The Invitational Week 182: Badvice
Give us supremely unhelpful tips for various scenarios. Plus ‘Hand bruise: banned news’ and other winning rhymey punchlines.
Hello. Let’s say you just heard of The Invitational, and are thinking of submitting an entry, and asked us for advice, and we said, “Well, most people do best when their entries are drolly amusing, referencing abstruse or esoteric subject matter such as theosophy or modal realism.” That would be very bad advice, which is what we are seeking in this week’s new contest, below. But first, the snarky malarkey.
Wise Guys’ Prize Replies: Rhyming punchlines from Week 180
In Invitational Week 180 we asked for jokes in riddle form that ended entirely in rhyming words or phrases.
Third runner-up:
Q: What would be a poor slogan for an investment company?
A: T. Rowe Price: We throw dice.
(Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)
Second runner-up:
Q: What inspired the statement “I stink, therefore I am”?
A: Descartes’ farts.
(Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)
First runner-up:
Q: What was the widespread reaction to NBA Finals ticket prices?
A: Knickerbocker sticker shocker.
(Ann Martin, Brentwood, Md.)
And the winner of the cow-leg socks:
Q: What happens when the White House livestreams a Cabinet meeting?
A: Voters notice POTUS gloat as doters’ quote is “GOAT is POTUS!”
(Jesse Frankovich)
As usual, if you think one or more of the honorable mentions below are better than these, shout out your favorites in the Comments.)
Mirth Dearth: Honorable mentions
Q: How did California’s governor find the courage to stand up to the President of the United States?
A: Newsom grew some. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)
Q: What do you get when a boat full of tourists capsizes on the Amazon?
A: Piranha nirvana! (Jonathan Jensen)
Q: What do the French think of Spaniards’ boast that their nation will win the World Cup?
A: Andalusian fan delusion. (Michael Stein, Arlington, Va.)
Q: What do they call a guy in Santiago power-washing his butt?
A: Bidetin’ Chilean. (Bob Forrest, Tempe, Ariz., a First Offender)
Q: So what’s on the president’s schedule today?
A: Views news, stews, sues news crews; screws slews, accrues boos; spews views, cues coups. Snooze ensues. (Jesse Frankovich)
Q: What kind of leader might you find in California, but not Texas?
A: Alfalfa/kale alpha male. (Jonathan Jensen)
Q: How did my buddy at Dogecoin describe his “can’t-miss plan,” though the judge later described it as “wire fraud”?
A: “Ipso facto crypto hack, bro!” (Daniel Galef, Cincinnati)
Q: What did Consumer Reports call its file of tests for bra flammability?
A: The Boulder-Holder Smolder Folder. (Mark Raffman)
Q: What’s the name of the calorie diary for midnight binge-eaters?
A: Noshturnal Journal. (Dan Steinbrocker, Los Angeles)
Q: What did the pretentious poet call himself on his résumé?
A: “Avant-garde savant-bard.” (Chris Doyle, Warminster, Pa.)
Q: What new book attacks mass-marketing of processed foods for causing chronic obesity?
A: “Bad Guys’ Ad Buys Pad Thighs.” (Mark Raffman)
Q: Why won’t the White House press secretary discuss Trump’s big ugly purple smudge?
A: Hand bruise: banned news. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)
Q: What Tudor era game was the predecessor of today’s Fuck, Marry, Kill?
A: Bed, Wed, Behead. (Mark Raffman)
Q: How do FIFA players respond to every yellow card?
A: Admonishment astonishment. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)
Q: What do cops call an orgy that turns into a riot?
A: Obscene mob scene. (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)
Q: What do you call a naughty nun’s journal?
A: Fiery priory diary. (Jeff Contompasis)
Q: Who perpetrated those college panty raids, and what did they get away with?
A: Plunder-varmints; undergarments. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)
Q: What’s another name for toilet paper?
A: Bowel towel. (Dave Metzger, Venice, Fla.)
Q: Eau d’Hobo? What’s that?
