The Invitational Week 59: Why the #$%#$% Not?

The Washington Post is looking for some bold ideas — let's show it some! Plus: Winning bad ideas for books and movies.

(Freepik)

Instead of all these primaries and debates, with each man insisting he’s in perfect shape while the other’s a doddering weakling, why not just have Trump and Biden go at it in the boxing ring? Winner gets the White House. One’s taller and more of a heavyweight, but doesn’t exactly float like a butterfly …

We owe the inspiration for this week’s Invitational contest to our former longtime employers (and eventual unemployers) The Washington Post: Its opinions department recently announced a new, yearlong project from contributing columnist Daniel Pink, author of several bestselling books about business success and human behavior. The headline isn’t exactly humble: “American imagination needs an adrenaline shot. Here’s how I’ll deliver it.” You can click on the preceding link to read the whole thing, but in a nutshell: Once a month, Pink will post the question “Why Not …”— with a suggestion to which most people would respond “Whoa” or at least “Hmm.” A few examples he offers: Why not pay all schoolteachers at least $100,000 a year? Why not give presents on your birthday, rather than receive them? Why not move Congress to a rotating selection of cities?

From there, he says, he’ll studiously weigh the pros and cons, costs and benefits, hugs and kisses, and — and this is the ultimate goal, we’d think — invite lots of spirited discussion in the comments thread, sharing links throughout social media, etc. He even invites readers to submit their own provocative ideas.

Ha, you see where we’re going. For Invitational Week 59: Send us a humorous Why Not? question, as in the Donald/Joe example above and those below. You could accompany it with a brief pitch (up to seventy-five words or so), as above, or your idea might be so hilarious that just stating it would be enough. Um, no, we won’t be judging the ideas by how feasible they are.

Consider these, which we just made up:

Why not have newspapers make their newsprint edible and tasty?  You could have different flavors for the different sections, like Nacho Sports and Kombucha Style.  There’d finally be a reason for people to pay for the print paper other than to save Grandma’s obit. 

Why not equip cars with driver’s-seat toilets, and drive pantsless?   It would save time, avoid “emergencies,” give our butts a chance to breathe.

Why not just pass a law requiring that God show Himself, to settle the question once and for all? 

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyURL.com/inv-form-59. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form. Also as usual, please submit each individual entry as a single line; i.e., don’t push Enter in the middle of your joke.

Deadline is Saturday, Feb. 24, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Feb. 29.

The winner gets the Butt Station, an elegant desk set consisting of a tape dispenser/ pen holder in the shape of a Gumby-green humanoid sitting on a toilet. Also, its keister is magnetized to scoop up paper clips from the toilet underneath. If your employer has forced you to slog to the office so that you can attend Zoom meetings with other people in the building, this ensemble makes just the right statement. Donated by Kathy Sheeran.

At least it’s tape and not Charmin. This week’s prize desk set.

Hey, we’d like your questions and observations, many of which we will respond to today in real time. Send them to this grotesque orange button:

Acadummy Awards: Bad ideas for movies and books from Week 57

In Invitational Week 57 we asked you simply for bad ideas for books or movies — the title, the casting, the plot, whatever.

Third runner-up:
Proctology: A Scratch-and-Sniff Guide. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

Second runner-up:
This Is Literally Spinal Tap: A video of Rob Reiner having a lumbar puncture. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

First runner-up:
Jaws Meets Baby Shark: That ominous dum-dum-dum-dum theme is replaced by . . . (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

And the winner of the Horrible Meeting Bingo notepad:
Self-Esteem for Dummies. (Judy Freed, Deerfield Beach, Fla.)

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

(If, after voting, you prefer one of the honorables (below) to any of the above, tell us in the Comments.)

The Jest-Cellar List: Honorable mentions

The Koran: The Graphic Version. (Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)

The Little Engine That Never Stood a Chance: The Importance of Accurate Self-Evaluation. (Judy Freed)

A Nightmare on Sesame Street. (Steve Smith, Potomac, Md.; Judy Freed)  

The Big Nothing: An alternate-history novel set in a universe where the Big Bang never happened.  (Gregory Koch, Falls Church, Va.)

