The Invitational Week 89: Funny, Init?

Compare two people who have the same initials. Plus winning altered quotes given to other people.

Runner-up entry by Mike Fransella in our 2005 contest.

Hello. Welcome to The Invitational Gene Pool, which is a giant pool with an island in the middle of it, an island of soothing humor and mental tranquility where one can escape the normal worries and anxieties of the day, such as whether immigrants will eat your cat.

Today we introduce a contest that we hereby declare brand new, inasmuch as we are a nation of truncated attention spans, and we haven’t run this contest in nineteen years.

For Invitational Week 89: Link or contrast two people (or animals, whatever), real or fictional, living or dead, who have the same initials, as in the example above and those below, all from our 2005 contest. The results back then included such names of the hour as Jeff Gillooly, Alan Keyes, and Heidi Fleiss; our own hour surely can provide many more letter-twins.

Carrie Bradshaw and Chef Boyardee: Sex and the ziti. (Chris Doyle)

For Thomas Hobbes, it was life that was nasty, brutish, and short. For Tonya Harding, it was Tonya. (Seth Brown)

Susan Sarandon was in "Rocky Horror"; Sylvester Stallone was in several "Rocky" horrors. (Brendan Beary)

Formatting this week: As usual, we ask only that you write each of your entries in a single line (i.e., don’t push Enter in the middle of the entry).

Deadline is Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Sept. 26. 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-89.

This week’s winner receives a little bitty pair of earrings that look as if two little bitty corgis are biting you on your earlobes and wiggling their cute little bitty corgi butts.  In an amazing coincidence this week, the left and right corgis share the same initials.

At least it’s not humping your leg. This week’s corgi earrings.

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 Gene hopes to deal with in real time today. You do this, as always, by sending them to this here button:

Quip-Change Artists: The altered quotes of Week 87

In Invitational Week 87 we asked you to slightly change any well-known quote, then attribute it to someone else. Submitted by too many people: “I’ll be Black,” quoting either faker Rachel Dolezal or, according to Trump, Kamala Harris.

Third runner-up:
 “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little Doug, too!” — DJT (Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)

Second runner-up:
“I have had it with these motherfucking snakes in this motherfucking drain!” — a retiring plumber (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

First runner-up:
“We shall come over.” — Your in-laws (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

And the winner of the Crocs earrings:
“I think; therefore I, um...” — Joe Biden (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)

As always, if you think the best among today’s inking entries were unjustly buried in the honorable mentions, shout out your favorites in the comments.

That’s NOT What She Said: Honorable mentions

“Now is the winner of our discontent.”  — Virtually half the electorate on Nov. 6. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

“Breaking is hard to do.” — Raygun (Jesse Frankovich)

“It’s a cinch to kill a mockingbird.” — Eric and Don Jr. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)

“Why can’t a woman be more like a mat?” — Andrew Tate (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

“It is what it isn’t.”—Donald Trump (Terri Berg Smith, Rockville, Md.)

“I can’t get nose satisfaction.” — Michael Jackson (Jesse Frankovich)

“Greed is God.” — Donald Trump (Gary Blankenship, Tallahassee, Fla., a First Offender)

“I did not have sexual relations with that ottoman.” — JD Vance (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll slow your House down.” — Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Judy Freed, Deerfield Beach, Fla.)

“There’s no trying in baseball!” — Chicago White Sox manager Grady Sizemore (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.; Brian Cohen, Winston-Salem, N.C. — surely this is the first time in Invite history that two family members independently submitted essentially the same entry)

“There’s no spying in baseball?” — Houston Astros (Duncan Stevens; Kevin Dopart)

 “Come up and seat me sometime.” — Rosa Parks (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)

“Does anybody really know what climate is? Does anybody really care?” — Fox News (Craig Dykstra, Centreville, Va.)

“Fist, do no harm.” — Gandhi (Tom Witte)

“I am become Death, the destroyer of words.” — Porky Pig (Duncan Stevens)

“Got to get you into my wife.” — Bedroom scene, guy in Viagra ad (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.)

“Don’t rain on my charade.” — G. Santos (Judy Freed)

“Go fake a hike.” — Mark Sanford (Gregory Koch, Falls Church, Va.)

