The Invitational Week 67: Bring Up the Rear

Move the last letter of a word to the front. Plus winning poems about artworks.

A runner-up in our Invitational contest for poems about works of art. See the rest of the Week 65 winners below. (Sculpture in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris)

O-RING: A band that holds a group together but is the weakest part of it. (Craig Dykstra)

 SNIPPLE: Babies agree: the Best Stuff on Earth. (Kyle Bonney)

 LB.-AGE:  What you’ll add from overeating breakfast carbs. (John McCooey) 

Ever since those results from our 1998 change-one-letter contest started to move around “cyberspace” on “e-mail”  and then on “the World Wide Web” — and still pop up in corrupted form — The Invitational has been known best for neologism contests, especially ones that ask you to take an existing word and alter it slightly to make a new word, usually relating somehow to the original.   

Here’s a variation that we did only one time, back in 2011.  Maybe it was because we thought the results were so good that we worried we couldn’t match them. Maybe we just forgot. Anyway, have at it.

For Invitational Week 67:  Move the last letter of a word, phrase, or name to the front, and then define the result, as in the examples above from the original contest above (full results here).  You can alter punctuation or capitalization.  

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyURL.com/inv-form-67. 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 one single paragraph; i.e., don’t push Enter until you’re starting the next entry.

Deadline is Saturday, April 20, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, April 25.

 Winner gets a little pink “Nose Condom,”  “for the safe practice of brown nosing.”  Complete with testimonials on the packaging like “Six months ago my boss didn’t know I existed. Now it’s weekends on his yacht.”  Donated (unused) by Dave Prevar. Warning: Don’t Google this or you will get a very different product. This is such a lousy prize, even by our standards, that we’ll throw in some vintage Loser Magnets. 

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.

Meanwhile, send us questions or suggestions, which we hope to deal with in real time. You do this, as always, by sending them to this here button:

MoMA Mia! The artwork poems of Week 65

In Week 65 we asked you to choose any artwork we could run a picture of, and write a funny poem about it. The results were spectacular, as you will see. It turns out that Losers, in addition to being famous smart-asses, know more than a bit about art.

Third runner-up: See Judy Freed’s poem in the art at the top of this page.

Second runner-up:

Tracey Emin’s “My Bed” at the Tate museum in Liverpool, 2016. (Photo by Richard Stonehouse, Getty Images)

“My Bed”
Tracey Emin broke all the rules from the start,
Thus becoming an enfant terrible of art.
Spending four days in bed drinking nothing but booze,
She declared it was art and got stellar reviews.
“My Bed” is unmade, stained with menstrual blood,
And the floor’s strewn with underwear, condoms and crud.
The furor she caused, though, was quick to abate,
And today it’s worth eight million pounds to the Tate.
(Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) 

First runner-up:
“White Painting [three panel],” by Robert Rauschenberg
“It’s brilliant, Bob!” gushed the curator on the phone.
“Daylight and shadow make a shifting tone-on-tone!”
Puzzled at his praise, I glanced at the crate
Where my finished artwork still sat in wait.
The couriers must have grabbed the other box,
The one with three blank canvases fresh from the docks!
Pausing just briefly, I said, “Gerald, you’re too kind.
But I’m glad you see precisely what I designed!”
(Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)

And the winner of the “Scream” finger puppet:

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

As always, if you disagree with all of our choices, and find that the best entry is not one of the above, but one of the honorable mentions (below), tell us in the Comments.

ILL AT EASEL: Honorable mentions

Two reflections on “The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo:

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel 
Has a fresco that’s a zinger —
What is it that Adam’s saying?
I suspect it’s “Pull my finger.”
(Richard Franklin, Alexandria, Va.)

If Adam had a mother not,
That navel must be Photoshopped!
If he was first, who took this shot?
It’s time this AI crap is stopped! 
(Hildy Zampella, Sarasota, Fla.)

“The Lovers II,” by René Magritte, 1928
When they met at the bar, they were drunk.
He thought she was cute; she thought “Hunk!”
But, in truth, beauty’s fleeting.
That’s why they make sheeting —
So daylight won’t change what they thunk.
(Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)

“I Am,” by Salvatore Garau, 2021 (read about it here)  
“I Am” was nothing to look at,
On its elegant white stand,
But became a “must haven’t” for eighteen grand
When a buyer bought the empty space,
Called a “density of thoughts” — and with a  straight face —
By the artist of the sculpture made only of air,
Who was happy to certify: Nothing was there. (Stu Segal, “Southeast U.S.”)

Two reflections on Michelangelo’s “David”

I stand here in this gallery in Florence,
Where crowds of tourists, much to my abhorrence
Still come to gawk and laugh at limitations
Apparent on all David imitations
Around the world, with whom I share this linkage:
We’re all unwilling poster boys for shrinkage.
(Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)

Young Abishag was hired for to lie beneath the sheet
Beside the aging David to provide the king with ... heat.
The Bible says that Dave showed no reaction to her touch --
If Mikey’s art is true to life, she wasn't missing much.
(Elliott Shevin, Efrat, West Bank)

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”Hometown Lake” by Thomas Kinkade (see it here)
The price of “Hometown Lake” might rise
Now that Tom's defunct,
Although we’re asking post-demise
Why it's not been junked.  (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

c

The “flying skirt” photo of Marilyn Monroe, by Weegee (Arthur Fellig), 1954
In some lines of work, they say, “Dress for success!”
In others, the mantra “Success means undress!”
So Marilyn (never applauded as chaste)
Was caught with her skirt flapping up to her waist.
(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

Uffizi Gallery, Florence

“Judith Beheading Holofernes,” by Artemisia Gentileschi, c. 1620
She’s in the act of slicing through his neck;
On seeing it, my first reaction’s “Yech!”
But then that’s followed by “Am I psychotic?”
Because it’s disconcertingly erotic. (Frank Osen)  

“Orange and Yellow” by Mark Rothko (see it here)
“Orange and Yellow” might evoke a vibrant sunny morn,
But I believe it gives a close-up view of candy corn. (Jesse Frankovich)

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Edward Hopper’s “New York Movie,” 1939.

