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BPBTC: Two Winners, Two Dollies

January 28, 2021
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Another Bad Pun Brain Teaser today. Here is the contest, and the response, as it appears now on my Samsung laptop:

2021 0128 bpbt dolly

Scott and Jess are frequent flyers with my contests, and frequent winners. So this time I made an Executive Decision:

WOW, that didn’t take long. Scott, multi-Bad Pun winner, has the correct answer. Jessica, multi-Bad Pun winner, has THREE brilliant answers, and the Judges say they would accept at least two of them, the left one and the right one.

What am I going to do with you two brilliant people? I don’t want to discourage you, but I do want to give ordinary mortals a chance. So here’s the deal: henceforth, you two must WAIT TO POST a minimum of ONE HOUR. As soon as you get the answer, write it down and take a time-stamped pic, so if you both get it the prize will go to the first.

Meanwhile, I’ll try to come up with harder Bad Pun Brain Teasers. Truly, I am in awe!

Oh, the Judges would also have accepted “River Deep, Mountain High,” and, if Dolly were wearing too tight a bra, “PLEASE Release Me, Let Me Go.”
ETA on the two Dollies is three days or so. I want to do them justice.

One more acceptable answer–blinding flash of the obvious from Yours Truly–“Hello, Dolly.”

And here is what Scott will receive in the mail in a couple of days:

2021 0128dolly01

And this one’s for Jess:

2021 0128 dolly02

Congratulations to the brilliant Winners!!

BPBTC and aftermath, 29 Nov 2020

November 29, 2020
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Today I had another Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest on Facebook, thus:

Wow, it’s been forever since our last Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest. This one here may be easier for anyone who’s been through a pregnancy.

A man and his pregnant companion are in the kitchen. “Wow, I’m hungry,” the man says. “I’m gonna make lunch. Want some?”His companion thinks about it, sniffs the air, makes a face, and says, “No thanks. I _______.”

Fill in the blank with a single seven-letter word that makes a truly wretched Bad Pun of this scenario, and if you’re the first one with the right answer, you win! Win what? We’ll see.Contest ends at one PM Mountain Standard Time, when I’ll disclose the answer, if there is no winner, or congratulate the winner and announce the prize, if someone has answered correctly.

Have fun, Friends!

Almost instantly I heard from Jessica Renee Ballantyne, a frequent flyer with my contests and the winner of the very first contest I had:

“No thanks I gestate.”
“No thanks I just ate”

This is, of course, the correct answer. Jessica went on to explain that she had independently invented, and employed, the Bad Pun when she herself was pregnant.

So I on-the-spotted her prize with this comment:

CONGRATULATIONS, Jess!!! Not only have you Won, you have Won Again! You are one Smart Cookie, with or without a Bun in the Oven!

We don’t have to wait till one PM. It’s my contest and I change rules at whim. So here’s your prize, if you choose to accept it, Jessica: If you provide me with a title, I will write three poems, using three different poetic forms, using the title you provide for each. If you specify a poetic form I will use it for one of the poems. (If you pick Ballade or Sestina it may take a couple of days!!)

If you don’t want to do this, that’s okay too. If that’s the case, your prize will be Bragging Rights.Again, congratulations!

Jess gave me the title “Starry Night” after the Van Gogh painting. So I first wrote a Sonnet.

****
Starry Night

Some see the stars as fixed but VVG
Lent vortices of motion with his paint:
Impasto in impassioned filigree
Illumes a humble town with unrestraint.

He saw stars in his brainstorms, some have said.
Photemic teeming of hallucination
Acquired in his lonely madman’s bed
With kinesthetic sight based on sensation.

But Truth is often found in an asylum,
Beatitude oft had with heart’s expression,
And metaphor turns blandness into ylem
The primal stuff we mix a batch of Fresh in.

The Starry Night sees Vincent’s flag unfurl:
Above a town, a tidal, Cosmic Whirl.
****

Next came a Senryu:

****
starry night

here i am says light
endlessly variable
in shifting array
****

Third and last was a Villanelle:

****
starry Night

“the stars are not above,” perceives the child.
“they full surround the sun, the earth, and me.
exploding, they birth elements gone wild.”

when chandrasekhar’s limit is defiled
massivity begets its potpourri.
“the stars are not above,” perceives the child.

“it’s sweet to think a kind Creator smiled
As pressure built and Chaos was set free–
Exploding, it loosed Elements, made wild.

“this starry Night, so temperately mild
includes some supernovae on a spree–
the stars more than ‘above,'” perceives the child.

“as gold is ringed and silicon is tiled,
as oxygen is tanked, we thank who be
exploring with those elements gone wild.”

the child descends the hill, her entry filed.
she spoke of starry Night, and Majesty.
the stars below, above, around the child
explode anew with meekness fused to Wild.
****

I was jazzed after finishing the poems, and thought I had enough juice left to do an illustration to the sonnet. It was true.

For Vincent’s face I used as source not one of his self-portraits, but rather one of the existing photographs of him. For the suggestion of his famous painting I found a photo of it in its frame at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where it is part of their permanent collection.

Big thanks to Jessica, who kept me out of trouble and creatively productive all afternoon doing this project. I feel that this was the absolute best use of my time today, and I’m grateful to Jess for the inspiring title that made it so!

BPBTC, First of November

November 1, 2020
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Friends, I had another Bad Pun Brain Teaser contest on Facebook.. I will not reveal the answer here, but it is on my Facebook timeline. What I will do is pose the question and then reveal the prize I’ve made for the winner.

