The Invitational Week 79: The Farce of July

Give us new ways to celebrate Independence Day. Plus memorable 'Barney & Clyde' strips about dementia, penned by the Losers.

This week’s winning strip, by Mark Raffman. See the rest of the winners of Week 77 below.

Hello. Today’s new contest is based on … today! Independence Day! We at The Official Invitational Treehouse have been bothered by neighborhood fireworks in the last few days, but not as much as our dog and the other neighborhood dogs, who are even more bothered, making their displeasure known via shrieking, making our displeasure worse. It occurs to us that there has to be a better way to celebrate the Fourth than setting off explosive devices, amputating fingers, etc. Which leads to today’s contest. What are some better ways to appropriately celebrate the Fourth in the future?

Such as:

— The annual burning of the British Embassy. 

— Eat a meal of at least 8,000 calories, including a bacon cheeseburger with fries and whipped cream, while chanting “USA USA!”   Alternatively, consume a bald eagle.  Same chant.

— Conserve your use of electricity by flying a kite, with a key attached, in a thunderstorm. 

— Play the “1812” Overture, but instead of celebrating Napoleon’s defeat, you pay homage to the new U.S. Emperor.

For Invitational Week 79: Give us a new, updated, colorful way to celebrate Independence Day, as in the examples above. You can be very succinct, or you can talk about your idea more fully, as long as it’s fun to read.

Deadline is Saturday, July 13, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, July 18. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form. 

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyURL.com/inv-form-79.

Formatting this week: As usual, if you’re submitting more than one entry, please write each entry as a single line (i.e., don't push Enter in the middle of the entry).

This week’s winner gets some happy socks. Even if it’s hard to smile these days, your ankles can.

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 observations, which we hope to deal with in real time today. You do this, as always, by sending them to this here button:

Alz Stars: ‘Barney & Clyde’ scripts on memory loss

Here are the results of Results of Week 77, in which we asked you to come up with scripts for Gene’s “Barney & Clyde” comic strip, centered on a key storyline involving Cynthia Pillsbury and her grandpa Ebenezer, her best friend, who is entering the early stages of dementia. Cynthia is the only family member who knows of his problem, and has taken steps to disguise it from others. They are a team.

This was a controversial contest. Some longtime, highly skilled Losers did not participate because they were reluctant to make jokes about dementia. Understandable. But many of the submitted entries were remarkably good, finding humor in unexpected and unexplored areas, particularly beauty. This week’s winner, by Mark Raffman of Reston, Va., appears at the top of this Gene Pool; it’s amazingly timely and astute and scary as hell. Mark wins a signed print of his strip.

The illustrations are by the great David Clark, the regular “Barney & Clyde” artist and co-creator, who turned these strips out in record time. (Such record time — literally minutes — that we are wondering if we overpay him.)

First runner-up, by Marc Leibert, Travis Air Force Base, Calif.:

Second runner-up, by Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.:

Third runner-up, by Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.:

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

As always, if you feel none of those is the best among today’s inking entries, shout out your favorites in the comments (below).

We Almost Forgot These: Honorable mentions

Panel 1: Grandpa: I found my comb in the dish cabinet.
Panel 2: Cynthia: Your socks were in the office desk drawer.
Panel 3: [They look at each other, suppressing a laugh.]
Panel 4: [Both smiling] Grandpa: Old age is hilarious — I just wish I remembered it more.
(Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.) 

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Panel 1: Cynthia: The doctor told me to take away your car keys.
Grandpa: Tell him to get his own car.
Panel 2: Cynthia: No, Grandpa. It’s just … he says it’s not safe for you to drive.
[Grandpa stares into the middle distance.]
Panel 3: Grandpa: Well, I guess you can drive me places now.
Cynthia: Grandpa, I’m 11 years old.
Panel 4: Grandpa: In my day, that was old enough to drink, work, and drive.
Cynthia: Let me guess—and you did all three in a snowstorm.
(Leif  Picoult) 

