The Invitational Week 100!
... which we celebrate with a centennial contest
Gene Weingarten and Pat Myers
Nov 28, 2024
Thanksgiving Novelty Inflatables Pumpkin Pie - Bullseye's Playground™, 1 of 4
AN INFLATABLE SLICE OF PUMPKIN PIE!
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Hello. Happy Thanksgiving. We’ll be quick with this one so you can get busy eatin’ and excretin’.

We confess that when we resurrected the Style Invitational contest in these newer, narrower confines in January 2023 after its assassination by The Washington Post, we weren’t sure that with a smaller, subscriber-only entrant pool, we’d still have the firepower left to run funny, inventive, daring results week after week.

You’ve pulled it off. It turned out that the readers who moved with us, as well as those of you who’ve contributed since then, are largely a distillate of the very best. You make us proud. We feel secure.

So, to celebrate Week 100, we look ahead. Waaay ahead.

Give us your predictions about some things that might be happening 100 years from now, in 2124.

We actually did a similar contest once before, on Feb. 29, 2004, when we calculated that there wouldn’t be another leap-day Invitational until Feb. 29, 2032, so we called for predictions for that year, 28 years in the future. At the time we set up four potential categories:
— What a news headline of the day would be;
— The best-selling book;
— The most successful corporation;
— What would win The Style Invitational that week.

For Invitational Week 100: Tell us about what will be happening anytime in 2124. This time, you may use the categories above or any other you come up with. Here are some winners from 2004 (full results here):

News story: Hundreds Dead in Segway Pileup (Art Grinath)

Successful corporation: Big Al’s Smog Saws (Russell Beland)

News story: Al Qaeda Threatens Security Council Veto (Bob Dalton)

Book: Heather Has Three Mommies and One Happy Daddy (Jeff Brechlin)

This contest was suggested by Longtime Loser Marni Penning Coleman, aka Marni Penning the Stage Actress and Audiobook Narrator. As threatened promised to Week 100 contest suggestors, Marni wins an ice cream date with the Empress.

Deadline is Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Dec. 12. 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-100.

Formatting your entries this week: We’re back with our regular request that you write each individual entry as a single line (i.e., don’t push Enter until the end of each entry). And trust us: You won’t insult us by making it clear that your entry is that day’s news story, Invite entry, or whatever.

This week’s winner gets the fine inflatable slice of Thanksgiving pumpkin pie pictured above. We bought it at Target for $3. We will not inflate it for you.

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.

Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, Nov. 30: our Week 99 contest to read a real headline as something funnier than it is, then write a “bank head” with the new interpretation. Click on the link below.


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Idea: (Marni Penning Coleman)
Examples: (Art Grinath; Russell Beland; Bob Dalton; Jeff Brechlin)
Judging: ()
Title: ()
Subhead: ()
Prize: ()
Add:H:1588: ()
VisibleInk!