The Invitational Week 35: Doody and Muldoon

Plus 'Jeopardy!' — the winning questions for our wacko answers

Hello. Today is Invitational Day, which we will get to only after compelling you to endure another extraneous Gene Pool Gene Pool. Here it comes. Grab some popcorn.

Okay, good.

Week 35: A Brand New Contest!

I open my eyes —
Las Vegas! How nice!
But I’m missing a kidney
And packed in ice.

—

“Head, shoulders, knees and toes.”
That’s how the kiddy ditty goes.
(In Jersey, Mob tots end with this take:
“Now cut ’em off and throw ’em in the lake.”)

For Invitational Week 35: Write a Muldoon,  a four-line poem that features at least two body parts and a place name, and at least one rhyme.

We officially declare this a new contest. We actually did run it once before, during the first George W. Bush administration, but that was so long ago we declare that one deceased and erased from the records.

Muldoons were invented many years ago by the wonderfully alliterative Pulitzer Prizewinning Princeton Poet Paul Muldoon. As in the two examples above (the first by Jennifer Hart in 2003, the second by the Czar twenty years later) each poem must be a single quatrain with at least one rhyme. It must contain references to at least two body parts and one geographical location. The meter can be scattershot.

Click here for this week’s entry form. Or go to bit.ly/inv-form-35. As usual, you can submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same entry form.

Deadline is Saturday, Sept. 9, at 4 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Sept. 14.

The winner gets this nifty pen with a poop emoji that pops off into the air at the push of a button. If you happen to see the photo of President Obama signing the Affordable Care Act, look closely and you’ll see that this pen was exactly like the one he used that day. Donated by six-time Loser Cheryl White.

Until the invention of the typewriter, Invitational entries were written with one of these.

Runners-up get autographed fake money featuring the Czar or Empress, in one of ten nifty designs. Honorable mentions get bupkis, except for a sweet email from the E, plus the Fir Stink for First Ink for those who’ve just lost their Invite virginity.

Q It Yourself: Ask Backwards winners from Week 33

In Week 33, as we are wont to do, we offered a list of oddball “answers” and you supplied the questions — more than 700 of them — Jeopardy-ish style. For “No-Hit Wonder,” too many Losers to credit asked, “What did they call Stevie in Little League?” while a slew of entrants predicted that the 2024 Pantone Color of the Year would be something like Jumpsuit/Skin Orange.

Third runner-up:
A. Only black licorice. 
Q. Is it true Florida wants to ban licorice at Disney World? (John McCooey, Rehoboth Beach, Del.)

Second runner-up:
A. Florida Dog.
Q. What dog got bitten by its owner? (Dan Helming, Whitemarsh, Pa.; Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)

First runner-up:
A. The Dirty Baker’s Dozen:
Q, Which pastries are filled with dulce de lech? (Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)

And the winner of the cute sloth tea infuser:
A. Donald Trump, PhD:
Q. What’s more plausible than “Donald Trump, 6-foot-3, 215 pounds”? (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

Blowing an Ask-It: Honorable mentions

A. Florida Dog:

Q. Between Florida Man and Florida Dog, who is better able to resist licking his crotch in public? (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.)

Q. Who is now protected, by law, from groomers? (Steve Smith, Potomac, Md.)

Q. Who chases cars head-on? (Kevin Dopart)

Q, Who is not allowed to sniff another dog’s butt if it’s the same gender? (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

Q. What’s another name for the yoga position Head Up Your Ass? (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)

Q. Who’s a dumb boy? (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore; Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) 

A. 100 cats in a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment: 

Q. What’s the best remedy for Covid smell loss? (Pam Shermeyer)

Q. What smells like Steve Bannon looks? (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.)

Q. What listing can you find on Hairbnb? (Diana Oertel, San Francisco; Steve Smith)

Q. What would allow a Proud Boy to honestly say, “I’m getting a lot of pussy”? (Mark Raffman)  

 A. Arguably, they’re the same:

Q. What’s the difference between a satirical article about the Trump administration and a descriptive article about the Trump administration? (Neal Starkman, Seattle)

Q. What’s the difference between bathtub caulk and American cheese? (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.)