Ed was on a special blind date, with special instructions. He had a young, talking rubber tree in a pot that was easy to carry. As he walked toward his Blind Date rendezvous the tree kept saying to passers-by “Nice hat, Sweetheart” or “Have a wonderful day in that great-looking suit, fella” or “Heaven just called. They want you back, Angel.”

Ed’s date was easy to spot. She was at a table at the Alfresco Bistro and the lovely bonsai she had brought had just told the server, “You look dapper indeed, Sir.”

“Marcia?”

The young lady stood and said, “Hello, Edward. Very nice to meet you.” She gestured to the tree. “This is for you.”

Her bonsai said, “Yippee! I know I’m going to like you, Ed. And you can call ME Ed if you want. Two Eds are better than one!”

Ed smiled and said, “Thanks, Other Ed, I will.” He then placed the rubber tree next to Marcia’s chair. “I hope you like him, Marcia.”

In a smooth, Morgan-Freeman-reassuring voice the rubber tree said, “I can tell we’ll get along famously, my dear Marcia.” And Marcia smiled.

Friends, this scene may seem bizarre, but with the help of a Bad Pun it becomes something that happens all the time on blind dates. What were Ed and Marcia doing?

First correct answer will get an original drawing of the blind date scene, including the talking plants.

20201101_112742

Congrats again to Scott, and here’s a heads-up, Friends: I intend before the end of the month to conduct a Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest on this blog! 🙂

Inktober 25th, 2020: Buddy

October 25, 2020
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Today’s Inktober prompt first got me thinking about the celebrities named Buddy that had won my admiration. There was Buddy Hackett, one of the funniest guys of all time. Buddy Rich, the incredible jazz drummer, and Buddy Holly, legendary rocknroller. Jack Nicholson was Buddy Rydell in Anger Management and Jerry Lewis was Buddy Love in The Nutty Professor.

But decent portraits of any or all of them would take hours. I wanted to do something quick, and something original. A lightbulb suddenly popped alit in a thought balloon over my head–the ULTIMATE Buddy would be…a conjoined twin! But what would the other twin be named–Muddy? Cruddy? Spuddy? No. Another lightbulb: SYSTEM! They would share a lower body, and they would walk using…the Buddy System!

And I could use this idea not only for Inktober, but for the Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest I sometimes inflict on my Facebook readership! And before a lamb’s tail shook twice, I posted this in Facebook:

Friends, here’s yet another Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest. This one is a toughie. If I hadn’t thought of it myself, I don’t think I would be able to solve it. But many of my readers are smarter than I am, so…

Imagine conjoined twin boys. They share the lower body all the way up to the iliac arches of their one pelvis. The one on the right as you’re looking at them has an unusual name: System. The one on the left has a much more ordinary name, that of a famous actor. What is his name?

Deadline is 3 PM today, Mountain Standard Time.

Winner gets a signed Laser print of one of my Inktober drawings.

Good luck, Solvers!

And in about an hour the contest was won by Brenda Anna of Maryland. She will be getting a signed print of today’s Inktober drawing, which is this:

2020 1025 inktober buddy

An Honorable Mention goes out to my former co-worker Nate Pleger, whose answer was “Joaquin,” after famous actor Joaquin Phoenix. Nate explained that they would need to get around using the “Joaquin System,” and that is a perfect example of a Bad Pun.

Another Honorable Mention goes out to the Funniest Man On Earth, Bill Campana, who just kept throwing out famous actors’ names, and goofed around with a weird blend of names (“rin tin dicaprio” for instance), and almost put me on the floor, crying from laughing. Bill came up with the correct actor, and answer, when he thought of Buddy Ebsen, but he was exactly one minute too late. And my classmate and friend Kristi Whitehurst Beckman also was correct but not in time.

Thanks to all participants!

Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest, 8 Oct 2020

October 9, 2020
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Yesterday I had yet another Bad Pun Brain Teaser contest. This makes about 10 or so. But this time there could be any number of correct answers (usually there is only one–or two when someone is clever enough to solve with an alternate solution!)

Here’s another Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest. What’s a Washing Machine’s favorite Jukebox selection?

Friends, there is MORE THAN ONE RIGHT ANSWER to this one. I’ve thought of two, but there may well be a dozen or more. And anyone commenting with an answer that rings true will win a Washing Machine with their name on it!! –A DRAWING of a Washing Machine, I hasten to add. If I were independently wealthy it would be a different story.

Ready to Fill, Soak, Agitate and Spin, Friends? Then GO!!! The deadline is Midnight tonight in your favorite Time Zone.

The response was WONDERFUL. No one came up with the two I had concocted before the contest started. They were “Let’s Get Loaded (Like We Used To Do)” and “The Cycle of Life.” The winning responses were better than mine, I think.

Kristi Whitehurst Beckham: “Twist and Shout”
Birdie Birdashaw: “You Spin Me Right Round”
Nancy Gunther: “A Little Bit of Soap”
Lyn Herndon Burmeister: “Ebb Tide” AND “Downy By the Riverside”
Wayne S. Hoyt: “Good Vibrations” AND “Turn! Turn! Turn!”
Scott Kaye: “I’m Amana”
Marv Edward Person: “You Make Me Feel Brand New”
Thomas Elmer: “Do the Twist”

And here are the prizes, which I did in as close to “real time” as I could manage as the entries rolled in. Congratulations, Winners!!!

2020 1009 contest