SOME CONVERSATIONAL TEXT This file combines all the text we have into one file, which you can search. If your search fails and you think it's our error, kindly advise. You can also get to Conversational text through the Master Contest List. ====================================================================== WEEK 2022, published ====================================================================== WEEK 1008, published February 10, 2013 February 7, 2013 Week 1008: Yeow, did the bills come in! Now let’s go to the movies. by The E — Pat Myers If your idea of an addictive time-suck is getting into political arguments on Facebook, or clicking on link after digressive link to even more Merrie Melodies cartoons on YouTube, think what it’s like to leaf through binders full of ... more than 500 Style Invitational columns in a search of a varied sampling of the best, most representative entries, cartoons, prizes and more from the past 10 years. Especially if another human is in the same room, enabling you to read entry after entry out loud. But at least I can say it’s for my job. And not only will we inevitably end up with slew of great stuff in the March 3 20th-anniversary retrospective (in print March 3, online, I hope, by Feb. 28), but I got to be reminded of some classic contests that clearly need another airing. This is one. Here are the original results from Week 524, https:**www.scribd.com*document*124383661*Results-of-Style-Invitational-Week-524 which were published a couple of months before I officially became Empress. But I think I had a hand in judging this contest; in the months leading up to when I overthrew the Czar, we had started to work together a bit. Note that while the original contest allowed both books and movies, this is just for film. If all goes as hoped, this new format of the Conversational has let me share with you Bob Staake’s two sketches for this week’s contest — he shared them himself this morning on Facebook, to demonstrate to his thousands of FB friends the silly demands he has to put up with from his various clients. I asked Bob on Tuesday morning which of two sample entries he’d like to illustrate: “The Brief Pelican” or “You Are 54 — Where Car?” He chose the latter, and in short order sent me the top drawing. See, I happen to be exactly 54. To me, this lady looked about 75. And “54” was the point of the joke — that your mind tends to start with the senior moments before the body actually turns senior.. It was the suggestion of my son, the Scion of the Style Invitational, who suggested that it’s easier to illustrate the concept of middle age with a man than a woman, because you can show a man as balding, paunchy, etc., but not elderly. With women, you pretty much have to go with a subtle amount of facial wrinkling to establish “in her fifties.” And it’s the beauty of Bob that a day later, he sent today’s sex-changed final, which I love. The contest: You can change the punctuation; capitalization shouldn’t be an issue. Don’t break up the words in the original into two or more words; the point is to rejigger the words in the title, not the letters. Yes, you have to use all the words in the title. As you can see from the results of the preceding contest, entries are generally funnier when it’s clear what the original movie was; if the movie is obscure, or if the words are rearranged beyond recognition, some of the humor will be lost, though perhaps not fatally. The Riotous Acts: The ‘joint legislation’ results of Week 1005 By my count, I’ve now judged the joint-legislation contest six times — for the freshmen (and sometimes exiting members) of the 109th through 113th Congresses, plus the 2010 off-year edition, in which we used only those legislators who were still in office since before the Invite did its first freshman contest in 1994. And , much as with the horse-“breeding” contests, they’re always a slog to judge, but a fun slog. Because it always yields so much funny stuff. By “slog,” I mean that many of the entries have to be puzzled out, said out loud; I can’t just move my eyes down the list. And of course because there are just so many entries from so many people (probably because it’s so easy to come up with some amusing combinations of two out of almost 100 names). But I’m always excited to see a lot of new names among the entrants, especially when they end up getting ink: I’ve been keeping track of new entrants (as opposed to people who actually get ink) only for a couple of years, as I update the e-mail list each week. But the 105 new names for Week 1005 were by far the biggest deluge; by comparison, I got 13 new people for Week 1007 (though many entrants were among those who started in 1005). Thanks to those Losers who took pains to include the “translations” of their entries but let me hide them while I gave the first read; putting them on a separate line, or listing them in a block below the group of entries, both worked well. It did prove useful a number of times when I wouldn’t have figured it out otherwise. I don't think I had to look up any entries that eventually got ink, but on the other hand, I’m reading hundreds of these entries at a time; after I see Esty used over and over to mean “is the,” I tend to forget that another reader might have to puzzle over it. As I did two years ago, I’m including the “answer key” for readers who can’t figure out the sound of the entry, or don’t get the reference. While some of them here can be hard to figure out, I still think they’re valid, especially if you have a sense of humor. As I warned the Style Invitational Devotees on Facebook earlier today: “Please try to turn down your griping dial this week about who’s getting credited for what combination of congressional names. There are going to be a lot of instances where someone had that combination, but with extra or fewer names attached, or with a very slightly different description. I have great faith that you will not let this wreck your day, and mine.” In fact, our winner today, Rick Haynes’s Heck-Pocan-Cook-Rice wasn’t unique in its entirety; some other entries had Pocan-Cook-Rice. But to me (and also to the Czar, whom I discussed this with) it was that starting “Heck” that turned the bill perfectly into a Marie Antoinette-style show of ignorant , contemptuous lack of compassion. It’s the fourth win for Rick (very misleading stats anagram: “He Is Cranky”), who recently retired to Florida from the D.C. area, and his 109th blot of ink. (These ink figures are from the last time Elden Carnahan updated the stats, so I’m sorry if the numbers are a couple short.) John Glenn (no, he’s not) of Tyler, Tex., who doesn’t enter often or with many entries but often gets ink when he does, gets Ink No. 19 (and 20) today, but his runner-up is his sixth ink “above the fold”; his “war in Yoho” was one of the few entries this week that made me laugh out loud. It’s a welcome return for longtime Loser Steve Fahey, who hadn’t been Inviting for years, it seems; Steve picks up his 165th ink, and 25th above the fold, since his debut all the way back in Week 104. And another always clever enters-now-and-again vet, David Smith, came up with the best of many takes on JFK conspiracies this week, for Ink No. 72. The HAW this week from Sunday Style Editor Lynn Medford — well, I don’t know if she actually emitted said HAW, since she’s in the newsroom and I’m home at Mount Vermin, but she liked it most — was the Horseford-Cartwright bill. Too inside, but cute was this “And Last”: The Jeffries-Payne Act to mandate that this contest be run with every new Congress. (Jeff Contompasis, who gripes about this contest every time.) Didn’t even make it to committee: The unprintable acts (DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE ANY TASTE) As I said, there were 247 entries that featured the legislative work of Rep. Peters. Holding-Peters. Pocan-Peters. Flake-King-Peters. Cook-Peters! And many, many others. I gave ink to two of them, but they won’t be in the print paper. And if I had to argue for those, you can see why these weren’t even close. (As often true in this section, I don’t necessarily consider all the entries inkworthy. But they’re funny in their tastelessness. (The “Schatz’ entries meaning feces ended up here as well.) The Gallego-LaMalfa-King-Peters Act addressing reverse sexual harassment. (Deb Dawkins) The Swalwell-Peters Act to promote the nutritional value of following through on oral sex. (Warren Standley) The Peters-Swalwell Act--Well, honey, it’s not really an “act”; it’s more of a “maneuver”. Here, let me show you... -- Divine Brown (William Verkuilen) The Peters-Flake Resolution, calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to officially retire the term ‘smegma’ and replace it with ‘organ dandruff’ (David Garratt) The Swalwell-Peters Act to regulate Your Mama. (Dixon Wragg) Brownley-Pocan Act in honor of ex-Senator Santorum (Mark Richardson) The Takano-Schatz Bill encouraging new members not to stink up the congressional washroom (Sam Ackerman) The Titus-Heck Act to allow more explicit advertising for K-Y Jelly (Neil Starkman) The Cook-Schatz bill for a fossil fuel alternative (Bill Clark) The King Schatz Brownley Act to declare that royal poop don’t stink. (Stephen Dudzik) Shatz-Titus-Heck Act - Congressional attempt to free logjams (Dave Komornik) The Yoho-Cruz-Castro-Wagner-Peters Act extending truth-in-advertising laws to prostitutes in the Tenderloin district and any other place a red-blooded American guy might reasonably expect to encounter an actual, you know, female, for crying out loud. (Paul Burnham, Gainesville) The Enyart-Titus Lubrication Research Act (Jonathan Hardis) myersp@washpost.com ====================================================================== WEEK 1078, published June 29, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1078: Broadway maladies of 1074; The fun of judging the Week 1074 parodies was tempered only by having to exclude so many. Washington Post Blogs June 26, 2014 Thursday 8:01 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1159 words Byline: Pat Myers Body I am going to be brief today (she lied as always), because I'd much rather you spend your Invite time reading the results of Week 1074, the songs about stage or movie musicals, written as parodies of songs from different musicals. This week's inkworthy entries are so well done -and so numerous -that a reader could think it wasn't all that hard to produce them. (Anyone who's written a good one will surely set you straight.) When Matt Monitto suggested this contest (along with a ready-made example), I jumped right at it. My only concern was that you did have to be familiar with musicals, which I defined for this contest as plays in which the characters do a significant amount of singing (which allowed for operas, but not movies in which songs play only as background music). This turned out to be no obstacle at all for the Loser Parodists, who sent both parodies and descriptions of everything from "La donne e mobile" to this year's overpoweringly popular Disney movie, "Frozen." I had great, great fun (perhaps my spouse less so -my parakeet, though, was in heaven) starting up the YouTube clips and singing dozens of the parodies out loud. I became better acquainted with plot points of "The Book of Mormon" and "Brigadoon" and was unfortunately infested with the earworm of "Would You Like to Build a Snowman." The only part of the process that wasn't fun was deciding which perfectly deserving parodies wouldn't make the list. In print, I fit in eight songs, two of them shortened; online, I kept adding one more and one more until I was left with my usual too many for any reasonable person to read through, let alone sing out loud or mentally in the time it takes to sing songs. It truly pains me to deny ink to work that not only required a lot of effort, but also should be read by others, because it's so good. So I hope I'll provide some comfort in posting non-inking songs once a day or so over the next couple of weeks on the Style Invitational Devotees page. I did this for non-inking parodies from last year's parody results for any movie described by a parody of any song, and I think they got more exposure and appreciation than if they'd been, say, the 27th song in the results. I chose to let a number of the songs run longer this time than I had in past years; chopping them would have weakened them, and in some cases would have rendered them unsingable. Among the great stuff not appearing today: "Anatevka" set to "Oklahoma!" and "Oklahoma!" set to "Anatevka," a pair sent by Nan Reiner, who simply outdid herself in this contest, sending nine outstanding parodies, along with clips of herself singing them. Kel Nagel also had the clever idea of setting the "Fugue for Tinhorns" trio from "Guys & Dolls" ("I've got the horse right here...") to the tune of the "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" trio from "Fiddler on tempered only by having to exclude so many. the Roof," and vice versa, stumbling only in the bridge of "Matchmaker," which I'm afraid didn't come close to matching the tune and words ("But my wife thought it worked when I sang it to her," Kel protested; as I said four weeks ago, you have to have someone else try to sing it, not just listen, since you won't be there for the reader to bend the accents of the word to your desired meter). And yes, this wasn't a week in which I could wait till the very end of the process to find out who wrote what: occasionally had to ask someone a question or ask the person to tweak something. On the other hand, I did very little editing this week; the parodies appear basically as they were sent in. This is Nan's ninth top win, and certainly not the first for parodies, and she's now up to 194 blots of ink. Plus, I guess, the point she gets from Stats Guy Elden Carnahan for having donated this week's prize. Melissa Balmain's hilarious take on "Frozen" -including the comparison of the princess's eyes to those of a lemur -brings her not only the vintage Year 2 Loser T-shirt that probably was never worn by Elden Carnahan, but also her 48th ink. Melissa, by the way, is the author of a brand-new collection of her very funny poems called "Walking In on People," and it's just a delight. Here's one called "Fed Up," which posits a different culprit in the Red Riding Hood story: Red Riding Hood's grandma had chest pains galore,cholesterol looming at two-forty-four,and blood pressure spikes. Though she kept it all quiet,her daughter found out and imposed a strict diet.No more would she bundle Red off with a pailof cookies for Granny; instead she sent kaleand casseroles ranging from foul to insipidbecause she had stripped them of every known lipid.One day Red arrived to find Granny in bed."Come closer, my dumpling," the dowager said.Forget the lame cover-up tale that came later:No wolf gobbled Red. It was Granny who ate her. Mark Raffman, who won last year's parody contest, finds himself now with 137 blots of Invite ink and yet another runner-up prize. And in fourth place is a veteran Loser but not someone whose name I connected with parodies: Kathleen DeBold, who first got ink in Week 697 but oddly chose to have an actual life, gets her seventh ink and her first "above the fold," for her nifty precis of "The Phantom of the Opera" using the wonderfully contrasting "A Spoonful of Sugar." Kathleen gets her choice of Loser Mug or Grossery Bag. The big change between this week's contest and our recent versions of it is that you actually have to find something that has a hyphen, rather than to use the first or last few letters of any word. Online, just use your search function and move down the page: Even though most Web pages don't break up words with hyphens just to make the line lengths more uniform, there are still plenty of hyphens to be found in modifying phrases, hyphenated names, compound words, etc. If your search lands you on a hyphen that was supposed to be another punctuation mark, like a long dash, don't use that. Ultimately, of course, the humor rests with the funny word and definition you come up with. Funny sample sentences are a great way to make a definition funnier; unfunny sentences somehow don't do the same trick. As you can see in the examples, the placement of the hyphen isn't all that important, but you need to include it to follow the conceit of the contest, even if it doesn't add to the humor. Loser Wrangler Pie Snelson is getting a group togther for a contingent to go to see fellow Loser Ward Kay's play "The Livonians" as part of the Capital Fringe festival in Washington on Sunday, July 13. The tickets, which usually cost $17 plus a $5 "button" that is the one-time fee to attend the festival, are $12 each if you get them in blocks of 10. (And the tickets can be used for any show.) So if you'd like to be part of the group, e-mail me at pat.myers@washpost.com ASAP and I'll forward you to Pie. I'll definitely be going. pat.myers@washpost.com ====================================================================== WEEK 1080, published July 13, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1080: Can you be so bad you're good?; The Empress of The Style Invitational blabs about the week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs July 10, 2014 Thursday 7:53 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1789 words Byline: Pat Myers Body It's been a long time since I ran a contest asking for bad writing, or "bad" anything. My predecessor, The Czar, ran many of these, the most famous being the "bad analogies" contest of Week 120, which continues to circulate under such titles as "Analogies Found in Real High School Essays," though his introduction to the results conceded that "there is a fine line between an analogy that is so bad it is good and an analogy that is so good it is bad." Exactly -and that's why I usually ask for "novel" or "humorous" or "creative" writing, and let the reader decide whether it's badness or cleverness that makes the entry funny. But the Czar persuaded me this month to give the Week 1080 contest a go. He'd been told about the delightfully terrible work of William Topaz McGonagall by our former Post colleague David Von Drehle, onetime editor of the Style section, now with Time Magazine, and one of the most elegant writers I've had the pleasure to edit; and the Czar quickly offered up a "tragedie" of his own to use as an example. You definitely want to check out the website I linked to in this week's contest; It's an attractive British site called McGonagall Online, and it features biographical nuggets, "245 of his best (?) poems," a featured "Gem of the Day" poem (such as the one I quote from in the this week's lead), and a shorter "Quote of the Day"; today's is "And for her bravery she got married to the miller's eldest son* And Hanchen on her marriage night cried Heaven's will be done." The trick for the Invite, however, is that something can't just be bad; it has to be funny bad: the images will have to be especially ridiculous; the rhymes will have to be laughable; the subject matter perhaps will be a funny idea or something comically inappropriate. So when I argued with the Czar over his suggestion -I'm famously skeptical of contest ideas -and I said, "We've had contests for terrible poetry before. I don't like them as much as for good poetry," he assured me, "Oh, i would read these and parodies of these!" So let's hope that the Invite's readers have a similar interest. More to the point than the "analogies" contest mentioned above, the Invitational has done quite a few contests over the years specifically asking for bad poetry. Here are some of them (links are to the results; scroll past the new contest on a given link): Week 47: Bad Valentine's Day poetry. Week 107: Poems featuring homonyms; the direction was to "create poems so bad they thud." blabs about the week's new contest and results Week 203: Very Bad Poetry: "Your poem should contain banalities masquerading as profundities, overstretched metaphors, etc. Special attention should be paid to dreadful syntax and painful rhyme." Week 243: "Write a rhyming poem of two to eight lines as a tribute to someone famous who died in 1997, the more awful the better. We will particularly value rhymes that thud, and extremes of emotion and sentiment." Here was one of the cases in which the Czar overruled his criterion of "bad" in favor of clever: "We were looking for overly maudlin poetry," he notes in the intro to the results, "but the best entries were more witty than woebegone. So we exercised our unchecked dictatorial powers and revised the criteria. Those readers who feel cheated, please form a line to the left and someone will be with you shortly." Week 279: "Come up with a treacly and deeply moving piece of crap. It must somehow mine joy and goopy inspiration from the vicissitudes of life. It must also rhyme. " And, in my own only previous contribution to the contest genre: Week 627: Write a limerick or other short poem with comically awful rhyming. So the angle this week is that the poem should focus on a "tragedy," as well as be comically melodramatic and bad. I think there's humor to be mined from choosing a comical "tragedy" -for one thing, that's a lot better an idea than making jokes about a truly depressing or horrific event, especially a recent one. But I'm not ruling anything out beforehand. It might even work with actual sad events. And, just as the Czar did, I might just end up being unable to resist some genuine wit. For those who haven't delved into the links above, here's the winner of Week 203, "Very Bad Poetry." The Czar says it is "one of my favorite entries of all time":The world's great mathematicians assembled for a lectureTo hear a rising star prove the Taniyama ConjectureAnd the young man astounded those who did hear himBy also casually proving Fermat's Last Theorem!And for this achievement, everlasting glory and acclaimWill forever go to, y'know, whatsizname.(Charlie Steinhice, Chattanooga, Tenn.) Only a few of which (the entries, not the results) might have qualified for Week 1080. In general, as both I and the Losercorps predicted, I received perhaps 1,000 double dactyls of which at least several dozen were inkworthy; I was able to fit 19 into the print Invite and share nine more in the online version. I erred in requiring a rhyme within the first line -that's never been a feature of double dactyls, from the start -but it didn't really matter, since it's a nonsense phrase anyway; rarely did it even factor into my choices. I did stick to the requirement that someone be mentioned in the poem, and that one line comprise a six-syllable term; this ruled out a few otherwise inkable entries ("Style Invitational," though it has lots of personality and is so conveniently double-dactylic, isn't a person). As I did in the example for this contest, I allowed such words as "nymphomanically" and "hyper-emphatically" to count as six syllables, even though the dictionary would break them into seven. I certainly pronounce them as six-syllable words. I didn't run any (I don't think) in which words were broken across two lines. Frequent subjects in Week 1080 included Benedict Cumberbatch (of course!), the Kardashian, Eric Cantor, Hillary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg and Edward Snowden. But as you can see from the results, they ranged from Jesus of Nazareth to -it's becoming a running joke in the Invite -Your Mama. A number of verses referred to people who aren't quite historic, but have been out of the news for a long time; perhaps they weren't written specifically for this contest. (One person did venture that he was helpfully sending me one of his own, along with 24 favorites that he just stole.) I counted more than 20 entrants in Week 1080 who were new to the Invite; I think many of them heard about us after I went up and plugged the Invite last month at the West Chester Poetry Conference, and organizer Kevin Durkin -who suggested this contest -spread the word. The Loser roster now includes a dittyload of respected poets who've learned of us over the years. Today it expands by at least two First Offenders: R.S. "Sam" Gwynn, blabs about the week's new contest and results editor of the anthology Contemporary American Poetry, whom I met at the conference when we appeared on a panel about song parodies (between us, I was not the one who put on a terrycloth-towel cape and did the Elvis impression); and Susan McLean,, also a poet and professor, whom I haven't had the pleasure to meet, but probably doesn't do the cape thing. As usual, I didn't know who wrote this week's inking entries until after I'd judged them. (I had some hunches but was right only part of the time.) And it was great fun to discover that a First Offender had run off with first prize: I'll be sending out the Inkin' Memorial next week, along with his FirStink for his first ink, to Jeremy Horowitz, who zinged the failed gubernatorial campaign of UL-tra-con-SER-va-tive (he didn't use that!) Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia, who as attorney general tried to require invasive ultrasound procedures to women seeking abortions. I hope to see lots more from Jeremy. The other three bards "above the fold" this week are veterans of the Losers' Circle: Rick Haynes now has 11 wins and runners-up (with 120 blots of ink in all); Beverley Sharp is hard upon the Hall of Fame with 461 inks, including a ridiculous 43 above the fold; and Brendan Beary, well, even crazier totals than Beverley -in fact, something like double what she has. A number of people sent in entries about the Invitational, about the Empress, and about fellow Losers: I especially liked this ode to uber-wordsmith Chris Doyle, of the 1,578-ink Chris Doyle of Ponder, Tex.: Pindar-y Ponder­yChristopher Doyle is a Master of poetry - Limericks and such. No doubt today Chris's Lexi-dexterity'll Earn lots of ink for him.Me? Not so much. I JUST NOW looked up who wrote this and was surprised -and delighted -to discover that it's by not one of the typical poetry-ink winners, but by Tom Witte, another of the Invite's greats, but mostly through neologisms and other short-form contests. (Tom was right; he gets robbed of ink this week and holds at a mere 1,297 blots.) The audience on Facebook for the Style Invitational Ink of the Day has just shrunk by a big chunk because I can no longer post it (at least this month) on the Washington Post Style page (95,000 Likes) on Facebook. If that's where you'd been seeing it -or if you'd like to start seeing the daily little card with a classic Invite entry -go to bit.ly*inkofday and click Like, and you'll get it on your Facebook news feed. (You do need to look at it on Facebook, but accounts are free and you don't have to sign up with your own name.) Sad news from 57-time Loser Ward Kay: Ward, who's produced a number of plays in various cities, had to cancel at the last minute his production of "The Livonians," which was to have opened this weekend at D.C.'s Capital Fringe festival and to which a contingent of Losers had planned to attend. "The lead actor dropped out and we were already two actors short," Ward explained last night in a Facebook post; "The show has been cursed. The director was hospitalized last month. We've have three different leads with scheduling issues. I finally had to admit defeat." "The Livonians" is one of three Fringe plays that were canceled. Theater-stuff happens; it's very difficult to make theater work with a group of people who all have day jobs. Here's an article that quotes Ward. Some of the Losers and I will be going to other shows in the festival; we're still going Saturday evening to see "W3," a play on ecological themes featuring puppetry and, not least (okay, maybe least) the Royal Consort as the voice of a ghost whale); and Sunday at noon to see "Sage of Blackwell," a drama about a labor union official, with the Empress's daughter, Royal Scion 2, playing his longtime friend. If you'd like to join us for any of these, e-mail me at pat.myers@washpost.com or just show up. ====================================================================== WEEK 1081, published July 20, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1081: A proud tradition of utter stupidity; The Empress of The Style Invitational blabs about this week's contest and the Tom Swifty results Washington Post Blogs July 17, 2014 Thursday 7:53 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1868 words Byline: Pat Myers Body When you read stupid things on the Internet, it's hard to know if the writers (or those being written about) are being stupid or just playing at being stupid. The questions I'm quoting from the Yahoo Answers site in this week's Style Invitational struck me as authentic, and the comments responding to them as a mix of sincere and obviously snarky. (I've linked to each thread in the examples so that you can read the comments.) There really are a lot of ignorant - I mean uninformed - people out there. And, well, a lot of stupid ones too. The Invite has done several stupid-question contests over the years, in various forms. The first one, "Like, Duh" (Week 128, 1995), asked for "snappy answers to stupid questions," but that wasn't about comical ignorance; it was about questions whose answers were obvious, and the snarky response to them; Mad Magazine ran this sort of thing regularly. The results aren't so pertinent to today's contest, but they're pretty funny. Here are the top winners: Fourth Runner-Up: "Can I order a pizza?" "No, today we are delivering only gefilte fish." (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)-- Third Runner-Up: To a tall man: "Do you play basketball?" "No. Do you play miniature golf?" (Jim Jacobs, Arlington)|-- Second Runner-Up: "Are those twins?" "No, they're triplets, but I only take out two at a time. I rotate the third, like tires." (Gary Patishnock, Laurel, who has twins)-- First Runner-Up: "Do you know how fast you were going?" "I should think not, officer! At these speeds I prefer to keep my eyes on the road, not on the speedometer." (Jerrold M. Witcher, Takoma Park)-- And the winner of the stuffed and mounted turkey head: "Who do you think you are, anyway?" "I think I am Rene Descartes. Therefore, I am Rene Descartes. Who do you think you are?" (Phil Plait, Silver Spring) The contest that was most like today's was Week 217 (1997). Here are the examples the Czar offered, along with a warning that also pertains today. -If there is a God, and if He is a loving God, why does He allow bad things to happen, like, you know, when you hiccup that sour stuff and it tastes all yucky? -Why is the sky sort of greenish orange, or is that just me? -What is the sound of two hands clapping? This Week's Contest was suggested by Jonathan Paul of Garrett Park, who wins a rubber housefly that swells to the size of a baseball when you drop it in water. Jonathan says his teachers always told him there were no stupid questions, but he suspects this advice was wrong. Come up with truly stupid questions. And please spare us the ones about Grant's Tomb and why you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway, okay? We are looking for originality. The results are all one-liners, and a fair number of them actually fall into the obvious-answer category. As it sometimes happens with the Invite, the results of Week 1081 might tend toward something I hadn't had in mind, but blabs about this week's contest and the Tom Swifty r.... turned out to be much funnier --and this is why I'm so happy that the Losers are competing for a ceramic cup in the shape of a human breast, rather than, say, a diamond necklace: Report from Week 217, in which you were asked to disprove the old maxim that there are no dumb questions. Despite our warning to the contrary, many people submitted tired old jokes, and some tired new jokes, such as why people call those things "hemorrhoids" instead of "asteroids." Also, some people asked good questions that were too clever to win, such as this one by Bob Sorensen of Herndon: "Wasn't the Army looking for trouble by calling them `drill' instructors?" Here's another, from John Kammer of Herndon: "Why could the Professor build a nuclear reactor out of coconuts but not fix a hole in a boat?" These violated the fundamental precept of the contest. The questions had to be stupid. Sixth Runner-Up --Excuse me, does this pharmacy carry that "date rape" drug? (Russell Beland, Springfield)Fifth Runner-Up -- Why do people drive so close in front of me? Don't they realize it's dangerous? (Jerry Ewing, Fairfax)Fourth Runner-Up --Just where do you get off telling me what to do, Your Honor? (Elden Carnahan, Laurel)Third Runner-Up --Do I, like, have a shot at boinking you? (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)Second Runner-Up --Are you sure that's a spaceship behind the comet? Because I wouldn't want to make a mistake here. Okay, swell. Just checking. (Paul Styrene, Olney; John Kammer, Herndon)First Runner-Up --If you are not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat? (Dave Ferry, Leesburg)And the winner of the demonstration-model prostate gland: If I win this week, can I have the $75 instead of the prostate gland? (Edith Eisenberg, Potomac) We also ran two contests called Caller IDiot, for stupid questions to ask customer service hotlines, as well as auto-related questions to ask the "Car Talk" guys. These actually are closer to the ignorant-questioner model than the results of Week 217. The top winners of Week 648: 4. To Pampers: "It says 'for up to 25 pounds.' Isn't that . . . kind of a lot of poop?" (Brenda Ware Jones, Jackson, Miss.; Dan Seidman, Watertown, Mass.) 3. To Blue Cross: "After a night of heavy drinking, I woke up to find an image of Muhammad tattooed on my chest. Do you think you might cover tattoo removal in this one case? It might be a pretty big health issue for me if I don't do something." (Fred Dawson, Beltsville) 2. : To The Washington Post: "I'm wondering about your name. I mean, you don't really deliver the paper by mail anymore. Wouldn't it be more accurate to call yourselves The Washington Guy Driving a Minivan?" (Russell Beland, Springfield) And the Winner of the Inker: To Unilever Corp.: "Why do your Dove Bars taste like soap?" (Kevin Dopart, Washington) From Week 736: 4. My son just got his license and wants a V-8 Mustang. I'm afraid he'll drive too fast, trying to impress girls. Should we have him neutered first? (Russ Taylor, Vienna) 3. My 1999 Ford Taurus doesn't run properly at night. See, I drive a lot for my job, and from 8:30 a.m. until 5, the car runs fine. But then I park it outside a tavern at 5:30, and when I come out a few hours later, it's dark and my car veers all over the road. Please help. (Chris Rollins, Cumberland, Md.) 2.When I drive into a parking lot and set my car on "Park," it just sits there, even if there are several empty places very close by. What am I doing wrong? (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) And the Winner of the Inker: When I get my 2004 Mustang up to about 85 miles an hour, I hear a high-pitched whining off to my right that persists until I wind down to 60. What can I do to shut her up? (Chris Rollins) blabs about this week's contest and the Tom Swifty r.... And from Week 827: The Winner of the Inker: To the White House: My 2006 Chrysler Sebring is hesitating when I step on the accelerator. When can I bring it in? (Jeff Hazle, Woodbridge) 2. To Procter & Gamble: I love your Charmin toilet paper, but I hate those rolls that dispense from the underside. Can you tell me where I can buy rolls that dispense from the top of the roll? (James Noble, Lexington Park) 3.To Whole Foods: Can I just come in to your downtown store and buy a cow? (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) 4. To Colgate: Goo goo ga ga ma ma. . . . What, you're not understanding? Then why do your instructions for your Peroxyl Antiseptic Oral Cleanser very clearly say, "Children under 2: Consult a dentist or physician"? (Les Greenblatt, Ann Arbor, Mich.) So this week, see what you can do about being stupid in some way without committing the stupidity of repeating these winners. You can see the complete results of the above contests on the Master Contest List at nrars.org. Will we have a follow-up contest with answers to these questions? We'll have to see how the entries shake out. I wasn't sure I could fill up a whole page of Invite with fresh, clever Tom Swifty jokes, ones that didn't repeat any of the results of Week 44. Not a problem: I'm running about 40 entries, and robbing a number of others. I got lots and also lots of entries; 2,000 is a conservative estimate. Not everyone seemed to understand what makes a Tom Swifty funny (at least in my book, but my book, my dears, is the book, she said patronizingly); some entries didn't really use wordplay, or used an adverb that really made no sense on any level ("It's true the world over, Tom said universally"). I received a number of entries with Tom saying something "testily," and had chosen Mark Richardson's -"One more low blow and you're disqualified!" the referee said testily -until I noticed the Week 44 runner-up "Well, at least she didn't cut off everything," John Bobbitt said testily," credited to three entrants. (A few others, making jokes about standardized tests, etc., just didn't make the cut.) Also, because I was so specific in the contest announcement that the wordplay had to involve an adverb or verb, I didn't include this clever adjective*noun play by Larry Gray: "Please reconnect my breathing tube," Tom gestured with a detached