A: Vagrants’ fragrance. (Jeff Contompasis)
Q: How does a fitness freak react when they don’t get their daily steps in?
A: Fitbit shit fit. (Jonathan Jensen)
Q: What do you call it when a gang of morons acts impulsively?
A: Stupid group id. (Lee Graham, Columbia, S.C.)
Q: What do you call a secretive investment in Liberty Financial?
A: Crypto tiptoe. (Jonathan Jensen)
Q: What do you call the noisemakers at fancy World Cup parties?
A: Froufrou galas’ vuvuzelas. (Chris Doyle)
Q: What did the lamestream media do to his beautiful life story, according to Trump?
A: Gag a MAGA saga. (Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)
Q: What lawn decoration data from a chain store is an indicator of the current economy?
A: Home Depot’s gnome repos. (Kevin Dopart)
Q: What’s the most unlikely thing for AOC to say at a White House dinner?
A: “May we dance, JD Vance?” (Ann Martin)
Q: Where does this candy store hide its dildo-shaped lollipops?
A: Erection confection protection section. (Mark Raffman)
Q: What did Pete Hegseth decide to do when he found out he wasn’t invited to the FBI director’s bourbon party?
A: Crash Kash bash, trash mash cache. (Michael Stein)
Q: How might you describe Trump’s inaugural address?
A: Bore-a-nation coronation. (Diana Oertel, San Francisco)
Q: What do you call Trump’s White House bunker project?
A: Vex-a-nation excavation. (Jonathan Jensen)
Q: What do you call that theater patron who cries out in despair from his seat when Desdemona dies in Act V?
A: Melodramatic “Othello” fanatic. (Chris Doyle)
Q: What headline do FIFA officials fear if the victorious team has to pose with Trump after the final?
A: World Cup Winner Hurled Up Dinner. (Kevin Dopart)
Q: What’s the difference between the 44th president and your mother?
A: Obama’s swell, hunky. Yo Mama smell funky. (Jonathan Jensen)
Q: What’s the biggest winter event in Panama?
A: Isthmus Christmas. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)
Q: Among themselves, what do bawdy urologists call large penises with curved, painful erections?
A: Peyronie bologna. (Roy Ashley, Washington, D.C.)
Q: What do you call it when a geezer proudly pees, poops, and farts all at once?
A: Geriatric merry hat trick. (Mark Raffman)
Q: What’s an albino’s dinglefruit “stem” called?
A: Very rare derriere berry hair. (Kevin Dopart)
And Last:
Q: What do you call someone who pretends to understand this contest’s premise?
A: Loser poser. (Jeff Contompasis)
The headline “Wise Guys’ Prize Replies” is by Jeff Contompasis; Jesse Frankovich wrote the honorable-mentions subhead, plus “snarky malarkey.” The Loser Community’s website with all the stats and stuff is now NRARS.net; the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook is still here.
New contest for Week 182: Bad advice in various scenarios
We did this contest once before, in 2001, and the results were bad, which was good, if you get our drift. Here are your new categories:
A. Parents about to start potty training their first child
B. Someone who has just been appointed an envoy to North Korea
C. Someone who has to give a eulogy for an ex-spouse
D. Someone who’s writing their first novel
E. Someone who’s planning a kitchen renovation
F. Someone who’s thinking of getting a dog
G. Someone going to New York for the first time
H. Someone who wants to lose thirty pounds in six months but can’t afford GLPs
For Invitational Week 182: Give some comically bad advice to any of the people above. Lots of your fellow Losers might have the same general idea, so funny writing just might be what gets your entry the coveted blot of ink.
Formatting your entries: Begin each entry with the letter of the category — as in A. [your entry] — and keep each entry to a single line; i.e., don’t press Enter until you’re starting another entry. This will let us sort all the novel-writers together, all the potty-trainers, etc. You are free to, but don’t have to, mention the category as well; we just need those letters at the beginning.
