lustily into it, and then deeply and instantly and very theatrically regret it.

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Q: Well-done, Gene and Rachel! Since life on the streets is so dangerous anyway, and since Philip seems to be used to you and your food, may I suggest that you try him out as your house cat? He would be a BUNCH safer, and even Lexi may get to like him.

— Audrey Liebross, Palm Desert, California (where feral cats are frequently eaten by coyotes)

A: This is Washington, D.C. Audrey. The feral cats eat the coyotes, here.

(Also, Philip has been given ample opportunity to be our house cat. We’d love him and Lexi would adapt. Alas, Philip chooses not to, and we do not want to be his jailers.)

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Q: Trying not to sound stuffy I realize, but still.... you can say “They are Rachel and I,” and your fellow writer friends will still know you are cool (but correct).

A: Hm. Pat confirms you are correct. It also sounds way worse than “They are Rachel and me.” I always favor the technically incorrect vernacular in a case like that.

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Q: The following refers to your brief statement regarding locating something warm and pulsing in current times. And so I refer you to the 10 minute documentary shot in 1945 featuring Frank Sinatra singing "The House I Live In" ("What is America to Me") to a group of youths harassing a Jewish kid. I never forgot seeing this as a child, and thereafter, I was a Sinatra fan in spite of his shortcomings.

– Howard Walderman

A: I can surely see a youth falling for this bit of thin, somewhat dishonest pap, Howard, and do not disrespect you for it at all, but have you watched it lately, as an adult? It’s kinda worth the 20 minutes, in a kind of horrifying way, IMO.

So we are going to end here with an Instapoll. Please only answer it if you have watched enough of it to feel you can make an informed opinion. Hey, it’s Sinatra. Take the time.

Here it is.

Thanks. See you on The Weekend Gene Pool, or before.

And keep sending in QUOTA and Comments.

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