All the President’s Men 2024, starring Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, 80 and 79, as themselves. (Steve Smith)

All the President’s Men 2024: Two intrepid Fox News journalists find absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump or his campaign after an exhaustive minutes-long investigation. (Michael Stein, Arlington, Va.)

The Jar Jar Binks Trilogy: The Origin Stories. (Jesse Frankovich)

The audiobook of The Least Frequently Mispronounced Words in the English Language, narrated by Fran Drescher. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)

20,000 Really Good Passwords. R9c7wjm2&*@%qR and Y89-@m35Qrsp[% are just some of the highlights! (Duncan Stevens)

A Hundred and Fifty More Shades of Grey. (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

Huckleberry Fine: Mark Twain’s novel is revised to be historically consistent with Texas and Florida school board guidelines, fondly recounting a boy’s idyllic, strife-free childhood in the Old South. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.)

The Significance of Microaggression in Grover Cleveland’s Second Term. (Tom Witte)

Citizen Kanye: Reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of anything he says. (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.) 

Conan the Barber: A documentary about a bodybuilder paying the bills by cutting hair. Many closeups of him admiring his arms in the mirror. (Richard Franklin, Alexandria, Va.)  

Horton Molests a Who. (Jesse Frankovich)

He scored with his remake of “The Producers” — now it’s Mel Brooks’s Silent Movie: The Musical. (Perry Beider, Silver Spring, Md.)

Psycho ’24 :  During the shower scene, Marion Crane does an impromptu promo for Head & Shoulders. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

The Godfather: After PETA gets involved in this 2024 remake, Jack Woltz finds a live horse sleeping peacefully next to him. (Beverley Sharp)

Old Feller: Two creaky political dogs battle for the presidency in 2024. (Neil Kurland, Elkridge, Md.)

CliffNotes of “The Oxford Textbook of Neurological Surgery.” (Judy Freed)

The Hangover: Dry January. Four friends travel to a cabin in Yell County, Arkansas, for a bachelor party featuring jigsaw puzzles and charades. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

Translate “Green Eggs and Ham” into Pig Latin: “Atthay am-i-amsay ! Atthay am-i-amsay! Iyay oday otnay ikelay atthay am-i-amsay!” (Kevin Dopart)

Wikipedia, Vol. 1: Aa-Ab (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)

Budweiser’s Wassup the Movie. (Jesse Frankovich)

A pop-up edition of Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland. (Jeff Contompasis)

A book on the history of cheese, made entirely of cheese.  (Gregory Koch)

The Moosewood Travel Companion Cookbook, featuring eco-conscious roadkill recipes. (Judy Freed)

A collection of all my most amazing daily Wordle results. (Sam Mertens)  

Pulp Fiction 2: Instead of a twist contest, Vince and Mia win a cornhole competition (Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)  

The Very Hung Caterpillar. (Leif Picoult)    

Adventures in Eggplant: The Kama Sutra Written in Food Emoji. (Kevin Dopart)

Harry Potter and the Evil, Evil Transgender Activists, by J.K. Rowling. (Duncan Stevens)

“I Am Curious (George)”: The lovable monkey has a very problematic relationship with the man in the yellow hat. (Jonathan Jensen)

How Not to Be an Anti-Racist: A Guide for Florida Teachers. (Mark Raffman)

Grinch 17: How the Grinch Stole Arbor Day. (Duncan Stevens)

Laugh if You Dare: The Funniest Racist Jokes. (Jonathan Jensen)

The Autobiography of ChatGPT. (Steve Smith)

The Dark Side of Mister Rogers: The shocking, never-before-told story of the time he got a parking ticket. (Duncan Stevens)

The Real Housewives of Lake Wobegon. (Perry Beider)

Snot Our Business: Celebrating 100 Years of Kleenex. (Jonathan Jensen)

The headline “Acadummy Awards” is by Mary McNamara; Tom Witte wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, Feb. 17: Our Week 58 contest for sensationalist clickbait headlines for mundane news items. Click on the link below.

The Invitational Week 58: Praise the Lurid!

Here comes the real-time segment. If you are reading this in real time, please keep refreshing your screen so you can see your observations and Gene’s responses. The observations today are an amalgam, including responses to our question about smart people doing stupid things, and stupid people doing smart things.

