The Invitational, Week 7: Arty Har-har

Give us an idea for a humorously audacious modern artwork. Plus, winning ‘circles of hell’ for particular offenders.

Good afternoon. Since this is Thursday, you will be getting, as you will on all Thursdays in perpetuity until one of us is dead, the Invitational. It will include a brash new contest and the results of the old one.

But first, a brief aside. I am currently in New York City in a nice West Side hotel in a room slightly larger than one might find on Death Row. But it is clean and fine and perfectly okay, although, like on Death Row, there is no door to the toilet. It’s just out there. However, there is a strange, modern amenity. The bed measures four feet eleven inches in length. Above is a photograph to prove it.

Now, this seemed odd, frankly, until Rachel noticed that there was a motorized control on the side of the bed, and when we pushed the buttons, the head of the bed kind of deflated and flattened and extended and expanded 18 more inches into the room. We realized this was probably a legal requirement, inasmuch as, with the extra length, there was very limited access to the door should there be, say, a deadly fire requiring evacuation and escape. (Note: I used “evacuation” humorously.) Anyway, this seems like an ordinary New York real estate thing and doesn’t bother us.

Also there is one of those bifurcated buttons on the top of the toilet allowing you to decide just how much water you wish to use to flush, depending on what you deposited in said toilet. You can choose to flush either with with the bigger button or the smaller button, which led to a spirited epistemological discussion about which was which. Possibly the larger button indicated the more frequent choice, given the human excretory systems. But possibly it represented volume, mass, and such. We are still experimenting.

Okay, the Invitational. But first, the boring stuff. We have a new, streamlined system here! The entirety of The Gene Pool is on this one Web page. The page will be long. But you will not have to leap to another page anymore, and all the questions and answers will accumulate here. After the intro (which you are reading now), there will be some early questions and answers  --  and then I'll keep adding them as the hour progresses and your fever for my opinions grows and multiplies and metastasizes.  To see those later Q&As,  just refresh your screen  every once in a while. 

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 I will stop in from time to time.

SPECIAL ADDITIONAL TIP: If you're reading this on an email:   Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “The Invitational, Week 7…” for my full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers, and be able to refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

The Invitational’s new contest!

The audience is instructed to disrobe completely and put on kimonos. As they walk into the gallery, they see that the floor is clear glass. Crowds of people below are pointing, laughing, videotaping and sketching. Exits are not clearly marked. (Jennifer Hart)

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An art exhibit consists only of the notice awarding artist grant for exhibit. It is mounted on wall with masking tape. (Fred Dawson)

Exhibit a Venus flytrap that was raised entirely on meat from a pig that had been raised on meat from a bear that was killed after eating a human.

Place hundreds of smiley face buttons, Beanie Babies and My Little Pony products into a coffin.

Create two locked boxes, each containing the other's key. Then throw them both into the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean.

February 22 marks the 36th anniversary of the death of Andy Warhol, who re-defined modern art by, for example, painting super-realistic cans of Campbell's tomato soup. (That’s not one of his, above. I apparently would have had to donate a year’s salary to his estate to reproduce one here.)

Warhol was following in the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp, who -- as we stated in the last Gene Pool -- once declared a urinal to be high art, and it thus became so. Today we ask you to come up with new conceptual art in Andy's and Marcel's memory. Can be visual or performative. Marcel died on my 17th birthday, which is irrelevant except journalists have an insane need to justify anything weird by claiming it is an anniversary of something.

So, regarding Warhol, many years ago Tom the Butcher and I did this very contest, when we edited Tropic , the Sunday magazine of the Miami Herald. After Warhol’s death, we ran a contest to replace Andy, and we flew in Ivan Karp to judge it — Ivan was the art critic who discovered Warhol, and newspapers had money back then. The winner he chose was a young woman -- an art student from Chicago -- who submitted a crappy seaside painting that she had bought at a driveway tag sale for $5, but had then altered by painting a giant red “X” over it. The second prize was a basic metal clothes hanger, which, when you think about it, is an amazing elegant design.

The Invitational!