“Fortune favors the bald.” — Jeff Bezos (Jesse Frankovich)

“He’s not playing with a full dick.” — Lorena Bobbitt (Jon Gearhart)

“Heaven hells those who help themselves.” — Miss Manners on cutting in at the buffet line  (Roy Ashley, Washington, D.C.)

“Hell is Mother, people.” — Norman Bates (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.)

“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my clothes-up.” — Marilyn Monroe on the set of “The Seven Year Itch” (Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)

“Out, damned spit! Out, I say!” — the Hawk Tuah Girl (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)  

“The cluck stops here.” — Colonel Sanders (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

“Yo, Hadrian!” — Marcus Aurelius (Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va.; Kevin Dopart; Gary Crockett)

“A date that will live in infinity.” — Bill Murray (Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely payers.” — Ticketmaster (Bill Dorner, Wolcott, Conn.)

“I take a village.” — Genghis Khan (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.)

“I’m wanking here! I’m wanking here!” —Paul Reubens (Duncan Stevens)

“Let my peepee go”: Lauren Boebert’s date (Jon Ketzner)

“Do not go gently into that good night.” — Strunk and White (Roy Ashley)

“I feel the need — the need for steed.” — Catherine the Great  (Craig Dykstra; Tom Witte)

“I feel the need — the need for screed.” — Michael Moore (Jeff Contompasis)

“Love means never having to say you’re Siri.” — Alexa (Beverley Sharp)

“The bigger they are, the harder to fail.” — Ben Bernanke  (Kevin Dopart)

“There’s no item like the present.” — your wife (Jesse Frankovich)  

“The road to hell is paved with good inventions.” — Elon Musk (Stu Segal, Southeast U.S.)

“To thy gown self be true.” — RuPaul (Chris Doyle)

“I’ll wave what she’s waving.” —Samuel Alito (Duncan Stevens)  

“When you care enough to send the very beet.” — Dwight Schrute (Roy Ashley)

“Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent inhalation.” — Willie Nelson (Tom Witte)

And Last:  “Gene? He is just 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." — Pat Myers, happily working fifteen miles away from him (Jon Gearhart)

The headline “Quip-Change Artists” is by Jon Gearhart; Jesse Frankovich wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, Sept. 14: our Week 88 contest to come up with a fad even sillier than decorating the inside of your refrigerator. Click on the link below.

Week 88: The Cold New Trend

We now enter the coveted Real Time segment of The Gene Pool, where Gene tries to respond to your questions and observations, which were made in Real Time. Today’s Q’s and O’s, so far, are mostly focused on his call for anecdotes about the most compelling / eccentric person you have ever known. Please send in more Q’s and O’s of any sort:

Also, you might want to send me money by upgrading your subscription to “paid.” You might not, of course, but you might, just for frugality’s sake. I have calculated it, and determined — this is true — that the cost of one column is 29.2 cents. That’s cheaper than the price of a single cage-free chicken egg.

Or choose a chicken egg instead:

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Q: You want eccentric? I once worked with a woman who always wore the same clothes. I have no reason to believe she was crazy; she was competent and pleasant enough, perhaps a little stand-offish, but not to the point of dysfunction. But every day at work, she wore black slacks with a white belt and a white, slightly puffy shirt. She wore the same accessories, too — pearl stud earrings and an understated bracelet. When I say “every day,” I mean every day for the four years I knew her. Either they were literally the same clothes, laundered and pressed nightly, or she had a closet full of them. As far as I know, no one ever asked. No one dared. I wish I could end this story dramatically, like the one you published about the lady at Penn University who set herself on fire, but I can’t. This lady got another job and was gone. I would tell you her first name, but it’s very distinctive, and I don’t want to ridicule her in front of her new employer, because I am sure she is still dressing like that.

A: In college, I knew a guy named Ed Estevez. Perfectly cool guy, with one eccentricity. Even in the dead of winter — NYU temperatures could hit 10 degrees — when outside he wore no coat or jacket or even sweater, even on ten-block walks. He wore only a muffler and gloves. And a climate-useless straw hat. Ed explained that those two things are all most bodies need to retain warmth.