air." In general, the jokes worked best when the adverb in the Swifty applied to the sentence itself on a literal level. But occasionally, the adverb was comically opposite the point of the joke: "beatifically" for Ike Turner, "bashfully" for Muhammad Ali. It's likely that readers won't get the jokes in all the entries. I took the rare and risky move of explaining a few of the jokes in the intro, hopefully at a safe distance from them, to help turn readers in the right direction to get the rest. But there are also some references that not everyone will know; quite in-cred-ibly, the deposed Czar of The Style Invitational -a man whose Twitter avatar is a pile of dog poop -was not familiar with the term "deuce." I added a few explanatory links, but if you're stumped, feel free to ask in the comments thread where I post the Invite on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. The Devs won't mock you -really, they're very supportive. They save their snark for the Invite. Theorize as you will, but for some (i.e., no) reason, all four of today's "above the fold" ink-blotters are guys from Northern Virginia. It's the fifth win for Greg Arnold, but his first Inkin' Memorial -in fact, Greg's last first-place finish was in Week 290, in 1998. Greg is famous as the guitarist of the Dueling Loser Band, which has amused the Great Unwashed at many a Loser function. It's the 41st ink above the fold for Jeff Contompasis as he strides toward the 400-ink mark; Jeff Shirley once again finds himself in the Losers' Circle as well. But it will be the first Loser Mug or Grossery Bag for David Litman, who gets his fourth blot of ink today. However, one of those blots was a win -in Week 269 (1998): How to alleviate traffic on the 14th Street Bridge: Rename it Runway 90L. I can't make it there myself, but there will definitely be a Confirmed Loser Sighting this Sunday at 11 at the Busboys & Poets branch in close-in Hyattsville, Md. If you'd like to join the party, RSVP to Elden Carnahan here. ====================================================================== WEEK 1082, published July 27, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1082: Beyond the tweet; The Empress of The Style Invitational blabs about this week's contest and the neologism results Washington Post Blogs July 25, 2014 Friday 12:34 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 795 words Byline: Pat Myers Body We said it up front: We ripped this week's contest for altered band names right off Twitter. Here's the thread of contributions so far under the hashtag #RemoveALetterRuinABand. Most of the contributions aren't very funny or clever; a few are funny but not clever. Not because Twitter posters aren't clever (well, there is that) but because the thread - as well as, to some extent, the limit on tweet lengths - doesn't allow for creativity. Good thing we're here. We offer 19th-century turnaround time -Elizabeth Bennet could post a letter to Mr. Darcy in Derbyshire and get a snarky response, three times over, in the period I take to get around to looking at the entries and running the results -but you do get more of an opportunity to flaunt your skill at humor writing. And the chance to compete for limited-edition Bob Staake artworks: Only 100 of these sculptures were made, and only 500 of this print and this print. There are also only 100 of this Staake textile art, though we might put some more on the loom. Of course, you might be too funny and end up with a bobblehead of the Lincoln Memorial statue, or of a dayglo orange web belt embroidered with letters that sort of form Rolling Stones song names. It's a risk. In fact, I was surprised to find, from a scan of Elden Carnahan's One-Hit Wonders list on the Loser Stats page at nrars.org, that something like 87 people have won the whole contest but have never gotten another blot of ink, plus a few more who've won only the second-place gag prize. (Most shockingly, a full four hundred Losers were runners-up with their only ink, about 1 in 7 of the One-Hit Wonders.) Hey, those magnets might be getting valuable: If you saw the baseball All-Star Game last week, you might have seen this commercial for Intel in which Bob uses a "2-in-1" notebook*tablet (I think it's an HP Split) to both write and create artwork. Fortunately, the in-cred-ibly efficient Bobmeister can get his Invite work out of the way in about 3.2 seconds, because the photo shoot turned out to be an enormous production, involving the takeover of his Cape Cod home studio for several days by dozens of crew members, plus several other location shoots. Here's a piece about it by Publishers' Weekly, which notes that the commercial happens to coincide with the release of Bob's new picture book, "My Pet Book." Which is not a book about pets, but a book about a pet book. (He does sign copies you send to him, and even draws something along with his signature -see here and scroll down for directions.) Maybe it was a vacation week, or maybe there were too many restrictions and requirements (having to say what publication you got each entry from, plus which words you used?), but Week 1078 drew only about half the usual number of entrants, and very few new ones. Still, the Core Constituency produced a fine set of neologisms, though the ink wasn't spread around as much as usual -the 36 entries getting ink this week are credited to only 18 entrants, none of them a First Offender. week's contest and the neologism results Mike Gips has to find room for yet another Inkin' Memorial, his seventh win in all; his last was from the Mess With Your Heads contest of Week 1069. His winning pun -managing to create tasteful enough humor with a pointed allusion to a horrible disaster -gives him his 160th blot of ink, along with three honorable mentions to add to Mike's rapidly spreading puddle. Of course, a vacation and a visit to his wife's family in Greece isn't going to stop Kevin Dopart from sending a full complement of entries. I'm fully confident that if Kevin set to climbing K-2, I'd get weekly e-mails from a series of higher and then lower elevations. Kevin gets his 9,894th piece of junk from this contest -actually, the "We the People Are Piffed" T-shirt, donated by Nan Reiner, is a compellingly wearable prize. It's the 22nd ink above the fold for Pam Sweeney -who ended up with five inking entries this week, for a total of 237 -as did Chris Doyle, who's won even more junk than Kevin but wisely asks that we no longer send it to him. My "Conversational Only" section of my short list ended up with several colorful entries, but they all turned out to be from the same person. I can't say I was shocked. If you are likely to be, please skip the following. All from the totally out of control Thomas W. Witte: Head-adelphia: The City of Otherly Love. Faux-membering: Making use of a strap-on. Pink-Mart: A brothel. And then, in one grand effusion: Se-ment: A bonding material, sometimes for life. An adhesive you don't necessarily want to stick. Plaster of pairing. Dickum. Nutty putty. Screwcilage. An ad"he"sive. "C"lant. That is SO all. ====================================================================== WEEK 1083, published August 3, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1083: What's the use of wondering? (Just find it out.); The Empress of The Style Invitational blabs about this week's contest and the rhyme-riddle results Washington Post Blogs August 1, 2014 Friday 12:51 AM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1237 words Byline: Pat Myers Body I am one of the last people in America to have gotten a smartphone; I've had mine for less than a year. (Even later to the party was the deposed Czar of The Style Invitational, who just wrote about his this month.) Of course, I'm totally at sea now without it; I left it at home accidentally when I went to the supermarket this morning, and I found myself thinking: As long as I don't wonder about anything in the next hour ... And maybe that's why we're about eight years late with this week's contest. I am old enough, and had the right career, to be reminded continually, still today, how exciting and game-changing it is to have All The Answers literally at one's fingertips. You don't wonder in print about whether something happened that way; you don't ponder it with your companion. You find out. In two seconds. If you have a slow connection. In my pre-Empress job at The Post (I did both simultaneously for several years, actually), I was a copy editor in the Style section, starting in 1982. Along with fixing grammar and writing headlines, Style copy editors also checked the stories as best they could for accuracy. I had one of the few jobs for which being good at trivia is a relevant skill. To aid us on the copy desk each night (it was an evening job), we had a table full of big reference books: a world atlas; the two volumes of Who's Who in America; the World Almanac; the Diplomatic List of ambassadors and their spouses (Style covered more soiree-type events back then); a couple of film encyclopedias; a book of Billboard's Top 40 since 1956; and of course the giant Webster's Third to supplement our (incompatible) Webster's New World desk dictionaries. And we kept a Rolodex -remember those? -full of index cards containing facts that we might need that weren't in these books: for example, which local theaters spelled it "Theater" (Kennedy Center, Arena, Theater J) or "Theatre" (most everyone else but not all). If we were still stumped, we were to call the researchers in The Post's newsroom library on the phone. And if there was something we didn't understand from the writer, or something significant we thought we should change, we were supposed to call the writer on the phone at home. I hated making phone calls; I was borderline phobic. (I could never have been a reporter.) It took years before I stopped having palpitations when I had to call a writer; I even avoided calling the library. The Post finally converted to PCs in the 1990s from the dedicated word processors it had used since around 1980, but it wasn't until way into the 1990s when my tech-savvier fellow copy editor David Hall (now owner of the old-photo site Shorpy) showed me this thing called Alta Vista, in which you typed a bunch of keywords with various plus-signs and stuff ... and it would look things up for you! With no phone call! Invitational blabs about this week's contest and the .... The reference books did hang around on the table until we moved offices to another floor in the Post building; the giant dictionary and the increasingly outdated atlas moved with us. And now, of course, there are no longer any mistakes of fact in The Washington Post. The news of the world this past week has been beyond depressing, with so many people on so many sides acting shamefully and counterproductively, harming others, themselves, and their futures. It's enough to make you cry out: EVER-PRESENT EFFERVESCENT HEIFER PRESENT! And I hope that you, like me, will just break out laughing at the pointlessly, ridiculously funny entries like that one (by First Offender Joel Golden) and the 30 or so more rhyming answers to oddball questions in Week 1079 of the Invitational. They're even stupidfunnier when you read them out loud, even the questions. Also: In Washington, at least, the weather is freakishly nice and unjungly for the middle of the summer. The Nationals are in first place, and the local football team hasn't lost a game yet this season. This very afternoon, Royal Scion No. 1 is bringing over his girlfriend, who's visiting from Rome and would like to experience some Real Americana, and so we're going to eat steamed crabs caked with Old Bay, and corn on the cob, and baked beans, and coleslaw, and watermelon, and even apple pie, and maybe we'll read some of today's inking entries as we down our Natty Bohs. And so let's skip debating what "all the words must rhyme" should have meant. In next week's contest, you can go back to playing perfectly by the rules. For limericks. It's the first win, and just the sixth blot of ink ever, for Rachel Bernhardt of D.C.'s Maryland suburbs. Rachel has been dabbling in the Invitational -with just the tip of a pinky toe, and then with great toweling off in between -since Week 169, when she was first runner-up in a contest to point out really stupid lyrics in existing songs ("The other night I was at a party* I was dancin' with some other guy* Johnny jumped up and he hit him* 'Cause he still loved me, that's why!"). This turned out to be a fabulous contest for Loser Ace Mae Scanlan, whose four inks this week brings her to 257, including 22 "above the fold." Mae, who's noted that she went to elementary school in Connecticut with John McCain but she was in a higher grade, is a wonderfully clever wordsmith, poet and parodist, renowned in the light-verse world. But she's often at a disadvantage in the Invite because she refuses to send me any entries she wouldn't want her minister to read in the paper. Otherwise, Mae well might match the 1,300 inks of Tom Witte, who probably doesn't labor under that same restriction. You have to read John McCooey's rhyme out loud, doing your best Paula Deen imitation, to get it. It's John's 28th ink since his debut in Week 903, and his second runner-up entry. And Doug Franks's terse chronicle of Iowa's two major raisons-d'etre -farming and political primaries -might be a tad out of date, given that the 2016 presidential hopefuls already have been trampling the cornfields, but I still love it. It gives Doug 59 blots of ink, seven above the fold. But it's always fun to have the August Loser brunch up in Gettysburg, Pa., where on Aug. 17 at noon a contingent will gather at the Appalachian Brewing Co. eatery and then take a battlefield tour led by hometown Loser Roger Dalrymple, probably accompanied by fellow G'burg Loser Marty McCullen. I'm not sure that I can make it this year, but if you're interested in the Civil War or just want to get out to the countryside, it's an entertaining and enlightening way to spend a Sunday. RSVP to Elden Carnahan here; there's a good chance you can find someone to carpool with if you ask on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. (As always, please don't read the following if you don't want to read crude jokes. Because that is what they are.) What do Manassas defense attorneys suggest you use if you're sexting? Loaner boner. (Jeff Shirley) What's the nickname of the law permitting certain prescription drugs to be sold over the counter in suppository form? Poophole loophole. (Robert Schechter) Invitational blabs about this week's contest and the .... What do you call someone who is always making self-abuse jokes on Facebook? Fapper Yapper. (Elden Carnahan) What's the name of that new Brazilian wax salon? Shine a Vagina. (Rick Haynes) And: What's the only guaranteed way to get pussy in bed every night? Willow Pillow (Jacob Aldridge) ====================================================================== WEEK 1084, published August 10, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1084: Since 1993, we've been going out on a lim; The Empress of the Style Invitational ruminates all over this week's poetry contests Washington Post Blogs August 7, 2014 Thursday 8:22 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1257 words Byline: Pat Myers Body The Style Invitational ran its first limerick contest almost right at its birth. In Week 12, in 1993, here were the Czar's instructions: "Write a limerick. That's the easy part. The hard part: It must contain one of the following names: "Hillary Rodham Clinton," "Jack Kevorkian," "George Stephanopoulos" or "Bosnia-Herzegovina." The names don't have to be part of the rhyme, and their constituent words can be separated." The Czar learned immediately that "the easy part" wasn't that easy for the large majority of the contest's entrants back in Year 1. Three weeks later, he made this introduction to the results: We offered a contest poetic.The results, they were pretty pathetic.'Twas the worst of our fears -You all had tin ears! And kept trying to stick in extra clunky words and committing rhymes that gave us a headache. The Czar went on to give ink to one winner, five runners-up, a whopping two honorable mentions, and a "special award of a tin cup for the most pitiful attempt at a rhyme": "Stephanopoulos" and "rhinoceros." But even among these few limericks, the Czar could be only so stringent: "Stephanopoulos" and "topple us" -that's what we call a "perfect rhyme" "Stephanopoulos" with "lot of us." That's, uh, not what we call a perfect rhyme. While the first runner-up rhymed -the third runner-up matched The Invite has evolved. For one thing, we've learned that you can't just say "write a limerick" and assume that everyone knows exactly what you mean. This is why I've written up a big long list of guidelines called "Get Your 'Rick Rolling," which patiently and I hope not too confusingly spells out what we mean by limerick meter, and by rhyme. Some of it is lifted directly from the guidelines at OEDILF.com, the indefatigable project of Chris J. Strolin and his band to publish at least one limerick for every meaning of every word in the English language. Just months after Chris set up his site in 2004 (and just months after I started the Empress gig), I ran the first of our Limerixicons, asking for words beginning anywhere from ai- to ar-. "The OEDILF currently contains more than 600 limericks," I marveled in Week 572, It's now, as I type this, at 86,363. Note: There are at least two versions of the Invite's limerick guidelines floating around the Internet; the most current one is at bit.ly*InviteLim (or wapo.st*InviteLim) and is dated Aug. 10, 2014. It's no big deal if you come across the one at wapo.st*limrules, which is dated 2012; it's just that the dates referring to contests are Page 2 of 3 Style Conversational Week 1084: Since 1993, we've been going out on a lim; The Empress of the Style Invitational ruminates all over this week's poetry contests wrong, it lacks a few editorial tweaks, and it's missing the restatement of our ongoing rule that entries can't have been published elsewhere before we run them. The relationship between the Invite and OEDILF has benefited both institutions mightily: Once Chris put the word out to his regular contributors about the Invitational (which he persists in calling "WPSI," like some Greek radio station), we began to hear from lots of skilled and talented poets, some of who became Invite regulars, like Stephen Gold, Hugh Thirlway, Sheila Blume and I'm sure many more. (There were some ruffled feathers the first year, I recall, before the Oedilfers realized that our main criterion for a Limerixicon limerick was not that it define the word, as OEDILF emphasized at the time, but that it be clever and funny.) Not only that, but there was a secondary effect: Many of the 'Dilfers are active in the broader light-verse community, and I suspect that it was through their spreading the words on such poetry sites as Eratosphere that the Invite was enriched by such now-regulars as Robert Schechter, Frank Osen and Melissa Balmain, all of whom have shown here that they can be funny beyond just poetry-funny. But also, some of the Invitational's finest Loserbards were intrigued by OEDILF, and they started contributing. And contributing. Most notably, the Invite's all-time top scorer, Chris Doyle, has 792 limericks in the OEDILF archive, and has "workshopped" with many other authors to improve their own submissions. I hope you'll do so as well with your own limericks -just remember to wait until the Week 1084 results are published Sept. 4 to submit this year's Limerixicon entries there. I just this morning showed the Czar that first limerick contest, from Week 12, and he immediately shared with me, from memory, an entry that was rejected that week by the bow-tied Bob Kaiser, who was then The Post's managing editor. A lovely young lass from NantucketRequired help kicking the bucket."No problem, my child,"Doc Kevorkian smiled,"Wrap your lips round my tailpipe and suck it." The Czar doesn't, however, remember who wrote it. If you did, let me know - nice job! And that's another big difference between the Year 1 Invitational and the Year 22 Invitational: We now have the online version where we can share some of the more risque entries -and the under-the-radar Conversational for the really unprintable stuff. A contest that asks for bad writing runs a certain risk: Isn't it rather likely that good funny writing will be more entertaining than writing that's so bad it's funny? I do feel bad for those Losers who sent in sparkling light verse for Week 1080. And I concede the possibility that some of today's inking entries might have been funnier they been written in crisper rhyme and meter. Still, I sensed a distinct difference between them and the hundreds of unintentionally bad entries I receive for every one of the Invite's dozens of poetry contests. It's no fluke, I'm sure, that two of this week's top two winners are widely published poets. And it was definitely intentional badness -such as rhyming "pales" with "Versailles" (not Versailles, Ind., anyway) -that catapulted First Offender Thomas Blain right over the squalling mass of Loserdom into first place. So he'll be getting a FirStink for his first ink, along with his Inkin' Memorial. And I have a hunch that Thomas can be just as good as he is bad, so I hope he won't be one of those dozens of people over the years whose first-place wins turned out to be their only ink. Frank Osen probably won't be including "The Hello Kitty Disposable Travel Mug Mishap" in his next collection -his 2012 book "Virtue Big as Sin" won the Able Muse Poetry Award -but I hope that he'd treasure the pooping-gorilla key chain almost as much as the exceedingly creepy alligator-foot back scratcher he scored in June. Jeff Shirley, a retired dentist, had to pull teeth to rhyme "acreage," "rage" and "barrage" in his faux-etical old to the beleaguered Tiger Woods; and I'm sure that Mae Scanlan's own teeth hurt her when the otherwise flawless wordsmith served up a hilariously goofy lamentation on the World Cup results. Page 3 of 3 Style Conversational Week 1084: Since 1993, we've been going out on a lim; The Empress of the Style Invitational ruminates all over this week's poetry contests Meanwhile, among those too good for ink (despite its ick factor), here are all eight lines of Nan Reiner's lamentation on her clogged toilet: The morn, it breaks; my soul awakes, to revel in the maybeOf hours to spend in pleasure's end. Oh, joy, what shall this day be!The robins sing, the doves take wing; not any thing can spoil it!But all too soon 'twill plunge to ruin. Alighting from my toilet,I seek the flush, the filling rush, blue waters sanitizing;Instead I see late parts of me, inexorably rising.I turn my head and flee in dread: I know, too well, what's coming.I'd barter now three years of Law for just one course in Plumbing. ====================================================================== WEEK 1085, published August 17, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1085: We're tasteless in many ways, but not in every way; The Empress of The Style Invitational looks at this week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs August 14, 2014 Thursday 7:37 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 821 words Byline: Pat Myers Body There aren't too many people who have accused The Style Invitational of being too timid or wholesome or fuddy­duddy. (Well, Bob Staake is one; from his occasional rants at me after I rejected some cartoon or other, you'd think I was Church Lady's maiden aunt.) The Post has never even considered syndicating the Invite to other newspapers because not only is its humor often highbrow and often D.C.-centric (as in these results), but it's also often much edgier than other papers would want to risk. Here are a few examples, taken more or less as random, from past years, all printed in The Post. Week 766, awkward situations: You didn't realize you would get a screen credit as a fluffer. (Chuck Smith) Your boss tells you she saw your name Saturday in The Style Invitational. "But what does 'MILF' mean anyway?" she asks. (Drew Bennett) Week 547, bad product names: Excalibur is a good name for a security company but a bad name for a tampon. (Jeff Brechlin) Week 421, explain what everyday items "really" are (in this case one of a pair of dice): "After the tragic accident with the trash compactor, there were only 100 Dalmatians." (Jennifer Hart) Week 483, headlines for obits for people even if they haven't died yet: Hugh Hefner: Publisher Laid to Rest. (contest example) I can understand why other papers wouldn't want to go there, but I had no problems with the Invite's running any of the above. And as far as I know, none of them drew reader complaints. So why am I warning people so strongly to be tasteful in this week's contest for imagined items as various real or imagined gift shops? The difference, for me, comes down to pain. I don't want to be in the business of inflicting pain on anyone (except, of course, my blithely robbing Losers of highly deserved ink). The entries above show various elements of crudity: a fairly graphic image of a sex act, if you know what a fluffer is; the use of a highly vulgar acronym; a graphic allusion to the physical use of tampons; a joke about animal death; a crude term used as wordplay. (Of course, The Post's taste standards aren't based on pain potential alone; you can only be so graphic when it comes to sex, bodily functions and emissions, and profanity.) Style Invitational looks at this week's new contest and r.... But none of those jokes (with the possible exception of the Dalmatian one, which I decided amounted to "cartoon violence" rather than anything associated with reality) is possibly going to cause pain to anyone. On the other hand, think of someone with a personal connection to the Holocaust reading a joke about the Auschwitz E-Z Bake Oven. Just don't. If you're a member of the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook (or join up), you can see the discussion thread prompted by the Ground Zero gift shop here. Just as some of Loserdom's greatest poets pretended to be metrically deficient, tin-eared tragic-odists in our most recent contest, the McGonagalls, some of the Invite Shed's sharpest tools did some pretty convincing imitations of total dolts in Week 1081, in keeping with the inquiring mindless who post on Yahoo Answers. And while I don't know them from their previous cleverness, this week's five First Offenders clearly smartly got the joke as well. (I had a hunch we'd have a lot of fresh ink this week, since I counted 27 entrants who I think were entering the Invite for the first time; at least a couple of this week's newbies are among those 27.) It's a veteran, however, who earns the Inkin' Memorial this week: Gary Crockett gets his seventh win and, with his concurrent third place, his 26th ink "above the fold" as he continues to stride past the 200-ink mark. But it's just Ink No. 8 -and the second above the fold -for runner-up Scott Poyer, who's invited intermittently since his debut in Week 937. And the very same stats apply to fourth-place finisher Frank Mann, who joined us even later, in Week 996. Scott and Frank get their choice (if they let me know) of the Loser Mug or the Whole Fools Grossery Bag. Speaking of emissions standards: Here's a funny question by newcomer Dave Bunai: "If my girlfriend eats eggs, and later swallows some of my, um, "man juice," can she get pregnant? With chickens? It's not too late to join the half dozen Losers who'll be driving up this Sunday morning on roughly the route that J.E.B. Stuart took his Confederate troops to reach Gettysburg. However, Gen. Stuart didn't get to have a nice lunch at the Appalachian Brewing Company on Buford Avenue, and then not get shot at while strolling around the battlefields while resident Losers Roger Dalrymple and Marty McCullen explained what happened where. And if you need inspiration for Week 1085, the Gettysburg Visitor Center serves up aisle after aisle of tackiness. If you'd like to go (I won't be able to attend this year), contact Elden Carnahan ASAP via this link at the Losers' website, nrars.org. ====================================================================== WEEK 1086, published August 24, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1086: Tried and, um, reliable-like; The Empress of The Style Invitational looks at this week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs August 21, 2014 Thursday 8:34 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1721 words Byline: Pat Myers Body I'll admit freely that this week's contest -to alter a 12-letter term by one letter -is not exactly imaginative. Nor is it "pegged" to any recent event or phenomenon. But! As Loser Chris Doyle -that would be Chris "I Have 1,587 Blots of Ink" Doyle - points out, our contest asking for 13-letter words worked out awfully well, and so ... It's true; Week 919 was a very fine week for neologisms. So for guidance and inspiration, here are the FORTY­SIX entries getting ink back in June 2011, happily featuring a slew of Losers whose names I expect to see this week as well. (Speaking of inspiration: Less than two weeks before that contest was announced, Osama bin Laden met his match.) 1. Doom with a view: Recent listing for penthouse in Abbottabad (David Ballard, Reston, Va., a First Offender) 2. Typochondriac: A paranoid proofreader. (Ward Kay, Vienna, Va.) 3. Sodamasochist: Someone who drinks Diet Coke after eating Mentos. (Sylvia Betts, Vancouver, B.C.) 4. Watercoorist:A brewer of tasteless, weak beer. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) Treizepassers: honorable mentions Nosama bin Laden: Better "never," but "the late" will do. (Barry Koch, Catlett, Va.) Sinfinitesimal: Hardly worth going to confession for. (Lois Douthitt, Arlington, Va.) Panticommunism: Even Marx didn't mean for the abolition of private property to go that far. (Pam Sweeney, Burlington, Mass.) Defibillator: A lie detector. (Craig Dykstra, Centreville, Va.) Total meltdow: A stock market crash. (Christopher Lamora, Guatemala City) Hoverachievers: Helicopter parents. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) Sunderachievers: Divorce lawyers. (Tom Witte) Membarrassment: An open fly. (Theresa Kowal, Silver Spring, Md., a First Offender) this week's new contest and results Childpoofing: What pageant moms do. (Kurt Stahl, Frederick, Md.) Duchess of Dork: Beatrice. (Nancy Schwalb, Washington) Let's Mike a Deal: Recruitment slogan for DEA agents. (Loris McVittie, Rockville, Md.) To bed or not to be: The worldview of a sex addict. (Submitted under a pseudonym and revealed after judging to be The Post's Gene Weingarten; he gets no prize except questionable glory) Sirendipitous: Describing a man's ability to find, without really trying, the woman who will ruin him. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) Seventh heave: The apotheosis of worshiping the porcelain god. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) Gruel, to be kind: Airline food in economy class. (John McCooey, Rehoboth Beach, Del.) Streeptococcus: The acting bug. (Susan Geariety, Menifee, Calif.) "The Naked Ruth": TV ratings plummeted after Dr. Westheimer began giving live demos. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Interrorgation: Rejected euphemism for waterboarding. (Johnny Lanham, Columbia, S.C.) Bleakfast menu: A few old danishes on the motel sideboard. (Roger Hammons, North Potomac, Md.) Freudian ships: Submarines. (Ann Martin, Bracknell, England) Bloopingdale's: For great deals on irregular fashions. (Valerie Matthews, Ashton, Md.) Goop and Plenty: Melts in the box, not in your mouth. (Frank Mullen III, Aledo, Ill.) Pen and teller: Minimal banking. (Dixon Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.) Breastfeeling: What's promoted by the La Lecher League. (Kathye Hamilton, Annandale, Va., a First Offender) Sintermission: Pausing to have a cigarette and regain strength. (Tony Phelps, Washington) Big Bong theory: Cosmological theory of expan . . . hey, dude, you done with those potato chips? (Donald Carter, Wayne, N.J.) Gratifiction: Faking it. (Craig Dykstra) E pluribus anum: Out of many, we elect you-know-whats. (Matt Monitto, Bristol, Conn.) Hornithologist: Someone who studies birds AND bees. (Jonathan Hardis, Gaithersburg, Md.) Teutonic shift: A titanic gaffe. ("Ruth Frieder, Bethesda," revealed after judging to be Gene Weingarten) Foolhardness: An overdose of Viagra. (Tom Witte) WTOP Forty radio: It only plays songs by Talking Heads. (Christopher Lamora) It was God's swill: Rationalization for jumping off the wagon. (Howard Walderman, Columbia, Md.) Encephallogram: An X-ray of a man's brain - his other brain. (Theresa Kowal) Squintuplicate: The 1-point font for the fine print on car lease forms. (Brendan Beary) this week's new contest and results Aryan Zimmerman: The uberstar third baseman leaves no room for errors. (Steve Glomb, Alexandria, Va.) Bathematician: Archimedes. (Jeff Contompasis) Ragumentative: "End of discussion. Period." (Judy Blanchard, Novi, Mich.) Champ ate the bit: When Mike Tyson's hunger got the better of him. (John McCooey) A Day in the Wife: Little-known Lennon*Ono composition consisting entirely of moans and shrieks. (Dave Airozo, Silver Spring, a First Offender) Imperceptable: Describing an error that hardly anyone will notice. (Ward Kay, Vienna) And last: Lexhibitionist: Someone who sends in 120 neologism entries in a single week. (Tom Witte) Note that I didn't refuse to run entries that made it to 13 letters only because they ended in -s. Because the 12­letter parameter is just that, it doesn't violate any "spirit of the contest" to allow plurals. On the other hand, starting with a 12-letter term is the only parameter. So if your 12-letter term is a 13-letter word with a dropped letter, I can't run it. Otherwise, the general neologism guidelines apply: Your altered word tends to be a lot funnier if the reader can recognize the original term (which isn't shown). And while there've been occasional exceptions among our dozens of neologism contests over the years, you'll notice that in each of the 46 inking entries above, the definition alludes in some way to the original term as well as the neologism. How can you find a bunch of 13-letter words to work with? Well, I won't provide them myself, but I have a strong hunch -basically, I'm Richard III here -that one of the generous Losers on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook will shortly share either a whole list or a link to one. (If you haven't joined yet, you should; sign up and I'll wave you in.) If you've looked at the interminable list on Twitter of #removealetterruinaband, and possibly even if you read the e-mail group Losernet the morning after the Week 1082 entry deadline, you might not mind too much that The Washington Post has this person who reads all the Style Invitational entries and selects just a few dozen for you to read - even if there might have been one or two that you'd have liked more. In this middle of this process, I vented in this post on the Devotees page: "Estimated number of entries for the Week 1082 band name contest: 2200. Estimated number of clever jokes: few." "Few" turned out to be maybe 3 percent of the pool -my short list had about 70 entries. But that was all I needed -well more than that, in fact -for a still-lengthy list of altered names of bands or performers, along with funny notes about them. Not surprisingly, I sometimes got many entries with the same band name; in that case I chose the best wording, and occasionally combined two entries and gave double credit; I also double-credited the two Losers who gave the same description for different bands, the Violent Phlegms and Public Enema (we are just so cerebral here). While I think the jokes are easily "gettable," I linked to each of the performers' names, usually with a clip of the song that's also punned on. Frank Osen, who's just passed the 100-ink mark, grabs his fifth Inkin' Memorial with his timely and zingy "Kerry and the Peacemakers." Frank started playing the Invite so recently that none of his wins earned the Bobble-Linc's predecessor, the Inker, which we stopped giving out only two years ago. I hope Beverley Sharp has some formal dinner in Montgomery, Ala., to attend soon, now that she'll be able to wear the bright orange cotton belt decorated with grossly misspelled names of Rolling Stones songs. At least she'll this week's new contest and results be properly outfitted for her eventual Invite Hall of Fame induction -with her three blots of ink this week, Beverley is only 34 entries short of the big 500. J. Calvin "Bimp" Smith is one of our most veteran Losers, though not an obsessive one; he got his first ink in Week 60. Along the way, he's picked up 43 blots, including an impressive 12 "above the fold." But Marc Shapiro -one of a couple dozen new entrants this week -will be getting a FirStink air "freshener" for his first ink, along with his choice of Grossery Bag or Loser Mug. One new entrant, who just missed getting ink (he sent "Minivan Halen," which is listed in the intro to the results), is a familiar name to some old-time Losers: Warren Clements used to run an Invitational-like contest for the Globe & Mail newspaper in Toronto. Not only did several Losers get Globe & Mail ink back then, but a contingent even visited Warren at the paper's offices during a "Loserfest" vacation. (Where should the next Loserfest be? Any volunteers to organize it? Closer would be better, I think.) When Longtime Loser Joseph Schech joined the Style Invitational Devotees just last night, he asked if we'd be doing a contest to answer the winning and Losing stupid questions from Week 1081. While we'd done that for a past stupid-question contest, I didn't think that this year's entries would produce enough of a variety of clever answers; they just weren't constructed to allow for it. But I invited the Devotees to give it a try on the Facebook page this morning. My favorites: Q: "Is it insensitive to tell light-bulb jokes to a blind person?" (Dave Letizia)A: Not if you do it in sign language. (Mark Raffman) Q: Why do people argue about which came first: the chicken or the egg? Everyone knows you need a chicken to produce an egg! (Frank Mann)A: Wait, don't you really need two chickens? (Ken Gallant) (*Subhead by Jeff Contompasis) These aren't shocking, but still, if you don't like tasteless puerile humor, please don't read further. You'll be fine. Beatwood Mac- Many of their songs, including "Grypsy," "Handslide," and "Second Hand Ews," were originally performed single-handedly and were tried out on various members. (Jon Gearhart)Loo Reed: Singer who performed with Public Enema, Small Feces, Runs 'N Roses, Poo Fighters, the Red Hot Chili Poopers ... (Chris Doyle) Pubic Enemy: A Velvet Underground cover band. (Bill Verkuilen)Red Hot Chili Peckers: Every member of the group caught an STD on their world tour. (Doug Wadler) ====================================================================== WEEK 1087, published August 31, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1087: We're sort of poster children; The Style Invitational Empress looks at this week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs August 28, 2014 Thursday 7:05 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1999 words Byline: Pat Myers Body First off, for those who are staying in town (or coming to Washington) this Labor Day weekend: Come and heckle Style Invitational Designated Drawer Bob Staake on Saturday at the extravaganza that is the Library of Congress's annual National Book Festival, this year moved downtown to the Convention Center (which is right on top of a Metrorail station). Events at the free-admission festival run from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., but a contingent of Bobfans -one of them, Charles Young, dubbed them the Staake Pack -will be meeting at noon for lunch at the Anthem restaurant at the adjoining Marriott Marquis, and will then head over to see Bob, who'll be making a presentation about picture books from 2:40 to 3:10, and will meet people and sign books -including his newest, "My Pet Book," from 3:30 to 4:30. If you'd like to join them, for lunch or just at the festival, RSVP to this Facebook invitation or contact Janet Galope at twin061765@yahoo.com . (The Empress-analogue to the Staake Pack would be the Vengeful Mob.) As the Empress sends off the Little Princess for her senior year of college, it seemed fitting to sending you all back to school as well for Week 1983, and to revist the Invite course catalogue nine years after our first effort, in Week 626. The results below cover a fair amount of ground -the core curriculum of humor tropes -but certainly there are new areas of study. This contest was run just after Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005, and features the Style Invitational debut of (Kevin Dopart, Washington), who got a runner-up plus an honorable mention his first time out. (We hadn't started noting First Offenders yet). I'm glad that that ink seems to have inspired Kevin to pick up another 1,042 inks since then. Third runner-up: Film 007: The James Bond Canon. Students will view all of the Bond films and write their term paper on which Bond is the best. Those choosing Sean Connery will get an A, Pierce Brosnan a B, Roger Moore a C, George Lazenby a D and Timothy Dalton an F. (Joseph Romm, Washington) Second runners-up: Federal Disaster Relief 101. Students will build a decision support system using faith-based logic and a Ouija Board. Prerequisites include Getting Permission From the Mayor 101, Clearing Everything With the Lawyers 101, and Telling the FEMA Director to Turn on the %#@* Television 101. (Kevin Dopart, Washington; Steven J. Allen, Manassas) week's new contest and results First runner-up, the winner of the "prepared dry fish bone" food item: Anatomy 1 and 2, Posterior Survey: Through two semesters of intense classroom instruction and weekly labs, students will learn to locate their behinds using both hands. Textbook, flashlight and washable headbands required. (Phil Battey, Alexandria) And the winner of the Inker: LANG 238: Ancient Voices. Who were the Ink Spots? Country Joe and the Fish? What does "nanu-nanu" mean? Intense immersion into the language and culture of 15 to 50 years ago will enable the student to understand and converse with older relatives and prospective employers. Prerequisite for all INTN (Internship) classes. (Douglas Frank, Crosby, Tex.) Honorable Mentions: Mass Communications 330: The Future of Reality TV. Students will compete to participate in a reality TV show about competing to be on a reality TV show. (Bill Spencer, Exeter, N.H.) Mechanical Engineering 499: Intelligenter Design. Team project will recast the human body more sensibly, addressing ear hair, male nipples, the need to belch, things that flap when you run, lack of cup holders.