A. Barbie, Ken, and Kamala: 

Q. On which pronunciation quiz did Tucker Carlson score 66.67? (Mark Raffman)

Q. What are more valuable when kept boxed up? (Kevin Dopart)

A. Donald Trump, PhD:

Q. Who is the only recipient of a doctorate in phoniness? (Mark Asquino, Santa Fe, N.M.)

Q. Who received the first honorary degree bestowed by the Clorox School of Medicine? (Perry Beider, Silver Spring, Md.)

Q. Who hired a team of lawyers to defend his thesis, and then stiffed them on the tab? (Mark Raffman)

Q. Whose dissertation had footnotes citing the source “A lot of people are saying”? (Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va.; Duncan Stevens)

Q. Who uses the abbreviation for “Phenomenal Dictator”? (Rob Cohen)

Q. Who got his doctorate in uncivil engineering? (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

A. Heirloom Twinkies:

Q. What can you find in the snack aisle next to the locally grown Ding Dongs? (Judy Freed, Deerfield Beach, Fla.)

Q. What did Elon Musk pay $2 billion for? (Roy Ashley, Washington, D.C.)

A. No-Hit Wonder:

Q. What would we have called the Baha Men if the dogs had stayed in? (Duncan Stevens)

Q. What’s simultaneously an appropriate and inappropriate nickname for Shohei Ohtani? (Duncan Stevens)

Q. What do you call someone who can get high just walking past the dispensary? (Gary Crockett)

A. Only black licorice:

Q. What is the candy equivalent of well-done steak with ketchup? (Dan Helming)

Q. Is there a food that will not work as rat bait? (Lee Graham, Reston, Va.)

Q. What is worse than the day when your wife leaves, your business partner takes all of the money that your wife didn’t, and your dog dies? (Jeff Hazle, San Antonio)

(Note: Both the Czar and the Empress actually like black licorice. Please send all your unwanted black jelly beans to the E.)

A. Ploppenheimer:

Q. Who is most likely to create a weapon of ass destruction? (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

A. Oppenhopper:

Q. What did they name the first atomic-powered pogo stick? (Mark Raffman)

Q. Who stars with Bugs Bunny in the 1945 short “Gone Fission”? (Mike Gips)

Q. What do Los Alamos residents call a five-legged frog? (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)

Q. What was Kermit’s role in “The Muppets Take Manhattan Project”? (Jeff Contompasis)

The 2024 Pantone Color of the Year:

Q. What is Freshly Picked Cotton? — R. DeSantis (Steve Smith)

Q. What will be Whatta Maroon? (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

Q. What is Cell-a-Don? (Barbara Turner)

Q. What announcement sparked an “All Colors Matter” protest? (Judy Freed)

A. A bad idea for an Invitational contest:

Q. What is “Come up with funny twelve-digit numbers”? (Duncan Stevens)

Q. What is “Tell us some funny Holocaust ‘equivalencies’”? (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)

Q. What is add “buttfuck” to a movie title and describe the new movie’s plot? (Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)

Q. What is an annual contest to write a poem about somebody born the preceding year? (Jesse Rifkin)

Q. What is “Make up funny limericks using the names and addresses of the Georgia grand jurors”? (Mark Raffman)

Q. What are insulting Pakistani names for Indian food? (Kevin Dopart)

The headline “Q It Yourself” is by Jesse Frankovich; Beverley Sharp wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 4 p.m. ET Saturday, Sept. 2: Our Week 34 contest to link two people who share a birthday. Click here or type in bit.ly/inv-week-34. 

Okay, so now we entreat you: The Gene Pool has many thousands of people around the country and globe who read us weekly for free, and many hundreds who pay us a little money ($4.15 a month). Will you take the graceful, gazelle-like leap from the first group to the second, upgrading from “free” to “paid”? If you scratch our backs, we’ll scratch yours. Literally. Gene will come over to your house and scratch your back. Here’s how to arrange it:

So here comes the renowned real-time questions / observations / answers part of the Gene Pool. Many of these are in response to our Weekend call for “sosumis,” things that most everyone likes but you don’t, so sue me. Also, many questions further address Tuesday’s poll about The Kiss. Please remember that if you are reading this in real time, you should keep refreshing your screen for new questions and answers.

