The Invitational Week 18: Colt Following
Now that we have the winner and punners-up of our venerable foal-name contest, it's time for 'grandfoals'
Hello. This is an almost-all-equine Invitational Gene Pool, featuring a new hybrid horse contest and the results of the insanely popular yearly Name-the-Foal contest, tied to the upcoming running of the Kentucky Derby. But first, as is our custom, a couple of Gene Pool Gene Polls. The first was recommended by a reader, Jill from Utah, and it is great. The second was recommended by Gene, because it is disturbing.
Poll One. Cross your arms in front of your chest. Do it now. Okay? I’ll wait right here.
Now look down.
Poll #2
Think of the most self-destructive thing you do. Which summarizes it best? If one involves two related issues — say, substance abuse and overspending, choose the underlying cause. If you do nothing self-destructive, just don’t answer, you liar. (Reminder: This is totally anonymous. Even we don’t know who you are.)
And Now, The Invitational! Diddly-doot, Diddly-doot, Diddly-DOOT-doot-doot-doot. (That’s the bugle call before a race.)
As the Churchill Downs crew cleared off the workout poop and smoothed the track for this Saturday’s 149th Kentucky Derby, The Invitational — as it has every year since 1995 — invited the Loser Community to horse around with the year’s nominated Thoroughbreds and “breed” their names to produce a pun-filled “foal.” The results appear below. The new contest, which we are announcing here, is the second leg of our Double Crown: For Week 18: “Breed” any two of the “foal” names generated in in today’s results and give the “grandfoal” a name that reflects both names. We even have a handy-dandy list of all this week’s foals right here (or type in bit.ly/grandfoals-2023). Just as with the Week 16 contest (and in real horse racing), a name may not exceed 18 characters including spaces; those characters may include punctuation and numerals. You may run words together to save space, but the name should be easy to read. As always, you may submit up to 25 grandfoals, preferably all on the same form.
For guidance and inspiration, let’s look at the top four of last year’s inking grandfoals (the whole list is here):
4. No-Knock Warrant x Lake Flaccid = DEA’d in the Water (Frank Mann)
3. Finals Are Today x Catch Some Z’s = Got Some F’s (Andrew Hatziyannis)
2. Catch Some Z’s x I the People = Nap Bonaparte (Pam Shermeyer)
1. Atom and Heave x Pig Penn = Hurls Before Swine (Laurie Brink)
Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to bit.ly/inv-form-18. Please write your entries in the A x B = C format you see today so that the Empress and especially her longtime volunteer sorter, Loser Jonathan Hardis, can sort the entries by horse name.
Deadline is Saturday, May 13, at 4 p.m. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, May 18. You need to be a paying subscriber to The Gene Pool to enter; sign up (just $5 for a month or $50/year) at the “subscribe” box above.
This week’s winner gets … a dog! More precisely, Knit Your Own Dog, a kit with everything you need – including, they say, the expertise, even if you’re a rank beginner — to knit and stuff a little black-and-tan dachshund. What’s especially Loserly is that even in the photo on the box, the dog came out a bit uneven and gimpy-looking. But cute! Like most of us in Loserland. Donated by Loser Steve Bremner. If you come to the Flushies picnic (see below), Gene and Pat will give it to you in person.
The results of Week 16 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 Gene will keep adding them as the hour progresses and your fever for his opinions grows and multiplies and metastasizes. To see those later Q&As, refresh your screen occasionally.
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.
The Kentucky Derpy: The ‘Foals’ of Week 16
Our first Gene Pool foal name Invitational brought, as always, far more utterly inkworthy entries than we could sanely run. The Empress’s first cut among the 1,750 entries to Week 16 topped 200 names, and these didn’t count about a dozen excellent one that were sent too frequently, including Auguste Rodin x Clear the Air = The Stinker, or Instant Coffee x Ironsides = Sanka Ship, or Ready Shakespeare x Mr. Peeks = King Leer. If your brilliant name didn’t get ink today, it absolutely got cut only in the very last round.