(Elwood Fitzner, Valley City, N.D.) Harvardese I: Recordings of George Plimpton, William F. Buckley and President Kennedy are used to develop speech and listening skills in an obscure northern dialect. Fulfills foreign-language requirement. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Anthropology 570: Genealogy of the Daytime Serial. Documentation techniques will be utilized to trace the bloodlines in "All My Children" and "One Life to Live." Team-taught by Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick Montgomery and Victoria Lord Riley Burke Riley Buchanan Buchanan Carpenter Davidson. (Deborah Guy, Columbus, Ohio) Philosophy 000: Elementary Nihilism. Students learn the philosophy of total self-negation. Those who bother to attend classes will be failed. (Joseph Romm) Academic Communications 191: An information delivery module designed to disseminate linguistic interaction experience to assist Carbon Based Life Forms (CBLFs) in transactionalizing with other CBLFs, without utilizing affirmative*pejorative value judgments. (John Crowley, Annandale) CHEM 180: Household Chemical Reactions Lab. Students spend the semester in the home of the course instructor, testing various cleaning compounds on a variety of surfaces. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) Math 420: Numerical Methods & Queuing Theory. Students learn to quantitatively assess aggregated items, compare their magnitudes to an arbitrary constant, and enter an appropriate queuing schema accordingly.Final exam held in the "12 Items or Less" checkout line. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) American History 300: The Baby Boomers. Students will learn precisely why it is that their professor is so cool now, was so cool in his youth, and will ALWAYS be cool, and is therefore forever entitled to be self-indulgent and snotty. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) Comp Sci 404: Magical Standing for Office IT Guys. Students learn how to stand behind people in such a manner that their computer suddenly works, even though it didn't work the last 10 times they did that exact thing. (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) Studio Art 327: Hotel Room Picture Painting. Curriculum covers techniques in sunsets, crashing waves and various autumn things. Prerequisite to Crying Clowns I. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Early Childhood Education 001: Students will learn all they ever really needed to know. Prof. R. Fulghum. (Kyle Hendrickson, Frederick) week's new contest and results Campus Activism: Practicum in which students earn credit through a real-life social project. This semester, the class will attempt to resolve egregiously discriminatory, arbitrary denials of tenure. Asst. Prof. Whistlebottom. (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) Literature 421: "Gilligan's Island" as a Metaphor for the Iraq War. What starts out as a three-hour tour turns into a trip to uncharted territory with no clear exit strategy. (Chuck Smith) Humanities 414: Waiting Through History. Students will investigate the social and cultural impact on society of waiting, and will actually wait for Godot, Lefty, the Robert E. Lee, Guffman, the Sun, and God. Meeting time TBA. (Andrew Hoenig, Rockville) Theatre Arts 243: Contemporary Barroom Dance. Students learn to stand and wiggle their butts while drinking beer from a long-neck bottle. (Roy Ashley, Washington) BIO 101: Comparative Anatomy. Curriculum includes determining whether eyes or stomachs are bigger and distinguishing rears from elbows. (Kevin Dopart) American Literature 411: "For Dummies" Books, 2000-2005. In this survey course, students will skim brief excerpts from this genre, and submit short reports. (Tom Witte) ANTH 100: Distinguishing Old People. Undergraduate seminar dispels the popular notion that old people all look alike. Identifying characteristics will be underscored (e.g., gender).(Martin Bancroft, Ann Arbor, Mich.) ENGL 615: Yoda I. To Yoda's grammatical structure you will be introduced. (Evan Golub, College Park) Phys Ed 349: Disaster Response Gymnastics. Coaches teach students how to put their heads up their butts in preparation for government service. Prerequisite: Arabian Horse Judging 101. Required text: "My Pet Goat." (Phyllis Reinhard, East Fallowfield, Pa.) English Comp 121: Great American Text Messages Under 250 Characters. ezy cls ne1 cn tak. Several short papers. (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) SRP 101: Basics of Sub-Aquatic Reed Plaiting. Introduction to the most maligned of college majors. (Russell Beland) WORK 1601: McJob Practicum. Prerequisite for LIFE. Perform mindless, pointless and degrading tasks all day while taking guff from perfect strangers and feckless idiots. Try to find meaning and maintain your basic human dignity, especially after you get your first paycheck. Imagine doing this the rest of your life and suddenly finals week seems like Club Med. NOW are you ready to pick a major? (Douglas Frank) Our contest to come up with either a humorously useful phone*tablet app or a humorously unproductive one drew a lot of stock peeve*observational humor along with the ones that spoofed the app industry. Some people are so bitter: One person suggested "the Hack-Shock app, which, when entered into your computer, detects hackers and sends a powerful current to the hacker's computer, destroying the hard drive and electrocuting the hacker." Handy tip: Wishing death or torture on people doesn't get ink. I'm just (un)funny that way. It's an amazing third Inkin' Memorial for Robert Falk -amazing not because Robert isn't usually all that funny, but because Robert hardly ever plays the Invite. Robert's total ink since his debut in Week 1026: Four honorable mentions. And three Inkin' Memorials. His first win, in Week 1034: "I like my girlfriends the way I like Apple customers: flush with cash, stylish and unaware they can do better." His second, just three weeks later, for taking offense to a name that most people haven't thought (yet) to be offended by: "The members of the American Association of Lobby Builders and Decorators (AALBD) create and decorate the warm, inviting, beautiful spaces that greet you as you enter many a building. But the name of our creations has been besmirched by the vile, underhanded and corrupt practice of influence peddling. We've asked our foyerist in Washington to . . ." : week's new contest and results In second place is a veteran Loser who's started entering again: John Kammer blotted up some 160 inks in the first decade of the Invite, then vanished for another decade until just a few weeks ago. With two inks this week, he seems not to have skipped a beat upon his return. By the way, this is the tag-line on all John's e-mail: "Pain is a dish best served hot. Really hot. And with jagged edges." It's a First Offender in third place this week, but his name wasn't brand-new to me, and it won't be to a number of Losers: Danny Gallagher, of the Dallas area, is a humor blogger and the moderator of the Top 5 List, now under the aegis of HumorLabs.com. Top 5 is a sort of smaller-scale, quicker-turnaround Invite contest with a regular roster of joke contributors, including, over the years, top Losers Chuck Smith and Sandra Hull. So it's great to have him on our roster as well. Danny will get the FirStink for his first ink along with his choice of Loser Mug or Grossery Bag - let me know, Mr. G. The last "above the fold" spot goes to Extremely Dedicated Loser Jeff Contompasis, who recently passed 400 blots of ink (eww -hope it cleaned up all right) and is a mortal lock for the Hall of Fame in the next couple of years. It's Jeff's 35th ink above the fold, so he might opt for one of the vintage Loser T-shirts won by Elden Carnahan before Jeff started Inviting in 2004. Another party heard from: The Invite was read this week on the multiplatform desk (formerly the copy desk) by editor Arielle Retting. I asked Arielle if she had a favorite entry, and she shocked me by saying that she liked the top four winners the most, as usual. As longtime Style Conversational readers know, the previous editors who'd weighed in with faves chose honorable mentions almost every time. Arielle added that she also especially liked the last HM, Mark Raffman's sure-fire romance preventer. Now it's time for me to buckle down with the limericks of Week 1084, which look extremely good. Many, many of you will be utterly robbed. The Vengeful Mob group will be sending you an invitation soon. ====================================================================== WEEK 1088, published September 7, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1088: Evidently not everyone knows 'Hickory Dickory Dock'; The Empress of The Style Invitational on the limerick entries of Week 1084 Washington Post Blogs September 4, 2014 Thursday 7:51 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1327 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Of course the inking limericks posted today in the results of Style Invitational Week 1084 are terrific examples of the form -the Limerixicon contest has served them up in delicious abundance for 11 years straight. But ... well, let's say that not all the entries were quite as good. I didn't expect everyone who entered Week 1084 to look up "Getting Your 'Rick Rolling," a detailed explanation of what we look for in a limerick -the meter, the rhyme, the content, the humor, the secret communications from our alien overlords. But even in the few lines I had available in the print-edition Invite, I had room for this: "in a nutshell: 'perfect' rhyme, and a strong 'hickory-dickory-dock' rhythm in Lines 1, 2 and 5; a 'dickory-dock' in Lines 3 and 4; plus 'weak' syllables on either side." This got me, among the 848 limericks I received, entries including: This one: Finagle's a term,That sure makes me squirm... And this one: Fire in your loins is good, but fire in your house is not.... And this one: I just found a limerick for each English word!I have to read all of these and not be deterred ... And this one! Five Finns Found A Fine Brand new FjordFlying? No, Driving Fine Finnish Fords Those were obviously from people who either didn't look at the nutshell directions or weren't familiar with "Hickory Dickory Dock." Most of the entries did reflect at least a basic grasp of what a limerick is. But even among those, the meter on some of them was distorted beyond anyone's comprehension, except that of the Ms. Incredible stretchability of the writer's own mind. Here's one first line: A woman's mind began to pain her ... Okay, where would the hickory-dickory-dock go in that one? The only way I could make it work was: a WOM-an's mind BE-gan to PAIN her ... If the writer had asked a friend to read that line, the friend of would have said: "a WOman's MIND beGAN to PAIN her" - ba-BUM, ba-BUM, ba-BUM, ba-BUM: That's iambic meter, and iamb hard-pressed to put it in a limerick. Style Invitational on the limerick entries of Week 1084 Or this one, which had correct meter in Lines 1, 2, 4 and 5, but this in Line 3: Tweets, Facebook, YouTube views .... "Tweets, Face-BOOK ... "? Moral: Have someone else read it out loud to you. Be open-minded about how it sounds. If your accent is on "the," it's not going to work. There's one thing I've discovered: You can be a bit more ambiguous about accents once you're well into the limerick, because your meter is already established. You still can't put ac-CENTS on the wrong sy-LAB-bles, but a reader can more easily figure out which of two valid stresses is the intended one. For instance, if you read "I jumped up like a shot," you might say "i JUMPED UP like a SHOT." Or you might say "i jumped UP like a SHOT." If a line is this ambiguous at the beginning of a limerick, it's a problem. But it didn't give me a problem at all in Line 3 of Brendan Beary's entry (which was cruelly robbed of ink today): My philosophy final todayOn the Skeptics unfolded this way:I jumped up like a shotAnd yelled, "I don't know squat!"On the spot, the prof gave me an A! I'm not even going to discuss the "rhymes" ... okay, I'll just list a few. Flamingo* Ringo* stuccoThefts* requestsAnnapolis*urinalysis* diaphanousConstant* it can't* savantPranks* strengthsMoves slowly* soccer goalie* pays a fee But let's take the positive tack. What makes this week's inking entries so good? First off all, they qualify: The rhymes are perfect rhymes; the meter does the HDD*DD thing. But even though a disturbingly large proportion of this week's entry pool didn't qualify, several hundred limericks did meet these basic requirements. But also: - They have natural, readable, lyrical syntax, with the words in normal order, and few or no dropped articles, conjunctions, etc. You don't have to struggle through them. The words aren't used incorrectly unless that's part of the joke. - They tell some sort of joke, with a strong ending. The humor might be bitter, like Chris Doyle's limerick about SWAT teams, but it's not just a definition of a word, or a political screed, in limerick form: there's clever wordplay, or funny observational humor, or a scene that creates a comical mental image. - They have an internal logic to the humor; there isn't some weird name or reference in there just because it rhymes. Why would two polar bears get married? Why would someone's name happen to be D'Shan? (I hesitated for a moment about Craig Dykstra's nonsensical mix of "Batman" and floral hedges, but his wordplay punch line was just so amazing that I used it anyway.) As usual, I judged the limericks without knowing whose were whose. I had some hunches, but those sometimes were disproved. But all four entries "above the fold" turned out to be by longtime Loser Bards, with the Limerick Smackdown Kings hitting the exacta. It's Brendan Beary's 34th Invite win, many of them for various forms of poetry. Brendan's two blots of ink today give him 939 in all, a position dangerously approaching the Abandon All Hope threshold of the Invite Double Hall of Fame. Making Brendan seem like a slacker, meanwhile, is Chris Doyle, the Losingest Loser Ever, who picks up his 190th ink above the fold. Chris's signature limerick trick of ending the lim with a clever spoonerism or similar wordplay has surely influenced many writers, both in the Invite and at OEDILF.com, where he's also a mainstay. British-born, Netherlands-based World Court honcho Hugh Thirlway, who's active on OEDILF under a pseudonym, once again drops by at the Limerixicon to pick up his ink. Hugh sent us a slew of clever limericks in this contest, of which two get ink, raising his total to 24, including a win. It's Hugh's first chance for a Loser Mug or Grossery Bag, but fourth-place finisher Frank Osen has so many of both that he uses the bags as dishcloths for his mugs; it's his 18th ink above the fold, all of them from just the past three years. Style Invitational on the limerick entries of Week 1084 As it has been since 2004, the Limerixicon is run in conjunction with OEDILF.com, the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, founded and supervised by Chris J. Strolin with the assistance of a skilled corps of volunteer contributors and editors. Every August, Chris tells me which sliver of the dictionary he's working on, and once the Limerixicon results are posted -that's now -Inviters can submit any of their entries, inking or no, to OEDILF, where they're assessed and put through a very useful "workshopping" process, in which experienced writers offer constructive criticism and suggestions. If your entry got ink today, please indicate to OEDILF that it's already been published by The Post. You may also enter limericks showcasing words beginning with anything up to fo-, starting with Aa-. While OEDILF limericks no longer are required to define the word, some Invite entries might not feature the given word prominently enough for the 'dilfers. Limericks have a long tradition of being risque -in fact, some people say that a limerick, by definition, must be risque, much as purists maintain that a haiku must reflect on nature. We obviously don't subscribe to that narrow view, but were in no ways surprised to receive numerous limericks even bluer than the Web-only entries near the bottom of today's list. Here are three of the best: A fig leaf's for covering stuffLike statues of those in the buff.One leaf hides her quim And likewise for him Unless one leaf isn't enough! (Tom Witte) The Nats made a deal oh so wise And young Fister has opened some eyes: He slips in the strikes And the hitters yell "Yikes!" As his K's seem much more like KYs (Jeff Shirley) And the Scarlet Letter goes to ...To the giant, she made a stern face:"Though you fee, fie and foe at my place,This portfolio's new,So whatever you do,You'd better not fum on my case!" (Craig Dykstra) ====================================================================== WEEK 1089, published September 14, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1089: If you can't laugh anymore, they win: Humor in the Sept. 11 era; The Empress looks back on the Style Invitational contest in the weeks after 9*11 Washington Post Blogs September 11, 2014 Thursday 7:19 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1731 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Uh, "Happy September 11" isn't quite right ... In the Sept. 18, 2001, Washington Post, on the front page of the Style section, Gene Weingarten came out as the editor of The Style Invitational (though not as the anonymous Czar) in an essay headlined "Not Funny: The Rules of Humor Changed on Sept. 11." Gene noted that it had taken more than five days for him to see any online jokes about the attacks - an interval that even back then was uncharacteristically restrained. "Last week," Gene said, "The Post decided to publish as scheduled its Sunday humor contest, the Style Invitational, which I edit. This feature is not famous for its political sensitivity, but this weekend I found myself culling from the results any entries that suggested any cognitive weaknesses in the president of the United States." The Sept. 16 Invitational had already been produced; the contest's production deadlines were earlier then. It asked for Rodney Dangerfield-style "no respect" jokes. But the next contest, Sept. 23, contained this complete set of directions: "Make us laugh." Gene offered to reflect on that Sept. 18, 2001, essay, and his sudden (if temporary) ban on George W. Bush jokes that had been submitted for contests in process: "A few things about this column, and the decision. I remember cutting at least two Bush-is-stupid jokes, for these related reasons: The first was simply a matter of way-too-soon. The second was that people were genuinely fearful about what would come next. Third, people were truly invested in hoping that this new president of ours was smarter and more competent than they suspected he was. I didn't want to publish anything, for a week at least, that might extinguish that small flicker of hope. And finally, even if I had judged that a Bush joke was okay to use, I didn't think it was fair to do that to the entrants who had composed it before 9*11 and who might well want to disavow it in light of events." . Gene turned out to be wrong, I think, in declaring that "it won't be the same," that the rules of humor had changed permanently; the Bush-critical jokes were back in the Invite well before the end of the president's first term. But I see that a full nine months after 9*11, the results of a contest for "a haiku summarizing the career of an American politician" contained none about President Bush. Here are the results of the "make us laugh" contest, which includes only the gentlest teasing of Bush's language creativity: During the least funny week in anyone's memory, Page 2 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1089: If you can't laugh anymore, they win: Humor in the Sept. 11 era; The Empress looks back on the Style Invitational contest in the.... we asked you simply to make us laugh. No further instructions. Predictably, your 175 entries constituted the smallest response in the history of this contest. We empathize with all who chose to stay silent but salute all who did not: Your entries were wildly different but shared a certain thrilling pugnacity. Thanks for the laughs. All entries below win T-shirts. Winner of the Prince George's County Police Department bell is the last entry on the page. There is one huge problem with the guarantee of 70 virgins for each martyr in Paradise. What can one do with six dozen women? The guarantors eit her don't know Paradise or don't know women. (Howard Walderman, Columbia) If wives were meant to enjoy sex, God would've made husbands good at it. (Judith Cottrill, New York) Bad choice of tough language for the Taliban to use: "Oh yeah? You and what army?" (Russell Beland, Springfield) This is a real excerpt from the news shortly after the WTC and Pentagon were attacked. The interview took place at a blood donation site: "At times like this, people come together. We have come together here to give blood. Many people didn't know they had it in them." (Judy Freedman, Rockville) A tornado tore through the Gaithersburg Home Depot yesterday, leaving in its wake 12 newly fashioned houses, three toolsheds, a gazebo, and a new deck added onto a nearby home. (Paul Kondis, Alexandria) I keep waiting for our president to say something like: "We are not at war with Islam, and we certainly don't wish to offend the many good Muslim Americans. Our enemies are the terrorists and those nations that have become a Mecca for terrorist behavior." (Hang Xia- Ti, Arlington) As I write this, I am at work and not wearing pants! A clown has just thrown a pie in my face! Also, poopy­doody! (Stephen Dudzik, Olney) Okay, here's a trick. Think of a number between 1 and 10. Now multiply it by the number of decades you have been alive. Okay? Now subtract the day of the month you were born. Okay? Now picture J. Edgar Hoover in a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader costume. (Russell Beland, Springfield) The week before Russell wrote those jokes, his close colleague Bryan Jack was on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon - into Jack's own workplace. I had hesitated to run this contest at all, because I was afraid that all the funny stuff would be unprintable. I finally relented, adding the explicit challenge that the humor couldn't be too sick. And then I realized that the results would be posted online on Sept. 11, and so I banned all 9*11 jokes as well. I wouldn't think Reader's Digest would want to share the inking humor in this week's results, but I hope the sicker entries have at least passed the "too soon" bar. Many of the entries aren't sick at all, but simply use the gift-shop construct as a vehicle for your typical Invite current-events jokes. (The one I was wavering on was Dave Airozo's Lincoln penny bank with the slot in the back of the head, but I'm hoping it's okay 149 years later.) That didn't mean, of course, that people didn't send some nohhhh-wayyyyys. A small sampling: At Monticello, a Sally Hemings inflatable doll (Thad Humphries), and and at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a Karen Carpenter de-flatable doll (Diane Wah). At the Clinton Library, a Monica Lewinsky gobblehead. (Tom Witte) From the gift shop at the maker of Thalidomide, commemorative Lego minifigures. (Kevin Dopart) But the jawest-dropper of the week was the suggestion of a new player, one Nathan Ainspan. Nathan suggested some U.S. Holocaust Museum oven mitts. This would have been just garden-variety unprintable except for Nathan's note: Page 3 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1089: If you can't laugh anymore, they win: Humor in the Sept. 11 era; The Empress looks back on the Style Invitational contest in the.... He used to work at the Holocaust Museum. Now that is sick. One entry that I'd chosen was rejected by The Post's managing editor, when it was brought to his attention, as "not in good taste." It's by Rob Huffman: "At the FedEx Field gift shop: Your choice of bobbleheads: Nappy Head, Polack, Hymie or Redskin." The thing is, we'd done essentially the same joke less than a year ago -showing equivalent slurs to make clear that the football team's name was one, too. Barry Koch's second-place bank-headline : Post headline: Metro to stay open late for Redskins Bank head: Honkies, coloreds file discrimination complaint That one received no reader complaints, even at the top of the page. But I decided not to make a big to-do; for one thing, this week's joke is pretty much the same idea as Barry's. And also, I'd just as soon not have the top editors worry over the rest of this week's ink as well. Lots of new or rarely appearing Losers this week, including at the top: Mike Duffy, who's relocated from Washington to Montana. Mike got his first Invite mention all the way back in Week 90, but is an ink-dabbler; this is his 16th blot and his first Inkin' Memorial. But! It's his fourth ink "above the fold" - a truly impressive ratio. Nancy Schwalb gets Ink No. 18 (and 19) and her third above the fold, along with the Titanic tchotchkes. And it's just the second blot of ink for Randy Arndt, who'd sent his entry as an actual picture of a didn't-vote sticker; and the fourth for Steven Steele Cawman, who's a regular on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. Randy and Steven get their choice of the Loser Mug or the Whole Fools Grossery Bag, provided they let me know by Tuesday morning. Otherwise, they get my choice. We're having two neologism contests three weeks apart why? Because I'm so jazzed about this contest idea, which was suggested by the Royal Consort here at Mount Vermin. Much like the contests we've based on ScrabbleGrams letter sets, Week 1089 should get a whole lot of entries, because it's so, so easy to find words, especially since the letters don't have to be in a straight line. (Finding interesting words, and writing clever definitions, might not be so easy.) And now that I've found out about the cool word find maker at puzzle­maker.com, I can easily make new grids for future contests. You simply feed a list of words into the entry field, one to a line, and the software instantly creates a grid with your specified number of rows and columns (if possible), filling in the rest of the spaces with random letters. Which words to use? For that, I consulted the Random Word Generator at wordgenerator.net: I clicked 15 times on "Generate random words" and fed the following into the word find maker: Amoneste. Enregister. Bunghole. Floriculture. Condensate. Itsy bitsy. Defensible. Mustachioed. Doricism. Polytechnica. Ectropium. Salic. Educability. Spreadeagle. So those should all be in there in straight lines. No prize for finding them -unless you dazzle the Empress with a hilarious definition for one or more of them, of course. (While forming the grid was delightfully easy, I was grateful for the assistance of Scion No. 2, the Little Princess, who agreeably offered, from her college dorm, to turn it into a graphic that included the number and letter coordinates and the circled neologisms.) There's a change of venue for the Sept. 21 Loser Brunch. It had been the annual outing to the Baltimore Museum of Art, but instead it will be in Montgomery County: It's at Founding Farmers, just off I-270 north of Montrose Road. See the details and RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Loser webite, nrars.org. I have another engagement that morning, but should be able to make it to the October brunch Oct. 19 at the Front Page in Arlington's Ballston area. There are a number of new Losers on whom I have not cast my personal eyeballs; I hope that this situation will be rectified. pat.myers@washpost.com Page 4 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1089: If you can't laugh anymore, they win: Humor in the Sept. 11 era; The Empress looks back on the Style Invitational contest in the.... ====================================================================== WEEK 1090, published September 21, 2014 Style Conversational: Stick your knobstick in the jerkinhead, okay? Add to list The Empress of The Style Invitational talks about this week’s contest and results By Pat MyersSeptember 18, 2014 I know, Week 1090 is sooo immature. But the part of my epidermis that is showing is blushing only a wee bit in embarrassment. I’m somewhat surprised that we got to do this contest; I did take the step of asking for approval beforehand. But “words are words,” figures Arts & Style features editor David Malitz, even though these words are “fuksheet,” “invagination” and “pershittie.” Your poem isn’t required to sound dirty to someone who doesn’t know what the word actually means (which would be virtually everyone); there are other ways to make poems funny. The only rule is that the word can’t only mean something it doesn’t really mean: When I read the poems, I’m going to keep the real meanings in mind. (By “real,” I mean what it says on this “50 Words That Sound Rude” list on Mental Floss.) Note that the Invitational’s list doesn’t include all 50 words; there are about 40. So many of the 50 redundantly contain “cock” or “dick” or “hole.” And I also omitted “kumbang,” which is a certain kind of wind in Indonesia. I’ll probably run the poems with the definition at the bottom, as in this week’s example, which was written by a man who just this week released a picture book for little children. Some real douzies: The 12-letter neologisms of Week 1086 Invite neologism contests always work. Okay, I shouldn’t be fallaciously inductive: Invite neologism contests always have worked. It’s amazing, really, that the well doesn’t run dry. Um, hasn’t run dry. But some of our contests present certain challenges. For Week 1086 it was the length of the term: a 12-letter word (or an 11- or 13- letter one) is often hard to read — I had to look at most of the entries pretty slowly — and its potential for humor decreases if readers aren’t going to get from one end of the word to the other. Two examples I noted during the judging: “hypotoniceity” and “feuhemeristic.” (Sometimes the revised word looked almost identical to the original; I had to look twice at “prostituition,” which is why I added a hyphen to Steve Langer’s entry.) “Hypotoniceity” and “feuhemeristic” also point to some advice I gave four weeks ago, and apply to all the neologism contests: If the reader doesn’t immediately sense the original term you’re playing on, he’s probably not going to find it very interesting. Which means that the reader has to be familiar with that word. Some people’s entries included the original as well, to be helpful; I tried not to look at the explanation, however, since the eventual reader wouldn’t see it. But it did come in handy when the writer of “Afroembolism: Cause a blood clot by wearing cornrows that are too tight” explained that he*she (I never looked) was playing on “aeroembolism.” Ah. (I still don’t know what “hypotoniceity” and “feuhemeristic” are referring to.) And that entry points to another problem I see all the time in neologism contests: The definition doesn’t match the part of speech of the neologism. Even though the neologism is a made-up word, our familiarity with the English language lets us see the word as a noun or verb or adjective or whatever. We know that “Afroembolism” isn’t a verb, it’s a noun; it has the noun suffix -ism and is based on the noun embolism — and so why would the definition be the definition of a verb? The definition for that one needed to begin with “A blood clot caused by . . .” Then there was “Flopcharting: Career statistician for the Chicago Cubs.” The definition needed to see the word as a verb (“keeping stats for the Cubs”) or as a gerund, a noun in verb form that involves doing something (“data analysis for the Cubs”). “Flopcharting,” whatever it is, is not a person. I’m glad that I allowed multi-word terms in both the original and the neologism; it turned out that three of the funniest entries this week comprised two or more words. I didn’t, however, accept