The Invitational Week 19: A Crooning Achievement

Write a lyric for a politician to sing. Plus the winners of our toilet paper art contest!

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May 11, 2023

Hello. Today we introduce a new Invitational contest based on the moment above, when the South Korean president broke into song at a recent state dinner at the White House.

But first, as always, a one-question Gene Pool Gene Poll.

At some recent red-carpet events, Hollywood journos and hangers-on were startled to see numerous celebrities wearing wristwatches — a practice that’s become almost extinct since the advent of cellphones. It’s apparently Happening. So, today, a poll about your taste in watches.

This is only to gauge your watch aesthetics. Your choice should be entirely based on looks and design — ignoring price or cachet or brand name or any knowledge you may have of the quality of engineering. Which one of these watches would you most consider getting for yourself or a loved one, based on its appearance alone? You may consider any added features the watch offers. (These are men’s only — we may do a ladies’ watch comparison later.)

Watch 1. Watch 2. Watch 3. Watch 4. Watch 5.

And now, the Crooning Achievement: The Invitational Week 19

Our new contest is based on a suggestion by a reader of The Gene Pool, riffing off the moment at a recent White House dinner when South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol launched into an excellent version of American Pie. The still-anonymous reader suggested a contest in which we propose scenarios where some politician breaks into song that seems ironically appropriate, or devilishly pointed, or in some other way hilarious. The reader gave two examples: Barack Obama singing “Born in the U.S.A.” to a roomful of MAGA people, or Donald Trump, while entertaining Putin at the White House, singing to Vlad “This Land Is Your Land.”

We're going with that idea, with an additional requirement: You must write a new section to whichever song that the pol will throw in. To demonstrate, the Czar took the reader’s two suggestions and ran with them:

Trump, as Woody Guthrie, to Putin:
This land is your land, this land is my land
They say you rolled me, and that you’re vile and
A tyrant bloody — but you’re my buddy!
This land was made for you to screw.

Obama, as Springsteen, to the MAGAs:
Got me in a little birther jam,
Big orange fella asks from where I am.
Am I a Yank, because he has his doubt.
Here’s my baby papers! Kenya ooze on out?
I was BORN in the U.S.A. …

So for Week 19: Add a verse or two to a well-known song that a politician might humorously sing. Set the scene if needed. You can choose any politician, or even a duo or trio, from anywhere, past or present. Even even if it’s obvious to you, please tell us which song you’re using, and link to a YouTube version if the song might not be well known to everyone.

Ask a question!

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to bit.ly/inv-form-19. As usual, you can submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same entry form. And don’t try putting your whole song onto a single line, as we usually ask for entries; just write them in a typical poetry-style format.

Deadline is Saturday, May 20, at 9 p.m. — you get a few extra hours, since the Czar, the Empress and various Losers will be congregating that afternoon at the Flushies picnic (see one last blurb after this week’s results). Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, May 25. 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.

Have a nice cup of repartea with this week’s prize.

This week’s winner gets a coffee mug from Manhattan’s Algonquin hotel, famed as the daily lunch site and watering hole for the Algonquin Round Table, a 1920s clique of pre-Invitational wits including Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley. The mug was picked up in the 1990s by Maja Keech during a visit to New York by members of the Loser Community, whose “official” name is the Not Ready for the Algonquin Roundtable Society (hence its website, NRARS.org).

The results of Week 17 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.

Sheets and Giggles: Toilet Paper ‘Art’ From Invitational Week 17

In Invitational Week 17 we asked you — in our subversive answer to The Washington Post’s contests for dioramas featuring Peeps — to create and photograph some original construction featuring toilet paper and/or its cardboard tubes. As you will see, most people went the wordplay route rather than the craftsy route -- but the winner ably combined both approaches.

Third runner-up:

“WE don’t believe the crap we shovel, but you viewers go right ahead.”

(Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)

Second runner-up:

NEWS LEAK FROM THE JANUARY 6 INVESTIGATION,
or: What happens when you forget to flush fifteen times:

(Steve Smith, Potomac, Md.)

First runner-up:

(Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

And the winner of the bacon-and-egg socks:

“It’s now illegal to have your tubes tied in this state.”

(Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)

Arty Poopers: Honorable Mentions

When you know it’s gonna hit it, you gotta be prepared. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)
—

Pierre was tired of being treated like merde. (Stu Segal, Charlotte, N.C.)

From The Rear that made Milwaukee famous. (Kevin Dopart)

Chuck Berry’s bathroom. (Steve Leifer, Potomac, Md.)

—

TP canoe — Anne Tyler, too. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

—

(Jesse Frankovich)

(Beverley Sharp)

“It’s called a bidet. And it’s an existential threat.” (Stu Segal)

(Jesse Frankovich)

Scott finally lands a top roll. (Judy Freed, Deerfield Beach, Fla.)

(Kevin Dopart)

The headline “Sheets and Giggles” is by Jesse Frankovich; Chris Doyle wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running – deadline 4 p.m. Saturday, May 13: Our Week 18 “grandfoals” contest to “breed” the winning foal names from Week 16. Click here or type in bit.ly/inv-week-18.

Last call to join the Loser Community — plus Gene and Pat — at the annual Flushies picnic on Saturday afternoon, May 20. Here’s your personal invitation! We’ve heard that there will be Losers and Invitational Devotees coming from as far as Texas. And definitely some Loser-penned parodies to sing along with.

See more about The Invitational, including our 2,000-member Facebook group and our podcast.

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I’m going to end on the intro by talking about my friend Heather Armstrong, a once-rich and famous sardonic mommy blogger who called herself Dooce, and who died this week by suicide. Heather was a subject of my 2019 book, “One Day,” about the events that happened on a date I chose at random by picking numbers out of a hat. It turned out to be December 28, 1986.

On that day, Heather — then eleven — was at a sleepover at a friend’s house. The friend had Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers, which Heather was prohibited from playing at home; her parents were strict Mormons who found the game vulgar. So Heather ate it up, playing for hours, until her friend fell asleep, and then, an hour later, so did Heather. She woke up at 5, to continue her game, and at nearly 10 a.m., triumph.

She did it. No one saw it. Heather, a serious, solemn kid, pulled a loose-leaf page from her friend’s backpack, and wrote: “Today I saved the princess.” She signed and dated it — December 28th, 1986 — and kept it in a shoebox for years.

That lonely act of sedition against her upbringing proved to help define her life — a subversive rebellion against what was “proper” or “acceptable” behavior. She lived a public life that was always bracingly, terrifyingly honest. It made her rich and famous and deeply conflicted.

Heather died of alcoholism and depression — a devastating self-perpetuating combination — at 47 years old, the mother of a 19-year-old and a 13-year-old.

Dooce had been generous in the time she offered me, and unflinching in the things she was willing to discuss. I will not forget her. This is a link to the chapter on Heather in “One Day.” In isn’t short but I won’t mind if you leave to read it. Or hang on to it until after the chat.

Okay, here come your questions and my answers. We begin with a needed return to levity.

Q: Humiliations? This embarrassing situation happened not to me, but to my Dad. It quickly became one of his favorite stories to tell on himself.

In 1968, our young family had just emigrated from the coalfields of northern England to the coalfields of north-central West Virginia where Dad had found employment as an engineer. One day on the way home from work, Dad stopped at the local Acme supermarket to pick up a few things. As he was paying for his purchases the cashier noticed his thick Yorkshire accent and inquired if he was from England. He told her that he was and she replied “Oh, my brother-in-law is also from England.”

In England, a common retort to receiving surprising information is to respond “Well blow me down with a feather!” indicating that the news has left one off balance. Sayings like this are often shortened through use; perhaps you recall Popeye exclaiming “Well, blow me down!” In the vernacular of Yorkshire it is shortened even further, and Dad responded to this nice lady “Well, blow me!”

Her pleasant demeanor instantly vanished as she slammed shut the cash drawer and stomped to the store office. Dad was quite literally dumbfounded as she returned with the manager who angrily asked him to leave the store and never return. He told the story to Mom, who was equally nonplussed. The next day he related the story to his colleagues at work. After they recovered from their fits of laughter, they clued him in to the local meaning of the phrase. All future shopping was done at the A&P.