Did we choose the wrong winners? Take to the comments below to share your thoughts about the contest, your personal faves etc. (Do not shout out your own favorite non-inking entries; you can do that in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group.) Or if there’s an entry you didn’t get, someone will (mostly unsnarkily) explain it to you.
Third runner-up: Hoosier Philly x I Don’t Get It = Indy Penn Dense (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)
Second runner-up: Forte x Ten Days Later = Fifte (Eric Nelkin, Silver Spring, Md.)
First runner-up: Ready Shakespeare x Theismann = Tibia Not to Be (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.; Mike Hammer, Arlington, Va.)
And the winner of the horse-hoof-motif socks:
Disarm x I Don’t Get It = Stumped (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)
Dam Close: Honorable Mentions
Acoustic Ave x Infinite Series = American Pi (Steve Smith, Potomac, Md.)
Acoustic Ave x Circling the Drain = Unplugged (Roy Ashley, Washington, D.C.; Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)
Armstrong x Meteorite = One Small Step–OW! (Dave Zarrow, Skokie, Ill.)
Armstrong x Secret Threat = Strongarm (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.)
Candidate x Lap Star = Pole Worker (Steve Geist, Mechanicsville, Va., who got his only previous blot of Invite ink in 2003)
Disarm x Kingsbarns = Venus de Silo (Rob Wolf, Gaithersburg, Md.)
Gandolfini x Flipper = GanDolphini (Bernard Brink, Cleveland, Mo.; Elliott Shevin, Efrat, West Bank; Richard Wexler, Alexandria, Va.)
Instant Coffee x Expect More = Sanka for Nothing (Rob Wolf)
Aaron x Giant Mischief = Hanky Panky (Richard Franklin, Alexandria, Va.)
Aaron x Instant Coffee = Hanka (Karen Lambert, Chevy Chase, Md.)
Accident x Curly Larry and Mo = Crash Test Dummies (Tim Watts, Great Falls, Va.)
Accident x Disarm = 127 Hours (Bill Dorner, Wolcott, Conn.)
Angel of Empire x Protege = Deputy Seraph (Chris Doyle)
Angel of Empire x Banishing = Sans Seraph (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park, Md.; Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)
Ready Shakespeare x Eye Witness = Julius Sees Her (Mary McNamara, Washington, D.C.; Malcolm Fleschner, Palo Alto, Calif.)
Auguste Rodin x Confidence Game = Chiseler (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore; Chris Doyle)
Auguste Rodin x Flipper = Thinker Swim (David Peckarsky, Tucson, Ariz.; Steve Langer, Chevy Chase, Md.)
Banishing x Ben Franklin = Go Fly a Kite (Pam Sweeney, Burlington, Mass.; Mia Wyatt, Ellicott City, Md.)
Ben Franklin x Accident = Been Franklin (Neil Kurland, Elkridge, Md.; Elizabeth Kline, Frederick, Md.)
Ben Franklin x Rocket Can = Bean Franklin (Neil Kurland)
Ben Franklin x Clear the Air = Founding Farter (Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)
Ben Franklin x Giant Mischief = C-Note Evil (Andrew Rosenberg, Brooklyn, N.Y.)
Ben Franklin x Sgt. Pepper = Mr. Kite (Steve Price, New York; Mike Hammer)
Be Punctual x Low Expectations = Tempus Fuckit (Sarah Walsh, Rockville, Md.)
Ready Shakespeare x Blocked = Bard the Door (Doug Hembrey, Manassas, Va.)
B Minor x Ready Shakespeare = Etude, Brute? (Diana Oertel, San Francisco)
B Minor x Skinner = Key and Peeler (Jon Carter, Fredericksburg, Va.)