extra words just to pad the entry to 12 letters: “A wicked witch,” “a crystallizer,” etc. I was fairly lenient toward plurals and other suffixes that brought the total to 12, though sometimes they were a bit too distracting: “volumptuously” and especially “badvertisings,” for example, because we don’t tend to use the words “voluptuously” and “advertisings.” ADVERTISING Finally, as always, I got lots of great neologisms that deserved funnier definitions than the ones they came with. When I judge word contests on printouts, I mark entries “BD” — should have a better definition — and often compile them into a list. A couple of times I’ve sent them out in a later contest to be crowdsourced by the Loser Community; I’m not sure whether I’ll do that for these words, which include “My Little Phony,” “RBI-wan Kenobi,” “rubscription,” “gymphomaniac” and “unsung zeroes.” No such problems for the 40-odd inking entries this week — every one of them, alas, written by a repeat offender to the Invitational. It’s the second Inkin’ Memorial, and the 59th ink in all, for Larry Gray since his debut in Week 923. Larry’s first win was in Week 1045, last year, when we asked to turn a line from a song into a statement, and add a question it could answer: 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? I’m not surprised that Nan Reiner, who’s carved a niche for herself in Loserdom with jokes about local politics, noticed that her recently convicted ex-governor, Bob McDonnell, conveniently has a 12-letter name. Or that she took it to the next level with both his new name (“SOB McDonnell” is so obvious — once you’ve seen Nan come up with it). Nan recently hit the 200-ink mark and now marches forward with two more, including her 21st ink above the fold. Melissa Balmain, who’ll be coming to D.C. in December with her new, utterly delightful book of poems, “Walking In on People,” had a great Invite week; her runner-up “Cream of What” topped three honorable mentions, for 53 inks in all. And Brendan Beary (see 339 previous contests). Obviously seeking the Nerd of the Week prize was Elden Carnahan, whose entry wouldn’t have been printable anyway if we’d actually been able to read it: FUCOXANTHINS [acetic acid [(1S,3R)-3-hydroxy-4-[(3E,5E,7E,9E,11E,13E,15E)-18-[(1S,4S,6R)-4-hydroxy-2,2,6-trimethyl-7-oxabicyclo[4.1.0]heptan-1-yl]-3,7,12,16-tetramethyl-17-oxooctadeca-1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15-octaenylidene]-3,5,5-trimethylcyclohexyl] ester] --> FUCOXANTHIS!: what the ill-prepared student of organic chemistry might say the night before the final exam. Maybe Elden would like to write a poem about it. (See the bottom of this column for some unprintable entries.) You can’t keep that brunch down — yet another new location for this Sunday This month’s Loser brunch — originally planned for Baltimore, then for Potomac — will now be at Clyde’s overlooking the lake in Columbia, Md., between the Washington and Baltimore beltways, this Sunday at noon. I won’t be able to make it, but I hear that a number of northwest-of-D.C. Losers and Style Invitational Devotees plan to gather there, and probably won’t even throw their food. If you’d like to join in, RSVP to Elden Carnahan on his Loser website so he can give the restaurant a head count. I do plan to make it to next month’s brunch, Oct. 19, at the Front Page in Arlington’s Ballston district. See you next week — maybe Next Thursday’s Conversational might be especially late, especially early, or nonexistent: Rosh Hashanah begins Wednesday night and continues on Thursday, and the Empress is going to be doing the New Year thing, which isn’t exactly a party but does have some cool noisemakers. Regardless, next week’s Invitational should appear as usual, sometime late Thursday afternoon. The dozen doesn’t: Unprintables from Week 1086 (Note: Crude wordplay below. Please don’t read it if you think it will bother you.) Motherpucker: Oedipus-lite. (Bruce Carlson) Skulldungery: Shitheadedness. (Christopher Lamora) Clithographic: What Georgia O’Keeffe’s art is. (Mark Richardson) Eat-her proof (as in weatherproof): Property of a chastity belt. (Sylvia Betts) Procotologism: KY Jelly; and Lickety-spilt: Badly performed oral stimulation. (Roy Ashley) Yes, you clearly are immature enough to get to work on Week 1090. ====================================================================== WEEK 1091, published September 28, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1091: The good*bad and inky; The Empress of The Style Invitational chews over the week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs September 25, 2014 Thursday 5:48 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1378 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Happy New Year, everyone. It's a Mini-Convo this week because along with doing the Empressing thing, I'm also the person at our little synagogue in Central Goyishe, Md., who's in charge of organizing the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. So I'm writing this in advance, between services, and hope the auto-publish function of the "content management system" Methode, The Post's second most snarled-at entity this week, worked better this time than it did back in April, when I went on vacation and had to make it all work from my B&B room in Oxford, England. I was surprised that the Invitational hadn't repeated the good-idea*bad-idea contest of Week 105, since the results were so memorable: When I mentioned to my predecessor, the Czar, that I was doing this contest again for Week 1091, the C immediately quoted me the winning entry from 19 years ago, about the kids' party, from memory. (At least I think it's the first time we're repeating this contest; I searched Elden Carnahan's indispensable Master Contest List for "idea"; out of 34 mentions, only Week 105 mentioned good*bad. If it slipped in sometime over the years without "idea" in the name or description, welp, we're doing the contest anyway.) How "slight" are "slight changes in wording"? Slight enough to be funny and interesting, as in the first set of results. I'm going to show the Week 105 results right here, because some coding problem caused the entries in the archived version to run togetther in a nigh-unintelligible blob. Report from Week 105, in which we asked for good idea-bad idea scenarios. But first we wish to once again protest a torrent of crude jokes from people who seem to think this contest dwells in the gutter. Please be advised that the Style Invitational will never stoop to rewarding sophomoric, adolescent humor. Fifth Runner-Up: Good idea: Shampoo. Bad idea: Shampoop. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) Fourth Runner-Up: Good idea: Wash hands after using toilet. Bad idea: Wash hands using toilet. (Jay Snyder, Chantilly) Third Runner-Up: Good idea: Taking back the streets of Washington, D.C. Bad idea: Taking the back streets of Washington, D.C. (Steve Hazelton, Reston) Second Runner-Up: Good idea: Have a documentary on the civil rights movement narrated by James Earl Jones. Bad idea: Have a documentary on the civil rights movement narrated by James Earl Ray. (Jerry A. Pohl, Rockville) the week's new contest and results First Runner-Up: Good idea: In business meetings, express yourself. Bad idea: In business meetings, express your milk. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) And the winner of "Standing Firm" autographed by Dan Quayle: Good idea: Showing pictures of your kids at a private party. Bad idea: Showing pictures of your privates at a kids' party. (Ira Moskowitz, Lanham) Honorable Mentions: Good Idea: Purchase a dog at the pound. Bad idea: Purchase dog by the pound. (Patrick G. White, Taneytown) Good idea: Saving the spotted owls. Bad idea: Saving the spotted owls in little plastic baggies in your freezer. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Good idea: Picking up a cent on the sidewalk. Bad idea: Picking up a scent on the sidewalk. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Good idea: Getting into Wharton after high school. Bad idea: Getting into Lorton after high school. (Beryl Benderly, Washington) Good idea: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Bad idea: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for Iraq. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) Good idea: Drive right, pass left. Bad idea: Drive right past cop. (Kevin Mellema, Falls Church) Good idea: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Bad idea: Let he who is without insurance pass the first stone. (Rich Milauskas, Laurel) [Oops - should have been "Let HIM who..."] Good idea: Presenting fresh, shiny faces to the teacher each morning. Bad idea: Presenting fresh, shiny feces to the teacher each morning. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Good idea: Take pride in your work. Bad idea: Take pride in your wart. (Meg Sullivan, Potomac) Bad Idea: Clinton, Gore in '96. Good idea: Clinton, gone in '96. (David Clayton Carrad, Hockessin, Del.) Good idea: Shopping at Food Lion. Bad idea: Being lion food. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Good idea: Pose for Playboy while you can. Bad idea: Pose for Playboy on the can. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Good idea: Calling your mother. Bad idea: Calling "You mutha!" (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Good idea: Cultivating a staff of competent workers among your underlings. Bad idea: cultivating a staphylococcus among your under-things. (Mike Sharkey, Washington) Good idea: Acquire a foreign tongue. Bad idea: Acquire a foreign tongue in your wedding reception line. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Good idea: Getting great marks because of your class in "The Social Structure." Bad idea: Getting grate marks because of your class in the social structure. (Tom Albert, Alexandria) Good idea: Yearly mammograms over 50. Bad idea: Over 50 mammograms yearly. (Leslie Marshall and bridge buds, Bethesda) And Last: the week's new contest and results Good idea: Post humor contest winners. Bad idea: Posthumous contest winners. (J. Calvin Smith, Laurel) Wow, great week. Note that the list of Losers include four who would end up in the Hall of Fame, with more than 500 blots of ink each: Chuck Smith, Jennifer Hart, Russell Beland and Elden Carnahan. Plus there's 333-time Loser Dave Zarrow. Aah, you can top those guys. And youse guys, you can top yourselves. *Alternative-headline entry by Beverley Sharp It was something of a slog to judge this contest, which asked for novel course catalogue descriptions. I really do, as promised, read every entry I receive, but when I get to a numbered list of 25 entries, each of them pushing 100 words, and the first dozen haven't shown me anything I 'd want to give a prize to -well, I might not muse as deeply as usual on Entries 13 through 25. But as I observe most weeks, once the chaff is tossed, the wheat can make a pretty yeasty Invite loaf. Or at least a few crackers to nibble. For the second week in a row, we had no First Offenders among the inking entries, but a number of occasional (if longtime) Losers aced this week's final. One who doesn't fall into the "occasional" group is Frank Osen, whose evocation of Every Student's Nightmare (well, mine, repeatedly, for perhaps 30 years) earns him his sixth Inkin' Memorial -yes, all his wins date from the post-Inker era (since mid-2012) - as well as Ink No. 116. The bag of scarlet caterpillar fungus from the Beijing Walmart goes to John Glenn, the earthbound Texan who since Week 684 has dabbled in Loserdom with great care: In a typical week, John will send in one or two entries, then later will resubmit one of them a few days hence with small but significant improvements. The thoroughness has paid off: In his 34 blots of ink since 2006, John has placed "above the fold" eight times. Meanwhile, it's the first time above the fold -and just the second blot of ink -for Dan McMahon, who knows from students: He's the principal of DeMatha High, one of the D.C. area's premier Catholic schools. His students -all boys -will surely be so proud to see Dr. McMahon attain this high honor, along with his choice of Loser Mug or Whole Fools Grossery Bag. And it's also the first ATF for Margaret Welsh, after 11 honorable mentions over the years, since Week 397, back in the Czarist era. I hope Dan and Margaret let me know before next Tuesday which runner-up prize they'd prefer. Once again, have a healthy and inky new year, and may you be inscribed in the Book of Laff. ====================================================================== WEEK 1092, published October 5, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1092: Hmm, a challenge to do stupid things ...; The Empress of The Style Invitational talks about this week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs October 2, 2014 Thursday 7:02 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1599 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Welcome, federales, to FY 2015; welcome, Jews, to 5775; and if you're reading this, then The Washington Post has finally welcomed me to the new Methode year -I found out right after midnight Wednesday*Thursday that as of Oct. 2, 2014, The Post's security certificate to remotely access its publishing system had expired, and I couldn't log on to the system no way no how. [It was finally fixed around 11 a.m., at which point some other thing went wrong.] I'm truly heartened that the ALS Association received such a huge windfall -or waterfall -from its Ice Bucket Challenge; a friend and neighbor of mine just died of this cruel disease, and a cure cannot come fast enough. $100 million surely will help in some way. Still, you just know that lots of equally worthy charities (along, no doubt, with numerous unworthies) are hatching plans of their own to get pledge money directed their way. Your challenge for Week 1092 may well be to figure out some crazy fundraising scheme that isn't actually being used already. There aren't any concrete rules this week for how the entries should read (except for the standard fabulously-funny­and-clever). But please don't write on and on; humorous essays can be wonderful, but they just don't work in The Style Invitational, especially interspersed with one-liners. For those who don't get the print Invite, here's a link to what the page looks like in its latest location, the third page from the back of the Arts & Style section. (Elden Carnahan's Master Contest List has PDFs of most of the past 1090 print pages; just click on the cartoon icon on the right side of a certain week's contest listing.) Take a look at the link above and see those blocks of type in the narrow little columns. You see a couple that are especially long -Dan McMahon's third-place ink; John Kammer's honorable mention? Each of those runs about 55 words. And even at that length, they look forbidding to the weekend-morning eye, especially before that second cup of coffee. So try to be concise, and try to make your sentences as readable -fun to read -as you can. What counts as an organization? I'm not going to be rigid, but a joke will make more sense if it's a nonprofit entity of some sort. Apple's charity foundation, yes: Apple Inc., no. For years and years, the Invite always likened the Ask Backwards contest to "Jeopardy!," since you have to answer in the form of a question. But in recent years we've acknowledged our debt to Carnac the Magnificent -Johnny Carson in bejeweled, feathered turban "divining" the questions for the answers supplied by the genially obsequious Ed McMahon: A. Sis Boom Bah; Q. Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes. Here's a video clip of that joke and a few others. The "Tonight Show" audience is very supportive. Page 2 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1092: Hmm, a challenge to do stupid things ...; The Empress of The Style Invitational talks about this week's new contest and results I offered 16 categories in Week 1088, up from the usual dozen, about half of them contributed by Losers on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page. I padded the list because I didn't have a feel for which phrases would be fruitful. And some weren't; "iPad Thai" drew a bunch of entries about using your noodle, noodling around, etc.; and com.org brought in only 24 entries, possibly an all-time low, and none of them guffawable. On the other hand, there were plenty of good jokes about a cross-country trip in a Miata, but just about all of them are, duh, about being cramped. So I wasn't going to run a dozen of them; it's better to go on to the next topic. As I mention in the results, that category was inspired by the trip by Longtime Loser J.J. Gertler last month from Arlington, Va., to Monterey, Calif.- and back -to the 25th-anniversary Miata convention at Mazda's Laguna Seca racetrack, attended by 1,800 little bitty pretty cars, including JJ's 17-year-old ragtop. He kept a Facebook blog called "JJ's Almost C2C2C Sojourn" to document what seems to be a crisis-free 6,712 miles and 16 days, starting with a video of himself backing out of the driveway. Presumably he got to put some luggage in the passenger seat. Once again, brand-new Loser Danny Gallagher fails to score a magnet. Just a few weeks ago, Danny got his first ink with a runner-up idea for a new phone app: "The Teh: An app that un-autocorrects your texts so it makes people think you're busier than you really are." Now the Dallas-based humor blogger gets to bobble the head of his own Lincoln Memorial statue courtesy of his tribute to the governor of his state. (I'm sure there's already a Rick Perry bobblehead, and even one that's a little statue with a spring in the neck.) Appropriately winning a package of tenacious little critters that you keep finding in your house no matter how you try to dislodge them, Frank Osen once again finds himself in Runner-Up Land. Well, last week he wasn't a runner-up; he won the whole contest. The three other runners-up this week are all Invite veterans -in fact, I'm sorry to say that there weren't any First Offenders this week. (As tempted as I am to encourage promising new people by giving them ink, I don't see names when I judge, and there were probably some very clever entries by newbies that just missed the cut. Just keep trying, new people -see the nice pretty new magnets?) 170-time Loser Lawrence McGuire and 170-zillion­time Loser Chris Doyle did the great-minds thing with "stir-crossed lovers," and Dave Prevar gets Ink No. 255 with one more go at Bob McDonnell, in this case, an allusion to the plea bargain that the ex-gov really, really stupidly turned down. Not surprisingly, there were several good ideas that were sent by too many people to get individual ink. Tysons Coroner had the slogan "Shop Till You Drop"; a cross-country trip in a Miata was feasible only in Liechtenstein. A factoid I learned courtesy of one entry: Zoologists say that an octopus has "arms," rather than tentacles. They reserve the latter for appendages that have suckers only on the end, rather than all the way up, as an octopus does. I learn so much in my job -including various genres of porn, but fortunately that didn't have anything to do with the octopus entry. (Unprintable entries from Week 1088 at the bottom of this column.) When I was off doing some volunteer work yesterday, I noticed an e-mail to my Post account from whoever takes "contact us" questions on washingtonpost.com: An Ira Moskowitz would like me to contact him immediately. I recognized the name; I had just credited Moskowitz last week for his super-clever winning entry from Week 105 (1995), which I used as an example and inspiration for Week 1091, an encore of the same "good idea*bad idea" challenge: Good idea: Showing pictures of your kids at a private party.Bad idea: Showing pictures of your privates at a kids' party. So I e-mailed Ira and complimented him on his long-ago ink, said I figured he'd seen it again, and asked what I could do for him. He instantly e-mailed me back. "Call me." So I called (n.b.: I hate calling strangers on the phone). Ira informed me that he was very upset to see his name "used fraudulently" next to this joke, that he had just heard about it because someone had mentioned it to him. Page 3 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1092: Hmm, a challenge to do stupid things ...; The Empress of The Style Invitational talks about this week's new contest and results Furthermore, he did not find it funny to joke "about displaying genitals to children." And further-furthermore, he worked in a "very sensitive job." He demanded that I take the name off the joke immediately from the online version. I explained that I'd simply copied the joke from the archives of 1995; I didn't recently get anything with his name on it. He wanted to know if I could check the original entries from 1995. No, sorry, I said: It was the dawn of e-mail, and The Post's e-mail purged after 90 days. And anyway, most of the entries still arrived by fax and postal mail; they got trashed as soon as the prizes went out. (Heck, probably some were trashed before the prizes went out, to judge from the number of people who wrote me to complain they'd never gotten their bumper stickers from the Czarist regime.) So unless I'd just dreamed up the name by mistake, I told him, the joke must have been by another Ira Moskowitz, strange as that would seem. And I certainly wasn't going to deprive the Cleverer but Perhaps More Tasteless Mr. M. of credit because someone else was running around with his name. When I got home, I double-checked the Week 105 results, and indeed the winner was "(Ira Moskowitz, Lanham)." This Ira is not and never was from Lanham. I think, in fact, he recently moved to the Washington area. And so he seemed satisfied. If you Google the name, most of the hits are for an artist who lived from 1912 to 2001, residing in New York and Taos in his later years. There's also a doctor in California. The Ira I called had a D.C. area code. The original Ira, according to Elden's statistics, won the contest with his first ink, and never got another blot. Until the encore presentation last week. So I guess it's not likely that Ira Formerly of Lanham will be reading this, eager to set us straight and bask once again in the glory of a well-wrought chiasmus-type joke about children and genitals. (I do now, by the way, keep copies of all the entries except the few that straggle in through the fax machine.) Among the unanswerables:A. A cross-country trip in a Miata. Q. What is the best way to prepare for self-administered oral sex? (Harry Farkas) A. Mary Had a Little Lemming. Q. What is a cute euphemism for Mary's intimate foliage? (Tom Witte) A. An octopus doing the Hokey Pokey. Q. Who's got fewer things going in and out than Your Mama? (Jon Gearhart) ====================================================================== WEEK 1093, published October 12, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1093: Sometimes an oh-notion; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ewww) the week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs October 9, 2014 Thursday 7:39 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 2284 words Byline: Pat Myers Body I'm glad I noticed before this week's Style Invitational went online -and especially before the print version was typeset -that this week's fabulous second prize, the set of four crocheted coasters depicting the rear view of raised-tail cats, was pictured upside down. So you would have seen this instead of this. It was my fault; when my computer uploaded the photo from my phone, it automatically inverted it, and I didn't notice before passing it on to Arts & Style's layout editor. In the upside-down view, the little cat feet in crocheting artist Shanna Compton's design look a bit like little (or big) cat ears, and the curved tail looks as if it's sitting on the floor. But then, hmm, what's that little pink star in middle of the cat's ... face? chest? So I'm glad the cats are back on their feet again. And thanks again to nine-time Loser Diane Wah, who got them just for us -or, actually, for you. Provided that you're just a leeeetle short of being the funniest writer in Week 1093. This week's contest, which I slammed into existence just days after 162-time Loser Mark Raffman suggested it to me, bears some resemblance to one of my first contests as Empress, almost exactly a decade ago: Dating from October 2004 (Week 581) and headlined "Evil Things in Store," that contest asked the Losers to "think of similarly evil or just plain stupid practices that the staff of a retail or other establishment might perpetrate." The contest was suggested by then-rookie Dave Prevar (now the Dave Prevar of 245 inks), who'd written in with this Tru-Life Experience: "I was looking for some over-the-counter back pain relief, and guess where the store stocked it? The bottom shelf, naturally. It took me a while just to get down there, and I hung on to a shelf to get back up. While I was down there, I even helped an older feller with his selection." That example wouldn't really apply to Week 1093, because it seems to be based in just thoughtlessness rather than greed. But some of the results of Week 581 can inspire you -thie first runner-up is classic. Here's the whole list, with both kinds, including true ones: Report from Week 581, in which we asked you to think of evil or stupid practices that a business might perpetrate. About half of you took this as an opportunity to vent hair-tearingly about actual insanities you've witnessed, including the ever-popular waiting on hold with tech support because you can't connect to the Internet, and hearing a repeated recording directing you to a Web site; and numerous sightings of drive-through bank lanes that featured Braille keypads. The remainder were fanciful -at least as far as we know: The Empress cannot guarantee that there isn't some sign on some bus somewhere that says, "Illiterate? For help, write to . . ." Third runner-up: True story: I once went to an Italian restaurant where the restrooms were marked Donne and Uomini. I figured that donne was the plural of don, and so . . . (Wayne Rodgers, Satellite Beach, Fla.) Second (ewww) the week's new contest and results runner-up: Peep shows that won't start when you put the money in because "I think you know why." (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) First runner-up, the winner of the SpongeBob SquarePants sponge, plus a Loser pen: Replace the candy in the checkout lane with kittens and puppies. (Stanley Halbert, Lawrence, Kan.) And the winner of the Inker: "Due to the increase in Metro ridership, all commuters will now be required to make reservations at least 24 hours in advance. Please arrive at the station at least 30 minutes before scheduled departure to receive your seating* standing assignment." (Mike Cisneros, Centreville) Honorable Mentions:IMAGINED EVILSInstalling automobile GPS devices that give directions in a choice of two voices --Porky Pig and Betty Boop. (Peter Metrinko, Plymouth, Minn.)A large scale in a restaurant with an arrow pointing to a mark that says, "You must weigh less than this to order the Triple Death by Chocolate dessert." (Art Grinath, Takoma Park)Certain confessional booths designated for only mortal sins. (Chuck Smith)Furniture stores institute a "you sit, you buy" policy. (Eric Murphy, Chicago)Restaurants suggest a tip of 5-pi percent. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park; Danny Bravman, St. Louis)"If you are deaf, press 1 . . ." (Maja Keech, New Carrollton) Sell each produce item in a different novel way. Grapes: 4 cents each. Coconuts: $7.23 per cubic decimeter. (Russell Beland, Springfield)Along with the Levitra prescription, include condoms with wrappers that take four hours to open. (Josh Borken, Bloomington, Minn.)Emergency number is 1-800-271-8684; Press 1 for medical emergency, Press 2 for fire . . . For an electrical fire, press 1; for burning wood, press 2 . . . (Art Grinath)Encourage people to pay for debt consolidation services with a credit card. (Art Grinath)Display canned tomatoes with the canned pears and peaches instead of with canned vegetables, since, technically, they ARE fruit. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney)A housing developer could honor world culture by naming all the streets in a suburban subdivision after, say, famous Indians and Serbs, e.g., Ananda K. Coomaraswamy Boulevard, Zeljko Joksimovi Way. (Peter Metrinko)Free cold medicine with the rental of any heavy machinery. (Russell Beland)Pay toilets also have coin slots inside for pay toilet paper. (Chuck Smith)Grocery stores could put Aunt Jemima pancake mix in the ethnic-foods section. (Roy Ashley, Washington) And the first-ever Anti-Invitational winner: Add a half-cent to every price at dollar stores in Virginia so that, with the 4.5 percent sales tax, each item costs exactly $1.05. (Russell Beland) TRUE EVILSLarge-size bras are always hanging on the lowest, almost-on-the-floor racks, causing us top-heavy shoppers to have to bend over, losing our balance. This is evil. (Christy Miller, Charlottesville)Drive-through liquor stores: for when you're too drunk to walk. (Steve Fahey, Kensington)Hey, ladies, don't you just love those feminine-product disposal units stuck at nose level right next to the toilets in public bathroom stalls? (Michelle Stupak, Ellicott City)When applying for a job as an English teacher for foreign students, a friend of mine was handed a form that said at the top: "If you are unable to read English, please ask for a translator." (Dot Yufer, Newton, W.Va.)In a warehouse store in Nebraska a while back, I wandered into the feminine-products area. And there, on a support beam, between the tampons and the sanitary napkins, was a shrink-wrap*card display of ice picks. (Don Critchfield, Washington)In a CVS, the sign over the aisle read: Candy* Snacks* Diet Aids (Jessica Lynne Mathews, Arlington)I like how supermarkets now sell freshly brewed coffee --and have those little platforms by the checkout keypad slanted just enough for your coffee to slide off while you pay. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis)Banks are happy to lend you money when you don't need it. (Jack Cackler, Falls Church)Publish KidsPost in the same section as Tell Me About It [Carolyn Hax's advice column], The Style Invitational and stories about sex toys. (Russell Beland) And Last: From the Metro section of the Oct. 24 Washington Post: "Maryland education officials have notified Prince George's County that it cannot use federal money to provide extra tutoring because a large number of its public schools are falling behind under the No Child Left Behind law." (Rosie Behr, Baltimore) Note that today's headline is stolen directly from Kevin Dopart's honorable mention today -His definition of his neologism "oh-notion" is what Week 1093 is all about. You don't get a physical prize for it, but Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan gives a point in the Loser standings -the same single point that he gives to someone who wins the whole contest -for an honorable-mentions subhead, and even one for the "revised title," the alternative headline for the next week's contest that runs at the bottom of the online Invite. (ewww) the week's new contest and results Not too many people send in suggestions for these headings, so you might have a better chance to get ink than with a regular contest entry (on the other hand, I choose just one each, so maybe the chance isn't that much better -but hey, it doesn't require tons of effort, either). But first, I have to see your entry. Make sure of this by sending your HM*RT entry or entries -you can send up to 25 each, in addition to your regular entries -on a separate e-mail to the regular address, losers@washpost.com, and indicate in the subject line something that shows you're sending entries in either or both of these categories. (It's fine to send both in the same e-mail, and if you can't decide whether a certain title would be better for the honorable mentions or the alternative headline, that's okay.) See, as opposed to when I judge the regular contest entries -in that case, I work from one huge combined file with everyone's name deleted -when it's time for me to choose an honorable-mention subhead or a revised title, I just scroll down my e-mail inbox for that week's entries, and look only at the e-mails so designated. Usually, it's no more than a dozen. So if you just write it along with your regular entries, I might remember to group it with the other HMs*RTs, but there's a better chance I won't. Desperately seeking Losin'*: The results of Week 1089 (Subhead by Tom Witte) I was so excited four weeks ago to run a neologism contest based on a word-search grid, because I knew I was going to get lots and lots of different entries. I wasn't disappointed. I had expected a deluge of e-mails, because it was going to be easy to find some word or other, with the flexibility of the Boggle-style snaking of letters that was permitted -and that didn't happen; fewer than 200 people entered the contest. But many of those entrants sent the full complement of 25 entries, and many others at least 10, so it was no problem at all to find the 38 that got ink today. My first-cut "shortlist," in fact, was something like 150 entries. I'll definitely do this contest again. All four of the "above the fold" winners this week are regular guests in the Losers' Circle: The most frequent visitor among them is Pam Sweeney, who gets Ink No. 243 (and 244) and her 23rd blot above the fold, including nine wins, since Week 499. Frank Osen might as well just set up a cot -he has 21 above-the-fold inks in just three years of Inviting (and 121 blots in all). Today's Inkin' Memorial winner, Mark Raffman (who also suggested this week's contest, it turns out) is in rarefied territory as well: It's his seventh win, 15th above the fold, and 162nd ink, all in only a little more than two years. Whew. So in this company, Rob Wolf isn't quite as obsessive, but he's no dilettante: This is Rob's 29th ink, and second Loser Mug or Grossery Bag (Rob, let me know which). One entry was nixed this week by The Post's managing editor, the No. 2 guy in the newsroom: It was by almost First Offender George Wright: "Jivecrime: The next target for the NYPD's stop-and-frisk initiative. Also known as talking while black." Kevin argued that "jive" is considered offensive, especially in the context of the "stop and frisk" police practice, "which has actually led to people getting beaten unmercifully, in some cases, and even killed." I do think "jive" is an outdated term of slang, as in the hilarious "I speak jive" scene in the 35-year-old movie "Airplane." On the other hand, Kevin did not comment on "Clintonhole," or a picture of four crocheted cat anuses, so I'm not complaining. (For stuff that even I wouldn't think of running, see the bottom of this column, but only if you have no taste.) One entrant decided to keep tracing through the word-search grid until the sun went down. I didn't actually verify this one, and actually couldn't really follow it, but I'll share this effort from Larry Lasday: K-15: OOGLE AMYS MOTEL COT ON BANK TIME FAD SENDS TONY LUCK: Occurs when Tony, the bank teller, takes advantage of the time his fellow fantasy football league bank coworkers spend searching the internet for leaked photos of Amy Adams by claiming Andrew Luck for his fantasy football team. Win a vintage Style Invitational bumper sticker! And by "win," we mean "show up to claim": It's your Special Grand Party Favor for attending this month's Loser brunch at noon on Sunday, Oct. 19, at the buffet of The Front Page in Arlington, just a block from the Ballston Metrorail station. Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan has donated a huge stack of Czarist-era honorable-mention bumper stickers to the Greater Loser Community, so here's a chance to get a piece of Invitatiana that hasn't been produced (ewww) the week's new contest and results since 2003, when we switched to the magnets. I'll be there, and hope to meet some new people as well as see the Invite regulars. RSVP to Elden at NRARS.org; click on "Our Social Engorgements" at the top of the page. Effpelt: A beaver. (Jeff Shirley)Jismotel: Its rooms are available in 15-minute segments. (Edmund Conti)Peecolo: A skin flute. (Kathleen DeBold) [actually, I'm not sure that was unprintable, but Kathleen asked that it not be printed in the Invite)Matitse: A French artist who specialized in frontal nudes. (Elden Carnahan) [again, not shocking, but it wouldn't have gotten in]FistFaux: Marital aid. "She couldn't coax him from watching the playoffs in bed, so she amused herself with her Fist-Faux." (Sylvia Betts) And Rob Wolf's alternative definition to the one that got him a runner-up this week: Clintonhole: What to use when a humidor is not nearby. Next week's prize - a toy man who farts bubbles. ====================================================================== WEEK 1094, published October 19, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1094: If you get it, you don't get it:; The Empress of The Style Invitational on why most of this week's results are only online Washington Post Blogs October 16, 2014 Thursday 7:43 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1138 words Byline: Pat Myers Body "Sure don't see why not. Words are words," answered my editor a month ago when I sent him an e-mail titled "Can we do this contest?" I was pleased, of course, that he'd given the go-ahead to Loser Ward Kay's suggestion of a poetry contest based on the list of "50 Words That Sound Rude but Really Aren't." And readers seemed to agree: Four weeks ago, in announcing the Week 1090 contest, The Style Invitational printed 40 or so of the words, both in print and online, including such genuine wholesome English words as "shittah," "dreamhole," "fuksheet" and "dik­dik" -without any indication of what their real meanings were. And there was even a sample poem by Gene Weingarten, featuring "peniaphobe" (someone with a fear of going broke): My sister is truly a honeyBut a peniaphobe, as to moneySo my sis sells her tailTo most anyone male(Which is pretty ironically funny.) Yeah, it was a pretty immature idea. But "immature" is part of the Empress's job description anyway, and, as I'd expected, we received the usual number of complaints for a Style Invitational column: zero. Four weeks later, however -yesterday evening -my editor had a serious change of heart. He remembered his earlier approval, "but after seeing the page today I think we just have to go another direction. There's simply too much in there that crosses the line, when taking into account that we are still a family paper." Fortunately, he agreed late this morning to let the entire set of results run online, and to allow the winner and two other entries -ones that weren't double-entendres -to run in print. Officially, The Post's position is that there are not two sets of standards for print and online; everything is held to the same high standard. That may be true for its standards for accuracy, transparency and news judgment, but here's a case when differing standards do and should apply: As I note in the Web version's introduction to the results, readers paging idly through the Sunday Arts & Style section might reach Page E16 or 18 -let's say they had an unusually large breakfast waffle -and be unpleasantly surprised by what they could see as coarse humor (or, if they were young children, in-cred-ibly exciting humor). But to read the Invite online, you really have to track it down. You have to look for it through the search bar at washingtonpost.com, or you have to know the generic URL, washingtonpost.com*styleinvitational; or you have to know the usual specific-week URL, bit.ly*invite[week number]; or you have to have the link (which you get if you're on the e-mailing list by entering the Invite or by signing up on your own). And if you go looking for The Style Invitational, and you're upset by these poems, well, you're just being silly. most of this week's results are only online I'm delighted that The Post did give actual liquid ink to Danielle Nowlin's poem about the guy bragging about his Hawaiian fishing trip, with the conclusion "aholehole" (a fish). Danielle, who didn't start entering the Invitational until Week 995, already has blotted up 132 inks, including 14 "above the fold"; this is her fourth Inkin' Memorial. The Loser Community awarded Danielle plaques for both Rookie of the Year and Loser of the Year this past May. It's hard to see how anything could top that, but she's giving it a try - Moppet No. 3 is due shortly. So this week we have two second-place winners and two third-place winners. But just one "Klutz Book of Inventions." The book will go to Beverley Sharp, who edges out Chris Doyle by virtue of printability. Not to mention that Beverley once ended up with a flying squirrel in her bed, and maybe there's some invention in there that's a Flying Squirrel Debedder. With this 475th blot of ink -46th above the fold -Beverley continues inexorably downhill toward the welcome mat of the Style Invitational Hall of Fame. Chris's "penistone" couplet only increases his hold on the status of Biggest Loser Ever, as he slides away from the 1,600 mark. I'm not sending him anything. It's ironic that this contest deemed too risque for our readers includes two inking entries from Mae Scanlan, the most gracious and elegant of Losers. Mae, whose younger elementary school classmates included John McCain, has told us that she writes to her own criterion of tastefulness: She won't send in anything that might embarrass her minister on a Sunday morning before church. So while Mae's "gullgroper" entry -with no double-entendre at all -was the one that wins her a mug or bag, even she had her "dreamhole" poem cut from the print paper. And then there's the other fourth-place for Frank Osen, because Frank Osen seems to have some deal with the gods in which he has permanent squatter's rights above the fold. I don't know what it says about Frank that he ended up with five blots of ink in this contest - perhaps his next volume of poetry could contain a set of these. Some people didn't follow the contest directions, which stated that the poems had to make sense if you read the words with their actual meanings -even if you could also read them entertainingly with the wrong meanings. So it wasn't the contest to say "The Cohens were now sitting shittah" for someone who died, or "The bird fired a pakapoo [actually an Australian lottery] in my ear." It wasn't like the contests we've done in which you had to come up with your own, totally inaccurate definition for an archaic word. Chris Doyle suggested the Tour de Fours contest 11 years ago, basing it on a similar one that ran regularly as part of the New York Magazine Competition, in which he played a starring role (under various credit names) in its later years. And each year since then, the word-block neologism contest has evinced dozens of classic additions to the vocabulary. (I'll be sharing some this week from 2010 on the Style Invitational Ink of the Day.) If you'd like some inspiration for this week's contest, it's easy to find the 10 previous versions (with different letter blocks, of course) on Elden Carnahan's Master Contest List at nrars.org. Call up the list and search on "fours" to find each contest, then scroll four weeks down to click on a link to see the results. As always: An interesting made-up word -it's especially good if it has a real-life application -can become a funnier entry with a clever definition and*or a funny sentence as an example. It's not too late to join the Loser contingent this Sunday at noon at the Front Page in Arlington's Ballston section. I'll be there, along with about 10 others, including some I'll be meeting for the first time. There's a buffet (as well as a Bloody Mary bar) but you can also order from the menu. RSVP to Elden Carnahan here. I am so glad that I didn't have to show up on a week when there was no Invitational at all. ====================================================================== WEEK 1095, published October 26, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1095: The man who made Style ripe for the Invitational; Without Ben Bradlee's creation, you wouldn't be reading these jokes here Washington Post Blogs October 23, 2014 Thursday 7:04 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1507 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Ben Bradlee had nothing to do with The Style Invitational. Not personally, anyway -he retired in 1991, two years before the contest debuted. It was his successor, Len Downie, who approved the idea (a bit surprisingly, to me) and let the Czar run with it. But in another respect, Bradlee had everything to do with it: It was he who created the Style section in 1969, tossing aside the fusty and demeaning "For and About Women" section and replacing with a lively and irreverent digest -essentially a daily magazine -featuring some of the day's best writers. As he wrote in his memoir, "A Good Life": "We wanted to look at the culture of America as it was changing in front of our eyes. The sexual revolution, the drug culture, the women's movement. And we wanted it to be interesting, exciting, different." And it was Ben Bradlee who, in 1990, hired one Gene Weingarten away from the Miami Herald, where Gene had similarly transformed its Sunday magazine, Tropic, running cover stories like this one on the budget deficit, and recruiting Dave Barry as a humor columnist. Before long, Gene was given his own domain at The Post, the Sunday Style section, which until then was the final vestige of For and About Women, featuring a fashion column, society news, and features such as Ann Landers and the horoscope that on weekdays ran in the comics pages. Gene promptly made Sunday Style appointment reading for a major feature story every week (often of the true-crime genre), on which -he's a terrific editor -he would work closely with one of a roster of writers he particularly respected; occasionally he wrote his own. And he also, on Page 2, started up a contest based on the one in New York Magazine (in which his sole entry failed to get ink), and made it edgier than any of the contests run by that famously brash publication. Though from its earliest days it drew contestants from around the country, even before we had the Internet, The Style Invitational was never syndicated -it just wouldn't have been suitable for other newspapers' feature sections. But it was perfect for the one that Ben Bradlee created. Bradlee also hired me, by the way. After a few years working part time, I was hired as a copy editor in 1986; the job interview was brief. (He asked me what my father did; I looked young.) However, after I became Style's copy desk chief, a particularly honest job evaluation I did crossed his desk. "This Myers, she's tough as nails," he remarked to my editor, Mary Hadar. It wasn't true, but I treasured the Bradleean appraisal anyway. creation, you wouldn't be reading these jokes here There have been some marvelous Ben Bradlee appreciations published over the past two days. In addition to the excellent obit by The Post's former managing editor Bob Kaiser, I especially enjoyed these personal reminiscences by some of the paper's most talented writers from over the years: Bradlee and the Style section, by my former Style colleague Martha Sherrill. Bradlee backs up his young reporter against lawyers, anecdotes by The Post's Marc Fisher. (Note: "Flysh--on paper" is to be read as "fly sh--") From my former Style colleague David Remnick, now editor of The New Yorker, in his magazine. (In the understatement of the century: "His letters in no way resembled those of Emily Dickinson.") And one in Time Magazine by my former boss David Von Drehle. Given that in the 1960s, Ben Bradlee told Katharine Graham, in the middle of a fancy restaurant, that "I'd give my left one" to be editor of The Washington Post, it seems to me that the Invite is carrying on his legacy proudly. With both. Given the poetry chops of the Greater Loser Community -witness the "rude word" poems in last week's results -I'm always eager to set them upon a different genre of verse to bumfiddle, to use one of said words. Last week I saw a tanka posted on Facebook by Loser Madeleine Begun Kane, whose main gig is a limerick blog. I can't seem to find it now, but the form seemed just right for the Invitational -short enough for lots of them to fit on the page, long enough to get some cleverness in. And because real tanka -in English, anyway -doesn't actually hew to a strict syllable count (here's some beautiful poetry, labeled as tanka, by Gerard John Conforti, and the lines greatly vary), and it doesn't rhyme, I figured that rather than getting the poetry people up in arms with our insistence on 5-7-5-7-7, and rhyme, and humor, we could let them keep their arms down and we'll just call it something else. Hence TankaWanka. My hunch is that the rhyme will usually be set in the last two lines, in sort of a mini-mini-sonnet ending. But it can be anywhere, and in more than one place. The syllable count, though, and the rhyme requirement, will be fast rules. The subject matter is really flexible, but it can't just be a little personal*domestic musing, about your dog, say. It has to concern some topic that's mentioned in the news of late - i.e., not already out of the discussion. Lord knows, just because I have reading glasses dangling from a little chain around my wattly neck doesn't mean I'm mature. And I admit that both the Royal Consort and I kept breaking into almost weepy guffaws at the succession of poopy jokes, sex jokes and sicko jokes that I was reading aloud to him from my (un)short-list of "good idea*bad idea" entries for Week 1091. A lot of them were similar, and so it didn't make sense to run them all, but I hope the inking ones today will give you a giggle, even if it's a guilty giggle. I had no idea at all whose entries were whose until I put them on the page on Tuesday; because the format was predetermined, it was even hard to tell when one set of entries finished and the next began. And it was fun to see that three out of the four top finishers were either brand-new or occasional visitors to the Invite. But first prize -and not just my own choice, but that of both people I asked to read the short-list -goes to Him Again Frank Osen, who's having the kind of year that reminded me of when, one year about a decade ago, Brendan Beary got 179 blots of ink before returning to semi-sanity. But Jan Forman will have to be moved off the Loser Stats' One-Hit Wonders list, now that we'll supplement her Week 1060 FirStink with a genuine vintage Loser T-Shirt for her thing we used to call a chiasmus and then got corrected because technically it's "antimetabole" or "epanados" -having fun switching the order of words, whatever you call it. It's just the ninth blot of ink for Larry Carnahan (no relation to Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan), who's been stopping by in Loserland very occasionally since Week 551 -but did come to this past weekend's Loser Brunch in creation, you wouldn't be reading these jokes here Arlington, Va., along with what turned out to be about 20 other people; that's where Cheryl Davis gave me this week's cool prize. Larry might have lucked out a bit with "Use power tools to keep your ear functioning properly," since I recently had to go to the doctor to get one of my ears cleaned out, and I was struck by the mental image of a Dremel rotary reamer in my left auditory canal. And Eric Yttri's nifty wordplay earns him his choice of Loser Mug or Whole Fools Grossery Bag along with the FirStink for his first ink. Eric, let me know which one you'd rather have. Some funny entries didn't quite fit the contest because they were good-news*bad-news rather than good*bad ideas; they weren't things that people might think to do. In fact, I hadn't noticed that myself until copy editor extraordinaire Doug Norwood pointed two cases out to me: Good idea: Thanks to the lottery, winning a million dollars. Bad idea: Thanks to the lottery, winning a million "relatives." (Lawrence McGuire) Good idea: The Post article describes you as an interesting person.Bad idea: The Post article describes you as a person of interest. (Howard Walderman) .So good news*bad news for Lawrence and Howard, good news*good news for the two entries that replaced them. (Not yours; yours got ink from the start.) Good idea: Surprising a co-worker by putting a cupcake in their office. Bad idea: Surprising a co-worker by putting a cupcake in their orifice. (Jeff Shirley) Good idea: Pulling your bowling balls out to clean them before going to the alley.Bad idea: Pulling your balls out to clean them at the bowling alley. (Brad Alexander) Good idea: Sneaking a piece of Good N' Plenty candy. Bad idea: Sneaking a piece of Good-and-Plenty Candy. (Jim Stiles) Good idea: Blowing one's own horn to advance in the company.Bad idea: Blowing your boss's horn to advance in the company. (Also Jim Stiles) Good idea: Stimulating children's minds.Bad idea: Stimulating children's hinds. (Tom Witte, who I bet will protest, "But I said it was a bad idea!") G: Write in your diary.B: Write in your diarrhea. (Kevin Dopart; sorry, too gross even for me) And the Scarlet Letter goes to: Good idea: Dishwashing liquid that is really hard on grease.Bad idea: Dishwashing liquid that is really hard-on grease. (Elden Carnahan) ====================================================================== WEEK 1096, published November 2, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1096: We just keep tooning along; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates (ew!) on the new and old contests Washington Post Blogs October 30, 2014 Thursday 8:26 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1097 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Did you know that when Bob Staake does his cartoon each week for The Style Invitational, he often makes two versions for us -one in full color, to be posted online, and one that will look better when it's printed in black-and­white? (Which is what's done each week now that the Invite is no longer on a color page of the print paper.) But this week, Bob also did two separate versions of his cartoons when they're both in black-and-white -just to add a splash of color with the numbers. Once I realized that we weren't suddenly going to be moved to a color page this week (and also four weeks from now, when the results are published), I knew that the contest wouldn't work if the cartoons in print were in B&W and the online ones were in color, because inking entries often refer or allude to the colors in the pictures, and then the print readers would be all confused and would fill up their fountain pens and start writing letters to the editor about how journalism has gone down the toilet. Maybe next time, Bob could just write RED -->, <---ORANGE, etc., right on the cartoons, and people could color them in. (Hey, we did a word-find puzzle, you know.) Actually, the large majority of our cartoon contests have been in black-and-white: The Post didn't publish much in color at all until 1999, when it built a gigantic high-tech plant in College Park, Md. (it was later closed in a consolidation after circulation shrank drastically). But even after that, the page that the Invite was on -Page 2 of the Sunday Style section -didn't get to be in color (with a few rare exceptions) until February 2004. And even then, we had to take turns with Page 2 of Sports: Sports got the color page for the whole football season, for the Super Bowl and, on alternate years, for several weeks around the Olympics. (And probably a few other events I'm forgetting.) So I scheduled the cartoon contests around those times, traded my firstborn child for a week with color during the football season, etc. One reason I wasn't too upset that the Invitational moved to the Saturday paper in 2007 -even though Saturday had the week's smallest circulation, barely half of Sunday's -was that I was promised a color page every week. And on many weeks it was really splashy, with all kinds of art and graphics (here's a good example, from Week 727, featuring the zany face of Loser Kyle Hendrickson). So I got pretty spoiled on that. But as the newspaper business and The Post itself got spun around every which way as it looked for some way to bring back circulation and especially ad revenue, there was a move to bolster Sunday coverage, and so in 2011 began the separate Sunday Style tabloid section -to which its editor, Invite fan Lynn Medford, brought us when she moved over from the daily section. And she gave us part of and later the whole back page. And that page was always in color, because the other half of the sheet of paper it was printed on -think of splaying out a magazine upside down - was the cover of the section. (ew!) on the new and old contests And that all lasted several years, while The Post patiently waited in vain for ads to show up on all these new arts pages, while a pared-down staff of editors and writers worked incessantly to fill two Sunday sections as well as the six daily Style sections (and Weekend, and of course all the blogs and other online sites). And now we're back to the reunited Arts & Style section, which is still very spaciously laid out, with tons of lovely big pictures and artsy white space (and many thoughtful, well-written stories). But the color goes to the arts stories -believe me, a black­and-white page featuring an abstract expressionist painter is not a great idea -while the Invite is on the same page as a crossword puzzle. But! You know how when you move to a new house, there's always some stuff that's not going to get packed up one more time? Well, we've made it into that van four times in our 211* 2 years (while numerous others weren't so lucky), and if this time we didn't get to move into the corner room with the bay window and the skylight, our friends still know where to find us. *An entry from Jeff Contompasis As I do most every week, I read through all the entries for Week 1092 from a list that included no entrants' names or addresses; made a short-list of my favorite few dozen entries; cut that list by half or more; and then picked the top four, and copied them into the template that makes up the Invitational's layout. After each, I typed "(XXXXX, XXXXXXX)." Then I copied another block of entries into the honorable-mentions area. Then I looked up my list of "Week 1092 with names," and searched for each entry. The person whom last week I called "Him Again Frank Osen" is now Him AGAIN Frank Osen. Frank's current string of highest-placing ink -and sometimes he'd have as many as five blots: Week 1092: Win. Week 1091: Win. Week 1090: Third place. Week 1089: Second place. Week 1088: Second place. Week 1087: Win. You have to go back to Sept. 21, seven weeks earlier, to find a Style Invitational contest in which Frank did not place "above the fold." I don't have time to find out how far back it was when he didn't get any ink at all. Has there ever been a run like this? Even in the year when Brendan Beary got 179 blots of Ink? Even Chuck Smith when he dominated the Invite in the early years? If there has been, that runner will surely let me know (or even another stats-obsessive Loser will, now that baseball season is over), and I'll let you know. And it was pretty yada-yada-yada with the others in the Losers' circle, as well. Beverley Sharp is just daring me to change the powder room guest towels of the Invitational Hall of Fame, as she glides smoothly toward Ink 500; and Lawrence McGuire and Danielle Nowlin have more than 300 inks between them. One Loser whose entry didn't quite make it -though I enjoyed its mix of yuckiness and utter wackiness -is Sandy Moran of Santa Rosa, Calif., who deserves a special Comedy Is In The Timing award, since four weeks ago she obviously calculated that this very day, her subject would be on the front page of every newspaper: "The Bumgarner Booger Blast: In celebration of the public nose-clearings of the Giants' star pitcher, two people face each other three feet apart, block one nostril and attempt to blow a snot rocket at their opponent. All for the Snotless Children of East Bermuda Fund." It took only 32 years, but I finally made the front page of The Washington Post. See the photo! ====================================================================== WEEK 1097, published November 9, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1097: If there were a Pulitzer Prize for horoscopes ...; The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses the week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs November 6, 2014 Thursday 8:31 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1401 words Byline: Pat Myers Body · "The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained." -The first in a list of "Seven Principles" written by Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946 · Hyderabad, India: Hello Raju, Everyone in India know that your father, Innaiah does not believe in horoscopes and astrology.I found a horoscopes column in the Washington Post. Do you believe in horoscopes? Raju Narisetti: I don't. But a newspaper needs to serve a very broad audience and horoscopes are very, very popular among WP's readers. -From a 2009 online chat on washingtonpost.com with Raju Narisetti, then The Post's managing editor, the second-in-command in the newsroom: · "The horoscope in the April 23 Style section gave an incorrect date. It should have said April 23, not April 24." -Correction, Page A2, 2007 It's a weird, weird thing, running horoscopes -the epitome of pseudoscience -in a serious newspaper. And The Post didn't always run them on the comics pages, either; they used to run right inside the Style section alongside the news and arts reviews. I'm sure that some readers assumed that Sydney Omarr was a staff writer. And they have continued to run in Style on Sundays to this day, now in the Arts & Style section. Right next to that other testament to Eugene Meyer's mission of truth-telling. So it's fitting, I think, to help clarify their grand truths in this week's Style Invitational contest, Week 1097. I've done my best to accommodate those who don't subscribe to either the print or online Post by directing you to Astrology.com; the online Post uses the "detailed" horoscope from that site, but you may use the short form as well. The print Post uses a different horoscope, by Jacqueline Bigar of King Features Syndicate. If you happen to find the two horoscopes hilariously contradicting each other on the same day, let me know -I can mention that with the results. While I remembering having to read the horoscopes many years ago while working on the Style copy desk, I have absolutely no evidence that bored copy editors would occasionally rearrange the day's various predictions for the zodiac signs, just to tempt the Fates. And today I asked Gene Weingarten, editor of the Sunday Style section in the 1990s and early 2000s, whether he ever tinkered with the text of horoscopes, perhaps at the request of the Czar of The Style Invitational. He said that he couldn't imagine having done that, although he did argue both in house and publicly that The Post should not be running horoscopes at all. Invitational discusses the week's new contest and re.... Does any scholar of the early years of The Style Invitational have any evidence to contradict this -a Loser-penned horoscope that appeared outside the Invite itself? If so, let me know. The Invitational did have fun with horoscopes in at least one previous contest: In Week 68, the Czar asked readers to name a new zodiac sign and write one day's horoscope for it. The ink: Fifth Runner-Up: TUCHUS: You'll get a little behind in your schedule today. (Kathy Weisse, Sykesville, Md.)Fourth Runner-Up: LIBRIUM: You will have a terrible day, but you won't care. (Linda Shevitz, Greenbelt)Third Runner-Up: OREO: You may feel yourself pulled apart today. (Lyell Rodieck, Washington)Second Runner-Up: TSURIS: Better you should stay home. (Stu Segal, Vienna)First Runner-Up: FECES: Watch your step. Avoid electric fans. (Jean C. Clancy, Fairfax; Joe Sisk, Arlington) And the winner of the painting of the "Abbey Road" cover featuring Bogie and Dean and Marilyn and Elvis: TEDIUS: You will wake up. You will stretch your left arm. You will stretch your right arm. You will yawn. You will stretch your left leg. You will rub your right eye. You will yawn again. You will . . . (Christie Houser, Alexandria) Honorable Mentions CUOMO: Do not make a decision today. (Gary F. Hevel, Silver Spring)LEONA: Everybody hates you. (Joseph Romm, Washington)ENIGMA: Spend Sunday as if it were Thursday. Monday finds you wishing it were Wednesday. Avoid non-sequential weasels. (Bev Wiedeman, Manassas)HYPOCHONDRIA: You have cancer today. You will have pimples tomorrow. (Kate Weizel, Bowie)ENNUI: Today will be so, oh I don't know, dissatisfying. (Sue Lin Chong, Washington; also, Dawn-Michele Gould, Germantown)HILARIUS: Today you have to screw in a light bulb. Be original. (Bill Harvey, Alexandria)TAURIST: You are going to visit new places, meet new people and pay 20 bucks for a seven-block cab ride. (Jon Patrick Smith, Washington)ARSENIO: You are past your prime. (Larry Gordon, Potomac)ZEBRA: It's not a good day to be with a Leo. (Stephen Dudzik, Silver Spring)CAPRIATI: Stay off the grass. (Stephen Dudzik, Silver Spring; Chris Rooney, Blacksburg, Va.; Gordon A. Janis, Washington)HERPES: Avoid flare-ups with loved ones. (Larry Cynkin, Kensington; Annie Wauters, Washington; Stephen Dudzik, Silver Spring)GIGOLO: Stay away from Virgos. (Dave Ferry, Leesburg)JIMINY: Stay on the straight and narrow! Don't steal, cheat or lie! (Eric Chang, Silver Spring)THESAURUS: Find new ways to express yourself. (David Siltman, Gaithersburg)ZEPPO: Your siblings may garner more attention than you. (Paul Sabourin, Greenbelt; Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)BIMINI: Avoid photographers. (Joseph Romm, Washington) Inkless alternative-headline entry by Gary Crockett What I kept encountering while judging Week 1093 -imaginative ways for businesses to squeeze yet another buck from us -were ideas that, while not actually in use (maybe), weren't so far from the realm of possibility that they'd be funny; they'd just be irritating. A charge at the supermarket for letting you type in your phone number rather than using your store card. A charge for extra condiments at the ballpark. There was one intriguing idea, sent by two people, that I wasn't sure had happened yet, but seems entirely plausible to me: A very upscale jewelry store charges $25 admission just to look around; it's credited back if a shopper actually buys an item. This idea actually doesn't sound like a bad business plan to me: It probably wouldn't deter the insanely rich shoppers whom the jeweler or Ferrari dealer is courting; in fact, they might prefer a shop where fanny-packed hoi polloi would be unlikely to brush shoulders with them. We had room for lots of entries on the page this weekend; all of today's inking entries are also in print. And perhaps the biggest news is that Frank Osen -whose six-week streak of "above-the-fold" ink I marveled at last Thursday when he snagged his second straight Inkin' Memorial -not only fails to reach the Losers' Circle, but gets no ink at all. I believe the last time Frank went inkless was July 3, with no entries in the results of Week 1075. In other words, Frank just broke an 18-week Losing streak. Perhaps his decision to leave his job and family to concentrate on writing Style Invitational entries wasn't the best strategy after all. (He did have several entries on my short-list this week.) Invitational discusses the week's new contest and re.... So, Frankless, my dear, we appropriately give this week's Inkin' Memorial to Gordon Cobb of Atlanta -Cobb County, in fact. I remember Gordon because he once wrote to the Empress to lament that she was obviously never going to like anything he sent in, and was giving up. I'm glad that Gordon (Loser Anagram: Corn Dog Bob) renewed his faith that I would smarten up one of these days, and indeed, this first win is his third above-the-fold ink out of four total! Meanwhile, the promising rookie Todd DeLap successfully counted on the Redskins to continue to undistinguish themselves during the three weeks between contest deadline and results. Todd had a terrific day, with three blots of ink - including his first above the fold - to reach 22 in all since Week 1039. The two other runners-up are, to understate the case, non-rookies: Roy Ashley picks up Blot 323 since his first ink in the famous Week 120 "bad analogies" contest of 1995, while Gary Crockett gets his 212th notch in the bad-Post. The Loser Community moseys up Rockville Pike for its next gathering, an annual brunch at the Mosaic Cafe, famed for its waffles. I won't be able to make that one, so someone save me a waffle with roasted apples. You can mail it to me. The brunch is at noon on Sunday, Nov. 16 - RSVP to Elden Carnahan here. ====================================================================== WEEK 1098, published November 16, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1098: The week of review; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ew) the week's contest and results Washington Post Blogs November 14, 2014 Friday 12:55 AM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 985 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Actually, as far as I know, J.P. Bezos of the Seattle area is not acquainted with The Style Invitational. But it's good to see that his sideline Web business has a sense of humor: Rather than getting huffy that people enjoy taking advantage of its sophisticated feedback system by writing creatively silly product reviews, Amazon seems to embrace them: It even sends readers to its own page of "Funniest Reviews" as well as "More Funny Reviews." And notice that it invites nominations for others. Amazon also offers a link to a "smart take on the funny reviews phenomenon," a blog post by Maria Popova called "The Art of the Humorous Amazon Review." I think that's notable because the reviews Popova cites includes some that actually mock the product being sold on Amazon, such as the Bic Cristal For Her pen in pretty pastel colors, and lauds the many recent snarky and sarcastic pen reviews for skewering "the gobsmacking marketing exploitation [of] the 'women's niche' (which is, of course, statistically a population majority) by pinkifying, softifying, and otherwise ladyfying products that are so obviously gender-neutral by nature." For our purposes, I think we can have as much fun as we want with the Week 1098 contest, as long as it doesn't mess with Amazon's star-system feedback ratings, which often determine which product and which seller a buyer will choose -often without actually reading the reviews. A listing with an average feedback rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars tends to be shunned in favor of one that has the full 5. So even if your bogus review is negative, if you post it on Amazon, you ought to give the product the maximum five stars. (I don't think there's an option to post a review without choosing a star rating.) And if you're going to make the review negative, it must be abundantly clear that you're joking; don't say it made you sick, that it injured your child, anything like that. When I checked the current reviews for the five products I chose, I didn't see any joke posts. But I bet that at least a few people will disregard my instruction not to post the entry until I print the results on Dec. 11. I love the solar dancing turkey -I got one myself, and it's a happy addition to my growing collection of solar dancers. (If you're on Facebook, you can see a few seconds of video here; Pukin' Paul on the right was an Invite prize that was declined by its winner.) "The inclusion of X in Week 1094's Tour de Fours really cuts down on the usable permutations," fretted Such a Loser Jeff Contompasis on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook minutes after I posted the contest four weeks ago. But a couple of days later, I was reassured by Even Bigger Loser Chris Doyle, who posted this: "Like Jeff, I was concerned about the limited useful letter permutations in Week 1094, but after playing around today (while watching soccer and football), I've decided Pat will have ample funny material to fill the column." the week's contest and results I'm glad that Chris decided this, for -though I wasn't really ever worried -we ended up with the usual lots of clever, varied neologisms for this Tour de Fours XI. And I never systematically checked, but I think that almost all of the 24 permutations proved usable (including for Jeff), provided the user was imaginative enough. There were of course a lot of jokes about taxis and taxes (and there was the resultant duplication of ideas; I picked the entry that I thought edged out the similar ones), but also so many with totally different, often unique approaches. An ingenious, instantly understandable term -and one that ought to gain currency in our language -is Ann Martin's winning portmanteau "prophylaxity," combined with "unplanned parenthood" in the definition. It's the second win for Ann -her 10th ink "above the fold" and her 67th in all -and I'm relieved that I won't have to ship the Inkin' Memorial overseas now that she's moved back from England. And Chris Doyle was especially creative (and amply funny) with "A_XI_TY," netting him an electronic bubble fart machine that might even work, as well as even more distance between Chris and Russell Beland atop the Invite's all-time standings. Two more veteran punsters round out the Losers' Circle to earn their Loser Mug or Whole Fools Grossery Bag: Dudley Thompson (official anagram: Note Shoddy Lump) passes the 100-ink mark with this 14th ink above the fold, and Jeff Shirley (Fish Fly, Jeer) blots up No. 46. Note to honorably mentioned Losers: While I wrote four weeks ago that this week's HMs would get one of the two new Loser magnets, it turned out that I still have a couple dozen or so left from the 2014 set, and I'd like to use them up. This will probably be the last week of the Po' Wit Laureate and Puns of Steel, before I switch over to the Hardly Har-Har and The Wit Hit the Fan. (A few unprintables from Week 1094 are at the bottom of this column.) Right now, Brunchmeister Elden Carnahan has just a half-dozen names for this month's Loser brunch, at noon at the Mosaic Cafe, but it's not too late to join in. RSVP Elden here. (I'm afraid I can't make it this time.) AND! An announcement will be made very soon for a Super Great Event in early December that will feature several especially creative members of the Loser Community. I'll provide more details as soon as I'm given the go-ahead. Stay tuned to the Devotees page. Among the funny-but-nos: Buxatits: The Leslie Johnson lingerie collection. You'll