A: This is the best Humiliation story so far.

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 19…”) 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: What is the most embarrassing place you’ve ever had to poop?

A: Omigod.
Well. This is compelling me to remember something I’ve been trying very hard not to remember, apparently. And it raises an interesting epistemological question, almost a koan: Is it possible to be humiliated if you are completely alone?

In 1980 I was an editor for the National Law Journal, whose offices were located in the Woolworth Building in New York City. It was a huge, elegant early 1900s skyscraper, once the tallest building in New York. Because I am and always was a workaholic, I sometimes came in on Sundays. The building was open, but empty; it operated on old-timey old-building protocols. At some point during the few hours I was there, nature summoned me, somewhat urgently. The bathrooms were locked. The janitorial / maintenance office was closed. The building was … empty, except for me. This was downtown Manhattan on a Sunday; no restaurants or retail stores within walking distance were open.

What to do?

Well, there were windows that opened. We were on a high floor.

I found a newspaper that was not the National Law Journal. That would have been an intolerable forensic giveaway. It was the Wall Street Journal, as I recall. I relieved myself into it, and approached the window.

Now, I know what you are thinking, and you are wrong. I was not about to deliver a large splatting package of poo, possibly on the head of some innocent passerby 400 feet below. The Woolworth building had one of those scalloped designs, with ledges every 100 feet or so. This is the building.

So my poo splatted on a ledge many feet below.

Was I … humiliated? Yes, but I’m not sure why.

Q: What do you think of the controversial New York Times story on Elizabeth Holmes?

A: I think it was a dreadful story filled with pointless scenes, lacking any real insight, reaching no truths. Ultimately, I think the reporter was bamboozled by Holmes, who, after all, is a con artist. The story never adequately addressed the elephant in the room – how the hell did she get pregnant when she knew she might be facing a long prison term? Was it a strategy to AVOID a long prison term? Was she terrified? The best measure of how weak this story is and how hesitant the reporter was to be a reporter , as evidenced by this line of wussy introspection: “How do i ask someone who was nursing her 11-day old baby two feet away on a white couch if she was actually conning me?” There’s an easy answer to that and every other journalist on Earth knows it: You ask. It is your job.

Q: Humiliation. Even though I was a civilian, I deployed a few times while working for the Department of Defense. And, unlike most other civilians in the DoD, I was not former military so the culture shock was significant and ongoing. I’d been in Afghanistan a few months when I detected I had a little ‘female trouble.’ I asked a Major in my office what to do. “You just go on Med Call and get in line.” Okay! There I was the next morning standing next to guys who had wounds. Blood, pus, etc. “Sign in and take a seat.” The corpsman in charge just pointed at everyone in turn and said, “Whaddayou need? Whaddayou need? Whaddayou need?” I saw where this was going and started edging toward the door. “Need a new bandage.” “Get stitches out.” Pause.

Corpsman looks up, “Ma’am, why are you here?” Trying not to move my mouth, I said, “Yeast Infection.” He gives me the curly-come-here finger and I walked over, bumping into people on crutches. “Yeast infection, huh?” I nod. “Do you want to be examined?” “Oh, god, no!” Meanwhile, there was utterly no chatter behind me. I was praying to any god available for a missile strike or anything to end this. Suddenly I remembered the last time I had a yeast infection the cure included vaginal suppositories. The corpsman had gone into the back and I thought this was my last opportunity to get out, but I couldn’t move. He came back out with a card of pills and said, “Take two now and then one every 12 hours.” I didn’t know how to ask if I was to take them orally without stepping into the next circle of hell, so I left. Luckily, the back of the card had instructions. Jackpot!

Q: I was riding an unfamiliar bus, and the bus stopped to change drivers. The entire process of the new driver getting on and fussing with his seat or whatever took over 9 minutes, which I know because there was a blinking time and temperature sign near the stop. The bus was moderately crowded, and it was not a pleasant wait. Eventually he got his lumbar settings juuust so and was ready to leave.

As soon as we took off, someone rang the bell.