Candidate x Dreamlike = Rep. Van Winkle (Jonathan Paul)
Circling the Drain x Ready Shakespeare = Coriolanus Effect (Diana Oertel)
Classic Catch x Hard to Figure = Willie Maze (Steve Price)
Clear the Air x Dr. Kraft = WhoSlicedTheCheese (Jon Carter)
Confidence Game x Auguste Rodin = HookLine&Thinker (Sarah Walsh, Rob Wolf)
Confidence Game x Litigate = A Ploy Named Sue (Tim Watts)
Curly Larry and Mo x Greenland = Nuuk Nuuk Nuuk (Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.; Mia Wyatt; Mike Hammer)
Cyclone Mischief x Litigate = Storm Suer (Jesse Frankovich)
Lap Star x Fleet Feet = Porn to Run (David Garratt, Silver City, N.M.)
Fleet Feet x Mr. Peeks = EnemaOfThePeephole (Mark Raffman, on vacation in Moji, Japan, site of the Toto Toilet Museum; Judy Freed, Deerfield Beach, Fla.)
General Banker x Curly Larry and Mo = The Three Scrooges (Larry Passar, Reston, Va.; David Garratt)
Hard to Figure x Circling the Drain = RiddleOfTheSinks (Duncan Stevens)
Hard to Figure x Two Phil’s = Why an Apostrophe? (J. Larry Schott, West Plains, Mo.)
Hit Show x Low Expectations = Shit Show (Howard Ausden, Damascus, Md.; Mark Raffman; J. Larry Schott)
Ironsides x Blocked = USS Constipation (Brian Cohen, Winston-Salem, N.C.; Andrew Rosenberg)
Jackstown x Power in Numbers = Wanks a Million (Mark Raffman)
Justice Department x Fleet Feet = J. Edgar Hoofer (Jonathan Paul)
Justice Department x Instant Coffee = Eliot Nescafé (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.; Andrew Rosenberg)
Major Dude x Confidence Game = Fonzie Scheme (Jesse Frankovich)
Miracle Worker x Low Expectations = Walk in Water (Jonathan Paul)
Promise Me a Ride x Love Me Not = Walk (Duncan Stevens)
Ready Shakespeare x Instant Coffee = Tempest in a K-Cup (Pam Sweeney)
I Don’t Get It x Instant Coffee = IDK-Cup (Laurie Brink, Mineola, N.Y.)
Ride Up x Hit Show = Wedgie Jackson (Malcolm Fleschner)
Runandscore x Yellow Brick = GOOOOOOOOLD! (Jesse Frankovich)
Sgt. Pepper x Low Expectations = WhenI’mSixtyFourth (Andrew Rosenberg)
Sgt. Pepper x Power in Numbers = When I’m 2^6 (Jonathan Hardis, Gaithersburg, Md.)
There Be Dragons x Low Expectations = There Be Geckos (Lee Graham, Reston, Va.)
Two Phil’s x Greenland = Double on Tundra (Duncan Stevens)
Yellow Brick X Lap Star = Vulveeta (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.)
The headline “The Kentucky Derpy” is by Jeff Contompasis; Jeff also wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.
Reminder: We welcome your comments about the foals.
Still running – deadline 4 p.m. Monday, May 8: Our Week 17 contest to make humorous art out of toilet paper and/or their rolls, and send us a photo. Click here or type in bit.ly/inv-week-17.
Join the Loser Community — plus Gene and Pat — at the annual Flushies picnic May 20. Here’s your personal invitation!
See more about The Invitational, including our 2,000-member Facebook group and our podcast.
Okay, on to your questions and our answers.
But first, there is this on-the-nose aptonym recently found by an eagle-eyed reader.
This is the director of the Seed Testing Laboratory and leader of a seed research project at San Diego State University. His name is Brent Turnipseed.
Okay, then. Questions, answers. There will be many spillovers from Monday’s call for Humiliating Moments.
Q: Gene: As someone no doubt raised with the traditional diet whose primary food group is lipids, when did you expand your horizons beyond mainlining cholesterol and become a füdie (if not a "foodie") ? Was there an "aha moment ?"
A: I was not raised with the traditional diet of lipids. Please read this. It’s very short. It’s my favorite column about food, I think.
TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this right now on an email: Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “The Invitational Week 18…”) for my full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers. And you can refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post from about noon to 1 ET.