Send questions / observations here, and Gene will respond to them, if they are any good. That is a challenge:

Q: Regarding The Kiss:  When I was young I occasionally used to get my tits grabbed (non-consensually) by strangers in public; routinely get hooted at on the street, especially if I had the temerity to wear, say, a tank-top in hot weather; be on the receiving end of comments about various aspects of my anatomy. Oh yes, and of course frequently get told to smile, sometimes by the same men who were doing the hooting, grabbing and commenting. I should add that I was never dressed provocatively (unless you consider exposed arms to be a provocation, but if so you must be reading this from your desk at the Vatican); I just had a big rack.

My point about all this is that it would be really nice if women could just be treated as though we were actual human beings rather than prey. If the woman felt demeaned and didn't indicate consent then yes he deserved some sort of reprimand and punishment, for instance what he got. But what he did seems so trivial compared to what goes on all the time, and I think that the urge to hang everyone who commits any sort of offense at all is just not going to lead anywhere good. The French Revolution? Some fine ideas, but eventually all of them lost their heads and once everyone had guillotined everyone else, the result was Napoleon. Just saying.

A: This is an interesting point of view.  It coincides with my initial point of view.   Yes, The Kiss was wrong, and if the kissee felt it was assaultive, it was perforce assaultive.   But it was a momentary, closed-mouth thing – by its nature, not overtly sexual, IMO – and as this reader points out, there are so, so many worse things.  A firing offense? Probably not, I felt. But then a couple of readers raised another point that is worth considering, and I think it changed my mind: 

The organization Rubiales heads, The Spanish Football Federation, has been in a testy standoff with the women’s team, which feels disrespected and not listened to.  Their complaints that their head coach was abusive went unheeded by Rubiales, who gave the coach a new contract. This doesn’t change the dynamics of The Kiss, but I think it puts the moment in a different perspective.  

Had Rubiales been a beloved boss, a clear friend to the team, he might have had reason to believe (naively, sure) that his action would be welcomed or at least accepted as not ill-intentioned.   But Rubiales knew he was not popular with this team, so he had to know – or strongly suspect – that the kiss would be resented. That changes things.  That adds some potential power-play hostility to it. Intent is almost everything. 

Finally, there is news today that Rubiales’s uncle called him an arrogant, sex obsessed bastard.  That’s not probative, but you know.

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… “ ) for the 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 roughly 1 p.m. ET today.

Q: What the heck does “Doody and Muldoon: mean?

A: Clearly, you are one of those rare Gene Pool devotees who are under 68.   It is a reference to the two lead characters in the 1961 police sitcom “Car 54, Where Are You?,” officers Gunther Toody and Francis Muldoon.  (Starring Herman Munster and Joe E. Ross.)   Even the theme song, which I have committed to memory, shows its age:  

There's a hold-up in the Bronx / Brooklyn's broken out in fights / There's a traffic jam in Harlem that's backed up to Jackson Heights / A scout troop's lost a child / Khrushchev's due at Idlewild / Car 54 where are you?  

Idlewild! Khrushchev!

Here’s the actual opening credits.  

Q: Call me Unsure: I've been thinking a lot over the past week since you confessed to never having had a one-night stand. I'm struggling to figure out if I've ever had one myself! Rather than twisting myself into a Bill Clintonesque discussion of the meaning of "is," I'd like to ask YOU whether I've ever had a one-night stand. Is a one-night stand with a stranger? Is it an odd occurrence that happens just once? What are the criteria? Example one: Dated someone casually for a bit, slept together once, never did it again. Example two: Had one date with a grad school classmate/friend, slept together on that one date, never went out together again but continued to hang out in the same friend group. Example three: Slept with an out-of-town guest I met at a wedding. Kept in touch a few weeks, but never saw them again. Trying to keep all this gender neutral in case that matters. So what say you: have I ever had a one-night stand?

A: According to the Britannica: A situation where you have sex with a person once and do not continue a relationship afterwards.     By that definition, your first and third examples qualify, your second does not.  It’s only one for three but whatever your gender, you apparently still qualify as a slut.