Exactly *one block later* — approximately 200 feet down the road — the bus pulls over, and a solitary able-bodied adult woman with no baggage got off the bus. She was perfectly free to get off the bus at any time during those 9 minutes. I have no idea why she chose not to do so. It confounds me to this day.

A: I was not going to use this question because it seemed so trivial, until I reread it twice: YES, THAT IS ABSOLUTELY FREAKING WEIRD. Also, you write very well.

Q: Exactly what was CNN thinking ? More like a beer hall rally in 1930s Munich than a town hall.

A: I thought Kaitlan Collins did very well, considering that her subject was a compulsive liar. The problem was having him on at all.

Q: Gene, I write you (please keep this anonymous) in your regal capacity as Prince of Poop. Because of an injury to my back, I installed an inexpensive bidet attachment to my toilet. No warming, no electric, no nothing. Just pure city-pressure-level water shooting up my backside.

Not only am I the cleanest I have felt in years, but I feel I have become addicted to it. A good 10-second-long shot stimulates my lower digestive system to empty fully. I have lost weight, I no longer am bloated, and I feel great. When I travel, I miss it.

A: Ditto. There is a fine entry to the Invitational, above, on this very subject. And there is this, that I wrote on the subject a couple of years ago.

Q: Hello, Gene. I have lived in the DC area (both MD and VA) for 28 years. I see a driving phenomenon here that I have not seen elsewhere. When folks line up at stoplights, there’s always somebody who leaves a too- large gap between themselves and the next car. This is not a courtesy and it’s not related to cell phones. It can be, but I observed this before everybody had a cell phone and found themselves unable to look away from it, when while driving. Have you seen this? Is it just me? Considering that the driving here can be moderately aggressive, I’m stumped. It’s good to leave some space for safety, but these are large gaps.

A: Some people, when they arrive at stoplights, basically fall asleep. It’s most evident when they’re the first person at the light, and simply don’t move when the light changes. They get upset when you honk them. Perhaps they you have jarred them awake.

This brings me to my two bugaboos. The first is when you are the third car at the light, and the first car doesn’t move when the light changes. You wait three seconds and then honk, and then the second guy at the light throws up his hands in anger, as if to say, stop honking me, it’s not my fault. It IS his fault. HE should have honked the asleep driver.

But my biggest bugaboo, as I have writ before, is when the first person in line – you have a green light – is trying to turn left through upcoming traffic, but instead of easing into the intersection, as is both permitted and encouraged, sits in place, making it impossible for anyone else to get past, and forcing the car directly behind him to miss the light.

Q: In your Gene Pool post calling for Existential Questions that you would answer, you gave four examples. I think you should answer them. So I am going to ask them now, in succession, as though it is from four different people.

A: Shoot.

Q: What is The Meaning of Existence?

A: The dictionary says it is “the fact or state of living or having objective reality.” Kafka says “the meaning of life is that it ends,” which is profound, succinct, and correct. I move on a bit: I believe the meaning of life is to laugh until you die.

Q: Why do so many talking heads pronounce “negotiation” as “nego-see-ay-shun” when there is no c or s in the word or ANY reason to pronounce it that way?

A: Because somehow it sounds more hoity-toity. Most actual human people don’t pronounce it that way. It’s vacuous talking heads who do it because they starve for gravitas.

Q: Why do we hiccup?

A: It is God reminding us, for our own good, that we are ridiculous creatures who should not preen. It is also why we fart and have to pick our noses.

Q: Why can you sometimes stop a sneeze by jamming an index finger crosswise under your nose?

A: There’s a good answer to this. Sneezing is caused by an irritation to the trigeminal nerve. The finger disrupts a competing nerve, the maxillary nerve. They fight. This distract the trigeminal. I think I have this right.

Q: Why do cats jump into boxes?

A: This is true: It is because they are lions the size of guinea pigs. Their genes compel them to feel beset by predators, and boxes give them a sense of security. They think they are hiding and safe. Here is a great short column a great writer wrote about cats in a newspaper in Guam .

Q: Why will cats, who are otherwise sensible creatures, walk by a fresh bowl of water and drink from the toilet.

A: Because they are cats. They resent that the bowl of water was PLACED there for them.