The Invitational Week 169: Hey, Baby, Wanna See My Ink?
Tell us some bad (new) pickup lines. Plus winning pictures for the captions we offered.
Pat Myers and Gene Weingarten
Mar 26, 2026




Above is Jesse Frankovich’s winning picture to illustrate one of seven captions we supplied for Invitational Week 167. The results are below.

But first, imagine the guy in that illustration, after losing his turn on “Wheel of Fortune,” asking Vanna if she’d like to hook up with him. That’s in line with our new contest, which is about really bad pickup attempts. We’ll get to that lower down.

Fetch-a-Sketch: Pictures for our captions from Week 167
In Invitational Week 167 we presented seven short, vague “captions” and asked you to create pictures that would humorously illustrate any of those lines. We received hundreds of original images that mostly used a variety of AI platforms. AI was just a facilitator, of course. The best entries were those with the funniest ideas behind them.

The AI art was astonishingly, creepily good, with a few exceptions. One Trump had six fingers on his hand before further human-editing; on another, the AI had drawn the White House’s demolished East Wing on the west side of the building. One entrant had an absolutely great idea: For the caption “You can’t fix stupid,” he had a carpenter attempting and failing to build, out of wood, a 3-D model of this optical illusion …


… but the AI simply could not reproduce it, either in two or three dimensions. (We know, because we tried, too. AI’s spatial perception is dreadful.)

Third runner-up:

My horoscope told me that I should expand my comfort zone.



^(Kevin Dopart, Naxos, Greece)

Second runner-up:

What a piece of work is a man!



^^ (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

First runner-up:

You can’t fix stupid.



^^ (Chris Doyle, Warminster, Pa., with ChatGPT)

And the winner of the Grow a Girlfriend and Grow a Boyfriend sponge novelties:
“You can’t fix stupid,” the “Wheel of Fortune” parody by Jesse Frankovich that appears at the top of this page. Jesse tells us that after ChatGPT repeatedly failed to put the apostrophe in its own block, he had to take matters into his own fingers and do it himself in Microsoft Paint: He had to fix stupid.
(Jesse Frankovich)

Eh-Pic Achievements: Honorable mentions
What a piece of work is a man!



^^(Chris Doyle, with ChatGPT)

—

I took the road less traveled by.



^^ (Stu Segal, Southeast U.S., with Dall-E 3)
—

And that was the last anyone saw of Becky.



^^(Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md., with Copilot)

—

And that was the last anyone saw of Becky.



^^(Kevin Dopart, with GeminiAI)

—

And that was the last anyone saw of Becky.



^^(Jesse Frankovich, with ChatGPT)

—

What a piece of work is a man!



^^(Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va., with Meta AI)

—

You can’t fix stupid.



^^(Original hand-drawn work by Trevor Stone Irvin, Atlanta, a First Offender. Trevor is a commercial artist and political caricaturist who hates hates hates AI.)
(Trevor Stone Irvin)

—

And that was the last anyone saw of Becky.



^^(Mark Raffman, Reston, Va., with DeevidAI)

—

You can’t fix stupid.



^^(Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md., with Gemini. Dave notes that Gemini refused to draw a teenager in such a dangerous situation as parasailing off a drone, so he first asked for the kid to be on a snowboard, then asked it to add and remove various elements, one at a time.)

—

My horoscope told me that I should expand my comfort zone.



^^(Jesse Frankovich, with ChatGPT)

—

My horoscope told me that I should expand my comfort zone.



^^(Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va., with DeepAI)

—

My horoscope told me that I should expand my comfort zone.



^^(Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md., with Nano Banana 2)

—

My motto is “Be prepared.”



^^(Kevin Dopart, with Gemini)

—

What a piece of work is a man!



^^(Jesse Frankovich, with ChatGPT, using “many tries to get his pose right”)

—

You can’t fix stupid.



^^(Chris Doyle, melding Trump and Alfred E. Neuman with ChatGPT)

—

The headline “Fetch-a-Sketch” is by Chris Doyle; Jesse Frankovich wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

New contest for Week 169: Inept pickup lines
“Hey, buy me a drink so I can wash down these damn Midol.” (Jennifer Hart, Kevin Cuddihy)

“Is this a banana in my pocket, or am I just glad to see you?” (Russell Beland)

“You are exactly the same size as my last girlfriend. Would you like some of her clothes? I still have the key to her apartment.” (Meg Sullivan)

“Hi. I’m as fertile as Mesopotamia.” (Tom O’Connor)

“Lose the sideburns, get your elbows off the bar and sit up straight. And hello.”
(Jean Sorensen, Jennifer Hart)

For Invitational Week 169: Make up a comically ineffective pickup line, as in the examples above from a long-ago Style Invitational contest.

Formatting your entries: It’s just our standard request to write each entry as a single line i.e., don’t press Enter until you’re starting another entry.

Deadline is Saturday, April 4, 2026, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, April 9. 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-169.

This week’s winner gets a Scaredy Cat Hot Pot Trivet, an expensive-feeling silicone kitty who arches defensively at you until you flatten him with a saucepan. Fortunately, in the footsteps of his progenitor Sylvester, he pops right back up again. Donated by Dave Prevar.




It should last at least 999 lives: This week’s prize trivet.
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.

InvisibleInk!
Idea: ()
Examples: (Jennifer Hart; Kevin Cuddihy; Russell Beland; Meg Sullivan; Tom
O'Connor; Jean Sorensen; Jennifer Hart)
Judging: ()
Title: (Chris Doyle)
Subhead: (Jesse Frankovich)
Prize: (Dave Prevar)
Add:H:1588: ()
VisibleInk!