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Panel 1: Cynthia: Grandpa, it’s time for your medicine.
Grandpa: What’s it for?
Panel 2: Cynthia: The doctor says it slows memory loss.
Grandpa: Some things I’d rather forget.
Panel 3: Cynthia: Like what?
Grandpa: Like the time a cop caught your grandma and me buck naked in the back of a Chevy.
Panel 4: Cynthia: Now I want to forget that, too. 
(Leif  Picoult) 

Panel 1: Cynthia: Grandpa, I’ve heard that older people sometimes remember long-ago stuff but not recent stuff.
Grandpa: True. I can’t remember what I had for dinner today.
Panel 2: Cynthia: That might be because it’s not dinnertime yet. 
Grandpa: Ah, that could explain it.
Panel 3: Grandpa: Well, I can’t remember what I had for lunch.
Cynthia: Grandpa, we haven’t had lunch yet either.
Grandpa: You got me again.
Panel 4: Grandpa: Anyway, to your point, I do clearly remember the Cuban Missile Crisis.
(Leif Picoult)  

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Panel 1: Grandpa: How much do you get from the tooth fairy when you lose a tooth? Panel 2: Cynthia: I’ve lost all my baby teeth by now, but it varied.
Panel 3: [Silence.]
Panel 4: Grandpa: So you don’t know how much an upper denture plate is worth? Cynthia: Let’s check the bathroom sink first. 
(Sam Mertens) 

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Panel 1: Grandpa: You probably never had a chance to watch old broadcast TV.
Panel 2: Grandpa: Back then, the TV had tubes in it. The picture could get fuzzy and sometimes it was hard to follow.
Panel 3: Cynthia: But you watched anyway, and still enjoyed it.
Panel 4: Grandpa: Sometimes I feel like one of those channels.
Cynthia: I receive you just fine, Grandpa.
(Sam Mertens) 

Panel 1: Grandpa: I don’t drive anymore. I used to love it.
Panel 2: Grandpa: There’s nothing like cruising in first, then shifting to neutral at the light, then straight to second for a quick start.
Panel 3: [Grandpa smiles nostalgically. Cynthia eyes him skeptically.]
Panel 4: Cynthia: You never actually drove a stick-shift, did you?
Grandpa: Hm. I guess not.
(Sam Mertens) 

—

Panel 1: [Ebenezer and Cynthia sit in a medical exam room. A doctor shows him a photo of an apple.] Doctor: Now this part of the cognitive test is based on familiar image recognition. What’s this?
Ebenezer: Banana.
Panel 2: [Doctor and Cynthia look concerned; he shows a second image, a horse] Doctor: And this?
Ebenezer: Banana.
Panel 3: [Doctor, extremely worried, shows a bicycle.] Doctor: And, and this?
Ebenezer: Orange.
[Cynthia’s expression has changed to a sly smile.]
Panel 4: Ebenezer: Why the worried look, doctor?
Doctor: Mr. Pillsbury, your responses are extremely …
Ebenezer: But orange you glad I didn’t say “banana” again?
(Kevin Dopart, Naxos, Greece) 

—

Panel 1: Cynthia, eyeing Ebenezer’s laptop: You buying a ticket?
Grandpa: Yep. Going to Paris. Wanna go while I can still remember it.
Panel 2: Cynthia: Can I join you?
Grandpa: Sure, kiddo.
Panel 3: Cynthia: There’s just one thing.
Grandpa: Yeah?
Panel 4: Cynthia, looking at the screen: I don’t think Greyhound goes to France.
(Leif Picoult) 

Panel 1: Grandpa: Promise you won’t give my boxes to the FBI.
Panel 2: Cynthia:  What boxes?
Grandpa:  The ones in the bathroom.
Panel 3: Cynthia: Why would the FBI want your old National Geographics?
Grandpa:   I can’t tell you.  National security.
Panel 4: Cynthia: You have to stop watching Fox News.
(Mark Raffman)

Panel 1: Grandpa to Cynthia: How do people remember things?
Panel 2: Cynthia: Sometimes they write stuff down—you know, make a list.
Panel 3: [Grandpa stares at Cynthia.]
Panel 4: Grandpa: How do people remember where they put their list? 
(Neal Starkman, Seattle) 

