The Invitational Week 89: Funny, Init?
Compare two people who have the same initials. Plus winning altered quotes given to other people.
Pat Myers and Gene Weingarten
Sep 12, 2024


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.

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.)

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.

InvisibleInk!
Idea: ()
Examples: (Mike Fransella; Chris Doyle, Seth Brown; Brendan Beary)
Judging: ()
Title: (Jon Gearhart)
Subhead: (Jesse Frankovich)
Prize: ()
Add:H:1588: ()
VisibleInk!