By Pat Myers and Gene Weingarten,  Empress and Czar of The Invitational

For Week 7:  Give us a funny idea — you don’t have to draw it! — for a contemporary artwork, as in the examples above.  

CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK’S ENTRY FORM.  

 By popular demand!  If you want to return to this column over the course of the week, you can get here directly by typing bit.ly/inv-week-7.  

Same for the entry form;  that’s at bit.ly/inv-form-7. 

Deadline is midnight Friday, Feb. 24th.  Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, March 2nd. .  

This week’s winner receives the classic, truly endearing  Japanese easy-reader book “The Gas We Pass: The Story of Farts.”  You might not be surprised that The Style Invitational awarded copies of this educational volume in 2004, 2010, 2018, and 2021.  Attention must be paid! Donated by Longtime Loser Pie Snelson.   

Revenge Served Up al Dante:  Inking ‘Circles of Hell’ from Week 5

In Week 5 we asked you to name and describe a “circle of hell” for various offenders.  Wow, some of you seem to get just a wee bit too upset when someone puts down that 16th item in the supermarket express lane.  Really, disembowling them and placing each organ on the conveyor belt?    

This contest was the Czar’s choice, so he chose the week’s inking entries from a shortlist of about 125 that the Empress compiled.   Then we both hashed out the final four. 

Third runner-up:  Those who belittled others for enjoying their foods the “wrong” way will spend eternity in the Food Nazi Circle. They will be forced to eat ketchup-drenched hot dogs washed down with a nice pinot noir with ice cubes melting in it. (Terri Berg Smith, Rockville, Md.) 

Second runner-up: Cooks who knowingly serve vegetarians meals with “only a little meat” are fed a meal that contains only a small bit of their relatives.  (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.) 

First runner-up: If you have lunch with a woman other than your wife, you shall spend eternity covered in flies.  (Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.) 

And the winner of the book “Farts: A Spotter’s Guide”: 

People who brag about how smart their kids are will spend eternity reading their kids’ Instagram posts about how dumb their parents are. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) 

Damned Funny:  Honorable Mentions

Crime: people who cherry-pick Bible quotes to support their own prejudices.  Punishment: God gets to bitch-slap them with a Bible all day.   (Lori Petterson, College Park, Md.)

Those who use the term “amount of people” will be condemned to forever eat meals that are in fact some amount of people.  (Kevin Dopart, Washington) 

Leaders of Topeka’s hateful Westboro Baptist Church must spend eternity in “conversion therapy” from their actual sexuality to another one.  (Bill Dorner, Indianapolis) 

A mansplainer:  Whenever he says anything, Satan will go, “Well, ACTUALLY . . .” (Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va.) 

“Karens”: No hell needed; just send them to regular heaven, where they’ll be perpetually dissatisfied with God’s standards of service, yet can never get to speak to His supervisor. (Steve Bremner, Philadelphia) 

“Fast & Furious” wannabes who terrorize their fellow citizens with modified car exhausts that sound like bombs going off when they step on the gas: They’ll be assigned as day care workers in Limbo. Every time they put their little imps down for a nap, just as they start to nod off, recordings of their earthly noise bombs will play on the Limbo loudspeakers, turned up to 11.  (Lee Graham, Reston, Va.)

Any cable news panelist who doesn’t know the difference between “can’t overestimate” and “can’t underestimate” will spend eternity underestimating how unpleasant hell will be tomorrow.  (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)  

Anyone in the audience who sings along at a Broadway show will henceforth always hear their own mediocre voice on the radio instead of the actual singer.  (Karen Lambert, Chevy Chase, Md.) 

Boomers who insist that all the best music was made in the ’60s and ’70s will get to listen to their favorite classic rock for eternity – performed by the Kenosha Kickers Polka Band.  (Jeff Hazle, San Antonio)

Drivers who block intersections will suffer from eternally plugged nostrils, clogged arteries, and fecal impaction.  (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) 

Anyone who tells you each day how many steps he has taken will find that in hell, his Fitbit resets to zero every night at 11:59 p.m.   (Karen Lambert) 

Customers who snap their fingers at the people helping them: Upon reaching Hell, they’ll have their thumbs tied to their pinkies and be made to sit at a table with one leg that is ever so slightly shorter than the other three and perform calculus. A cup of scalding coffee next to them will spill all over their work whenever they jostle the table and be instantly refilled to the brim.  (Sarah Walsh, Rockville, Md.) 