Deadline is Saturday, July 4, at 10 p.m. ET — that’s an extra hour so you can watch the fireworks. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, July 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-182.
Winner gets this essential for the summer dining table: It’s a set of plastic ants, each with a spike that lets it hold a piece of cheese, or a cube of watermelon, or a grape tomato, or a grape non-tomato. So much easier than an actual picnic.
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.
Still running — deadline Saturday, June 27, at 9 p.m. ET: It’s our contest to write new text for any of eight “Speed Bump” cartoons by Dave Coverly. Click on “read full story” below for details.
Now we seamlessly segue into the Mailbag portion of The Gene Pool, in which Gene responds to your questions and observations. Please send your new Questions and Observations here, to Ye Olde Mailbagge:
And last, if you have not already done so, please consider becoming a paying subscriber to The Gene Pool. It lets you enter the Invitational, rather than just reading the results every week and sourly deciding you would have done better and then kicking the family’s dog cat hamster bunny potbelly pig. weasel. sea monkey. giant squid. raccoon. humpbacked whale. Clydesdale. axolotl. naked mole rat. slime mold. Marco Rubio.
Q: I enlisted in the army as a chaplain. In chaplain school, there were only three women in my class. I am and was quite short, 4’11”. All the guys in my class treated me as a lovable mascot, dubbing me Ch Smurfette.
One day we did a formation run. The class instructor put me at the front right to set the pace. He didn’t want to see the short girl fall out of the run. About halfway through he trotted up beside me and asked me to slow the pace, as some of the guys were falling out. I started to learn that day that this little girl had a ton of ability, more than the guys.
I later went on to go to the 101st Airborne. I aced Air Assault School in 10 days flat, the fastest you can do it in. I was told I was too short, that I could not make it through the obstacle course. LOL. The 6’3” male 5th Special Forces boloed out three times, and never did get his wings. I later became the first female chaplain to serve in combat. Don’t mess with short, determined women. I could beat Hegseth with my eyes closed.
— Linda Leibhart
A: You could beat me up, too. I also could beat Hegseth, but only at any task of intelligence, character, etc.
This picture is from your Facebook page!
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Q: You asked about something you were learning in life before you realized you were learning it.
I was playing golf solo one weekday afternoon at a club outside Philly. I was in my late twenties and just screwing around, working on my game (which as ever needed work). I was about 100 yards off the green and thought I’d try a “knockdown” 4-iron to scoot the ball onto the green.
Normally a 4-iron from there is far too much club … but I was going to nuance that baby like Lee Trevino. Instead, I skulled the bastard. It flew high and long, disappearing over a substantial border hedge and, out of sight but not out of sound, crashing a mammoth glass picture window of a neighboring Gulf station,
I could have jumped into my cart and disappeared like Clyde Barrow, anonymous on that empty golf course. Instead, some inner voice said, “Man up, punk.” I stood by my cart and after a few minutes a fellow looking like Junior Samples lumbered through the hedge and asked, “Titleist 3?”
I gave him my info but never heard anything about it. Presumably the Gulf station’s insurance ate the replacement.
Now you could say what I learned was responsibility that day. But for me, what I learned was to not be a chickenshit. To some folks that might be a difference without a distinction … but not to me.
— Jon Ketzner
A: One night I had to play the harmonica onstage with Dave Barry in a pre-arranged gig. We thought it would be in front of, like, 100 people. It turned out to be a paying crowd of maybe 2,000, in an amphitheater, as part of a comedy festival. Dave was just fine with this. I was freaked out. My harmonica playing is not good. The joke was that Dave, in his routine, had complained that everything I played sounded like '“Oh Susanna,” and then he and the band started a blues song, and when he threw it over to me, he would say “take it, Gene,” I was to launch into “Oh Susanna.”
At the moment that point came, I froze. I could not move my hands or mouth, I had forgotten where on the harp the “C” was, etc. I stood there. Just pregnant silence. Millennia passed. And I remember willing myself to calm down and pretend I was just alone in my bathroom, on the toilet. And I did it, just fine. What I learned that day is that if you fear you are going to fail, you will. I learned to hypnotize myself through phony bravura.