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Q: In today’s “Barney & Clyde,” Cynthia asks, “I wonder whether anyone was ever named Murray Gynecologist?” — Probably not, but there is someone named “Bob Fingerman.” Unfortunately, he’s a comic book artist, not a doctor.

A: He might be an anti-aptonym.   His drawings are great, but, like many ‘toonists, he evidently isn’t great with fingers! 

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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.

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This is Gene.   Since the debate has re-raised the issue of abortion, here is a handy tip for how MEN can prevent abortions!

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Q: Regarding my choice of toppings for a hot dog, which you found inexplicable:  Catsup is as close to salsa as it gets.  

A: Salsa purveyors would challenge you.  They know the comparison and hate it, saying salsa is WAAY more complex, owing everything to its non-tomato flavors, like fresh red onion, green onion, garlic, lime, etc.    

I do like “catsup,” though.  I preemptively spell it that way. 

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Q: One of the most colorful / eccentric friends in movies was Harry’s (Art Carney’s) friend Jacob  (Herbert Berghof) in the film “Harry and Tonto.”   Do you know the brief scene I mean? 

A: I do.   Here is the magnificent 6-second clip, which I queued up out of the trailer.   When it’s over, you can leave.  I’ve started it at 0:27  

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Q: Gene, about 7000 soldiers died at Gettysburg, not 50,000.  The total of killed, wounded, missing, and captured ("casualties") was about 51,000.

A:  Thanks.  Mea culpa. 

Q: Suggested bumper sticker during the next two months:  

Show Compassion for Dementia.  But DON'T VOTE FOR IT!

                                                   — Nancy Meyer

A:  Ooh, good idea.  Start thinking about these.  It might be the Weekend Gene Pool challenge. 

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Q: Regarding the ladies-room sign a member of your household saw:   Sign in the single hole bathroom for either sex in the Holy Cross Germantown ER:  “STOP Don’t urinate in the trash Thank you”  This was over the trash can of course. It would have been difficult for me as a woman to do that but I wonder why men couldn’t tell the difference between a toilet and a trash can. Maybe that’s why they were in the ER?

A: Reminds me of a joke I possibly have told here before:  Guy comes home late at night, stinking drunk, and drops into bed next to his wife.  The next morning he is hung over and she asks him, with love but no little bit of suspicion: “What the hell were YOU up to last night?”

He said, “I was just with a couple of guy friends, I swear it.  We found ourselves in this amazingly opulent bar.  The bar was like a mile long!  The drinks were a buck apiece, and the urinals were made of solid gold!”

The wife scoffs at this, and gets more suspicious.  The guy fishes in his pockets.  “No, wait, you can check,” and he produces a matchbook from “Salvatore’s.”   She grabs the matchbook at calls the phone number.  

“May I ask, do you have a very long bar?”

“Yeah, it’s about 80 feet long, solid mahogany.” 

“And are your drinks a dollar apiece?”  

“They were last night.”

“And, um, do you have solid gold urinals?”

She hears that the bartender has muted the phone with his palm, and is calling out to someone else:

“Hey, Mortie, I think we have a lead on who pissed in your tuba.”

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Q: Many years ago, my cousin was getting a security clearance.  Back then, you had to include pictures of your relatives.  Only picture he had of our grandfather was in his Russian cavalry uniform which he submitted.  Needless to say, his security clearance was significantly delayed.

– Robert

A: Thank you.  Any other tales of unfortunate photos that had to be used, for whatever reasons?

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Q: My husband and I just bought a new car.  If you open the back door before a trip, when you turn off the car, a message pops up on the dash to check the back seat.  If you don't open the back door at the end of the trip, it sends a message to your phone.  

We actually want to disable this feature because we don't have kids and it's very unlikely we will ever be transporting small children.  But does this seem like a good solution for those who do?

A: Interesting.   I just spoke with Amber Rollins, administrator of Kids and Cars. org, the organization I worked with on the children-cars story.  She says this sounds like a new-car feature called “a door-sequencing alarm,” which is of some value but is not comprehensive protection for children. 