We see ourselves set out among the towers,
Engage the streets, fight for a life and win it.
A half-lived life with unmet chances sours
The mind, and all the aspirations in it.

What—have a dream? She’s too tired to begin it.
If she could choose just one from all the powers,
She’d leave her station in a New York minute,
But she must stay for two more goddamned hours.
(David Franks, Washington County, Ark.)

A well-intentioned parishioner at a 16th-century Spanish church attempted some art restoration in 2012:

The headline “MoMA Mia!” is by Lee Graham; Jesse Frankovich wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, April 13: our Week 66 contest to make an anagram of a business or product. Click on the link below.

The Invitational Week 66: Seeds of Change

NEXT WEEK, THE HORSES! Next Thursday, April 18, we’ll have our annual wordplay contest to “breed” the names of two of this year’s Triple Crown-nominated racehorses and name the “foal” that cleverly alludes to both names. Even if you’re not a yearly subscriber, you can enter this contest AND the “grandfoal” contest two weeks hence for just the single-month $5 for the whole race card, along with all the other stuff for that whole month. Subscribe now to make sure you get the email notification.

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Now we enter the real-time portion of the Gene Pool, where we take your questions and observations, and respond to them. If you are reading this in real time, please remember to keep refreshing the screen to see new stuff. Many of the Questions an Observations today relate to Gene’s Weekend call for office hijinks and moments when you got really scared, and Never-Have-Evers, and moments of shame. This will be eclectic.

Q: Office hijinks: I once cooked mackerel in the microwave, just to be obnoxious. I disliked my coworkers. I didn’t even eat it.

A: This does remind me that I once was asked by an art director not to use the word “coworker” in a story, because it looked to him like “cow orker,” and it bothered him. He didn’t see words as words, he saw them as pictures. He couldn’t articulate what “cow orker” meant, but it seemed disgusting and bothered him. His name is Brian Noyes. Noyes is a naturally funny name because it reads like “No yes.”

I just remembered a joke about an art director and an editor. They went out to lunch. And the editor ordered a steak and potatoes. And the waitress said, “And for the vegetable?” And the editor said, “Oh, he can order for himself.”

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Q: Shame: I was on the yearbook committee & I purposefully misspelled the names of all of the kids in the Library Media Club in their group photo. They were all nerdy kids everyone made fun of but they had never done anything to me. 

A: When I was an editor of my college newspaper at NYU, I resented having to cover sports, and once deliberately called a baseball player, whose name was Arnie Semel, “Montero Smell.”   I have no recollection why.   I believe he is now an ophthalmologist in Florida

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By the way, O.J. Simpson just died.   We do not have to grieve.  

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Q: I would love to confess my greatest shame to you in safe anonymity, in the chance that it might prove worthy of discussion.  However I can’t risk the very real chance that the people affected might come across it.  It involves the putting down of a beloved animal for behavioral, not medical reasons, and much worse, lying about it.

A: I killed a collie, a beloved pet named Augie.   She was 12 and was beset by fleas, in the summer in Miami.  We were moving to Boston for a year, and  I felt her quality of life had so deteriorated, and she’d be so freaked out by the move,  that it was a mercy killing.  But she was not technically unhealthy, and I never quite got over the decision.   I wrote about this subject  here.  

Alert: it Is kind of a disturbing story.

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Q: At a software company that I worked at in the early 1990s, our marketing manager was known for being quite a wiseguy. His office was at the end of a hallway, so one time when he was out on a business trip for a couple of days, some other staff members had his door drywalled over so it just looked like the hall was a dead-end. They even had an outlet installed on the wall, and put a table with a plant on it in front; it looked like the hall had always been that way."

A: I love this. I once judged a contest in Miami — it was a hijinks contest — where the winner drove into a parking lot in his junker convertible car and had a cement mixer drive up and fill the car — with him in it — with cement.

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Q: Books article in WAPO includes author aptonym: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/04/01/autistic-women-mystery-fiction/  

A: “Nita Prose” is an excellent name for a writer.  

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Q:  Office hijinks:  There was a person who stole food from the office refrigerator.    He wound up stealing Ex-lax brownies.   I do not admit to having done this, because it might be a crime. . 

A:  Holy crap, as it were.    I know someone else who did this.    

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This is Gene. I just remembered two pranks from college — not technically an office prank, but still.

Someone completely emptied a dorm room of all its furniture, and secured it in a sheet that was hung out the window, and secured by slamming the window shut. When he got into the room and saw it empty, he ran to the window and opened it.

Also, once an entire dorm room was emptied and put on the elevator.

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Q: Never have I ever eaten anything that had visible eyes, including fish.

A: Fish eyeballs can be very tasty. Just saying.

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Q: Never have I ever listened to a podcast. If I wanted to listen to some stranger drone on and on about something that they may or may not have any useful knowledge of, I’d go to a bar. At least I could get a beer.

A: Neither have I! Nor a book on tape!

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Q: I am ashamed of pooping. I know this makes no sense but it seems like something humans shouldn’t have to do.

A: I have had long conversations in chats about poop shame. One of my favorites, from many years ago, was from a woman who talked about “poop standoffs” in ladies’ rooms. Where two women, in stalls, would try to outlast each other.

This is Gene. I am calling us down. Please keep sending in questions and observations here:

And if you are of a mind to, you should rush to subscribe before the subscription price goes up to $70,000.