Q: When I was a sophomore in high school, my boyfriend and I were dropped off at a jazz concert at the local civic auditorium. (Neither of us was old enough to drive.) When we got to our seats in the balcony, we discovered that the concert was the following week and the evening’s entertainment was instead a Sisters of Sigma something-or-another reunion. Well. We had two hours to kill and nothing very interesting happening at the auditorium. So we did what two 15-year-olds will do when left unattended—we stayed in the balcony and kissed. Happily. Endlessly. Until the emcee got the attention of the various Sigma sisters, put a spotlight on us and called for a round of applause for “the people in the balcony.” Oops. And that was my most embarrassing moment until a different boyfriend’s mom walked in on us in bed.
A: This is an even more virulent version of the “Kiss Cam,” which is the single biggest abomination ever wrested on us by ballparks. I once asked a girlfriend to do me a favor: If we ever had a Kiss-Cam trained upon us by a ballpark, she should slap me hard across the face.
Attention Gene Pool shoppers! This communique just came in. It is urgent. The young lady seems to have a good sense of humor about it, so I feel it is okay — indeed, important — to share her unique story. Here it is.
Q: I once interviewed for a clerkship with a famous judge (whom I will not name) in October 1986. I had flown in and stayed with a law school buddy so we could watch Game 7 of the Mets-Red Sox World Series on TV the night before the interview, but sadly it had been rained out. When the judge asked me, “How was your flight in?,” my response was that the flight was fine but regrettably last night’s rainout meant I would miss Game 7 on my flight home. After more small talk, the topic turned to hobbies and I mentioned I had taken up golf, to which he replied, “That is a stupid game! Takes all day and you get no exercise.” The rest of the interview proceeded no better. Afterward, I stopped by to visit with one of his current clerks who asked how it went, and I told him about the golf Q&A. “Relax,” he said, “that is not a big deal. There is only one thing he really hates - spectator sports. Hope you didn’t say anything about the World Series.” Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.
A: Well done.
Q: The most humiliating thing I've done involves a friend whose father and cat passed away at approximately the same time. A mutual friend told me about this, so a week later I bought a sympathy card for the friend. But I somehow forgot it was the cat that died and somehow thought it was her mother. So the sympathy card I sent her expressed my condolences for the loss of both her parents.
A: Hahaha.
Okay, this is Gene. here is another important news story.
And yet another great story rolls in! Flying spaghetti monster recently touched down in Jersey, apparently.
https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1654010430245699584
Q: I heard a high school kid get excoriated yesterday for making a joke whose setup was "Going to All-Female Colleges" and whose punch line was "Study Abroad." It was not the most sophisticated joke ever told, but what was way more disturbing to me than a 15-year-old's attempt at humor was the reaction: the other kids tore that kid's head off. The reaction seemed more fitting had the joke been about someone from Poland, which we all told as kids (I'm 50), but whose time has passed.
“Broad,” as a reference to women, is obviously somewhat offensive, but it is so antiquated and corny it makes fun more of the utterer than of women.
The thing that I took away from the whole deal was an impression that the kids I saw were all humorless scolds. And that made me very, very sad.
A: Couldn’t agree more. I think it’s worrisome. Are we raising a generation of self-righteous, stony-faced prissy schoolmarm-scolds? Middle age is when you should be allowed to become a schmuck. Kids should be the first people to grant creative leeway for humor. This reminds me of the Junior Chamber of Commerce kids in high school. Future dorks and pricks of America.
Q: A year ago my partner was on a noontime administrative call among leaders at her hospital. I was cleaning up getting ready for an early afternoon west coast call. She needed to continue the call to her car as she was going in to her work. When she got outside, I peeled for the shower. She forgot something and reversed her phone feed accidentally when she came back in, catching me in the buff. She didn't realize it, but her colleagues calmly commented there was a "free show" happening on our end. Oh well, they were doctors, I wasn't really embarrassed, but she was. I hope they didn't diagnose anything.
A: I am glad you think that doctors, when not doctoring, do not laugh at accidental nudeness. I will do nothing to disabuse you of this charming notion.
