Style Conversational Week 1270: We’re not gray, we’re silver
On our 25th birthday, looking back over the past five years
Bob Staake's alternative version for this week's Style Invitational. The
Empress opted for the old-timey swimsuit over the bra and panties. (Bob
Staake for The Washington Post)
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Pat Myers
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Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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March 8, 2018 at 3:16 p.m. EST
Five years ago this week, The Style Invitational got to celebrate its
20th anniversary with a splashy multi-page spread in what was then
called the Sunday Style section. On the cover
was a
Bob Staake cartoon depicting the Empress and her predecessor, the Czar;
inside were 10 mini-retrospectives on such themes as classic neologisms
,
limericks
our memorable prizes
and classic entries from the preceding 10 years;
and there even was an article about the Losers,
the social community that emerged among Invite players and fans right
from the start.
For our silver anniversary, we didn’t get any extra space in the paper
this week, but I truly feel blessed that we’re still here in The Post,
with — as far as I know — no reason to think we won’t be back next week
or the next or the next till whenever. And this week’s contest
— playing off “25” with a choice of five-line
poetic forms — should produce memorable results. Maybe we’ll fondly
recall them when we turn 30 in 2023.
Since that 2013 anniversary, The Post has been through a/lot: / Most
notably, later that year, the Graham family sold the paper to a bald guy
named Jeffrey P. Bezos, whose World’s Deepest Pockets
were able to
transform it from a desperately struggling sinking ship to a robust,
dominant force in journalism worldwide — and a financially successful
one that continues to expand the newsroom toward its size before the
cash-strapped paper jettisoned hundreds of staffers in several waves of
early-retirement buyouts (including me — since 2009 I’ve been running
the Invite as a freelancer).
In 2014 the Sunday Style tabloid — where the Invitational occupied the
whole back page — was subsumed into a large Arts & Style section in the
Sunday paper; we now run regularly on the next-to-last page, with a bit
less room than we used to have, and no more color. But even back then,
and certainly by now, the print paper was just one, almost niche
“platform” of The Washington Post, with just a small fraction (and a
local one) of its total, global readership. I’ve had Invite readers
refer to the column as “your blog.” Often, including this week, the
online Invitational includes more entries than the print version.
And, of course, while the Invitational has used political humor from the
very start, these past few years have almost inevitably turned us into
Trump Central.
So how about if this week I share with you a few favorite winners from
these past five years — ones that /aren’t / T-centered? All the entries
below are first-prize winners. You can see all the contests in full via
the links on Loser Elden Carnahan’s amaaaazing Master Contest List
.
/Week 1013, jokes in riddle form that use puns on people’s names: /
Q. Is squeaky-voiced smarminess annoying in all adolescent pop stars?
A. No, Justin Bieber. (Natalie Beary, Great Mills, Md., then age 13)
/Week 1015, music fictoids: / Van Morrison wrote “Brown Eyed Girl” about
his then-girlfriend Elizabeth Taylor. They broke up shortly thereafter.
(Paul Kondis, Alexandria, Va.)
/Week 1019, what to do during Screen-Free Week:/ Turn your head sideways
and smile to show people when you’re joking. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.)
/Week 1028, “joint legislation” with names from the first Congress/: The
Johnson-Sevier-Lee-Lee-King bill to establish the key rule for ending a
filibuster. (Doug Hamilton, College Park, Md.)
/Week 1030, cinquains: /
Weiner —
“Carlos Danger”! —
Rears his head in hubris.
Doesn’t need our votes, he needs a
new bris. (Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.)
/Week 1031, “air quotes”:/ Ameri“can”: A butt larger than a size 18.
(Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.)
/Week 1033, limericks featuring “fa-” words: /
A physicist/humorist, Nell,
Had a comedy show where she’d tell
Of her spreadsheeting gaffes —
It drew thousands of laughs
Because farce equals math times Excel
. (Matt Monitto, Elon,
N.C.)
/Week 1038, convoluted answers to simple questions: /
Why are boogers salty?
Because boogers come from your nose,
and “rhino-” is a prefix that means “nose,”
and Ryan O’Neal starred in “Paper Moon,”
and the moon makes the tides rise,
and a rising tide lifts all boats,
and boats get barnacles,
and “barnacles” contains the letter block “nacl,”
and “NaCl” is the formula for salt.
Duh. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.)
Week 1044, comical safety rules: To avoid spinal injuries to women,
elementary school sidewalks must be poured as continuous slabs of
concrete
.
(Stan McCoy, Bethesda, Md.)
/Week 1045, find an “answer” in a song and write a question:/ From
“Ain’t No Sunshine”:
A. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I
know . . .
Q. Didn’t I say you couldn’t stop a moving helicopter rotor by yourself?
(Larry Gray, Union Bridge, Md.)
/Week 1058, good/bad/ugly: /
Good: You get to spend a summer’s day at a beautiful beach.
Bad: It’s awfully crowded and noisy.
Ugly: It is June 6, 1944. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)
/Week 1059, add a parenthetical to a song title:/ (Ad)just the Way You
Are (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)
//Week 1073, bank headlines:
/Real headline (from The Post’s food section):/ It’s not much to look
at, but this pickle rocks
/Bank head: /Bill Clinton recounts best pickup line ever (Mike Gips,
Bethesda, Md.)