From the Kids and Cars website:

GM, Nissan, Subaru, Acura, Buick, Genesis, Honda, Ford, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, Infiniti, Kia, Lincoln, Hyundai all offer systems that operate using door sequencing technology that provides an audio and visual alert if the driver opens the back door prior to driving. This type of system would not provide a reminder alert in a number of common scenarios. For example, if you stopped to get gas and did not open the back door while stopped, you would not get a reminder when you get to your final destination. Additionally, a system like this does not have the ability to detect the presence of a child alone inside a vehicle and would not protect children who got into a vehicle and became trapped inside.

Can you send me the make and model of your new car?  Amber says she’d like to check into it, because she has never heard of an alert sent to your phone.  Send to the Q’s and O’s button.

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Q: Pastors come into contact with a unique cross section of society.  From the baptisms, weddings, hospital visits, and funerals {aka: hatched, matched, patched, and dispatched}, to the knocks on the door at 10:30 at night by someone hoping you will give them $10 to just go away.  Then there was Jered (not his real name).  He showed up at the parsonage not long after we arrived in New Haven. A twenty something, tall, gawky, somewhat unkempt, unshaven, in need of a bath.  My initial impression was that he was a “$10 to go away”er; but I was wrong.  Jered was happy to get the $10 but did not want to go away, he wanted to stay and talk–to get to know the new pastor.  He was not a member of my church, nor any church–but he knew every pastor in town and he knew their story–he wanted to know mine.  

After a time he left but for the next 5 years we would cross paths at unusual places: at the shelter where he stayed most nights and volunteered in the kitchen–sigh.  He called me from jail once asking for bail money, I never knew what for but before I could get there he called to say another pastor had bailed him out. (I felt rejected).  Then I saw him in the hospital–he was proud, his girlfriend had just had a baby, but the baby had problems.  I talked to a social worker who assured me that the baby would not go home with the couple. 

He showed up when our daughter was born with a gift, used baby clothes that had been donated to the shelter.  Jered never had a car, walked all over the city.  

After 5 years we were packing to move to Long Island for a new appointment.  Amidst the chaos of packing Jered showed up.  I wanted to hide, to pretend I was not there–he kept knocking.  “I know you’re busy,” he said, “but I wanted to give you a gift before you left.”  He handed me a small box wrapped in a paper bag.  I opened it, Jered smiled.  It was a box for a watch, but not that watch, another brand.  It was definitely new and had lots of dials and stems.  He started telling me what all the watch would do.  I tried to put it on but the band was broken, he didn’t seem to notice.  I thanked him and he left.  

Later I realized why the band was broken–it was a display watch that had been broken so that it could be “lifted” from its display case.  I fixed the band and wore the watch for years and for memories.  

A: Whoa.  So, um, not to put too fine a point on it, pastor, but you wore hot merchandise on your wrist for years! I think I might have, too, under the circumstances.  The richness of the memory would have been worth the occasional twinge of guilt.

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Q: Because you referred to a wife as "your rib," an old (but new to me) joke: "Adam was feeling lonely, so God said, "I will give you a companion, and she will be called a 'woman'. This person will cook and clean for you, she will defer to your decisions, she will care for your children, and will freely give you love whenever needed." Adam asked, "What will this woman cost?" God said, "An arm and a leg..." Adam said, "What can I get for just a rib?"

A:  Thank you.  

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Q: This is more of a brief encounter of the weird kind. One afternoon long ago as I was driving home from work, the car in front of me slowed, crawled along a bit, and stopped. The driver’s door opened and a small, round, white haired lady stepped out. I rolled down my window thinking she wanted directions. She demanded to know why I was following her. I said I wasn’t following her—not in the way she meant—that I was just on my way home. From her mistrustful look it was clear she thought I was lying. As I sat there wondering what an alert person would do, she scowled and accused me of being an agent of Engelbert Humperdinck. I don’t know if she was referring to the composer or the pop singer and didn’t think it useful to inquire. So I just repeated that I was on my way home from work. She stood there a while eyeing me. Suddenly she looked very sad and said her son-in-law was trying to control her. I told her I was sorry to hear that. Then she returned to her car and drove off. Except for the time a waitress asked me if I was the drummer for Paul Revere & the Raiders, it was the only time anyone mistook me for somebody interesting. I hope she found her way home. – Jonathan Paul

A: I was once mistaken for Gene Shalit, the TV movie buffoon, and the person who so mistook me refused to believe I wasn’t.  He walked away convinced I was being shy.