This is Gene. I’m told that the first link above, to “the other important news story,” is broken. Try this one.
Q: Have you ever been arrested? What for?
A: No, but as a drug-addled teenager I once ALMOST got arrested, and it is a hell of a story. Note to yoots: Don’t do anything like this, ever.
In college I once was stopped by a cop while waiting for a friend to emerge from a house carrying enough narcotics to put each of us in prison for 20 years under the draconian Rockefeller drug laws. The cop went back to his unmarked car to just idle behind me, in order to learn – he’d told me this with a smirk -- why a white kid was in Harlem, waiting. For whom? For what? I had no way to issue a warning to my friend. This was a generation before cell phones.
I didn’t know what to do, but I knew disaster beckoned, so I hit the gas. The cop whooped onesiren blast. He chased me 200 feet, pulled me over, threw me against the roof of my car, frisked me. But I was clean, as was my car. My friend actually watched this happen as he left the house. Then he turned the corner and calmly went back to NYU on the subway, with the dope.
Q: I grew up in a small town meaning almost everyone knew everyone's business. There was a woman (Ruth) in town who was rumored to be having an affair with a guy named Cal. She was married to a guy named Pete. I had moved out of town and when back to visit about 2 years later and there was some kind of gathering that I went to. I don't know what happened to my brain but while talking to Ruth and asked how Cal was doing? Remember she was married to Pete. She played it cool and said he was fine, etc. I walked away to talk to someone else and it hit me like a brick falling on my head, that I had asked her about the wrong man. I wanted to die. I stayed as far away from Ruth the rest of the time. This was about 40+ years ago and I still am embarrassed about it. -RLP
A: Yeah, not ideal. I have a particular problem with names, especially under pressure. One month after being hired by the Post, I was walking to the Metro with my new boss, when, walking up to us was another journalist I knew very well. I had supped at her dinner table. This was my major panic moment, being forced to come with names very quickly, under pressure, to make introductions. I choked. Its not just that I could not summon the name of the other journalist, I could not remember the name of my boss. I stood there mute. I might have articulated “glork.” My boss, a quick thinker, read the room, stuck out her hand, and said “I’m Mary Hadar.” Handshake. “I’m Deborah Howell.” Mary and I did not discuss this moment on the way to the Metro, or any time after.
Q: One time when I was four I was at a carnival, I think it was the Purim carnival, and there was this game where you had to throw a ball at cans to knock them down. My mom said “Take the ball and knock down the cans” so I took the ball in one hand, walked over to the cans, and knocked them down with the other. My parents never let me live it down but I like my solution better.
A: That’s not humiliating! That is triumphant!
Q: I had a job interview with a high-ranking Pentagon official about a position on his staff. He was very stereotypical high-level miltary guy; abrupt, short sentences, gruff demeanor. However, overall, I think I did well. He send me an abrupt, short sentenced, gruff email thanking me for my time, which I forwarded to my wife, saying "I think this could work, but this guy is a bit of a dick." Immediately after clicking, I realized I'd hit "reply" instead of forward. His response, as you can imagine, was even more abrupt and gruff, and deservedly so.
A: Okay, THAT’s humiliating.
This is Gene. I have to say I am gobsmacked by the results coming in on the cross-your-arms poll. All the testing I had done with friends suggested lefties favor the left arm and righties the right. It seems to be totally haphazard.
For those people who are hesitant about taking an Oath of Allegiance to King Charles this Saturday at his coronation, may I suggest this alternative?
A: Yes, you may.
Q: Now that it has been a few weeks since you wrote about The Curry Incident, and a year or so since The Curry Incident, I'm curious -- any further contact with Padma Lakshmi? In thinking back, I think it is rare in my own life that I have wished or advised that a person should be fired from their job. It takes someone truly egregious, like Tucker Carlson, for me to wish it. And even in his case, he can't be fired from his REAL job, which is to live off his inherited wealth, so the Faux Nooz gig was actually just a hobby for him. I think in most cases, people who declare that a person should be fired are engaging in the same kind of hyperbole as chants of "Death to America!" -- they don't actually wish to see that outcome, they just want to vent their feelings in a way that draws attention to their passion. I'm curious if she gives a rat's ass that her hyperbolic demand met with success and she got you fired, and whether she feels satisfied or perhaps horrified that it succeeded.