/Week 1077, Tom Swifty jokes:/ “Every time you ask, you’ll get the same
answer; I did not have sex with that woman,” Bill Clinton said reliably.
(Greg Arnold, Herndon, Va.)
/Week 1087, college courses: / PSYC 207: Welcome to Your College
Nightmare. Participants will not be notified of their enrollment in this
class until the morning of the final exam. Note: Class location is
subject to weekly change without notice; each student will attend at
least one class session in the nude. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)
/Week 1091, good idea/bad idea: /
Good idea: Give a bowl of irises to your wife.
Bad idea: Give Ebola viruses to your wife. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)
/Week 1097, Amazon reviews of everyday products: /“Universal Paper Clips
72210”: Universal paper clips, my tentacle! Instead of neatly fastening
documents here on Naxerine Bb, these paper clips instantly melted due to
the heat of our binary suns. Amazon’s delivery service, however, was
surprisingly good. (Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.)
/Week 1101, yearly retrospective: / From Week 1051, anagrams of some text;
/Original:/ “ ‘A word to the wise ain’t necessary — it’s the stupid ones
that need the advice.’ — Bill Cosby”
/Anagrams to:/ A word to the ladies, evident by nasty tactics he uses,
is: Don’t be alone with this creep. (Kevin Dopart, Washington)
/Week 1103, pair a song title and a TV show: /“Three Times a Lady” for
“The Biggest Loser” (Larry Gray, Union Bridge, Md.)
/Week 1108, valentines:/ To Yoko from John: We could make beautiful
music together. Well, I could anyhow. (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.)
/Week 1110, Your Mama jokes: / Yo-Yo Ma’s Mama is so dumb she named her
son after her favorite stringed instrument. (Dave Silberstein, College
Park, Md.)
/Week 1114, optimistically slanted headlines : / //Milk Cartons Are
Beautified With Youthful Portraits (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)
Awww, I’m running out of space and time and hardly reached 2015. I’ll
just have to do this exercise some more in a future week. And I’m
definitely going to turn some of the winners above into Style
Invitational Ink of the Day graphics on Facebook.
*THE ’GRAM AWARDS: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1266*
For the fifth time, The Tile Invitational delivered a wealth of
neologisms from the 40 “racks” cribbed from the ScrabbleGrams word game,
which runs in the print Post every weekday. I’d neglected this year to
say, as I have in the past, that it was also okay to humorously define a
real word; I let such entries in anyway (including this week’s winner).
All the seven-letter racks do contain a real seven-letter word; if you
can’t figure one out and it’s bugging you, just enter the letters into
the box on wordfinders.com (among others) and
click.
And in another major demonstration of What Else Has Changed With the
Invite Since March 2013, once again Jesse Frankovich takes the
first-prize Lose Cannon — along with three honorable mentions and the HM
subhead. Back in 2004 and 2005, Jesse got ink in eight Invite contests —
and disappeared. Until October 2015. Since his sudden return, Jesse has
essentially run away, Secretariat-in-the-Belmont-like, with the Invite,
with multiple blots of ink virtually every week since. In the past year,
he scored an unthinkable 161 blots of ink, averaging well over three a
week — and this week he beats even that.
The Jesse of the 2000s Decade, Kevin Dopart — who was the Invite’s top
scorer for seven straight years and who still hasn’t flagged to a truly
sane level — takes second place, his 110th ink “above the fold.” and
1,358 in all. On the other hand, it’s just the second trip to the
Losers’ Circle for Sarah Jay, who has an actual life (as a veterinarian)
and gets her 14th ink all-time. Then there’s Jon Gearhart — another of
our Past Five Years stars — who since 2014 has 154 blots and 16 winners
and runners-up.
*What Doug Dug: * Ace copy editor Doug Norwood thought this week’s
results were consistent throughout, that “there wasn’t one that I
thought didn’t belong there.” His faves: Jesse’s winner, Kevin’s second
place and also honorables Anvilla as iron-enriched ice cream (Kevin
Mettinger), Nilla, Va., as the whitest Virginia suburb (J. Larry
Schott); Jesse’s Ye Crap, what Henry VIII called people from “chamber
pot countries”; and also Jesse’s 10-patty Enormac; Michele Uhler’s Dr
Vile for Larry Nassar’s license plate; and Drew Bennett’s Eel TV as a
poor second behind Shark Week.
*Should Have Kept Them Scrambled: The Unprintables*
Too tasteless even for the Invite:
ABEFFOT —> Off-beat: What Yoda does in the shower. (Jesse Frankovich)
ABEFFOT —> Aft-ef: Sodomy. (Tom Witte)
ABCLOOX —> Boolax: OTC treatment for scaring the s--- t out of you.
(Drew Bennett; Jamie Martindale, writing from Latvia)
ADEEKWY —> Eyewad: One of the hazards of giving a facial. (Tom Witte)
ADEEKWY --> Weed KY: A marijuana-infused lubricant. For potted planting.
(And yes, Tom Witte)