—

Panel 1: [Cynthia and Grandpa are in the panel, with Satan halfway in from the side]
Satan:  Say, gramps, how about you sell your soul to me and I’ll cure your dementia?Panel 2: Cynthia:  No, Grandpa, don’t do it!
Satan:  Don’t listen to her!
Grandpa:  Can I ask a question?
Panel 3: Grandpa:  If today I lack legal capacity to enter into a contract, can I void the sale when my capacity is restored?
Panel 4: Satan (turning away):  Never mind.
(Mark Raffman) 

—

Panel 1: [Grandpa is eating a sandwich. Cynthia looks at him inquisitively.]
Cynthia: If a genie let you wish to change any one thing in the world, what would it be?
Panel 2: [Grandpa has stopped eating, looks at her.]
Cynthia: I don’t mean like world peace.  I mean something small, maybe not even something anybody would notice right away.
Panel 3: [Grandpa begins to return to his sandwich.]
Grandpa: I’d make all the twist ties on loaves of bread from the store go the same way.
Panel 4: Cynthia: Really?  You answered that fast.  How long has this been bugging you?
Grandpa:  Since I started trying to open this lunch meat bag a half-hour ago before I gave up and just ripped it open.
(Sam Mertens) 

—

The headline “Alz Stars” is by Roy Ashley; Dave Prevar wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, July 6: our Week 78 contest to sum up a historical event in a rhyming couplet. Click on the link below.

The Invitational Week 78: History for the tl;dr Crowd

Absolutely last call! Schmooze with the Losers (and the Empress) this Sunday afternoon, July 7, at the Flushies, their annual awards/potluck/singalong. This year it’s in Crystal City, in Arlington, Va. Click here for the info and to sign up and tell what you’re bringing.

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Now we enter the real-time portion of the Gene Pool, where Gene will take your questions and observations, and respond to them. Send your stuff to this awesome creamsicle-colored button:

Many of today’s questions and observations were in response to the Tuesday Gene Pool, in which Gene disclosed he had donated $1,000 to the Biden campaign. Please remember to keep refreshing the screen to get new questions, observations, and responses.

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Q: Biden should privately see a neurologist.  If they say he is in cognitive decline, say early stage Alzheimer’s—he should quit the race, if not the presidency.  It would be a great and honorable thing to do.

And it would be done under circumstances that would give the next candidate a good chance to win.

If the examination comes back clean, he should stay and fight.

I’m shocked I haven’t heard this before.

A: Me, too.   It is exactly the right idea.  My secret fear is that, um, he has already done this. 

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Q: Regarding your reader’s symphony anecdote:

The Symphony was performing Beethoven's Ninth. In the piece, there's a long passage-about 20 minutes-during which the bass violinists have nothing to do. Rather than sit around that whole time, some of the bassists decided to sneak offstage and go to the tavern next door for a quick one.

After slamming several beers in quick succession, one of them looked at his watch. "Hey! We need to get back!" "No need to panic," said a fellow bassist. "I thought we might need some extra time, so I tied the last few pages of the conductor's score together with string. It'll take him a few minutes to get it untangled."

A few minutes later they staggered back into the theater and took their places in the orchestra. About this time, a member in the audience whispered to her companion, "Hey, doesn't the conductor seem a little bit edgy? "

"Well, of course," said her companion. "Don't you see? It's the bottom of the ninth, the score is tied, and the bassists are loaded."

A: Thank you. This made me laff.

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TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: JUST CLICK ON THE HEADLINE IN THE EMAIL AND IT WILL DELIVER YOU TO THE FULL COLUMN ONLINE. Keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

Please remember to Observe and Question:

Also, you can upgrade your subscription to “paid” here, but only if you do not support ignorant autocracy:

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Q: Last fall I signed up to donate $100 monthly to the Biden campaign.  So I've almost caught up to your $1,000. 

A: Today, I am planning to purchase a 1970 Accutron watch, a preposterously engineered timepiece based on the vibrations of a tuning fork, which was almost immediately supplanted by the vastly better if appalling crappy quartz crystal, and which made the tuning fork instantly obsolete.  I can’t afford that, either, but it was the first present I ever bought my dad with my own money.  It was his 60th birthday.   I will now not eat for several days, in penance.