A: I wanted to interview her for a story, but she declined. And to be fair, she didn’t actually “get me fired.” The Post never fired me; they just lowballed me and I declined. I don’t really blame Lakshmi. She felt she was doing her job, standing up for her culture and a billion and a half Indian people who she felt, rightly or wrongly, I had insulted. I thought her piece in The Post was vicious, but you know. We are writers. We write.
Q: When I was single man in my 20’s, I went into Pizza Hut to pickup a large pizza I had ordered by phone. There was a very cute young lady working the register, so I took a deep breath and summoned my manliest tone of voice, saying “Hi there, I’m picking up a large pizza for Carter.” At least that is what I intended to say. What I actually said to the attractive cashier was, “Hi there, I’m picking up a large peter for Carza.” I corrected myself but it was too late. I had made an impression on her, all right. Never has anyone gone into such laughing hysterics without making a noise. She simply covered her mouth, and with eyes watering and body trembling, slowly walked away from her register. After a few moments, when she still was unable to speak or otherwise function, the manager came out to ring me up. Since then I practice my elocution in my head before ordering or picking up a pizza. —Jon Carter (Ok, to attribute.)
A: Pretty women should be illegal. It’s simply not fair to men.
Q: In response to whether newspapers should publish these leaked documents, I think the unfortunate answer is they have to. The non-reputable media outfits are going to publish them. When reputable outlets do not publish them, it leaves them open to the charge, "This is what the left doesn't want you to know!" There can no longer be any appearance that a news organization is "hiding" or "keeping back" information because certain parts of our society take that to automatically signal some leftist conspiracy to prevent them from knowing what the government is up to. Once information hits the internet, it's everywhere, and like it or not, it's news.
A: That’s a hell of a bad way to edit a media outlet, in fear of what the you dopes will accuse you of. In fact, it helps explain by the Russian hacking thing took hold; the media wanted to show “fairness” to avoid charges the were pro-Clinton. There is a way to deal with that. If challenged, you say, transparently, why you chose not to print it. It helps set an ethical tone, at least to the extent an ethical tone is achievable.
Q: I never used Substack before you got on it, and I feel like this experience is teaching me how to use it in a low key way so I will one day be able to surprise someone with the knowledge that I am an old pro at using Substack. I didn't even know Notes was a thing until yesterday! Look at you, imparting knowledge to the masses and doing a mitzvah for your readers! (Followers? Subscribers? I don't know what our designation is now.)
A: Substack Notes is a successful ripoff of Twitter but far more civil and still interesting; when Substack gets a bigger, it may wind up being a popular alternative, which would be great. Check it out. substack.com/notes –
Q: I'm not the first person to observe this, but why is it called a "blue checkmark" when the checkmark itself is white?
A: It’s a good question for which I have no answer, and I am going to end this here, with another question, an epistemological one. Do we have any way to prove that everyone sees colors roughly the same way? In other words, lets say Joe sees red as most of us see red, but Jane sees red as blue, and blue as green, etc. She would still call the colors by the right name, because to her the color we think of as blue is “red.” Would we know, and how?
Okay, I’m calling this part down but disappearing into the comments for a while. Please keep sending questions AND comments. I’ll need questions for Tuesday, and will answer yours then, at length.
Thanks to everyone who entered the Week 16 contest -- I think it was the first time that everyone followed the Xtra Simple formatting directions! We had a very high level of wordplay; it was hard for me to make the first cut down to 200-some entries, not to mention Gene's task of then cutting 3/4 of those semifinalists.
While we don't have any First Offenders this week, we have a LOT of people who've just earned their first Gene Pool ink. Any suggestions for what we should call them?
“Take the ball and knock down the cans” reminds me of a high school English teacher of mine who declared that "Go and close the door" meant you could leave, closing the door behind you.