Q: I am smart. I am an engineer and a fire expert. I am published in my field and teach. However, just this past Sunday, two of my neighbors out on a walk happened by my home while smoke poured out my front door as my husband stood enthusiastically waving a box lid to encourage more smoke out of the house while I ineffectively waved two screaming smoke detectors around outside trying to silence the wailing.

My neighbors were perplexed and for some stupid reason, upon seeing them, I immediately hid the smoke detectors behind my back as though they hadn't already seen them and they couldn't hear the loud incessant screeching noise. They know I'm a fire expert and were justifiably concerned at the amount of smoke pouring from my front door. They asked what was going on. I tried to think how to quickly sum up the situation and I finally just said, "Look, no matter what the internet recipe tells you, do NOT put bacon in your oven on the air fry setting." 

A: Excellent story, well told.

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.  

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Also, under no circumstances should you upgrade your subscription to “paid.” That’s the sucker’s move. Everyone will make fun of you except God.

Q: Note: Neil Young was 25 when he recorded “Old Man”.  He's now 78.

A:  This is wonderful. .  Jimmy Fallon is an extraordinarily good song mimicker.  There is nothing really funny in it — it’s just brilliant imitation – until the very end, with a priceless look Fallon gives to Neil.  

Q:  On the Trump “success” at manufacturing the vaccine: Woodward polled his government sources for “Peril” on what had been missed in the depths of the disaster.  Turns out it was just about everything, and this came from the resources who had been poised to provide it. Though the vaccine got developed, they didn’t execute the Act that harnesses industry to produce it, and they left the states alone in how to manufacture and distribute it. When Biden got access in mid-January, he and his team realized that vaccine distribution was nowhere, and saved lives by their fast, historic action. It’s hard to say that just by commissioning industry, the Trumps had done ANYTHING.

A: I think we have to give him partial credit.  After all, Alexander Fleming “discovered” penicillin when he returned from vacation to find that to find mold growing on a Petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria.  He noticed the mold seemed to be preventing the bacteria around it from growing. 

He tried but never could figure out how to isolate and purify the green stuff so it would be an effective treatment for anything, and gave up.   It took another ten years before two other scientists –Howard Florey and Ernst Chain – succeeded.  They won the Nobel Prize in medicine – but so did  Fleming.. 

Uh, I’m not saying Trump deserves a Nobel.  I’m just saying he did something. 

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Q: Oh, I can top that "something unexpected" answer.   A friend and I were laughing about our previously horrible taste in men and we started googling them to see if we could find them on social media or online to see what they were up to. Uh, the game ended when I found an article about him in the paper.  I dated him for about 6 months when I was in college and he was in law school. 

A: Clearly, as a college woman you were too old for him.    This is quite a sleazebag.  The litany of what he did is eye-popping.  Just one line tells the story: “He lusted after Kellyanne Conway’s 16-year-old daughter.”

Q: People don’t have reasons to not like Biden.  It’s tribalism.  He’s not on their (MAGA) “side”, so they won’t vote for him, and then they have to give themselves an excuse to cover for this evolutionarily backwards quirk of human behavior.  Age, not what he’s done, is doing or will do, is all they can latch onto, but dangnabbit, it’ll do.

A:  Nah, Biden has had missteps.   He screwed up the pullout from Afghanistan and his unconditional support for Israel now looks pretty naive.   I’m just saying that, overall, he has been a fine president in  in hugely difficult times.  He surrounded himself with good people, not lickspittles, and has made mostly the right calls. He bolstered the strength of NATO after Trump savaged it.  His adroit steering of the economy has been impressive – really, error-free – so far.

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Q: My very smart friend, you say you would be no good at Jeopardy! But you've no idea what adrenaline can do for your memory when pumped to the max. I'd bet you'd have done well on Jeopardy! I was cracking off answers so fast, and hitting the buzzer like an Olympian. Afterwards, I couldn't tell you what happened and when re-watching the show, didn't know some of the answers that I myself gave correctly.

Part of aging is also lower adrenaline! Now I can't compete, the delays are pretty drastic -- sitting up in bed at 2 a.m. shouting "Harvey Korman" will give you an idea of the lag.

A: I am going to out you.  This is Lynne Larkin, the only former Jeopardy! champ who is, to my knowledge, a denizen of The Gene Pool. 