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Q:  Biden has to stay in.  And win.  There's no alternative.  I just sent him $150, with more to come when / if I can afford it.  And I'm going to be working my tail off in the nearest "swing state" to me (I didn't do enough there in 2016, and look what happened!), and possibly phone-banking to states farther away. 

A: I blame you, personally, for Hillary’s loss.

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Q: I will still take Biden’s team over Trump’s. It takes a village to run a country.

A: Agreed. I don’t care if he is a bit barmy. He surrounds himself with good people, and makes good decisions.

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Q: I’m an old man with one foot in the urn.  When you look at Biden you see a decent man trying hard to do the right thing. I see a prick who won’t acknowledge his granddaughter. Has never spoken to her, has never hugged her, has not given her secret service protection like he has his other grandchildren. F—k him. I won’t vote for Trump but I’m not voting for that pretentious horse’s ass either. If you can’t love your own 5 year old adorable granddaughter., you get nothing but contempt from me.

A: You are in fact voting for Trump, a traitor, based on a kneejerk reaction to a highly complicated and nuanced  situation.   So, FU.  You are the enemy, not Biden.

—

From the comments:

Q: I enjoyed the “bread twist ties” wish as I remember a Below the Beltway article in which the mystery was solved by a guy who knew everything about the machines that tie the bread bags shut. Two lines on opposite ends of a rotating shaft.

A: I can’t link to it apparently but here it is, cut and paste:

WASHINGTON - I am on the phone with Becky Madeira, communications vice president of Hostess Brands, the Irving, Texas-based conglomerate whose baked products include Drake's cakes, Hostess Twinkies, Ding Dongs and, most to the point, Wonder Bread. I have interrupted Becky on a family vacation in Maine because my question is of such gravity it cannot wait.

Me: Why is Wonder Bread flagrantly upsetting the delicate balance of the universe?

Becky: I do not know. Tell me.

Me: The world is a complicated and terrifying place. Death can visit any time. So we rely on certain verities to remind us that anarchy does not always reign, that some things are, and remain, constant. There are physical certainties, such as gravity, which always pulls down, never up. There are biological constancies - we all have navels and really ugly pinkie toenails. ...

Becky: True!

Me: There are also immutable rules of human behavior. For example, when you try to call someone on a cell phone, and get voice mail, and start to leave a message, that person will invariably call you back as the phone is pressed almost against your eardrum. This is not pleasant, but it is at least something we can rely on; in a perverse way, it is comforting. My point is, one of these comforting eternal verities is the simple mechanical paradigm, "Righty, tighty. Lefty, loosey." Do you see my point?

Becky: Sure, I guess, so far.

Me: I am holding in my hands right now a loaf of Wonder Bread, just purchased from Safeway. I notice, to my delight, that unlike many similar products, it is not cinched shut by one of those slotted plastic discs that break the second time you use them, nor by those plastic tongue-into-hole devices with shark-tooth serrations, which can close but never open. No, your product has a twist-tie, the oldest and very best closing device, for which I congratulate you. However ...

Becky: Are you going to complain that there is no inner bag?

Me: I noticed that but am frankly unconcerned; the bread is fresh. What deeply concerns me, however, is that the twist-tie opens clockwise and closes counterclockwise. Righty, loosey; lefty, tighty. Ma'am, are you aware of how malevolent that formulation is? There is comfort in familiarity. There is such a thing as syntax, and it is important. In the universe, as in literature, order matters. Dickens did not write "Times it worst the was best it was the times of of." Did he?

Becky:

Me: Now, my research suggests this lamentable condition exists in the package of other breads, as well - Arnold's and Stroehmann's among them - but yours happens to be the one I am holding, which is why you are on the hot seat.

Becky: Oh, no.

Me: Oh, yes. Can you justify this outrage?

Becky: No. I was unaware of this. I will have to talk to some people and get back to you.