Q: “Are you a fan of any actor or director or writer or comedian to the point of caring deeply about their careers and lives, reading / watching their next works? Anyone at all?”  Hmm. Interesting point. I will give it consideration: Certainly there are, for example, actors or directors (and authors) in whom I am interested, and whose next productions I anticipate and attend. But am I particularly interested in their personal lives, to the point at which I will keep detailed statistics on them? Certainly not. I may well say, oh good! So-and-so has a new film out, or who has has written another book, and be sure to watch or read same. But I could not care less where they live, or exactly how old they are, or what they weigh.

A: This is in reference to my response to people’s complaints about sports fans.   But see – you have just described, in describing yourself, EXACTLY what sports fans are.  No fan is following slavishly the events in Aaron Judge’s life.   He is being defined only by what he does on the field. 

Q: Why did you mention GWTW and The Wizard of Oz in your choices?? They are classicly loved.

A: Because when people wrote in their Sosumis, both movies were mentioned several times. There’s a posse of hatred out there. I did NOT include the most overrated movie of all time — Titanic — because I had mentioned it as one of my sosumis, and I feared I had seeded the pot.

Q:  When I was little a car drove up our street blaring music. I ran out to see the excitement. It was a convertible, and sitting in the back was a donkey! The donkey was handing out stuff, and it gave me a Stevenson button. When I showed it to my brother, he laughed and said it wasn’t a donkey. Probably just some guy in a donkey suit. I regret not having a sister.

A: I love this but I think an older sister would have been even more dismissive, no?

---

Q: I'm glad you recognize your status as a bystander to the Rubiales drama. In my experience, men cut themselves (and other men) a huge amount of slack for "impulsive" "exuberant" "appreciative" violations of women's bodily autonomy and consider it "way over the top" when the object of the "appreciation", or worse, other women, take offense. I think it is quite possible to draw a direct line from this kind of conduct, which boils down to "I'm physically stronger than you so I can take liberties and you can't stop me," to the noxious notion that because women "traditionally" didn't have bodily autonomy, it's somehow okay to invoke the presumed opinions of a bunch of 18th century men that women didn't enjoy the right to abortion when the 5th Amendment was adopted, therefore we don't have to recognize one now. If men like Rubiales were in the habit of forcibly kissing other men to show his "appreciation" of them, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.

A: I have two things to say about this, and neither is repudiating anything you said.  First, she could have kicked his ass.  She is a world-class athlete and kicking specialist, and he is a pasty-faced candy-assed 45-year-old bureaucrat.  But that’s just an aside.  As far as times changing, yes.  Otherwise, we would still be flogging our servants. 

Q:: Were you telling the truth when you said you never lip-kissed a woman with whom you were not in an established relationship?  

A: I thought I was, and technically I was, but I just now remembered one instance in high school.  I was 16 and she was 15 (not a woman, okay?) and we were at a party and we Did It, with lingual intermingling, a gloriously assonant  term I just made up.    It remains one of the most electrifying moments of my life.  My brain went to mush, and became  hard-wired for the next several decades to favor petite women, like her.   She is now a big-shot OB/GYN in New York City.  I am sure she still pines for me.

Q: Dip for your marinated steak ( good for grilled pork tenderloin)..jar of horseradish, jar of lime marmalade. Mix together. Looks kind of gross, tastes amazing.

A: This sounds utterly revolting.  I’ll try it. 

Q: Your edict on tomatoes reminds me that my parents, married lo these 50 years, have opposing approaches to tomatoes. My mom puts sugar on them, and my dad puts salt on them. Or vice versa. I can never remember who does what. Last summer my brother and I were visiting and he declined both salt and sugar to eat the tomato naked. (I mean, my brother was clothed. The tomato was naked). The looks they both gave him! It was like they realized they raised an alien.  

A: Whoa.  I am a salt guy.  Sugar on a good tomato seems overkill.  Still, I put sugar on an imperfectly sweet watermelon.  Rachel salts them. 

Q: I’m a dog lover that has no use for poodles. It’s not because of the snobbiness of many poodle owners or the foo-foo hair cuts; these are merely annoying. Poodles are creepy. Their narrow snouts and lifeless eyes don’t fit with the thick coat. Did you ever pet one only to have your hand sink down and feel their bony frame? Ick. They're like giant emaciated rats with perms. I feel labradoodles are the correct evolution of the breed.