Lynne, I fear you are wrong about my capacity to rise to the occasion under pressure and with the aid of adrenaline.   You fail to understand the gravity of my cognitive sluggishness, especially, alas, with names.   My thought processes, if you can call them that, work like this:

Clue: He played the evil doctor Charles Montague in “High Anxiety.” 

My mind:  I know this! 

My mind: That guy!  From the Carol Bennett show. 

My mind:  Burnett. 

My mind:  I can see his face! His name is Berman.   

My mind.  No, wait, Korman!  I got it!   

At this point, I triumphantly hit the buzzer, but it doesn’t  buzz on account of the winning buzzer has already answered the question and the moderator is moving on to the next answer. 

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Q: My parents enthusiastically support Trump, and I think they are bad people. They are motivated by hatred of others, although I recognize they've been poisoned by decades of fear mongering and misinformation. We've basically been estranged since the 2016 election, and it's been a hard and heartbreaking past few years. 

A: I’ve always wondered what I would do if someone I loved became a Trump supporter.  Like, what if it was Rachel?  Or Molly?   Fortunately, the possibility of those things happening are slimmer than Calista Flockhart after a crash diet. 

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Q: There are literally thousands of reasons to detest Trump. Comparing himself to Presley is not one - it's (mostly) a joke; one I might even find mildly amusing, if it were coming from a slightly tipsy guy at the end of the bar rather than the greatest threat to American democracy in generations.

A: I didn’t say it was a reason to detest him; I said it was a reason to conclude he is an un-presidential buffoon.  Would you want the babbling drunk at the bar as your president?

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Q: Speaking of clocks, the ubiquitous Amazon Prime commercial that uses Chicago’s  25 or 6 to 4 as its soundtrack got me thinking. In this age of digital time-telling I almost never hear anyone use the construction, “It’s 20 to 3” including me.  I guess it seems like an extra step. Do you suppose kids get what that is if they see the commercial? 

A: I don’t.  One of the smartest people I have ever known, a Millennial named Rachel, has trouble deciphering an analog clock face; takes her five seconds or so.  She squints and reads in like deciphering runes.  

Analog clocks and watches are a disappearing breed,  and reading them is a disappearing skill.    Also, 25 or 6 to 4 has always been (deliberately) confusing.  I didn’t know what it meant, initially.  Had to think about it.  

Q: Tuna in water has fewer calories, and the oil the canneries use is not the best. If you find the good tuna in real EV olive oil, that's the stuff. IMHO.

A: I do that.   If I can’t get it in oil, I get it in water, pour out the water and add EV olive oil, or peanut oil. 

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Q: I have chickens.  I never, ever expected to see a free range chicken slurp down a garter snake like a spaghetti noodle.  At least not the first time.

A: Thank you. 

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Q: Since it appears that Tucker Carlson is racing to become the next Geraldo Rivera, what do you think is the next empty safe he'll be opening? – Tom Logan, Sterling, Va.

A: It wasn’t Al Capone’s safe, it was Al Capone’s vault.   Geraldo was so sure that it contained riches or other incriminating and revealing items belonging to the 1920s crime lord that he hosted a two-hour show leading to the busting through of the vault. It got huge viewership. Geraldo had promised to sing a verse of “Chicago, Chicago”  if it contained nothing of value.   What it contained was a few empty soda bottles, garbage, and dust. A humiliated Geraldo wanly warbled out a couple of lines, stopped, went across the street and got drunk on tequila.   

Tucker will be accessing the vault of the Unknown Demagogic Schmuck.

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Q: Well, once I accidentally put windshield washer fluid into the entry port for the brake line, and it eroded a bunch of plastic parts that had to be replaced, I’m remembering $1,000. At least not the master cylinder. In my 20s, a long time ago. I was smart enough not to do that. Thought I was careful.

A: I was always afraid to change my own oil, because I wasn’t absolutely sure which “hole” to pour the oil into.

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Q:   Smart people, stupid actions.  

One day we were sitting in our backyard gazebo, when our neighbors in the house behind ours brought several trees, 10-12 feet in height, into their backyard. They held the trees up over a hole that they had dug, clearly intending to plant whichever one they liked best. The thing that attracted our attention was that the trees were cut off cleanly at the bottom, with no root structure whatsoever. They chose the one that they wanted, put it in the hole and covered it with soil. Naturally it wouldn’t stand up with no root structure to support it, so they put several lengths of cord around it and tied them to stakes in the ground in several directions to keep it upright. Then, after one of them said to the other “I swear to God that this will grow” they watered their new tree and went inside.