look like a million dollars... or at least 79,000. (Nan Reiner) Foxtaint: A vixen's betwixen. (Tom Witte)Lixateen: Provides extracurricular instruction at a certain D.C. public charter school. (Nan Reiner) And the Scarlet Letter goes to the wonderfully clever but doubly unprintable ...Yu Xiating Mee: A Chinese comic whose name translates to "Are you serious?" (Warren Tanabe) ====================================================================== WEEK 1100, published November 30, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1100: With pun in hand; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ewww) this week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs November 26, 2014 Wednesday 7:03 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1830 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Just a few notes on this closing-early Invite week (filled mostly with the results of Week 347): This week's new contest: A number of people had suggested over the years that we do another story-pun contest. And as I notoriously tend to do, I said it wouldn't work -the Invitational's format can't handle long-form entries, and anyway, aren't all the good puns taken? But as I mention in the introduction to Week 1100, I was emboldened after seeing this week's sample entry, posted by new Style Invitational Devotee Ted Remington of North Carolina. Ted is just an amazing shaggy-dog-story generator; anything he posts on Facebook is going to end in a pun. He even put one up the other day about a funeral: Yesterday was a tough day. Any day with a funeral in it is a tough day, isn't it? The funeral was for Tina Martinez, who was a much-loved member of the Marion NC police force, but her career was cut short by a particularly nasty form of pancreatic cancer. Tina was a rising star in our police department, and had been top of the list for promotion to sergeant when she was diagnosed. And this was after only six years of tenure. When he learned that Tina's illness was terminal, her husband, Steve, asked to be demoted from sergeant to corporal so there was room to promote her. I was at the wake when Steve began to talk about the love he shared with Tina. He reminisced about their breakfasts together at the local Waffle House, where Tina would ask for extra crisp rye toast and then dunk it in her morning coffee. There wasn't a dry eye in the house when Steve held up a cup of coffee and a piece of toast, looked up towards heaven, and began to sing, "Dunk rye for me, Sergeant Tina." It's still not going to be easy. There are a lot of pun scenarios out there. There's even the long-running annual O. Henry Pun-Off event in Austin, Tex.; one of the winners was Washington Post humor columnist Alexandra Petri. But I'm optimistic. One tack you might take is to use newly famous names, or less well known ones. That worked for some of the inking entries from our original pun-story contest, Week 347 (a.k.a. Week XIV; don't ask). Here are the results, complete with the Czar's irritated notes on the "Steal Invitationalists": Page 2 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1100: With pun in hand; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ewww) this week's new contest and results Report from Week XIV, in which you were asked to contrive elaborate scenarios that end in painful puns. As usual for a contest such as this, the Steal Invitationalists were out in force, submitting anciently unoriginal jokes as their own: You can't heat your kayak and have it, too; with fronds like that, who needs anemones; I can see Claire Lee now, Lorraine has gone; transporting gulls over a staid lion for immortal porpoises; only Hugh can prevent florist friars; picking bunions on a Sesame Street bus; repaint and thin no more; making an obscene clone fall; and of course, the creakiest, rheumiest granddaddy of them all: No pun in ten did. We are pretty sure those below are original. * Second Runner-Up: Maggie Thatcher went to see the doctor about a painful boil. The doctor told his nurse to administer a local anesthetic and let him know when she was ready for treatment. When the nurse returned, the doctor said: "Is Thatcher Fine? I'll Lance Her." (Chris Doyle, Burke) * First Runner-Up: Lithuania's King Lothar loved golf. Competing in a tournament at the famed Pair of Dice golf course in Las Vegas, Lothar and his partner finished the 18th hole leading the field at one stroke over par. Waiting nervously in the clubhouse, however, he received bad news about his rivals' results: "They played Pair of Dice and put up a par, King Lot." (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) * And the winner of the huge men's underpants: Two park rangers are making their rounds in the Rockies when they discover a guy named Nathan erecting an oil rig on the side of a mountain. He explains that he has been inspired by those ads on the radio, and has decided to drill for beer. The rangers are going to issue a citation, but decide to do something crueler: let him try. Winking to his partner, one ranger observes that since the mountain won't really be injured, "Why don't we just let Nate here take its Coors?" (Bill Strider, Gaithersburg) * Honorable Mentions: After a series of box office failures, Arnold Schwarzenegger's career was in trouble. Then he made a comeback with a triumphant performance on Broadway as the lead in a production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," with background music based on the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. When asked the secret of his newfound success, Arnold said: "Albee-Bach." (Joseph Romm, Washington) Intrigued by rumors that a group of Tennessee Jews has been successfully marketing a brand of chewing tobacco, kosher food giant Manischewitz sends someone to investigate. He approaches a group of men loitering outside a Baptist church, spitting into cans, and he asks: "Pardon me, goys, is that the Chattanooga Jews' chew?" (Charles Frick, Kensington) Who would have thought that Chris Evert would get caught doing cocaine? No athletes are showing her any public sympathy, except for one ex-Yankee. As might be expected, "Strawberry feels for Evert." (Chris Doyle, Burke) A man is trying to decide between two careers in journalism: He wants either to be an investigative reporter, spending much of his time digging through files like a mole, or to write an advice column. He consults an editor friend, who cautions him against both paths, with the immortal advice: "Neither a burrower nor Ann Landers be." (Meg Sullivan, Potomac) [We were so sorry to hear that Meg died earlier this week. She was a mainstay of the Invite in its early years, with a total of 181 blots of ink.] The Enterprise had an important assignment to stop a civil war on a distant planet. On the way it would pass the aptly named planet Allure, inhabited by beautiful, naked, sex-starved women. Capt. Kirk's orders were clear: He was to proceed directly to the war-torn planet. If he visited the women's planet, he surely couldn't put it on his captain's log. When his communications officer asked him what he was going to do, he said: "Tour Allure, Uhura. Tour Allure and lie." (Scott Owens, Alexandria) Page 3 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1100: With pun in hand; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ewww) this week's new contest and results It is a little-known fact that Golda Meir's fierce nationalism was forged when she was a young woman. Golda had a waitressing job on the Haifa ferry, serving smoked-salmon snacks to travelers. She was deeply moved when, one day, the ferry had to transport for burial the bodies of three civilians killed by terrorists. To this day Israeli children are told "the ferry tale of Golda, lox and the three biers." (Chris Doyle, Burke) Animal activist Bo Derek was horrified to learn that the queen of England wears antique sable coats. When she confronted the queen at a recent London affair, Elizabeth responded haughtily: "Some wear old fur to reign, Bo." (Chris Doyle, Burke) One day the famous gastronome Oliver Hardy was so hungry he ground his partner to bits, chicken-fried him and sealed him in tins. When confronted by his director, Ollie admitted it but begged forgiveness. Since Hardy was the studio's meal ticket, the director agreed to say nothing. In fact, he was hungry himself, and proposed a banquet: "If you canned Stan to eat, get out the ketchup." (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) * The Uncle's Pick: I sent in 10 different puns in the hope that at least one would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did. (Dave Walcher, Belcamp) If that's how you want to look at it ... The results of Week 1096's caption contest I'm always looking through the Invite archives for classic entries to share on Facebook as the Style Invitational Ink of the Day (sign up here to get it). And while a cartoon is certainly fun to share with readers (with hope that they will share it in turn), I've found that very few of the winners of our many, many caption contest winners make great jokes in themselves. The humor in them comes usually more from interpreting a given picture in an original way. What's more, the humor is intensified when you get to see a wide variety of interpretations of the same picture. For example, the object being held in Cartoon D this week was seen as, sure, a dinner check, but also a formal document, a cellphone, a giant fortune cookie and, for two people, even a Pop-Tart. This week's winner, however -the couple arguing over the check and one of them (doesn't matter who) saying, "No, let MY client get it" -would make a terrific stand-alone cartoon. And I was delighted to discover that Inkin' Memorial winner Frank Mann is indeed a lawyer (though in the public sector). This is Frank's first win among his 16 blots of Invite ink since he debuted in Week 996, but he's been quite a fixture in recent contests; it's his third ink "above the fold." Danielle Nowlin paid funny tribute to funny Tom Magliozzi of radio's "Car Talk" to take second place and the moose-head cup. Tom and brother Ray would often read Invite entries over the air during the first minutes of the show -always crediting the writers, and of course always exploding in laughter over them. Danielle is a habitue of the Losers' Circle; it's her 16th ink above the fold out of a total of 138. As, for that matter, are Lawrence McGuire (23 ATF; 174 inks) and the really-goes-way-back Art Grinath, who started in Week 106 and gets his 354th ink and too many runners-up to count. Okay, I counted: 65. Major Loser events! Season's readings and eatings We should have a major Loser cheering section on Friday, Dec. 5, at the free light-verse program "Poetry & Punchlines" at Catholic University -headlined by 55-time Loser Melissa Balmain, who opted to share the spotlight with several other poets, including Losers Brendan Beary, Mae Scanlan, J.D. Smith, and Claudia Gary, as well as confessed Style Invitational fan Gene Weingarten. It's sponsored by Able Muse Press, publisher of Melissa's very funny collection (which includes some Invite ink). Here are the details. And nine days after that, we're having a special guest at the December Loser Brunch, at the buffet at Kilroy's just off the Beltway in Northern Virginia: Ten-time Loser and popular Devotee Diane Wah will be visiting from Seattle. The brunch is Sunday, Dec. 14, at 11 a.m. RSVP to Elden Carnahan here so we can get a head count. Page 4 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1100: With pun in hand; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ewww) this week's new contest and results Hope to see you at either or both of these, and have a happy and safe Thanksgiving weekend, everyone. ====================================================================== WEEK 1101, published December 7, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1101: Looking back on the look-backs; The Style Invitational Empress ruminates on (ewww) this week's contest and results Washington Post Blogs December 4, 2014 Thursday 7:33 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1565 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Before I start my usual weekly blather: I really hope you can make it to Catholic University Pryzbyla Center on Friday evening, Dec. 5, at 7, for the nine-poet light-verse readofest that's headlined by Loser Melissa Balmain and features several other Invite figures, including Brendan Beary, Mae Scanlan, Edmund Conti and one Gene Weingarten. It's all free, it's right near the Brookland Metro station, and parking should be easily available. See details at this link. A number of us are going to hang out and grab a sandwich beforehand at the nearby Potbelly (655 Michigan Ave NE, near the Metro station) starting at 4 and at least until the Pryzby-doors open at 6. (My first chance to meet Mr. Conti, who's up from Raleigh.) The poets will also surely hang around to chat after the reading, and Melissa and Gene and I'm sure others will happily sign books (Gene's not bringing books; you'll have to bring your own. I suggest bringing a Bible). And*or: Diane Wah of our Seattle Loser Bureau will be in town for the Loser Brunch, Dec. 14 at 11 a.m., at Kilroy's buffet, just off the Beltway in Northern Virginia. I'll be there from 11 to 1. Please RSVP for this one to Elden Carnahan so we can give the restaurant a head count. Back to the blather. I've been running year-endish retrospective contests, like Week 1011, ever since I began Empressing: My third contest ever (Dec. 28, 2003) was to enter any previous Invite; I offered links only to the previous 100 contests, though (the others probably didn't go up online back then). My predecessor, the Czar, also ran such whole-oeuvre contests: in Weeks 94 (1995), 289 (1998) and less than a year before I took over (Week 490, 2003). (I don't know how he expected people to remember what the contests were.) After I did that first one -I guessed correctly that some jokes the Czar had rejected over the years would end up on my list -I limited the pool at least a bit: My next retrospective was at my 100-week mark and encompassed only my mess so far; and since then, starting in 2006, they've been for the previous year, give or take a few weeks. This year we go back to Week 1047 (November 2013), since last year's retrospective covered up to Week 1046. Over the years, I've usually warned contestants that, because of space limitations, especially in the print paper, short-form entries - neologisms, horse names, etc. - were more likely to get ink than, say, elaborate song parodies. The thing, though, is that parodies and limericks have gotten retro-ink a number of times, even on the print page. Last year's results included two lengthy parodies, plus a limerick and a cinquain; the 2012 results had three parodies, including the first runner-up. Basically, if an entry is fabulous, it could very well get ink even if it's quite long. But it might be the only really long entry on the page. So it's definitely a gamble. (ewww) this week's contest and results Note that I said that, yes, you can resend an entry that didn't get ink last time. It seems counterintuitive, and indeed I'd say it's a low-percentage play, if you're the kind of person who's going to be figuring out which 25 entries to send in. But more than once, I have given ink in the retrospectives to entries that got robbed the first time around. It might have been because there were other entries like it, or that the bar was just in-cred-ibly high that week and even some of the rejects were highly worthy. (Song parodies again come to mind.) Please remember to give the week number of the contest you're entering, and if it's not abundantly clear, please add a line about what the contest was (e.g., "fi-to fo- limericks") so that I won't have to look it up. As you might imagine, this contest takes a long time to judge. And yes, once again you can be robbed: Part of the purpose of this contest is to showcase the variety of contests we do over the course of a year, and so I'm going to try to represent a fair number of them. If 10 people send me fi- limericks that are better than anything else I get this week, some of those limericks won't get ink. Sorry. It's also helpful if I don't have to use a lot of space to describe the contest, though I'm usually pretty good at boiling down the relevant point. For inspiration and whatever guidance you'd like to infer, here are the links to most if not all the previous retrospective contest results. Some of them were restricted to a certain subset of contests, and a few required entries to fit a certain theme. (These links are from Elden Carnahan's Master Contest List and won't affect your story count toward the paywall. Scroll down past the new contest to see the results.) Week 94. Week 223 Week 292 Week 490 Week 496 (beat the entries from the 10th-anniversary issue) Week 538 Week 635 Week 692 Week 735 Week 793 Week 844 Week 894 Week 948 Week 999 Week 1011 (beat the entries from the 20th-anniversary issue) Week 1050 This contest to "clarify" horoscopes brought tons of entries this week, even though it required readers to track down horoscopes in the print or online Post, and of course your starrier-touched Losers probably pored over every one of every day, along with the alternate versions on astrology.com. Jonathan Hardis noted that the advice given to Scorpios whose birthday was Nov. 13 -"Allow greater give-and-take between you and others" -was exactly the same as what was given to Pisces people a day later. I only pray that the astrologer didn't get the dates mixed up so that some poor Pisces gave and took when she should have stomped her foot and refused to budge. In general, I found the most humor in entries that played off typical horoscope phrases, rather than the really oddball stuff in some of the predictions. Notable exception by Bruce Alter: "Aries: You are really in your element when it comes to verbalizing complicated concepts so that your audience (whether that means your coworkers at the company shindig, your grandparents, your honey pie, your little sister, your little sister's punk rock honey pie or whomever) can grasp just what a good idea it is that you have.Bruce: Huh? The Losers' Circle this week is filled entirely with Invite Obsessives -the winner and three runners-up have close to 3,000 blots of ink among them, and ranked 1, 2, 5 and 8 in the current year's standings. (As almost always, I judged the entries blindly, and didn't check who wrote the winners until this past Tuesday.) I would have chosen another winning example for this week's contest (or, actually, I wouldn't have included it in a list of choices for Bob Staake) had I known at the time that Frank Osen would win Week 1097. Because the Invite in the past few months has annexed a region called Osenania: The Poet From Pasadena gets his sixth win in just this "Loser Year," which began in March, along with 10 runners-up and 49 honorable mentions. What is Frank doing with all those Inkin' Memorials? We demand photographic evidence. Meanwhile, it's the second second-place in a row for Danielle Nowlin, last year's Rookie of the Year and Loser of the Year. Danielle hasn't been quite as devoted to the Invite this past year, since she's been busy with her two pint-size Losers in Training while growing another one, due in just a few weeks: I see that Danielle's Facebook "cover photo" features a mantel from which hang a stocking labeled Joseph, a stocking labeled Abigail ... and a sign (ewww) this week's contest and results labeled "Reserved." (For some reason there are silly pine cones and greenery atop the mantel rather than the four Inkin' Memorials that should be there.) Though Frank has been getting all these wins this year, I see that in the current standings he's only in second place, with his 64 blots of ink before today. That's because in first place, with 66, is this week's third-place Loser, Chris Doyle, the highest-scoring Loser of all time (a position likely to last forever). While Chris has 49 first-place wins since his first one in 2000, he hasn't yet won any in this Loser year. Freaky! Yeah, he has "only" those six runners-up, those 51 honorable mentions, the subheads, the contest ideas, etc.... And trotting into fourth place is Kevin Dopart, highest-scoring Loser for seven straight years, who also is Bobble-Linc-less this year, but has still managed to mop up 48 blots of other ink. No First Offenders made the final cut this week, but it's just the third inks for Terri Berg Smith and Curtis Morrison. Curtis got two this week, and his one about "releasing the reins" and the "safe word" was the favorite of both the Czar and ace copy editor Doug Norwood. Sagittarius: "You're definitely ready for some good, old-fashioned recreation -with no strings attached." Edward Gordon: So Pinocchio, get between my legs and tell me lies. Aquarius: "Others will push hard for what they want, especially those involved in your personal life." Jeff Contompasis: And specifically your cellmate. Sagittarius: "Relax, kick back and let big things come to you." Nan Reiner: Like Catherine the Great did. And most crudely: Capricorn: "One key person will let you know that you are indispensable by the end of the day!"Brendan Beary: The exact phrase to listen for is, "Well, it's not going to suck itself." Presumably Brendan won't be working that phrase into a poem to read tomorrow night at Catholic U. See you there! ====================================================================== WEEK 1102, published December 14, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1102: My (five) stars, what Amazon product reviews!; The Style Invitational Empress ruminates on (eww) the week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs December 11, 2014 Thursday 8:29 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1182 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Okay, let's go populate Amazon.com with amusing product reviews! As opposed to my rule about crediting The Style Invitational when you post your inking limericks at oedilf.com, I don't think it makes sense to mention the Invite when you post your paean to Pringles or your suggestions for eating cotton balls. Anyway, it's all in the family, if the CEO of Amazon wants to count as family that weird cousin from back East who, like, eats cotton balls. I don't think any of the "negative" reviews that got ink for Week 1098 would be harmful to their manufacturers in any way. Pringles is now owned by Kellogg (which bought it from Procter & Gamble), and Kellogg's stock isn't going to take a dive because you post a review noting that the chips seem to be made from packing material. I do ask, however, that if you're posting the review, you give the product the top rating of five stars, unless you have a real reason not to. The star system is a mathematical rating that buyers really rely on (often without reading the reviews) and I think that on principle, we shouldn't be doing any part toward corrupting it. It was inevitable that some Losers would be robbed this week -there were many clever reviews that were just too duplicative of one another; I chose the one I liked better or best, leaving the runners-up to get bupkis. Today's winner from Melissa Balmain, about the failure of the "Universal" paper clips to survive the "binary suns" of the planet Naxerine Bb, made the Royal Consort laugh loudly while I was reading him entries in the car earlier this week. But he also laughed at this one from Michael Greene: "Can't say enough about these paper clips! It's really hard to get good, heavy-duty products that can stand up to the crushing gravity here on Jupiter. And my brother-in-law on Saturn says these clips run rings around any other fastener he's used! Kudos, also, on the same-decade drone delivery!" And this one from Mark Raffman: "I was disappointed that the product is not truly 'universal.' On my small planet, we must use paper that is 3 forteks thick to accommodate a lower force of gravity. These puny 'paper clips' -a fraction of a fortek -are useless! I will not be ordering them again." Significantly more similar to one another than the ET paper-clip buyers were about a dozen testimonials from sadistic nuns over the efficacy of the wooden ruler. Danielle Nowlin's "making room for Jesus" addition got her the ink. The idea that "Original Pringles" meant the very first Pringles ever was also a recurring theme (nice research to Page 2 of 3 Style Conversational Week 1102: My (five) stars, what Amazon product reviews!; The Style Invitational Empress ruminates on (eww) the week's new contest and resu.... find out that they debuted in October 1967, people). I went with Second Offender (is there a funnier name for that?) Scott Berkenblit's entry that tied it in with preservatives and extreme food processing. Another best-in-group: Rob Cohen's complaint that the ruler's measurements were off because a certain something was obviously much longer. I liked that Rob put it in the voice of the girlfriend whose argument rested on the fact that her boyfriend "is an engineer." Several people voiced disappointment that the paper-clip box had no (or deficient) trombones inside, given the product's label. That was a new French word for me, too -it's a pretty cute one, too, obviously derived from the sound made when you put a paper clip between your lips and blow on it. It's the fifth win, and 55th blot of ink overall, for Melissa Balmain, who was just down from Rochester last weekend to headline the "Poetry & Punchlines" light-verse night at Catholic University. Melissa, by the way, is the editor of the light-verse journal Light, which comes out twice a year online. Given the poetic chops of so many in the Greater Loser Community, Melissa welcomes submissions of not overly topical poems that haven't already been published online. And she judges them blindly, too. Here's the submission info. Mike Gips's Pringles-box "maraca" wins not a box of Original Pringles but the Solar Dancing Turkey, along with points for three honorable mentions and this week's contest idea, for a total of 182 blots of ink since Week 509 (though most of them are from recent years). And Danielle Nowlin remains in the Losers' Circle for the third straight week, for Ink No. 142 (and 143), as B-day for Future Loser No. 3 nears ever closer. This contest seems self-evident to me, or at least is made clear by Mike Gips's examples: a funny idea for a niche radio channel, described possibly, but not necessarily, with a funny list of suitable songs. And of course, not all radio stations have to have music. Have fun with this one. (On other contests, having fun is not permitted.) This just in: Save the date Saturday, Jan. 10, for what I'm told will be the 16th annual Loser Winter Party At Someone's House, aka the Judeo-Christelvismas Party, held in January starting in 2010, when it got bumped to the next month by Snowmageddon. This year it will be hosted by 314-time Loser Craig Dykstra and wife Valerie. They live out in Centreville, Va., in a cool house (there's a curvy sliding board from the kitchen to the basement) that's especially well suited to performances of song parodies, poems, armpit-fart recitals, etc. It's not near public transportation, but carpooling is already being arranged. I can't remember the last time the party was held in Virginia; it's definitely the southsiders' turn. The Post-Holiday Party is perhaps my favorite Loser event of the year: There's more of a chance than at the Loser Brunches to meet and chat with a lot of people, because you're not stuck in a chair, and I just enjoy visiting someone's house (it's usually a potluck) rather than going to some anonymous meeting room or a back room of a restaurant. Craig will be working up an invitation in the next week. Watch your inbox. Seattle-based Loser and Style Invitational Devotee Diane Wah will be the Novelty Attraction at this Sunday's Loser brunch, 11 a.m. at the military-themed Kilroy's, just off the Beltway near Springfield, Va. About 20 people have already RSVP'd -including Ink-Drenched Losers Elden Carnahan, Chuck Smith, Brendan Beary, Roy Ashley and Mark Raffman -so be sure to let Elden know if you'd like to add your name to the list (otherwise you might have to sit on my lap). RSVP here to him at NRARS.org, the Loserly website. And then at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 17, Devotee Barbara Cackler -who's also the mother of Losers Joe and Jack Cackler -will share a piano bench with the other half of the Double C Piano Duo, as she and Rosanne Conway play the "Nutcracker" Suite in a piano-four-hands arrangement. Their concert is presented as an afternoon tea at Harmony Hall Regional Center in Fort Washington , Md., which happens to be right up the road from the Empress's house, Mount Vermin. So if anyone would like to join me there to enjoy the ivory-tinkling of Barbara and Rosanne while we nibble on tea-things, call Harmony Hall at 301-292-6070 to order a ticket ($16) and for more information. And let me know as well. Page 3 of 3 Style Conversational Week 1102: My (five) stars, what Amazon product reviews!; The Style Invitational Empress ruminates on (eww) the week's new contest and resu.... See you at one of these things! ====================================================================== WEEK 1103, published December 21, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1103: Get ready to do your revel best; The Style Invitational Empress talks about the contest and the Loser Community Washington Post Blogs December 18, 2014 Thursday 8:00 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1496 words Byline: Pat Myers Body First, some Important Loser News: Please watch your e-mail for your invitation -I'm hoping it goes out on Monday -to the 16th annual Loser Post-Holiday Party, a potluck hosted this year on Saturday evening, Jan. 10, by 314-time Loser Craig Dykstra and his wife, Valerie, at their house in Centreville, Va., a few miles off I-66. You'll RSVP to me at pat.myers@washpost.com, and if you're coming, I'll send you the address, etc. The Dykstras will put some food and drink out, and we'll bring the rest. You don't have to be a regular Loser -or have any ink at all -to come, and spouses or other handlers are welcome as well. (You can bring kids, too; Craig and Valerie will play family-friendly movies on the humongous screen in the basement, and they even have an ultra-cool sliding board that goes down there from the kitchen.) Hopefully, some of our Loserbards will contribute song parodies or read poems -the Dykstras have a piano, and there's a good chance that someone from the Loser Community will provide accompaniment. (And if not, we'll all be "singing" along anyway.) If you'd like to write something, preferably about the Invite, let me know. Dress for the party is anything you like except un-. In general, though, just as with all Loser events, it's just plain old chatting, not scintillating repartee: the official name of Loserdom, NRARS, stands for NOT READY for the Algonquin Round table Society. If you RSVP to me and I don't know you from the Invite, I might chat you up a little before giving out all the info. (Or just explain in your e-mail who you are.) If you don't get the weekly e-mail notification about the Invite, contact me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I'll forward you the invitation personally. (Or ask to get on the mailing list.) One more thing before I lose you: For the next two weeks, the Invitational and Conversational (surely a very short one) will be published on Wednesdays, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. It's going to be super easy to write entries for Week 1103 of The Style Invitational. It's not going to be so easy to write really clever ones, not "duh" ones. The song can't just be appropriate for the show - it has to be humorously appropriate. Whichever ones you end up writing, please don't send them one at a time on 25 separate e-mails -at least not until we've solved the problem we've been struggling with under the Invite's new "dropbox" in Microsoft Outlook that's the repository for all the entries sent to losers@washpost.com (Details farther down in the Technerds Only section.) Really, there's no advantage in sending your entry early in the week -I look at them all the same time. So I'd be perfectly thrilled if you let them all pile up in a draft e-mail until you send it off to me. (But certainly please don't sweat it if you want to send in another entry or two because you just thought of the most brilliant thing ever.) the contest and the Loser Community All the examples are of bare-bones form -just the TV show name and the song name -but I absolutely don't forbid some elaboration that would add to the humor. We like the fun-nee. I am, however, going to stick to the rule that both the song and the TV show have to be real titles. A note about this week's second-place prize hand sanitizers: While I just received the lovely Pee-Pee Poo-Poo product from Diane Wah, who'd brought it all the way from Seattle for last weekend's Loser Brunch, the Dog Slobber (remover -it's not claiming to be dog slobber in the bottle) has been on my desk at work for some time and managed to run away from the name of the person who donated it. If you were the Slobber Donor, please let me know and I'll make sure that Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan gives you a point. Let me know right away and I can credit you in the Invite this weekend; let me know later and I'll credit you four weeks from now when we award the "prize." Having posted the Invite online while I'm still writing this column, I'm already hearing rave reviews on the Style Invitational Devotees page for the results of this go-round of our perennial Questionable Journalism contest. Clearly, The Post's paywall, the limit of 20 online articles a month for non-subscribers, didn't hurt the quality of this week's ink. But there's no reason it should have, really, since a single story can provide fodder for a dozen entries; I'm pretty sure that even among the inking entries, one article is the source for multiple ink blots. Given the almost infinite source material for this contest -any sentence in the paper or online over the space of 11 days -I was surprised to get a number of entries based on the same sentence. "Not every turkey escapes the White House" does seem especially tempting, and Jon Gearhart's entry topped the field. "My head seemed disconnected from my body" also drew Loserly eyeballs. I tended to laugh most at entries that played on the meaning of the words in the source sentence -which means that it was clear what the original was about. The triumph in that category was Jeff Shirley's runner-up entry on the tidal forecasts, turning "waves" into a verb. On the other hand, wry comments on the actual meaning of the sentence - like Jeff Hazle's runner-up about Iraq - also proved fruitful. Oy! Beverley Sharp now has 490 blots of ink!! That's with her LOLling Inkin' Memorial winner - her 12th win -and two honorable mentions this week. So Beverley is probably polishing up her Sunday shoes (or at least some fuzzy bedroom slippers) to cross the threshold of the Style Invitational Hall of Fame. I'm afraid that Beverley and her long-suffering husband, Dick Amberg -such a good sport that at one Flushies he wore a name tag labeled "Dick Sharp" -are just going to have to come back up to Washington next year from their exile in Montgomery, Ala., to be "honored" in person. Pat Boone's priceless dating-advice tome "'Twixt Twelve and Twenty" goes to Jeff Hazle, who's racked up 44 inks including and 10 above the fold since his debut in Week 802. Surely it was a record week for Steve Honley, whose four inks this week bumps him eight spaces up the all-time stats list to a total of 43. And Jeff Shirley is back in the Losers' Circle with this 10th ink above the fold. (Unprintable entries from Week 1099 are at the bottom of this column.) When I judge the Invitational every week, I've been using one long master file in which I've combined all the e­mails for a particular week. (Actually two master files; I make two copies, then take out all identifying info from the second copy -everything except the text of the entries themselves -and that's what I judge from. I don't look at the full one again until I put the inking entries on the page; then I check to see who wrote them.) Combining all the e-mails into one searchable file was especially easy to do in our former system, Lotus Notes -you just highlighted all the subject lines in the inbox or another folder, and hit Forward, and you had one giant e­mail. This doesn't work in Outlook, to which the Loser dropbox has just been moved, years after all the regular e­mail moved there. Super-Helpful Loser Jeff Contompasis did show me a similar system in Outlook that saves all the e-mails to a giant .txt file, but it turned out that some of the e-mails (especially from Gmail and Yahoo) didn't show up on this combined list except for the headers -the person's name, email address, etc. Our IT guy said he's going to try to figure out why this would happen, but until then, I obviously can't use this method. the contest and the Loser Community But this morning, Also Super-Helpful Loser Steven Papier thinks he got it to work with a combined CSV file, whatever that is, that you then call up with an Excel spreadsheet. I'm going to try it out tonight. If that doesn't work, I guess what I'll do is use the Jeff Method, then copy in, one by one, all the entries that didn't