Q: Think America will ever elect a President who is openly, out of the closet, atheistic ?

A: Yes. I think we are heading there. And one reason I think so is that I’m not sure that anyone has even asked if Harris goes to church, or what her views are. I don’t know. Do you? And I think even Trump supporters know he has no religious faith at all.

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Q: A few things off the top of my head I wish Kamala HAD said in the debate.... "And what I do offer is a new [and younger] generation of leadership for our country." This exchange... "DAVID MUIR: We are going to get to immigration and border security during this debate. But I would like to let Vice President Harris respond on the economy here. VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, I would love to. Let's talk about [the fact that anyone that paid attention in school knows that tariffs are NOT taxes on foreign countries but ARE taxes on the American people]...

In reply to... FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Excuse me. Every one of those cases was started by them against their political opponent. And I'm winning most of them and I'll win the rest on appeal. And you saw that with the decision that came down just recently from the Supreme Court. I'm winning most of them.

I wish she had said "You're "winning" them on technicalities. You've lost EVERY case that's been tried on it's merits. You're a loser!" Tom Logan - Sterling, VA

A: Sure, Hindsight Man. But she did BRILLIANTLY on deadline. We reporters are enormously impressed.

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Q: When we were fresh out of college, three of us girls found a bargain apartment in an improbably nice address just outside of Harvard Square.  Top floor of an off-Brattle Street grand house.  First clue: it looked like a Schrafft's chocolate, brown with candy-pink trim.

The landlady's name was Mrs. Conquest. I don't remember how the rent checks were addressed, but we joked that her late husband's name was Norman.

Mrs. Conquest.  The bane of the proper, well-heeled neighborhood.  Pink trim on a brown-shingled house?  Oh, the horror!  Why pink?

"Well, of course," said Mrs. Conquest, broad smile showing gaps between her gray teeth, as she proudly swished her strands of hair back into the topknot on her head,  "It matches the rose bush."

And the big fat 1950s car so large that the garage door couldn't close, so she closed it halfway, giving the impression that the car was mooning her neighbors.  Which it was.

"What kind of cool car is that, Mrs. Conquest?"

"Why that's a Chrysler Imperial, of course.  Which is why the rose bush is a Chrysler Imperial Rose."

We were just beginning to scratch the surface of the World According to Mrs. Conquest.  

She loved to engage us in conversation as we trudged our way home from tedious college-grad first jobs.  One hot and dusty day, she was standing on her porch as some black-suited door-to-door missionaries were scuttling away down the street.

"Did they sell you anything, Mrs. Conquest?" I asked jokingly.

"I just remarked to them," she said brightly, re-creating her sashaying on the porch, ""On hot summer days I find it SO much cooler without undies.  Don't YOU?'"

Polly Freeman Lyman

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A: Excellent.

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Q: Grammar question for Pat the Perfect that I got into an argument with someone about. If you have a couple who is living separately until they get married, because they are religious and don’t want to live in sin, and then they get married and immediately go on their honeymoon without ever going home, just straight from the wedding to the airport, are they “living together” at that point. This happened to an internet friend of mine who plays the same online nation simulator as me. (Don’t ask.) I said his wife isn’t living with him until she moves in with him, which she hasn’t yet as they’re still on their honeymoon. He pointed out that they are together on their honeymoon. I replied that they’re not living at at the hotel, they’re just vacationing there. His wife, always one for dark humor, pointed out that they are clearly living and the alternative is rather grisly and depressing. What say you, Pat?

From Pat: "Living together" as a married couple includes the honeymoon, no matter if it's in a hotel that they pay for by the day or in an apartment they pay for by the month or a  hole in the ground they use rent-free.   

In fact,  back in the olden days,  Orthodox Jewish marriages were consummated in a little tenty-thing  at the wedding venue right after the ceremony. 

Q: Right.  I would add that there is no such thing as a stupid question you asked a question.  My other point would be that we are not 7 years old.   The issue is not “living together” but having sex.

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This is Gene. I copy us down. Thank you for being you. PLEASE keep sending in Observations and Questions to this button:

We shall meet again in the Weekend Gene Pool.