We kept watch for several days since this had no more chance of growing than if they had planted a yardstick. The leaves died and fell off and the tree rotated around on the cords whenever the wind blew. Eventually they accepted the reality of science, took it down after dark so that their amused neighbors wouldn’t see, and had a local nursery come out and plant one with roots. – HawkRapids

A: Excellent story. 

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Q: I’m the one that sent in the example of smart Jim Comey doing the dumb thing in 2016 of admitting that he had reopened the HRC email investigation. I attributed the dumb act to excessive candor. You asked what candor has to do with it.   Even though he did NOT have to admit this to anyone, let alone to EVERYONE, he knew that keeping it secret meant that he had not revealed information that some people would find relevant – the discovery of Carlos Danger’s computer files.  Comey took the concept of “the whole truth” very literally, even though the actual courtroom oath is understood to mean one need NOT answer an unasked question. That is why I believe Comey suffered from excessive candor.

A: Respectfully, I think you give him too much credit. My memory is he was covering his ass; MAGA lawyers he worked with were likely to leak it and if he didn’t get out in front of it first, he might be embarrassed.  I think he was actually exercising not excessive candor but excessive cowardice.

Q: Some might consider me a smart person, but there are times when that might be considered questionable. I was one of those idiots who drove from Falls Church to Richmond with a queen-sized mattress on the roof of a Suburban as I was taking my daughter to start school at VCU. We were doing fine until it started to rain.

We pulled off 95 at Ashland and bought a plastic tarp at a Dollar Store and put it over the mattress. Of course we messed up the tiedowns so now the mattress and tarp flapped in the rain and wind. About 5 miles from our exit it popped off so I pulled over and started the walk of shame. The first car drove over it and it got caught under their wheels so then they had to pull over. We decided it wasn't worth taking anywhere so we threw it off the roadway and they told us it was the perfect end to their weekend - they had planned a weekend to DC for a concert and before they even left Richmond they had car troubles that ended up costing them something in the hundreds. The place they had planned to stay was oversold so they had to find another place, the concert had been canceled and now this. I felt bad, but not as bad as having to buy another mattress. And I now stay very far away from any vehicles that have mattresses (or anything else) tie to their roofs.  - Peter Ashkenaz 

A:  Very marginally related – in my book “One Day” I tell the story of two teenagers who drove two days from their homes in Seattle to Ventura, California, to take in a Grateful Dead concert only to be told, the moment they got there, that the concert had been canceled.  A bland reason was given.  They seethed for days until they learned the truth:  Jerry Garcia was deathly ill in the hospital and almost didn’t make it. Five days in a coma.  They felt pretty damn guilty.

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Q: You answered that refund question – what if you died in March, would our money be refunded? – way too matter-of-factly. Take care of yourself, would ya? I clearly would rather have you around, than the money.

A:: Thank you.  But no offense taken, and no harm done.  You are talking to a guy who  once wrote a book about hypochondria, based on my experience with a potentially fatal disease.  The last chapter was titled “Is Death a Laughing Matter?  Of Corpse Not.”   Joking about death comes naturally to me. I have also written about having planned my deathbed final words: “I should have spent more time at the office….”     That so when, in the future, someone notes that no one ever said that, some pencil  necked geek can say, “Well, ACTchooally ….”

My answer was correct though.  If I die, or Pat and I decide to stop doing the Gene Pool, Substack has a system of refunding money in a pro-rata fashion. They claim it is flawless … 

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Q: Smart people doing dumb things:  (this is true; saw. it mine own eyes): Sign in an ear-piercing shop in a mall: "Ears Pierced While You Wait". (yes, let's assume the shop owner was smart, but really, was s/he expecting anyone to drop off their ears for later pick up?) 

A: Hahaha.  Good example. 

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Q: This is Gene. I am calling us down. PLEASE keep sending in questions and observations onaconna I will answer them, in detail, next week.

Aaand, (poem coming) if you are of a mind / to be kind / please upgrade / to “paid.