(45 minutes pass)

Becky: I have spoken with our bread guru, Floyd Snell. Floyd knows bread. Floyd lives bread. It turns out that there are two production lines for bread, with one operator in between them. The loaves face outward, toward the twist-tie machines: one on the operator's left, one on the right. The machines face each other. That means one loaf is approaching its machine from the left, and the other is approaching its machine from the right. Since the physical mechanics of the twisting procedure must be identical for each loaf, it is necessary that one machine twist clockwise and the other counterclockwise. So, basically, our twist-ties go in both directions. You just happen to have bought a righty-loosey one.

Me: That is a boring and philosophically unsatisfying answer.

Becky: I am sorry. Let's start from scratch. Ask the question again.

Me: Why does my Wonder Bread twist-tie the wrong way?

Becky: Actually, it turns out we go both ways.

Me: But why?

Becky: Sorry. Don't ask, don't tell.

Me: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Becky: You're welcome.

—

Q: Regarding your post about '“adultery.”

From the wonderful folks at Merriam Webster: "In case you were wondering, the words adultery and adult are not etymologically related (in other words, adultery didn’t grow out of adult in the way that punditry grew out of pundit). Although both words come from Latin and share the same first five letters, adultery is from adulterāre (“to pollute, defile, commit adultery”), a word formed ultimately from the Latin elements ad- “to, near” and alter “other.” English adult comes from adultus, which is the past participle of the Latin word adolescere (“to grow up”)."

A: Ah, as in “adulterate.” Makes sense.  Though I would argue that “adulterate” also suggests that when you adulterate, you are acting like an adult, by polluting.

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Q: This is Trump. 

Trump: "And I’ll tell you something – I wish he was a great president because I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be at one of my many places enjoying myself."

and

"I would be very happy to be someplace else, in a nice location someplace."

Fact Check: Trump played golf 285 times while President at cost of approximately $142 MILLION. We already know where he'd rather be.

https://www.statista.com/chart/23464/estimated-number-of-times-president-trump-played-golf/

Trump: "I just won two club championships, not even senior, two regular club championships. To do that, you have to be quite smart and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way. "

Fact Check: And you have to be able to own the club and cheat with impunity. 

— Tom Logan, Sterling, VA

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–

Q: I am 68 years old.  Your intro on donating money to Biden made me cry.  Thank you.

A: It made me cry, too!

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Q: This isn't really my story to share, but it brings me to tears every time I think about it, so I am going to tell it anyway. 

My friend, Betty had two daughters away at college. She had a couple of cats who missed their girls and always scampered into their rooms as soon as the girls came home and opened  the doors.

The year in question, Betty had, as usual, bought some outfits for the girls as gifts, and as usual a couple were deemed not to their taste or to not fit properly. She put those back into their respective bags from the stores along with the receipts, and put them in the girl's closet to be returned after the holiday.

January rolled around and she joined the throngs at the department store return desks. After waiting in line, and with a long line now waiting behind her, she strode to the counter and said "I need to return this." and dumped the contents onto the counter.  The contents were a skirt and quite a load of cat $hit.

She said she just stared at it dumbfounded, as did the clerk, until the clerk sputtered "Ma'am, we...we...uhh, we can't accept that back for a refund."

By which time, Betty was already withering from embarrassment and snapped "Of course not." and began trying to push the whole mess back into the bag, only what had appeared to be dried out began smearing, and the clerk began searching for paper towels, all while Betty says she could just feel the eyes of the whole line riveted on the spectacle.

She said she not only couldn't go back in that store, she never went back to that mall.

A: I love this story. 

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Q: I couldn’t agree with you more and my check is also in the mail (actually I’m giving online, but I digress). The Supreme Court has paved the way to dictatorship. I’m backing Biden until and unless he moves aside. Trump must be beaten. – Janet Vincent

A: Thanks, Janet. This is from the eloquent episcopal minister whom I quoted at length in this story. She had a fascinating and horrifying anecdote about Trump. Search for her name.

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I am calling us down. Thank you. Please keep sending in questions and observations, to this stupid, xenophobic orange button. I will address them Tuesday, at length.