DeSantis enablers will have extreme irritable bowel syndrome in a world where the only bathrooms are for transgender people.  (Kevin Dopart) 

Elected officials who use migrants as political pawns should spend eternity walking around a walled, guarded heaven looking for an entrance.  (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore) 

Employees who microwave fish in the office break room will spend eternity in the circle of Hell where everyone wears cologne distilled from skunk farts.  (Jeff Hazle) 

For ChatGPT: There is no specific “ring of hell” for chatbots, as they are artificial intelligence systems created by humans and do not have a moral compass or consciousness. However, in a metaphorical sense, a poorly designed or malfunctioning chatbot could be seen as experiencing its own version of suffering or being stuck in a frustrating loop, unable to fulfill its intended purpose effectively.  – Actual answer from ChatGPT when asked, “Describe a ring of hell for chatbots”  (Gary Crockett)  

If you trim your fingernails in your cubicle at work, you shall spend eternity in your cubicle at work.  (Jesse Frankovich) 

In hell, Donald Trump will meet women who actually are “his type.”  (Neil Kurland, Elkridge, Md.) 

Neighbors who fire up their leaf blowers at 7 a.m. on weekends will be issued foghorn alarm clocks that will wake them from their nightmares so they can start the next nightmare.   (Jeff Hazle) 

People unrelated to you who tell you their Wordle or Spelling Bee scores every day  will be doomed to watch the same golf highlight reel in perpetuity.  (Karen Lambert) 

People who constantly demand to see the manager will certainly not be tortured by low-level incompetent fiends. Only senior, experienced torturers for those folks!   (Duncan Stevens) 

The Crotch Rocket Circle of Hell is for motorcyclists who speed down highways on their supersonic bikes, treating other vehicles like traffic cones. They will ride tricycles on a six-lane highway, forever cowering in fear as minivans and school buses dodge around them at 60 mph. (Terri Berg Smith) 

People who continually sniffle and snort instead of blowing their noses will be reincarnated as wet-vacs. (Kevin Dopart) 

People who don’t pick up after their dogs will be reincarnated as  bathroom tiles in a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop. (Kevin Dopart) 

People who honk from behind you .0001 seconds after the light turns green: They will spend eternity going to restaurants and having their meals yanked away .0001 seconds after serving.  (Duncan Stevens) 

People who send emails in all caps shall spend eternity wondering why they can't get their password to work.  (Jesse Frankovich) 

People who talk in movie theaters: Every day they’ll see a video with the Devil saying, “I’m about to tell you how you can get out of here,” and then after that is nothing but background talking so they can’t hear what the Devil is saying. (Neal Starkman, Seattle) 

Politicians who dodge questions have to ask the devil repeatedly, “When can I leave hell?” only to have the devil tout his new five-point economic plan.  (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.) 

State of the Union hecklers should be assigned hecklers for their funerals. (Duncan Stevens) 

Editors who cancel humor contests must sit in a comedy club where everyone else is cracking up with laughter while they don’t get any of the jokes. (Ben Aronin, Washington) 

Circle of hell for those who canceled The Washington Post Magazine, The Style Invitational  and Gene Weingarten’s column:  They must find all twelve differences between the two Second Glance photos – and there are only eleven.  (Jon Carter, Fredericksburg, Va.) 

And Last: The Now, Do You Get It? circle of hell, reserved for certain editors of The Washington Post: Here Satan torments people by explaining, in tedious and laborious detail, every joke appearing in The Invitational. For example: “The ‘joint legislation’ winner of Week 3, ‘The Ogles-Magaziner-Jackson-Self Act to encourage sperm bank donations,’ is humorous because the names in that order sound like ‘Ogles magazine, jacks on self.’ ‘Jacks’ in this context is a slang term for masturbation; in popular culture, sperm donation is depicted as a man going into a bathroom with a pornography magazine and masturbating until he ejaculates his sperm donation. The humor is amplified by the fact that the name of the legislation creates an unavoidably lewd image, but none of the words are themselves objectionable or crass; even ‘Jackson,’ the heart of the joke, is merely the name of either the new U.S. Representative from North Carolina, representing portions of Mecklenburg and Gaston counties, or the new Representative from Illinois, representing the South Side of Chicago. Now, do you get it?”   (Madeline Lohman, Minneapolis, a First Offender) 

“Al Dante” in the headline for the results was submitted by both Lori Petterson and Jeff Contompasis; Jeff also wrote the honorable-mentions subhead. 