Would you dare say that about … Quincy, from the “pee” video?  (I know that Quincy is a Bichon, but same difference.) 

Q: Sosumi: Chocolate. My mother loved it. My sister loved it. My wife loves it. I won’t touch it. Tried it a few times and found it bitter and unappetizing.  

A: Oh, thanks for this opportunity.  If you were here now, I’d hold the back of your head and momentarily peck you on the lips and I don’t care that you’re apparently a guy.   YOU HATE IT BECAUSE THEY ARE BUYING DARK CHOCOLATE, WHICH IS IN FACT BITTER.

Q: Pedestrians being given the right of way at every crosswalk, every time. For goodness sake, people now just assume everyone will stop for them. They don't even bother to look both ways before they cross the street! The laws of the road will cost you a small fine. The laws of physics will kill you.

A: Oh, yes.   Also speed-trappy, obviously too-slow speed limits drive me nuts.   The public loves them.   20 MPH Saves lives!  Sure.  Even more lives would be saved at 2 mph.  

Sosumi: Parades. Stand there for hours to watch people walk by. The big fancy parades are better on TV. The small town parades? Ugh.  

The only tolerable parade occurs once a year in Miami: The King Mango Strut.  Everyone is drunk, including the marchers.  I referred to it this way, in “One Day”:

“Assembled behind the lead car were:  The World’s Greatest Jewish American Princess, who would ride on the back of a canary-yellow Cadillac Eldorado, tossing emery boards to the crowd while sipping Tab; a cadre of tightly uniformed stewardesses who would hand out “in flight snacks “ of Alpo and dog biscuits, vowing to make you feel like you never left the ground “because we’ll treat you like dirt,”; a faux “Chamber of Commerce,” men and women dressed like prostitutes and pimps, a live pig that swilled Budweiser from the can and the Marching Freds, a strutting contingent composed entirely of people named Fred.”    

Dave Barry and I once were in the parade, on the back of a pickup.   We called ourselves “The Chicken Foot Band.” We played only Wooly Bully.  Dave played guitar and sang; I played harmonica and threw raw chicken feet to the crowd.  A good parade. 

Q: How do you know it was a closed-mouth kiss? 

A: Because she never said it wasn’t, and she would have. 

Q: Do you salt cantaloupe? And yes, I do.

A: No, but I can see it. More than with watermelon. Cantaloupe is more umami.

Q: Sosumi: Rock concerts. Crowds, traffic, bankrupting ticket prices. ear-splitting noise, tiny specks gyrating on the stage a half mile away, enlarged on a Jumbotron you could have watched at home. Colossal waste of time and money. 

A:  Yes, Yes, I once saw Springsteen in the Orange Bowl, and this was before true Jumbotrons.  He was down there on the stage somewhere.  When he descended into the audience for “Dancing in the Dark,” he just disappeared. 

I would add to this observation another sosumi of mine:  Going to football games.  It’s the worst way to watch football, and not just because of all the drunks in the stands. You don’t really see the game the way you do on TV.  The action is hard to follow, you. can only focus on one thing at a time, and you miss later telestrator analysis, focusing on one player, slo-mo, etc.  A mess of an experience.  Plus, the drunks.  

Q: My popular opinion is that George W. Bush was a bad POTUS. My sosumi is my belief that Al Gore would not have been any better. Two nepo babies, each as shallow and unqualified as the other.

A: Well, I just learned “nepo” means nepotism.  So you think Gore,  the former active and involved vice president and future Nobel prizewinner for his work leading the world on climate change,  was as shallow and unqualified as W The Dork?   

Q:  My first wife ordered her steaks done "medium well." My second, current, and hopefully last wife places her orders for steak by saying, "Just glance at the grill as you walk past it with the steak." Obviously, I have traded up when it comes to spouses.

A: My favorite line, uttered by a woman of my acquaintance, was ‘just stun it, don’t kill it.”

I’m going to call us down here. Thanks for a spirited exchange. PLEASE keep sending questions and observations. It’s your best way to get a long reasoned response. Send ’em here.