Later, I realized that the total silence had lasted maybe two seconds. That’s the other thing I learned. Mortification expands time.
See next post.
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Q: What is something I learned without knowing it that later became valuable? It’s complicated and it begins with a faceplant, on stage.
When I was 38 years old, my husband had his second round of serious heart attacks and bypass surgery. I came to the realization that I had better be ready to take care of the family of four children in case he was no longer able to. I had two previous years of education nearly 20 years before and decided that getting my teaching certificate was the shortest route toward a decent income. This however, meant that I would have to take two years’ worth of classes in five quarters. I was determined to accomplish this in spite of the fact that for my whole life until that point I had been excruciatingly shy, even dreading speaking to strangers on the phone or reading out loud to children.
At the end of the five quarters, after taking 20 or more credits, a quarter, I was near graduation. The only thing missing was a Speech credit. To be honest, I had avoided taking the class because I was so afraid of having to get up and talk in front of people. The incongruity of wanting to be a teacher and being afraid to talk in front of people did indeed strike me, but I ignored it. My advisor told me that I could take a thing called the “speech challenge.” This was a week-long offering, during which one would advance to the end where the student would be expected to give a speech in front of an audience. Since I had absolutely no other option, I decided to take the challenge. I cannot emphasize too much how much I dreaded this, literally trembling with fear.
My chosen topic for my speech was censorship in schools, a subject about which I had some pretty strong opinions. With trembling knees, I got up on the stage in front of a camera with a microphone and an audience of 30 or 40 professors and other professionals from the school. I gave my speech with shaking voice. At the end, I took the large audiovisual aid chart from the easel and went to leave the stage. As I walked off, I tripped over the camera cords and fell flat forward onto my face. I was completely chagrined and totally convinced that I had blown it. I dashed off the stage, out the door and sat on the steps and cried. The speech professor followed me out the door, concerned that I might be injured, and assured me that I had passed the speech challenge with flying colors.
That pratfall and that speech were like miracles. From that moment on, I was no longer afraid to speak in public. I went on to become a teacher for 22 years, and often taught workshops and spoke at symposiums in front of hundreds of people with great enjoyment. It was a complete “cure” for my shyness. I am now 86 years old and living in a retirement home. I am very able to approach people and make new friends here, and even continue to teach.
— Jacqueline Volz
A: Thanks. I’ll end with an old joke.
Arnold Weinberg, a young politician, is giving a massive, high-stakes speech in front of his whole town. He is incredibly nervous. Right in the middle of a dramatic, dead-silent pause in his speech, he drops a page he is reading from, and while bending to pick it up, he lets out a deafening, echoing fart right into the microphone.
The crowd erupts into raucous laughter. Weinberg is so completely mortified that he drops the microphone, runs off the stage, packs his bags that very night, and leaves the country.
He spends the next 40 years living in exile in a remote part of the world. He never marries, never calls home, and changes his name. Finally, as an old man, he grows homesick. He thinks to himself: It’s been 40 years. Generations have passed. Maybe it is safe.
He catches a flight back, takes a bus to his old hometown, and steps off at the station. He notices everything has changed—new buildings, new streets, and new faces. Feeling relieved, he walks into a local diner to get some food.
He sits at the counter and strikes up a conversation with a young clerk working behind the register.
“I used to live here a very long time ago,” the old man says warmly. “Haven’t been back in 40 years.”
“Wow!” says the kid at the register. “Was that before or after the Weinberg Fart?”
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Questions? Observations? Here comes the Mailbag:
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Linda Leibhart you should sell your story to Hollywood. You’d probably have to tart it up with stuff like forbidden love, or being there in combat to comfort the very officer who tried the hardest to discourage you, but people would root for you.
I loved Mark Raffman's Bed, Wed, Behead