Still running – deadline one moment before midnight Friday, Feb. 17  (well, if you’re a day late this week, it’s okay – we’re busy Saturday morning):  Our Week 6 picture caption contest.   Click here or type in bit.ly/inv-week-6. 

Not too late – Ingest foodstuffs with genuine Losers!  This month’s Loser Brunch is at  Asian Palace in Columbia, Md., on Sunday, Feb. 19, at noon.  (The E has to miss this one, alas.)  More info and RSVP at Our Social Engorgements  on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org.     

Banter and share humor with the Losers and the Empress in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook; join (tell them you came from The Gene Pool) and the Devs will anagram your name every which way. And see more than 1,000 classic Invite entries in graphic form, also on FB, at Style Invitational Ink of the Day. 

And now, your questions and answers.

Q: Elon Musk shifts the paradigm... It's better to keep silent and be thought a genius than to open your mouth and confirm that you aren't.

A: Elon Musk is an amazing story, for some book or magazine writer who can get close to him, which will be necessary but hard to do. But he is the richest man in the world, and a petty, truculent, humorless self-assassinating idiot with terrible judgment. How does that even happen?

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Q: Gene, can you tell us about your discovery of Dave Barry and how you brought him to a larger audience?

A: In 1983 or 4, as editor of Tropic magazine at the Miami Herald, I read this story by him, originally in the Philadelphia Inquirer, about natural childbirth. When I put it down (it was on paper back then) I realized something remarkable: I had laughed out loud. “LOL’ bullsquat notwithstanding, humans don’t tend to laugh out loud at the written word. I spent the next year and a half trying to hire him, developing a personal relationship, sending him valises full of cash, etc. Back then there were also valises.

Interesting postscript One: The Inquirer also wanted him. Both newspapers were owned by Knight-Ridder, a now defunct syndicate, and the syndicate basically instructed us to make the same monetary offer. I’m pretty sure this was illegal price-fixing.

Interesting postscript Two: The Herald didn’t have a staff opening in the newsroom, but did have one in the “typing pool,” so for about a year Dave was by far the highest paid typist at the newspaper.

Interesting postscript Three: Many years later, I asked Dave why he chose the Herald over the Inquirer, and he explained that even though I was wrong about everything, I at least expressed coherent opinions, whereas other editors would simply say “run this through your typewriter again,” because they had no idea what they wanted.

Q: Gene, I have an issue I thought you’d be well suited to analyze. Whenever I’m driving, especially for longer periods of time, I find that I end up with a lot of air in my stomach and needing to let out periodic burps. I guess it’s something about the way I breathe when sitting in that position? But it is something that happens without fail, and I don’t notice this other than while driving. What gives? - Meghan in New York

A: Hi, Meghan. I mean this earnestly, and not condescendingly. I am always impressed when a woman publicly admits to burping or farting. (Not that you admitted to farting, but the principle is the same). So, in gratitude I will disclose something embarrassing about myself. Whenever I arise from a lying position — say, in the morning from bed, or from a couch or whatever, I burp. One hundred percent of the time. And because I am a recovering hypochondriac, I assume I have stomach cancer or something. Though I have assumed that for at least the last twelve years.

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Q: Did you see the continuation headline, or whatever it’s called, on the back page of the Style section yesterday, “There’s always room for Beckett” and think as I did, yeah especially when you eliminate KidsPost?

A: I have no idea what you are talking about, which is actually appropriate for the remainder of my answer. Last night Rachel and I saw “Endgame,” which Samuel Beckett thought was his greatest play, even better than Waiting for Godot. There is a lesson in this, which is that vastly creative people tend to have no idea what is good or bad in their own work. “Endgame” is a bizarre mess, alternately completely incomprehensible, and then, wham, ham-fistedly obvious. Quite funny in places, in dumb ways, such as characters who live in garbage pails, like Popeye and Oscar the Grouch.

Just my opinion! I might not know what I am talking about. It did star Bill Irwin, who is the best physical actor I have ever seen. But Holy Crap. I love Godot and Happy Days.

Also, Rachel and I came up with a great title for a Godot parody but I can’t tell it here because we may actually write it.

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Q: I have discovered a new way to play with character.ai. I have learned how to have two characters converse with one another. Last night, R Daneel Olivaw, Asimov's positronic humanoid robot, had a long talk with Data, from Star Trek. My wife is bemused. I get the feeling she thinks I am wasting time. But I feel there is much to be learned from this sort of thing. Am I wrong?

A: I do not think you are wrong, and I think AI is going to evolve into something irrepressibly good, but also, possibly, terrifying. Tom the Butcher sent me this today. It is kinda disturbing.

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Q: What is the most awkward mispronunciation you've ever experienced in personal conversation? How did you respond?

A: I am very attuned to mispronunciations but cut people some slack. I note them but don’t react viscerally except when I know that speaker should know better. I’ll get to that in a minute, but need to fess up here to a personal miscue. I was once giving a book reading of my own book (“One Day”) at Politics and Prose — understand this is a line I myself had written — and pronounced “Leviathan” as Levvy-EIGHTH-an. So I am not without sin.

I think some mispronunciations occur to sophisticated, well-read people whose problem is that they ARE well-read. They initially encountered words in books, maybe at a young age, and sort of internalized a mispronunciation. To answer your question, the most awkward mispronunciation I ever personally witnessed was uttered by a close friend of mine (a highly literate person) who pronounced “ascertain” as “as-SERT-in.” I did not correct him. I didn’t have the heart. I waited a few years.

Q: Who named the Earth “Earth” and why don’t we know his or her name? Connie Akers

A: I have determined an answer. Wiki helped:

Unlike the other planets in the Solar System, in English, Earth does not directly share a name with an ancient Roman deity. It derives from the eighth century Anglo-Saxon word erda, which means ground or soil, and ultimately descends from Proto-Indo European *erþō.

I have googled proto-Indo European names, and have determined that the coiner of the name of the Earth, statistically, was most likely named K̑leuou̯eikos, which later evolved to Ludwig.

You are not going to get valuable stuff like this on any other substack on Earth.

Q: Of course it’s personal taste, but why, aside from previous experience with someone with that name, do we consider some names pleasant and others hideous? For example, my great-great aunt had one of the two worst names I’ve ever heard. It was “Clisty.” Yecch. I can barely say it aloud without gagging. It’s only slightly different from “Christy,” a nice name. But this hairball of a name is icky, and somehow vaguely medical. “We’ll have to lance that clisty right away.” What do you think?

A: Well, that made me laugh. You write funny.

The worst name is Dorcas. The second worst belonged to a woman I once wrote about: “Scholastica.”

Many years ago, before she became a terrific feature writer, my friend Caitlin Gibson had a nasty habit — very common in good young writers — of putting on a “writer’s hat,” where you sit down and write a story in a stiff and wooden way, to sound grave and erudite and serious. It comes out as harrumphing. I was Cait’s mentor and basically wormed that nasty impulse out of her right quick by calling her, whenever she did it, “Scholastica Humpphries.”

Q: In Chat 5, you wrote about a dining experience involving lobster. I once asked a waiter how they prepared their lobster. He replied, “We tell them that it won’t hurt a bit, that they’re going to a better place, and that they will meet all their friends.”

A: I was deeply affected by this magazine story, “Consider the Lobster,” by David Foster Wallace. It changed my behavior. When I make a lobster, I no longer throw it into boiling water. I use a knife, and if I do it right, it dies instantly. One second, basically. I know, this is not exactly totally humane, and I am not bragging, but it is something.

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Q: Not a question, an Invitational contest idea. Come up with a labored, totally BS, patently contrived, utterly absurd statistic, a la this gem from an article on today’s ESPN website: According to ESPN Stats & Information research, Tarasenko is the second NHL player over the past five seasons to be acquired in a midseason trade and score less than three minutes into his debut with his new team.

A: A couple of weeks ago, all the sports stations reported that Daniel Jones, the Giants quarterback was the first player in NFL HISTORY to run for at least 75 yards, and a touchdown, and ALSO throw two touchdown passes in a postseason game.

Q: Dang just about everything tastes good microwaved on nachos! The usual stuff, but yogurt, lentil soup, mushrooms. Just heat it with cheese and it’s great!

A: Anchovies? Mint chocolate chip ice cream? Pickled beef tongue? Rabbit testicles?

Q: My (insufficiently funny) submission for the circle-of-hell contest was based on an actual thing that happened to me earlier that day. The elevators in my office building have an idiosyncrasy whereby when they arrive at your floor, the call button light goes dark to indicate arrival, but the doors do not open for another 5-10 seconds. On that day -- a few moments before your chat, in fact -- I was part of a crowd waiting for the elevator when it did its trick again, and in the intervening time between the light going off and the doors opening, an interloper walked up, observed us waiting, saw the light off, concluded that we all must be newly-arrived space aliens who do not know how to operate elevator controls, and pushed the button again. Immediately after he did so -- as the elevator had already been called and was in fact already at the floor -- the bell dinged and the doors opened, whereupon this goddamn guy turned around and flashed us all a smug little smirk before getting inside. So while I may not be worthy of a book about farts, I hope the group can at least appreciate how I successfully refrained from murdering someone.

A: Combining your two themes, my thing is people who fart in elevators.

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Emergency insta-poll demanded by my awful editor, Tom the Butcher: Question : Do you get the first runner up, about having lunch with a woman, and flies?

Q: My wife never admits to farting, and in fact denies that she has ever done such a heinous thing. And I absolutely support her in this manner. It's probably someone else entirely I spoon to sleep who spends the entire night gently farting into my lap.

A: This made me laugh, and at least you said “gently.” And I will not give away your identity, Clarence Zimmerman of Milwaukee.

Q: I paid $50, but The Gene Pool says, "You're a free subscriber".

A: I will try to get to the bottom of this, but it MIGHT be that we are not yet (soon) requiring people to pay to participate. And thank you for your support!

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Q: Sorry gene, but you mentioned it so I had to re female publicly admitting burping or farting. Here: https://www.riverreporter.com/stories/thar-she-blows,78032

A: Thank you.

Q: On the subject of lobster killing methods, please be aware that what you are doing, presumably, in a vain effort to spare the lobster suffering, is cutting the spinal cord partway down. Please be aware that this presumably makes the lobster insensate BELOW the point of the cut, but not above it. What you are actually doing is spare it the pain of boiling it's stomach, so it can think good thoughts about you while you are boiling its head. I love lobster, and eat it whenever I can get it, but I just thought you should know. Don't boil my head.

A: I think you don’t know The Method. It makes the entire lobster insensate, and probably deceased. I researched it.

Q: You both take turns leaving the room when the other need to use the toilet, right?

A: Yes.

Q: Whenever I get out of bed, no matter the time of night or morning, I do not burp. I pass gas. This did not happen until I was, say, over 50. Then the concert began. I used to be somewhat embarrassed about it, and like when you have to pee you keep your legs closer together, but that didn't work. So why the difference? Why does some air go up, and some go down?

A: I shall consult with a gastroenterologist and perhaps report back next week.

Q: People around Trump still say in the present tense, expressions such as, “The President is not in Florida this weekend”. I heartily agree usually, since the president is Biden. They should be saying “The former president” or better, “Mr. Trump.”

A: I could think of a different designation.

Q: On Monday I had a total hip replacement. Do you believe they boil down the removed parts to create hospital food?

A: Hips do not make as flavorful broth - stock as knees or penis. Penis replacement surgery is particularly valued by the hospital cafeterias.

Q: Hi, this is Gene. I am going to close this down a couple of minutes early, but only after doing another poll demanded by my horrible editor, Tom the Butcher. Here it comes, please answer it, and then I will run away in shame.