make the transfer automatically. So obviously, one e-mail containing 25 entries is going to be a lot less time-consuming than 25 e­mails each containing one entry. Obviously, my fingers are really crossed for the Steven Method! (Which makes it kind of a bear to write this column, but you gotta do what you gotta do.) Just two this week, but both exceedingly clever - we'll give them both the Scarlet Letter: Post: If you're going to fumble pulling the box out of the bag, you should show that. (From a story about a hit video of women opening pocketbooks) Q: Why are surgeons required to videotape their hysterectomies? (Edward Gordon) It's a massive, bulbous, inexplicably sexual thing that droops down from the ceiling and fills the whole space. (From an article about avant-garde art at the Hirshhorn Museum) How would you describe one of the hanging hard-ons of Babylon? (Chris Doyle) Happy Hanukkah and, to those who inexplicably won't be reading this column on Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas. ====================================================================== WEEK 1104, published December 28, 2014 Thanks a lot, guys. No, really. Add to list Style Conversational: The Empress gets as blubbery as she’s gonna get By Pat MyersDecember 24, 2014 I’m not going to keep you (and myself) here on Christmas Eve — I have to do my shopping sometime,. and that fruitcake-on-clearance isn’t gonna buy itself. But since this is the final Style Invitational weekend of the year, I did want to take a moment to thank those who continue to put such large shares of time, effort and resources to keep this unlikely vehicle running on most cylinders well into its 22nd year. — To The Washington Post, which has kept us around longer than it’s kept its own recent editors and publishers. This year, as the Style department’s two Sunday print sections merged back to one Arts & Style section, we found ourselves on a black-and-white Page 16 or 18 or whatever, but we have just as many column inches of space as before. And what’s more important, as The Post inevitably shifts its priorities online, and toward a national and global audience, we’re surely reaching more readers than ever. (And it even gives me a page for this column here.) — To the Loser Community, all of you who’ve taken the Invitational beyond its role as a yuk-yuk newspaper feature into a thriving and continually expanding social group. The primary culprit of course is Elden Carnahan, Keeper of the Stats, Baron of the Brunches, Founder of the Flushies, uh, Webber of the Website. (Not to mention someone who’s found time to get more than 500 blots of ink.) But also to many others who Make It All Work: Pie Snelson, who passes out name tags at brunches and door prizes at parties. Dave Prevar, who’s been organizing the annual Flushies banquet. Kyle Hendrickson, who for years organized full-weekend “Loserfest” field trips. Randy Lee, who revived the dormant Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook, which now is up to 868 members who yuk it up 24 hours a day (I know because I monitor it 24 hours a day). And those who’ve opened their homes to Loser events — including Steve Dudzik, Sarah Gaymon, Dion Black, Maja Keech and, this coming Jan. 10, Post-Holiday Party host Craig Dykstra. And the many of you who’ve provided entertainment at the Flushies and parties — writing up song parodies just for the occasion: Mae Scanlan, Nan Reiner, Mark Raffman, Pie Snelson, Dave Zarrow, Greg Arnold and whomever else I’ve stupidly forgotten. — To the numerous Losers who’ve volunteered their technical expertise to make the contests work: Elden for his now-indispensable Master Contest List. Kyle Hendrickson, Steve Langer, Gary Crockett, Jeff Contompasis, Craig Dykstra and I’m sure more, who’ve helped me out over the years when I needed, say, to figure out if a given entry contained any words that were not in the U.S. Constitution. And most recently Steven Papier, who spent three hours this past weekend at my home — plied only with pie and cookies — to figure out how I could continue to combine all the week’s entries onto a single text file without calling up each of the hundreds of e-mails, after the method recommended by Microsoft failed to work (it would include people’s e-mail addresses but would reject — rather snottily, if you ask me — the content of many of the entries themselves). — To The Czar of The Style Invitational, the Founder of Our Feast, and his earthly incarnation, Gene Weingarten, who, collaborating closely and almost incestuously, charmed*bullied Washington Post management into giving space in Our Distinguished Newspaper to a weekly contest celebrating the humor of excretory functions; shaped it for almost 11 years; and continues to contribute to the Invite by writing sample verses for poetry contests (next week’s is already done), as well as letting me bounce my short-list of entries off him almost every week. — To Bob Staake, who in 1994 was an up-and-coming illustrator based in St. Louis and delighted to score a gig that sent him a check every single week, but who is now The Really Big Deal, with the New Yorker covers,and the dozens of successful children’s books, and the Intel commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. But out of a sense of tradition — and a chance to bicker with me every seven days — Bob continues to work up a cartoon (or five!) every week, squeezing it in between book tour stops, supervising the gardening staff at his Cape Cod waterfront estate, etc. — And, of course most significantly, to the contestants, who jump through whatever verbal hoops I hold up in front of them week after week, in exchange for seeing perhaps 95 percent of their work go unacknowledged, and the rest “rewarded” with junk (some of which they bought themselves and donated to the cause). I am truly in awe of their talent, wit and just plain wackiness. In my totally objective view, the Invite puts out the cleverest stuff in journalism, week after week. (Okay, the Onion isn’t bad either.) So until they tell us to stop — and nobody’s said anything to me like that — bring it on. DID YOU GET YOUR INVITATION TO THE LOSER PARTY? It was e-mailed Monday afternoon Eastern time, to everyone on the Invite mailing list. Anyway, you’re invited simply by virtue of reading this column. Here it is minus Craig’s nifty artwork: DO YOUR REVEL BEST: PARTY WITH THE STYLE INVITATIONAL LOSERS Yes, you are so gosh darn fun to be with that you’re invited to the Style Invitational Losers’ Post-Holiday Party Saturday, Jan. 10, 7 to 10 p.m. At the home of Craig and Valerie Dykstra Centreville, Va. It’s a potluck -- Craig and Valerie will put out some food and drink, and we bring the rest. Spouses and other handlers are welcome -- and there will be movies for kids. Dress: Loserly (i.e., anything but un-) RSVP to the Empress of The Style Invitational, pat.myers@washpost.com, and she’ll provide the address and further information. Need a ride or want to carpool? Let the Empress know and she’ll see what the Loser Community can do. With malice toward none, With parody for all. We have about 30 RSVPs so far, including some people from out of town. You don’t have to send regrets unless you live in the area and you’re someone who usually comes to Loser functions. The ABCs, er, EFGs of Week 1104 So we’ll wrap up the year with Week 1104, a contest in classic Style Invitational form: to compare or contrast two entirely unrelated items — in this case two entities that happen to be abbreviated with the same three letters. Elden suggested this contest the first time around, for Week 1071, and I wasn’t surprised it was a success. Here are the results, for inspiration. (Scroll past the Week 1075 contest.) Intentional groaning*: The story puns of Week 1100 *Un-inking title entry from Jeff Contompasis Owwwwwwwwwwww. No, they were fun, for the most part — all the inking entries were, for sure. I think readers are going to love them. While judging them — I didn’t count the entries but I estimate a pool of about 1,000 — I found myself first reading the pun at the end of the story, to see if it would be worth having a long paragraph to set it up. Some entries I couldn’t even figure out — it took the Devotees to figure out for me “toupees in iPad” was supposed to be a pun on “two peas in a pod,” though I did manage to guess that “Own leader. G’day, Young” was “only the good die young.” I was going to give ink to Larry Gray’s “Juan spit in Dwight’s chai,” but none of several people I showed it to got that it was “once bitten, twice shy,” even though in my book it’s a perfectly valid pun, clearly approximating the sound of the original, once you figure it out. I also steered clear of entries in which the punchlines depended on obviously contrived names: “In the early 1900’s, a hurricane devastated the city of Approval,” began one that would end in something about sea lions and “seal of Approval”; or “Farmer Odd had a set of bees” ... “May the Odd’s bees hover on your flavor”; or one starting “John Huck and Tom Finn” and something about burying. It’s the 22nd win for Ultra-Loser Kevin Dopart of the 1,100-and-some Inks, but his first in a whole year. I’ll present his Inkin’ Memorial at the Loser Party. Chris Doyle — who’s famed for his trademark limericks that end in puns like these — not surprisingly inked up the place this week, with four feghoots. This week’s outlier in the Losers’ Circle is Marc Shapiro — it’s just his second blot of ink. And I’ll also be bringing a mug or bag to the Loser party for Nan Reiner, whose hilariously over-the-top fourth-place pun is topped over even farther by the long Web-only honorable mention ending in “a park ridge in a bare tree.” Maybe at the party we should take turns reading some of the feghoots out loud — and have everyone join in on the punch line. Merry Christmas to all — we’ll have another Wednesday Invite next week, on New Year’s Eve. Send me your party RSVPs! ====================================================================== WEEK 1105, published January 4, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1105: Send them off in Style; The Empress of The Style Invitational on the Invite's obit poems Washington Post Blogs December 31, 2014 Wednesday 8:34 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1291 words Byline: Pat Myers Body I always feel bad -well, it's more of a happy-bad -when there are so many inkworthy entries in a Style Invitational week that even if I run a long list, some great work will go unread simply because readers will never reach the bottom of the column. So the last thing I'm going to do it keep you here when I'd much rather you read the results of Week 1101's retrospective contest. Plus, I have to pregame for my annual New Year's Eve revelry with the Royal Consort: the Cleaning Out of the Refrigerator. I don't know if there are more interesting people than usual on the 2014 Departure Manifest (in either word "more" could refer to), but there will be many to choose from. Wikipedia serves up a handy list, with links to most of their biographical entries. Most of the people on the list are obscure, but perhaps there's a worthy ode to be written about , say, Peruvian Environment Minister Antonio José Brack Egg. I'm happy to run a few identifying words above the poem, but not a paragraph of explanation that will set up your verse. Your subject doesn't have to be "original" -I'd be surprised if I didn't end up running at least one poem about Marion Barry or Joan Rivers or Robin Williams or even Michael Brown -but I tend to receive a number of entries with the same idea (I'll choose the single best setting for it). "No more than eight lines" allows for eight long lines. Long lines are more of a problem in the print Invite, which has narrow columns. (Actually, even short lines sometimes break in the print edition; it's just not set up well for poetry.) Historically, the obit poem contest allows for a bit more sentimentality and less edginess than other Invite contests do. In today's retrospective results, for example, Christopher Lamora's tribute to David Frost was utterly devoid of snark. But in general it's still good for the verse to make some joke -perhaps not at the expense of the subject. In today's example, for instance, Gene Weingarten joked that Dr. Jobe missed out on getting his famous surgery named after him, rather than the baseball player he used it on. Not cruel. Last year's winner, by Gary Crockett, got the bite in by using political humor that wasn't actually about the subject at all, the inventor of the Etch-a-Sketch -a product used as an unfortunate metaphor by a Mitt Romney campaign aide in 2012: Andre Cassagnes, your Etch-a-Sketch showed usWe needn't just tweak, fix and patch.That sometimes the best course, for peasant or POTUS,Is shake and start over from scratch. obit poems You can criticize the subject, but a warmly teasing tone often works best. Also from last year, Rob Cohen's couplet about Al Neuharth, the founder of the pioneeringly short-format USA Today: Al Neuharth died at 89.(No room to publish second line.) There's an easy way to find all the Invite obit poems -the Czar did a contest in 1997 for bad poetry, and I've run them every year since I started, since 2004: Call up Elden Carnahan's masterly Master Contest List and search on "died." The description of the contest is for the week it's announced; look on the right for the link to the corresponding week's results. Ha -just so much great stuff, and yes, a lot of it got robbed once again. As often happens, a lot of the ink went to entries playing off recent events; when it comes to The Style Invitational, "rectal feeding" x "Dick Cheney" isn't going to wait for next year. I didn't notice till the end, but I see that I didn't end up choosing entries from the most recent weeks of Invites; perhaps they were just too fresh in my mind, or it could have just been coincidence. I did remember reading many of the entries before, and at least a couple of today's inking entries had been sent in the earlier contests; Mark Raffman's parody of "Chim-Chim-Chim-Cher-ee" is one. But I'm pretty sure that almost all of today's ink is fresh. (One sort of troubling occurrence: At least one of the entries submitted already got ink; I wonder if the writer had never looked, especially if the entry had run only online.) While it is the 23rd Invite win for Kevin Dopart, it's the first time he's won two weeks in a row. And it's also the second time Kevin has won this year with a tour-de-force anagram: He also won the original contest a year ago, Week 1051, with this astonishing feat: Original text: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Anagrams to: We, the Tea Party of Republicans, our heads in our Rectums, freed to ensure the disestablishment of that Obamacare, promote domestic Religion (provided Jesus is your Savior), disenfranchise the Poor, Effete, Liberal or Such, stifle Intellects not nutty Men, demote Geopolitics, offend on Twitter, do intend another Sequestration. Kevin must have a method for doing these anagrams. Perhaps he'll share it in the comment thread for the Conversational on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook -where his user name happens to be an anagram of "Kevin P. Dopart." Current events continued to hold sway for the second-place prize, for Nan Reiner's zingy double dactyl, with its terrific final line, about the Rolling Stone "reporting" debacle. Be sure also to look at Nan's twin song parodies about "Oklahoma!" and "Fiddler on the Roof" near the end of the column; Nan, who's been tending to her mother in South Florida, sang them into her phone so you can follow the melodies; see the links. A virtual newbie, Ivars Kuscevics (it's Latvian), gets his first "above the fold" ink, and his sixth overall, for his ... yeah, it's an Ebola joke; while not-a-newbie Mae Scanlan gets Ink No. 267 for her super homophone-pun. Mae, by the way, has had a bit of excitement this past month: She'd been given a heart monitor to wear while sleeping, for a routine test (Mae is somewhat north of 50), and "my heart decided to take a vacation from beating for what the doctor called a significant amount of time," she wrote me in an e-mail. But her mind, and her good humor, didn't go on hiatus for even a moment. She concludes: I must say, it proffers a bit of a slamTo see a flat line on one's cardiogram. Mae declares that she fully expects to attend the Jan. 10 Loser Post-Holiday Party. How about you? (See the invitation here.) Please RSVP to me at pat.myers@washpost.com Complain to me in person about the ink you obit poems didn't get -I even got a new tiara for Christmas, so you'll know whom to hector. No, actually, come and do everything but that. I am told that a song is being worked up by two Loser Bards just for the occasion. If you sent your entries in as usual, but did not, as usual, get the rambling but reassuring auto-reply some time later, join the club. It seems that Outlook Exchange, the e-mail system that newly holds the "dropbox" for Style Invitational entries, is especially stingy with the auto-reply: You get it once, for the life of the auto-reply. Evidently this is to prevent an endless back-and-forth in case you also have an auto-reply. But obviously it's an unacceptable restriction, and I'm told that our IT people will address it once more of them get back from vacation. Perhaps we can turn off the auto-reply once a week and turn it back on, and that will work. For now (hopefully just this week), I don't mind if you ask if I received your entries; I can check on them. I also don't mind if you trust the e­mail system. Happy New Year, everyone! ====================================================================== WEEK 1106, published January 11, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1106: A sampling of Invitational Hebdo*; The Invite's Muhammad jokes have been about not making Muhammad jokes Washington Post Blogs January 8, 2015 Thursday 7:41 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 951 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Well. Not a great week for the Satirical Publication world. If you hadn't had a chance to, read the superb reactions written yesterday by Joe Randazzo, the former editor of the Onion (here), and the Onion itself (here) -the American publication for which the attack must have hit closest to home. The Onion, from what I can tell, shows more far maturity and taste than Charlie Hebdo, but it nevertheless has a proud history of pointing up the unpleasant ironies and ridiculous logic of whoever voices them, and some of those people aren't known for reacting very rationally. Perhaps the most shocking thing the Onion ever printed was this cartoon about cartoon censorship. It was surely offensive to practitioners of several religions, its point was: Yes, of course it's offensive and tasteless. But we believe that your response will be to perhaps complain about it, perhaps just turn the page. Not this. Over here in Invite land, we're just not brave enough to make the point so graphically. Our idea of courage is seeing if we can get "ass" past The Post's taste police when it fits into a limerick. In general, I steer clear of jokes that mock specific religions. I'm not a religious person myself, in the theological sense (I'm Jewish in the ethnic sense and I'm active at my synagogue) but I think it's unfair to make fun of what might seem silly or weird dogma or rituals; for one thing, all religions have them. I won't run jokes about "Mormon underwear," for example. And I do regret using the Book of Genesis as a word bank from which I invited people to pluck words and string them together into humorous sentences -even though the results were a hoot; many people view the Bible as a sacred text, and there are other lofty texts I could have just as easily used as penis joke fodder. On the other hand, the Invitational has, several times over the years, joked about the danger of retribution for creating an image of Muhammad. Here are some: Week 648, 2006, in which we asked for silly questions to ask customer service representatives on their phone "hotlines": Third place: To Blue Cross: "After a night of heavy drinking, I woke up to find an image of Muhammad tattooed on my chest. Do you think you might cover tattoo removal in this one case? It might be a pretty big health issue for me if I don't do something." (Fred Dawson) Week 651, 2006, in which we asked you to add another character to a book or movie and describe the resultant plot: Second place: "Harold and the Purple Koran": Harold uses his crayon to show kids the acceptable way of sketching Muhammad: Just draw his house and say he's inside. (Kevin Dopart) about not making Muhammad jokes Week 865, 2010, Googlenopes -phrases that had had no Google hits: "Muhammad Halloween masks" (Kevin Dopart) Week 988, 2012, add excitement to a sport or game: Pictionary: The Muhammad card. (Danny Bravman) *Actually, "Hebdo" just means "Weekly"; it's an informal truncation of "hebdomadaire," as in hepto-, as in seven. This week's contest is awfully straightforward, I think. And the Week 1102 results, as I mentioned, didn't bear as much fruit as I'd expected, but the fruit that's there is tasty enough, especially if you listen to the radio a lot, as I do. And I was happy to be able to add a few more entries from my short-list from Week 1101. Whoa, it's the 10th win for Pam Sweeney (official Loser Anagram: Weepy Mensa)! And Ink 246 in all for the biotech engineer from Boston (and formerly based here) who's been Inviting since back in the Czarist era. The "Dull Men of Great Britain" calendar goes -much earlier in the year than some of the calendars we've given away -to Warren Tanabe, who got his first ink in 2007 but only recently has become a regular Loser. Warren is up to his 25th blot of ink, and his second "above the fold." A mug or bag is headed for Heather Spence, who popped up at a Loser brunch a year or two ago when visiting from New York. Heather's 12 inks, including two runners-up, outscore by 11 her father, Brent Spence, who corrupted his daughter's mind at an early age by introducing her to the Invite. Karma, Brent. And I combined parts of Jeff Contompasis's and Lawrence McGuire's jokes about playing songs backward to give them yet more runner-up swag; they have a total of 60 inks above the fold, and more than 600 total, almost all of it in the last five or six years. We're currently at 55 Losers, Style Invitational Devotees and their support staff, parole officers, etc. -but fortunately there's plenty of room at the Centreville, Va., dreamhouse of Craig and Valerie Dykstra, who are hosting this year's Loser Post-Holiday Party, Saturday, Jan. 10, 7-10 p.m. And I'm tickled to announce that 43-time Loser Steve Honley -a church musician when he's not the editor of a foreign-service magazine -has volunteered to play the piano to accompany Loserbards Nan Reiner and Mark Raffman, who'll be performing song parodies they wrote just for the occasion. It's a potluck, but you don't have to bring very much food or drink: We don't need 55 giant platters for 55 people. If you haven't RSVP'd that you'd like to come, please write me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I'll give you the details. I'm especially eager to meet people who've never been to a Loser event, but I also hope to catch up with the longtime Losers as well. Also: Door prizes. And party favors: Get a genuine vintage Czarist-era honorable-mention bumper sticker just for showing up with your clam dip or whatever. See you then! I'll be the one with the skunk on her head. ====================================================================== WEEK 1107, published January 18, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1107: Unnatural acts, and the Loser Zing-Along; The Style Invitational Empress talks about the new contest and results, plus Loser events Washington Post Blogs January 15, 2015 Thursday 9:10 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1439 words Byline: Pat Myers Body For the second straight Congress, there's no new Rep. Johnson. But, ahem, there is once again a new Peters. It's a mortal lock that a lot more congressional legislation is going to be proposed in the next 10 days than in the rest of the 114th Congress. By my count, we have 102 names to work with in Style Invitational Week 1107 (no duplicates, for once) and many, many of them lend themselves to be used as words, either straightforwardly or as homonyms , or as syllables that will form homonyms when combined with someone else's name. The "joint legislation" contest -variously titled "There Ought to Be a Law," "Bill Us Now," "Bill Us Later," "Hill's Bills," "Send Us the Bill" and "A Word From Our Cosponsors" -has consistently been one of our most popular contests since it appeared in Week 5, April 4, 1993 (my first successful contest suggestion!). The pool of names used in each contest has varied, but the idea has stayed the same: String two or more names together to create some proposed law, resolution, etc., that reflects those names in some funny way. Note that because this is a relatively small freshman class, I've padded the list with most of the senators whose names (or homonyms thereof) never got ink in an earlier joint legislation contest. (As best as I could determine, anyway -I copied all the results onto one text file and searched name by name.) Some of the new people's names were used earlier, but I included the whole freshman class. I arrived at the "pronouncers," as they're called, by watching campaign spots on YouTube, with the candidate approving this message in his own voice. (After watching about 20 of these, I've decided that they must all have been produced by the same company, and that several of the candidates themselves may have been produced from the same uterus.) The new delegate from American Samoa, however, addressed her constituents by calling herself Aumua Amata, rather than Congress's official Amata Coleman. Radewagen, and I ended up calling her office's voice mail to hear the pronunciation. There's a LITTLE give on the pronunciations you can use: I could see Capito as "Capital" or Katko as "cat go." But Mooney can't be "money." But even with what I'd consider a valid approximation of the sound of the name, it can be hard to figure out some even cleverly done entries. (Like this one from 2013 by Frank Osen: In "The Donnelly-Veasey Act to establish limits on emigration," it's "don't leave easy.") I beg of you, especially when you're making whole phrases with the name combinations: Write out your entry and ask someone else, with no guidance talks about the new contest and results, plus Loser eve.... from you, to read it and see if that person can figure it out. If that person fails you, try one or two other people. If most people can't see what you're getting at, you have no joke. On the other hand, it's not necessarily no good because someone doesn't get the joke; sometimes I've failed to get an entry that other people got right away. (Sometimes I'll post an anonymous entry on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook to ask for help. That's why I note that you're welcome to send me translations, as long as they're on a separate line so I can try first to get them without help.) And so for the 2011 and 2013 contests, ran the results on two separate lists; the second one featured "translations" of all the entries. This allowed people the fun of figuring out the jokes themselves, but also an explanation for any they couldn't get. Here are the translated results of Week 1005. I'll most likely do that again, unless it turns out that all the inking entries are especially clear. I have nothing against clarity! If you're looking for inspiration, you can look up all the old contests on Elden Carnahan's Master Contest List and search on "legislation" and "bills"; clicking on the "LEG" link at the top of the list will give you a page of all the contests, but those links are to the contest announcements, not the results. I had misgivings about Week 1103: Would pairing up a TV show and a song produce matches beyond the obvious or the silly, into the realm of funny and clever? Jeff Contompasis offered up several good examples that persuaded me to go ahead, and I'm glad I did; while most of the entries confirmed my hunch, we ended up with lots of laughs in the final cull -especially when presented in a series, like the several "Cosby" variations in the online Invite. And we have three First Offenders this week, after a couple of weeks' lull without a being able to mail out a Firstink. It's the third Inkin' Memorial for Larry Gray of rural Union Bridge, Md. Larry's "Three Times a Lady" for "The Biggest Loser" was one of the few entries to make both me and the Royal Consort laugh out loud. Meanwhile, Frank Osen moves back into his regular parking space in the Losers' Circle with his 27th blot of ink "above the fold." Nancy Schwalb picks up a remarkable fourth above-the-fold ink in just 21 blots in all, while Mark Raffman and Christopher Lamora gain yet more redundant swag. Among the unprintables: For "19 Kids and Counting": "Mama Told Me Not to Come"; and "Beat It" for "Pee-wee's Playhouse" (Rob Huffman) "Free Man in Paris" for "The Simple Life"; and "Heart-Shaped Box" for "Leave It to Beaver" (Jeff Contompasis) I'm so sorry if you weren't one of the 60 or so people who came out of the 20-degree cold into the warmth of Craig and Valerie Dykstra's hospitality as they hosted the Loser Post-Holiday Party at their beautiful and whimsical home in the outer suburbs of Northern Virginia. By "whimsical," I mean that several chronologically adult Losers repeatedly tried out the curved tube slide from the main floor to the basement rec room. Video of Chutes and Losers! There was lots of delicious potluck food and drink, and lots of meeting new people and reconnecting with old friends and acquaintances. I finally managed to present Elden Carnahan with the booklet containing his first 500 blots of Invite Ink, thus inducting him -a year and a half late -to the Style Invitational Hall of Fame. Video of the E reading a sampling of Elden's entries; start around 4:30. . But the Big Moments of the party were the performances of song parodies written for the occasion. Nan Reiner and Mark Raffman collaborated once again on an ode to Loserdom, and this time 43-time Loser (and professional musician) Steve Honley accompanied them on piano. (Video here.) LAME! (to the tune of "Mame")We write light verse 'bout people who died... Lame!Pen puns 'bout politicians who lied... Lame!We pray to see elected a dweeb who has a double-entendre name.We know we'll be rejected, but still we play our masochistic game. We spout some trivia that's not true... Lame!Spawn phony foals, and parodies too... talks about the new contest and results, plus Loser eve.... Lame!We're just pathetic rodents who scurry on some hamster wheel of fame...We find it motivationalTo hope that our creation'll Ink in the Invitational... Lame! There's no low prank that we won't employ... Lame!We yank our TankaWankas for joy... Lame!We think that we'll be chosen when punchiness and pith are at their peak,Then find some guy named Osen has grabbed a hold of Abe again this week. We riff on people's intimate parts... Lame!When all else fails, we fumble for farts... Lame!Oh, how our old professors would scoff about the "scholars" we became...But we've had publication be-Cause of our odd fixation; we Have the last laugh! Who cares if it's lame? Lame! LAME!! Nan also sang the heck out of an update of a fabulous song she'd done at an earlier party, "Everything's Coming Up Inkblots." And we all sang a get-well song to 269-time Loser Mae Scanlan, who was having some problems with a newly installed pacemaker. Here's "Pacemaker, Pacemaker," by Melissa Balmain and Nan. Thanks to Not Yet a Loser Richard Wexler for doing all the video. Next on the Loser Social Engorgements calendar: Brunch Feb. 8 at Buddy's Crabs and Ribs near the City Dock in Annapolis, Md. I probably won't make that one, but I do plan to be at the March 22 brunch at Paradiso in Alexandria*Springfield, Va. And later in the spring or perhaps early summer -date and place TBD but we'll give a lot of notice - will be our next Big Event, the Flushies award "banquet." Congratulations to 2014 Loser of the Year Danielle Nowlin on the birth of Benjamin Steele Nowlin, her third Loserkind, born Jan 10. For some reason, Danielle didn't make it over to the Loser party, even though she'd had the baby that morning and wasn't planning to have any more of them for the rest of the day. ====================================================================== WEEK 1108, published January 25, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1108: We welcome your heartfeld sediments; The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week's contest and results Washington Post Blogs January 22, 2015 Thursday 6:55 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1382 words Byline: Pat Myers Body I tend to have two reactions to most contest suggestions I get these days: 1. "Sorry, we've done that." 2. "Oh, we've done that -yeah, that was a good one. Let's do it again." I can't state a strict criterion about when I make Reply No. 1 vs. Reply No. 2. But for Week 1108 of The Style Invitational -which repeats a contest we've done in various forms three times -I'll point to a combination of factors: First, I'm not paying attention to Week 47, which asked for "bad Valentine's Day poetry" -I would like funny-clever, not funny-because-it's-lame. (The results here -scroll down past that week's new contest -show that the latter gets old pretty fast.) The second and third contests, on the other hand, produced some great results. But they're from 2004 and 2006. And so I figure that there are lots of new people to mock with flowery sentiments. (Hey, a skunk cabbage has a flower, too.) Some winners from Weeks 544 and 645. Complete results are here and here. To the National Zoo's then-baby resident: As you chew on the bamboo and yawnIn the sun on your makeshift veranda,Here's my Valentine wish, dear Tai Shan:May you never be moo goo gai panda. (Chris Doyle, the winner of Week 645) Slinkity, binkity,Eva Longoria,Oh, how I pine as youPlay hard to get.Why does my ardor meetNon-reciprocity?I guess you aren't that"Desperate" yet. (Brendan Beary, runner-up the same week) As was this one, which I think worked better because at the time we didn't have to give his last name: To my favorite lobbyist: Remember that cash in the sack? I regret that I must give it back.If they ask about meWhile you're copping your plea,Be nice: Tell 'em I don't know Jack. (Nick Curtis) And among the valentines to generic people: To a veterinarian: From three little stray cats, each with a uterus:Happy Valentine's Day --please will you neuter us? (Sue Lin Chong) From one historical*literary figure to another: A Valentine, some hugs and pecks,A night of wild, illicit sex.As your pastor, I must say,Miss Prynne, you've earned yourself an A. (Chris Doyle, who, you might have noticed, has made himself pretty useful over the past 15 years). From Calvin Coolidge to his wife, Grace: Yrs. (Tom Kreitzberg) I'm very optimistic about this contest. For the option of actually composing a graphic card: It has to look really good as well as be really clever, and if it's going into the print paper, it has to be readable in black-and-white. I won't be looking at graphic entries blindly, and I might get back to you if there's something I'd like you to tweak. Don't put your own name into the graphic. And The Post will not publish it if the photo you use is copyrighted. Any photos on Wikipedia are for general use, and many Getty's stock photos are free if you use the proper credit, which we're happy to do. (See here for details.) Please send your graphic as an attachment, at least 500K resolution and preferably higher. I know that some of you out there are Photoshop whizzes - here's your chance. Can you believe that two people, one in Texas and one in California, noted that HPD stands for both histrionic personality disorder and highest posterior density -and then related them to the perfect-for-both Kim Kardashian? That's what Chris Doyle and Frank Osen did this week in this week's abbreviation contest. Larry Gray scored the rare Invite feat of snaring two wins in two weeks -for three in all since he debuted in Week 923. (I had told him, in this week's prize letter, to save a little room on the mantelpiece.) Frank Mann gets the perhaps dubious "fossilized dinosaur poop" from the otherwise reputable SkullsUnlimited.com; Chris Doyle yadda yadda; and Kristen Rahman picks up her third "above the fold" ink out -plus two honorable mentions -to boost her blot total by 30 percent in a week. There's lots of grousing discussion on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook about the list of members of Congress we're using for this year's still-running "joint legislation" contest, Week 1107 -97 comments as I write this. First of all, it was noted that it was missing the names of legislators who took office before the 2014 election but after the previous freshman class -most notably David Brat, who replaced Eric Cantor late last year in a ploy to give him seniority over this year's frosh. Yup, the list I worked from didn't have those people, and I just forgot about the gun-jumpers who'd won special elections. But as Loser Jeff Shirley noted: "Missing a Brat -not the wurst that could happen." No doubt lots of people would have sent entries playing off "Brat." But I would have run at the most two of them. Also, there's a lot of concern about the pronunciation of the legislators' names; while I'd included "pronouncers" for many of them, I didn't note, for example, that Blum isn't pronounced "bloom" as it is in Germany, or that Dianne Feinstein, who has been a prominent senator for 22 years, isn't "Fine-steen." Also, I hadn't explained that Moolenaar is "Mole-enar" rather than "Mool-enar." And then was the complaint that if you did use the right pronunciation of , say, Gallegos (guy-AY-gos rather than gal-LEG-os or GALL-e-gos), readers wouldn't understand the joke because they don't know how to pronounce Gallegos. These people have a point: A wordplay joke is more reliable when the pronunciation is less ambiguous -this is why some of the best song parodies and limericks make it very clear from the words used where their accents fall; that way people won't read them another way in their heads and "miss the joke." Still: There are about a hundred names on that list, and you get to try 25 combinations. So maybe you'd want to include some totally unambiguous pronunciations along with ones that require a little knowledge. Also: A lot of people do know how to pronounce Gallegos. And there is some give in how much you can stretch a pronunciation so that it sounds like another word. While you can't pretend that Gallego has something to do with plastic building blocks made for girls, or that Mooney sounds like Money, there's just a shade of sound difference between Moolenaar and Molenaar; either interpretation will probably work in a joke. In any case, this contest remains one of the most popular perennials we do -entries are flooding in, with many by new entrants. For the 2013 joint-legislation contest, I counted an in-cred-ible 105 new e-mail addresses that week; normally I might get 10. This time there might not be so many -for one thing, a lot of those 105 people came back since, and some just do this one contest -but it's clear that this remains a popular contest, especially in Washington, where legislators' names can be part of the local news. My apologies about the continuing problem with the auto-reply that you're supposed to get after sending your entries to losers@washpost.com I have talked to several people in The Post's IT department about this -and thanks, techie Losers, for your suggestions -and they've been trying to work around the usual set-up in which the auto-reply doesn't want to tell you more than once that Mr. Dropbox is on vacation (or in our case, that we've received your entry and here's the stuff you forgot to look at in the rules the first time around). William of IT has created a program that's working on his computer in which he updates it once a day; this is why many of you have begun to get the auto-reply again, but not for a second e-mail you sent the same day. When I go to The Post's newsroom next Tuesday, I'm bringing my personal laptop, and he'll load that program for me too. So my fingers are crossed that after next Tuesday, I'll no longer be answering e-mails all day long about whether someone's entry has reached me. (The other problem is that I currently can't see both my regular Post e-mail box and the Losers e­mail on my phone, so I can't check on entries until I get home.) And yes, it's been noted that the owner of this company might find all this mess a bit surprising. All I can say is that they know what my problem is, courtesy of my big and increasingly caustic mouth. ====================================================================== WEEK 1109, published February 1, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1109: A matter of laugh and death; The Style Invitational Empress discusses the new contest and results Washington Post Blogs January 29, 2015 Thursday 8:02 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1402 words Byline: Pat Myers Body (That's Tom Witte's headline, which didn't get ink because it didn't fit on the page) Well, after I die, I am definitely going to call up some Losers and ask for a poem. (Someone will write something about my "in-tiara-ment" but I will reject it.) The obit poems in Week 1105, as always, were clever and fun, managing in a number of creative ways not to be too tasteless or mean in making fun of the recently out-of-here. And this year might have the best assortment ever of subjects: fascinating animals (a little easier to joke about than people) plus, as maybe a dozen people decided to use, various people who were on a list of Darwin Award nominees. I ended up fitting 20 entries into the print version of the Invite, nestled cozily in the higher-numbered pages of The Post's Arts & Style section, and a rather profligate 29 into the online version. There were at least that many on my "short"-list that got robbed. There were also, as always, hundreds and hundreds of really awful poems -the kind that you (or at least I) tend to wince at when a relative reads one at a wedding. They tend to rhyme, or sort of rhyme, but don't have any consistent meter, and often painfully twisted syntax to effect said rhyme*sort-of-rhyme. One almost always lethal phrase, when it comes to ink, is "he did [verb]" rather than "he [verbed]" -especially if it kills the rhythm ("Many careers he did mold"). A notable exception this week: Diane Wah used this very construction in her sonnet about "radium girl" Mae Keane -"Mae's brush with fate did point her way to heaven" -but I thought it worked because the whole tone of the poem was self-consciously and humorously "poetic," and so a little twisted syntax adds gently to the joke. Diane's sonnet was an exception in another way: While I regularly give ink to two entries on the same subject, as I did for the poems about Marion Barry, I normally do that only if the two entries make different points, or use diffferent styles of humor. But in this case, I had two fairly lengthy (in Invite terms) rhyming poems that told the same story. And they both told them really, really well. I finally decided to put the shorter of them at the very top -it turned out to be by Chris Doyle -and the other, the 14-liner, near the bottom -because how could I deny it ink? So the radium-unpoisoned Mae Keane gets two glowing tributes. All four of the Losers "above the fold" this week, and many of the honorable-mention Losers as well, have gotten lots of ink in earlier Invite poetry contests: From my scanning of the Losers' own Master Contest List, I see that Chris Doyle has won the top prize in at least fourteen Invite poetry or song contests since Week 503 in 2003. Melissa Balmain and Frank Osen, both well-known published poets, have sharpened the Invite's funny-poetry new contest and results chops even more since they started entering within a few weeks of each other in 2011. And Beverley Sharp steps merrily onto the steps leading up to the Hall of Fame threshold -watch the ice! -as she nears her 500th blot of ink, a lot of it in rhyme. The favorite this week of Copy Editor Extraordinaire Doug Norwood was Rob Cohen's OMG tribute to Eric Hill, the "Where's Spot?" author. Doug's daughter and my son are about the same age, and both of us fondly remember reading this book to our respective offspring approximately 362,000 times. Last night I had the fun of watching perhaps a dozen clips on YouTube of babies being read to or reading "Where's Spot?" -had my kids been born in the digital-video era, they surely would have been among them -and I linked to one of them in the heading of the poem, with a child who clearly has been through this book many, many times. I also found one with Eric Hill himself reading the book, with the aid of a stuffed Spot. It's very entertaining in his plummy English voice, and he's very animated as he elaborates on the drawings as he lifts the flaps, but I'm partial to seeing and hearing the delighted kids themselves. As veteran contest-suggesters know, I'm much more optimistic that a new contest will work if I see some great examples to go with it. Mark Raffman suggested this one to me just this week. I'd have thought that Bob Staake would have chosen the L'Enfant Terrible example to illustrate (I usually let him choose from the examples) but he went for the river. I acknowledge that there's an inherent danger running a local-angle contest in this global era -Jeff Bezos himself has explicitly said the The Post would focus more and more on national and international coverage and readership -but I think it will still be fun. It'll be the locals who read the Invite in the print edition, while I can might add some links to online entries that help explain the joke if necessary. (But it's not always: For example, I wouldn't expect out-of­towners to have heard of the Anacostia, but it's clear from the joke that (a) it's a river and (b) that it's associated with some bad thing, either pollution or bodies being dumped there, which is enough knowledge for the joke to be funny.) In the past week, two Losers -both funny people with significant quantities of ink -noted to me that this year's magnets for honorable mentions have proved problematic: One said that she decided she'd better take down her "Wit Hit the Fan" magnets from the refrigerator when guests came to visit, because of the language of the wordplay. The other asked me if I could henceforth not send the "Hardly Har-Har" magnet because his kids found the graphic violence of the clown drawing - especially the bloody saw - disturbing. Let me emphasize that neither of them complained to me, or argued that we should have used different slogans or art. (Incidentally, the pistol in the clown picture originally didn't have a "bang" flag; it was just a gun.) I'm mentioning this to say that if you also feel this way about either of the magnets, you're not alone -and that if you have a magnet preference (or don't want one at all), I'll be happy to accommodate you if you let me know before the Tuesday after you get the ink. To the tech-types who've been following my Saga of the Lack of Auto-Reply with a mix of amusement, pity and perhaps a bit of contempt: I know, I know. Anyway, everyone who sends entries to losers@washpost.com will now get a receipt for each e-mail, with varying degrees of immediacy. On Tuesday, Will of IT installed a program on my personal laptop with which, in case the auto-reply doesn't work on its own (which seems to be almost always the case right now), I can just click on an icon and it will create an e­mail with the whole text of the auto-reply directions. And the subject line will retain the week number you sent, so you'll know which entry it refers to. So if I'm at my laptop at home and I see your entry come in, I'll just hit that button. The other improvement that Will made was to fix my iPhone so that I can now get the losers@washpost.com e­mail as well as my pat.myers@washpost.com e-mail, all in the same feed with my personal-personal Gmail e-mail. So if I'm away from my laptop and I'm looking at my phone -and I know you already know all the info in the auto- new contest and results reply -I'll just reply to the e-mail with a "got it." If I think you need to see that information, however, I'll wait till I get home and then click on the manual "auto"-reply thing. One problem with this is that the auto-reply will sometimes work on its own, and so some people will end up with two receipts. This problem, however, will not keep me up at "night" (i.e., 3 to 8 a.m.). Meanwhile, we at The Post were told this week that starting at 10 a.m. tomorrow, we're going to a new, improved spam-filtering service, which we cannot access until then. My prediction -not that I have any reason to be pessimistic or anything -is that at the beginning, more of your entries than usual will end up in spam. Currently I have a list of 100 e-mail addresses that always bypass the spam filter, and I doubt that list will move over to the new system, so I'll have to reconstruct it. But as always, I systematically check the spam filter every Tuesday night, and send out an e-mail to the affected people to explain why they didn't get the auto-reply. So sorry, if you didn't get ink, it really was because I liked somebody else's stuff better. ====================================================================== WEEK 1111, published February 15, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1111 (Four 1s and for all): The bills that would never pass; The Empress of the Style Invitational reviews this week's new contest and results. Washington Post Blogs February 12, 2015 Thursday 7:57 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1455 words Byline: Pat Myers Body It's like sausage: Once it's put before you with lots of links, you'll say, "What happened with that stupid patty?" Nah, the results of Week 1107 are great, no? While I always moan and groan while judging The Style Invitational's biennial "joint legislation" contest, I also always look forward to it, because I know it will pay off -both in reader popularity and in the quality of the results. The 41 inking entries from almost 40 Losers -including five First Offenders -topped the stack of at least 2,000 entries, many of them remotely intelligible. I do wish that more people had heeded my plea to have someone else read their entries, without hints, so they could see if your string of congressmen's names sounded like an English phrase outside your own highly deluded mind. My guess is that the person who sent this one, for example, didn't go through the just-ask process: Emmer-Schumer-Feinstein-Young-Barasso and Tillis Proclamation declaring March to be Victoria's Secret Appreciation Month. Except for "Barasso," I had no idea how any of these words related to Victoria's Secret, let alone what the whole phrase said. Maybe I was just tired, I figured, so I posted the entry on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook, Their comments included: -"In William Goldman's ... first novel, Temple of Gold, breasts were referred to as "twillies" but I seriously doubt there's a connection. I only read it about 50 years ago and still remember that!"- " 'em are some-uh finest in young bare ass until it's ???" -" Emmer-Schumer seems to be the "March" part, but the rest seems full of empty syllables.- Schumer=showin' her or show him her.-and Tills="And still is?" Feinstein could be cockney rhyming slang for "fine?" -I suggest "finest teen" (even though it's TYNE) because you just can't ignore that S in Feinstein's name.- Don't know what Emmer-Schumer is yet, but I'm guessing the rest is: "finest in young bras show and tell us."-don't think the writer meant this but Emmer-Schumer makes sense as "amorous humor", I finally contacted the writer and asked. And what he was aiming for was this: "Them are (Emmer) some (Schumer) fine (Feinstein) young (Young) bare asses (Barasso) and titties (Tillis). "A bit of a reach perhaps." Style Invitational reviews this week's new contest and.... Perhaps. Obviously, the best way to make the your phrase clear is to use names that are perfect homonyms: Boyle-Dold-Rice is pronounced exactly "boiled old rice." But there could be a little stretch, as some of this week's inking entries demonstrate. I think the stretchiest this week is "The Hurd-Daines-Knight subsidy for those who have been working like a dog," But it totally works -because the rest of the entry makes it clear that David Friedman meant "Hard Day's Night"; because we don't have to puzzle out what the heck he's getting at, we can sit back and enjoy the joke. It's even kind of funny that it's phonetically off. Contrast that with "The Newhouse-Murkowski-Schatz resolution: Speaker Boehner's White Russian drinking contest to celebrate having a congressional majority and a personal bartender who don't want to get rid of him." The writer did think to add an explanation: "New House, more cowski shots! This joke requires the reader to figure out that a drinker as experienced as Boehner would have his own pet name for White Russians (which contain cream) - a "Cowski." This is asking a little much of even the hyperbrainy Loser Community. There's a difference between a joke -even a clever joke - and a puzzle. It was by accident that I hadn't included Rep. Dave Brat on the list of names to work with, even though he's not technically a freshman; he was rushed into his seat after beating House leader Eric Cantor in the primary, as a tactic to gain seniority. I just forgot to add him to the list of actual freshmen of the 114th Congress. So we can use him next time. There were many similar entries for Week 1107; some got double credit (I also occasionally combined elements of two entries for a double credit) but usually I chose the entry I thought worked a little better than the rest. But sometimes a slew of entries just canceled one another out; the many "Lieu-Trott" jokes about running to the bathroom, for instance, or "Love-Sessions-Booker," etc., about madams and pimps. Even without, for once, a Sen. or Rep. Johnson, there were lots and lots of off-color jokes (a sampling appears below). Thanks, Rep. Peters and Sen. Barrasso. I was mildly surprised that I didn't get any grief (as of this hour, anyway) from the newsroom Taste Police about the Peters-Nelson wrestling hold or the Torres-Dingle zipper safety legislation or the Buck-Tillis-Sasse-Hurd bronco-riding limits. Note, however, that none of those was used in a sexual context; and weren't as crudely graphic as some of the similar ideas noted at the bottom of this column. Lots of new and almost-new names among this week's inking entries, including "above the fold": It's just the third blot of ink ever for Inkin' Memorial winner Dawn Kral, who nevertheless has mastered the power of the elegant poop joke. And it's only the second ink for runner-up David Clayton, and the 10th for Joanne Free, who both nailed the Cosby angle in even this contest. And even longtime ace Losers Kathy Hardis Fraeman and Steve Langer -who have 17 winners or runners-up between them -total fewer than 100 blots (each has a Real Life as a scientist); contrast that with the Losers' Circle totals of well over 1,000 in many weeks. Too insidey for the Invite, but just right for here: Rep. Lee Zeldin was called into service for several tributes to a Hall of Fame Loser: -The Lieu-Zeldin Resolution to cheer the ink-seeking efforts of one Mr. Carnahan. (Nan Reiner) [Lose, Elden!]­The Schatz-Hurd-Zeldin-Sasse commendation honoring immunization advocate E. Carnahan for repeatedly demonstrating the hypodermic. (George-Ann Rosenberg) [Shots hurts Elden's ass]- The Emmer-Rice-Love-Zeldin Carnahan Act establishing that you don't have to be handsome to be the teacher's pet, as long as you're funny. (Mark Raffman) [Empress loves Elden Carnahan] This last one is disqualified because it implies that Elden is less than totally studly. (Refuted here.) I was thinking that we'd already done a contest that called for puns on song titles, but I guess not. And while we've done funny names for businesses, they don't seem to have played much on song titles: The only one I found was Style Invitational reviews this week's new contest and.... for the Week 641 contest to combine two businesses: Elliott Schiff noted that a petting zoo*bellsmith could be named A Ram, A Lamb, A Ding-Dong. Good, then! I'm expecting thousands of entries for Week 1111. Go to it! As usual, a familiar song title tends to make a funnier joke than an obscure one. You do need to change the title in some way, not just name a business that an actual song title would be good for. The March Loser Brunch has been set for Sunday, March 22, to coincide with the National Cherry Blossom Festival and the visit by Losers Kathy El-Assal and Becky Fischer from Wisconsin. It's the ample buffet at Paradiso, always one of my favorites. For more information and a calendar of Loser events, see the Losers' website, nrars.org, and click on "Our Social Engorgements" at the top of the page. Note: If you're reading all the way down here, we assume that you're not going to be offended by crude, tasteless humor. If you are, please don't read the following. They're not for you. There were a lot of entries along these same lines. Here are a sampling: The Peters-Torres-Sasse Penitentiary Reform and Inmate Reparations Act (David Clayton) Cruz-Young-Peters-Sasse Congressional Page "Mentoring" Act (Tim Livengood) Palmer-Rounds-Peters-Tillis-Hardy: This bill instructs freshmen congressmen on the best method to stay out of trouble when they become geo-bachelors in D.C. (Rob Wolf) The Torres-Sasse Bill to create a new opening for the President's staff, centered on servicing the privates sector. (Jon Gearhart)Cruz-Tillis-Peters-Hardy Act to study the invigorating effects of ocean voyages on erectile dysfunction (Jeff Shirley)Trott-Tillis-Dingell­Torres-Sasse: resolution to require the Surgeon General to warn men to wear jockstraps when jogging. (Rick Haynes) Young-Rounds-Mooney-Guinta-Bishop-Peters-Hardy Bill requiring altar boys to serve in pairs (Andrew Knapp) Hardy-Coons-Guinta-Tillis-Cotton Act to Repeal the Thirteenth Amendment (Elden Carnahan) I'm enough of a glutton for punishment to ask for ideas for a similar contest we can do before the 115th Congress goes into session in January 2017. ====================================================================== WEEK 1112, published February 22, 2015 Style Conversational: Eight neat things about (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) Add to list Not many people can rock the ensemble of Skunk Hat and Pearls. But Beverley Sharp surely was the best-dressed lady in church. (FAMILY PHOTO) By Pat MyersFebruary 19, 2015 1. She used to be (Beverley Sharp, Washington). Beverley was living in the District back in 2005 when she figured she’d try that game in The Post with the horse names, and scored an honorable mention by “breeding” Uncle Whiskers with By Sunday and naming the foal Santa Domingo. And that was it for Beverley, Style Invitational-wise, for a whole year. Then a few more in 2006, including a runner-up. But then she got to work, blotting up as many as 80 inks per year on the way to No. 500, which she hit last week with her “joint legislation.” Along the way she won the Inker or Inkin’ Memorial 12 times and accumulated swag from 37 runners-up (see a sampling below), and was the Loser Community’s Loser of the Year in 2010, and managed to be “Most Imporved” four years later. 2. Beverley’s friends don’t know from “Beverley Sharp.” To them, she’s Beverley Amberg. Beverley decided to use her maiden name (or, as I call it, her own name) in the Invitational because her husband, Dick Amberg, was at the time the general manager — the head of the business side — of the Washington Times, a daily paper that used to be more of a competitor of The Post than it is now, and she didn’t want to embarrass Dick. (Dick played along with this, so much so that he even attended Loser events wearing a name tag reading “Dick Sharp.” In a roomful of Style Invitational Losers!) 3. Beverley once got six blots of ink in a single week. It was Week 804, a contest to create a “typo” in a real Washington Post headline, and then write a bank head: Third place: What Could Have Been Horse? Travelers Ponder the Mysteries of Foreign Menus Save an Additional 200% [had been 20%]: Local Merchants Get Desperate Miser Loves Company: Skinflint Invites Friends In Just to Watch Him Count His Cash Striving to Have a Vice in the Workplace: Company’s Sexual Harassment Workshop Has Unusual Purpose Smoking Bat Passes in Va. [Ban]: Veterinarians Had Advised Mammal to Give Up Tobacco Factoring In the Cost of Getting Some [Home]: Bachelors, Don’t Forget Movie, Dinner, Wine 4. In 2007, after starting to get some regular Invite ink, Beverley learned that a number of contestants and hangers-on kept in touch with one another via an e-mail group called Losernet, and that they even did things together in person. Soon afterward, without having met any of the other participants, she signed up to go away for a weekend to Williamsburg and Jamestown under the “direction” of a man who looked like this. She had a fabulous time. I first met Beverley at a Dorkness at Noon weekday lunch in town, and was instantly smitten by this refined, perfectly coiffed lady who was cracking up over the usual double-entendres that pass for prandial repartee in Loserdom. And she became a regular participant in Loser Brunches, the Flushies awards and the Loserfest field trips, until Dick retired from the Times and they moved back to his hometown of Montgomery, Ala., in 2011. 5. Even after she’d freed herself from the orbit of Loserdom, seemingly safely ensconced 800 miles away, what does she do? When Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan drove down to the Gulf Coast with a church group on his annual trek to repair houses, Beverley insisted that they all stop by Chez Amberg on the way, and gave everyone lunch. Two different times. 6. In retirement, Beverley and Dick have been traveling all over creation, visiting the grandchildren and touring the world. But I still receive her entries every week, sometimes sent from a cruise ship or Internet cafe in Outer Whoknowswhere. 7. It was Beverley who suggested the term “First Offenders,” when I started awarding the FirStink to rookies in 2008. And a year later, it was she who came up with the name for the brand-new Style Conversational. 8. I’m glad that I judge the entries blindly, without knowing who wrote the entries, because I get the most gracious thank-you note every time Beverley gets her prize and letter in the mail — which is, of course, practically every week. And I see from the stats that she’s gotten at least as much ink since I started the blind judging as she did before. Being nice has nothing to do with it — she’s just very, very good at this Invite thing. For example, these first-place winners: — Week 747, ways to improve air travel, 2008: And the Winner of the Inker: Install removable tray tables. Then when the person in front of you reclines his seat to the supine position, you can place your tray, drinks and all, right on his face. — Week 767, Questionable Journalism: Find a sentence appearing in that week’s Post and supply a question that it might answer, 2008: And the Winner of the Inker: A. I don’t know if I should say something, let it roll off, or what. Q. “Isn’t that the neighbors’ baby up on the roof?” — Week 771, names for employee handbooks for particular professions or workplaces, 2008: And the Winner of the Inker: “The Paean Is Mightier Than the S-Word: The Congressional Guide to Speaking Near a Microphone” — Week 830, a bank head for an actual headline in a Post story or ad, 2009: And the Winner of the Inker: Talk All You Want! Hook Up Now! High School Adopts ‘Progressive’ Policies — Week 859, i“If they can ___, why can’t they ___?,” 2010: The winner of the Inker: If they can train puppies to use the newspaper, why can’t they train yuppies to use the newspaper? — Week 927, short ad-poems as a series of road signs, a la Burma-Shave: The winner of the Inker: Why exercise To get a date? WE’LL do the push-ups; YOU’LL look great! Wonderbra. — Week 942, the winning entry to a contest that can produce only one great entry, 2011: A contest to come up with a name for an older-adult swim diaper. Winner: Deep Ends — Week 985, 2012, in which we showed five Bob Staake cartoons and asked you to say Invitational contest it could be for. The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial, for Week 982, a song parody including one line from the original song: The cartoon was of a horse sitting in a bathtub, holding a toaster: Picture E: To “Fugue for Tinhorns” from “Guys and Dolls”: I’ve got the horse right here, He’s in the bathtub, dear, But all the lights went out, and he’s toast, I fear. Boo hoo, I’m blue; The horse blew a fuse, it’s true; It looks like the horse is through; (The toaster, too.) — Week 988, bogus laws “still on the books,” 2012: In Bethlehem, Pa., an innkeeper MUST provide a room for a hugely pregnant woman (because you just never know. . .). — Week 1056, good*bad*ugly, 2014: 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. — Week 1099, Questionable Journalism again, 2014: Sentence from The Post: Will begin to wane on Wednesday night. Q. What was the phrase that persuaded the Weather Channel not to hire Elmer Fudd? I’ve started preparing the compilation of entries that’s my reminder of time squandered gift to each Hall of Fame inductee, and would like nothing more than to present it to Beverley in person at this year’s Flushies awards in late spring. Which brings us to: Who has a nice big rec room? Flushies organizers Dave Prevar, Elden Carnahan and Pie Snelson are still searching for a place to hold the Losers’ 20th annual awards lunch or dinner, at which we fete the Loser of the Year, celebrate and mock others’ Loserly milestones, sing parodies for the occasion, and of course eat stuff. After several years of angst in dealing with banquet-room caterers and restaurant rentals, and not knowing till the last minute whether enough Losers would sign up to cover the guaranteed minimums, we agreed that it would be a whole lot better and cheaper for everyone if we could have it at someone’s house, and bring in the food, either potluck or from a caterer. Historically, we’ve had 50 to 70 people show up. Not everyone has to sit all the time, but we should be able to crowd around to hear the songs. Is anyone in the D.C. area in a position to host this year’s Flushies? Saturday, May 30, would be especially nice because out-of-town visitors could also take part in the Post Hunt the next day, but there are a number of other possible dates. We could do it outside as long as there was a Plan B inside for weather. Please contact Dave at DavePrevar [at] AOLl [dot] com as soon as possible. We’re already late in the game. Hars and flowers*: The valentines of Week 1108 *A headline submitted by a number of people I’m sure that some people would like to throw some Conversational Hearts at my face today after I robbed some worthy valentines of ink in the results of Week 1108. I did get 25 of them into the Web version, and 19 into print. The valentines include both poems and prose, to real and fictional people, and to a number of non-people, and even part-people (Kim Kardashian’s Butt). I was pretty flexible on what constituted a valentine, but I think it does have to be addressed to the recipient; it can’t be a third-person tribute or funny story about the person. That ruled out this otherwise very good double dactyl from Chris Doyle: Junkety, trunkety Kim West*Kardashian, Trying on clothes for the Valentine Ball, Checks on her signature Steatopygia: “Kanye, this dress makes my Butt look too small!” Also biting the dust was a song parody, “That’s Why Tom Brady Is a Champ,” from Barbara Sarshik and Duncan Stevens. I’ll share it on the Style Invitational Devotees page, though. And while valentines in general are something of an anachronism, perhaps, this one from Greg Arnold was out of phase by about 100,000 years: Lady Neanderthal to her Significant Other: I love you just the way you are. Your massive brow, your brawn. Your matted hair, your musky scent. It really turns me on. You lavish me with thoughtful gifts, But some, a bit surreal. Like, what am I to do with this... This thing you call a “wheel?” It is, if the Loser Stats are current, the big 100th ink for Rob Huffman, who didn’t start entering since Week 914. And it’s already his fifth win, and 10th “above the fold.” Rob, who hasn’t yet come up the 50 miles from Fredericksburg, Va., to Meet the Parentheses, told me recently that “by the way, I want to make a Losers social event this year. Time to come out of my Garbo-esque shell. Maybe the next one?” I hope he can make it to the next brunch on March 22, on his side of the Beltway at Paradiso on Franconia Road. See “Our Social Engorgements” at NRARS.org. Also visiting will be 30-time Loser Kathy El-Assal, from Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Mark Raffman closes in on 200 inks with his mayyybe problematic crush on the HR director, plus (at the bottom of the list, and only on the Web) one of the best double-entendres ever; it really deserves to be above the fold, but the Taste Police would have killed it, I’m pretty sure. Nan Reiner continues her specialty of skewering local politicos and institutions, and rising star Warren Tanabe gets a Loser Mug or Grossery Bag for his love letter from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to the teachers union. Meanwhile, the above-the-folders from Week 1107 haven’t gotten their prizes yet, because I didn’t go to the office on my usual Tuesday. I’ll mail them out on Friday. ====================================================================== WEEK 1113, published March 1, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1113: It's our parody - try if you want to; Plus new lies about D.C. - and we have a date and place for the Flushies! Washington Post Blogs February 26, 2015 Thursday 7:51 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1570 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Oh boy oh boy, I love song parody contests. I grew up on Mad Magazine in the 1960s , learning every word of Frank Jacobs's "MG" (sung to "Born Free"), "War" ("More") and one about a pampered poodle, set to "On the Street Where You Live" ("still he sits upon* his own private john* that I built for the dog that I love"). My predecessor, the Czar, though he also grew up on Mad, has never taken to song parodies. But within months after my Empress tiara was ceremonially implanted in my skull 11 years ago, I asked the Losers to offer advice to our nation's leaders in the form of a Christmas carol parody, and immediately realized that the Loser community could well out-Frank Jacobs Frank Jacobs. (The results.) Since then, we've had parody contests almost every year, with various themes and parameters: Sometimes you've had to work with a particular genre (holiday songs, Beatles songs, Stephen Foster songs, music that had no lyrics, "The Star-Spangled Banner" and no other choice); other times the music field was wide open but you had to write on a particular theme: campaign songs, songs about natural disasters, songs describing particular TV shows. This week's contest, Week 1113, is in the latter category; use any music you like. Feel free also to make a video featuring your song, and send me a file or preferably a YouTube link; sometimes I do a little editing to lyrics, though, so the final products might not be the same. My choice for ink, though, depends on the lyrics rather than the video. As always, because this is a column that gets read rather than heard, I'm looking for parodies that also work as well-crafted humorous poems; that means they have to really rhyme, not just have the assonance of the same vowels, a practice that works fine on pop recordings (current examples include reckless*breathless, feet*cheeks; mouth*out). That's true even if the song you're paroudying doesn't have "perfect rhyme." The structure of a parody-as-poem is also different from parody-as-performance: It works better when it ends with a sort of punchline, rather than a refrain that repeats earlier material; also, when we want people to read the lyrics of 10 or 14 or 25 songs (I tend to overshare because they're so good), there's just no room for verses that don't add to the wit. And, yeah, wit: However well crafted, the song still needs to make a funny or ironic point; it just can't be a translation of some other writing cleverly fitted into the form of some song. There's no limit on the length of a parody, but it has to be worth the length. Very often, the best parodies are no more than eight lines. On the other hand, just sending in a single couplet parodying two lines of a song is unlikely to get ink over more ambitious successes. date and place for the Flushies! Note that I specifically permitted collaborations for this contest, something I hope not to regret. Parodies are complex works that surely benefit from a bit of brainstorming, and I think we'll end up with even better material than usual with co-written songs. And so I don't mind spending a couple of lines crediting people; it's different from, say, a horse name, where multiple credits would be longer than the entries themselves. And this really isn't my department, but for Losers who care about their standings in the ink-gathering competition presided over by Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan, being part of a co-written entry gets each contributor a whole point of ink, in Elden's system. This seems kind of unjust to me -you know, Lennon and McCartney took double credit for every song, but they didn't make double the money -and so I don't plan to welcome double crediting except for the most labor-intensive contests, or perhaps for visual-art contests, in which one person comes up with the idea and the other makes a graphic out of it. This week's theme -it's pretty wide open. Creative "occasions" are welcome. And the song may be sung to a particular person. *Mark Raffman's allusion to a comment by D.C. Council candidate Christopher Barry, son of Marion. It seems that the Losers are ready for jobs as Capitol interns. I was a bit concerned for a while as I read through my master-list printout and swooshed off whole pages of fictoids at a time, but Week 1109 turned out to be one of those fairly frequent contests in which I ended up with a funny and even fairly long list of inkworthy entries. (I added a number of honorable mentions to the online Invite because they didn't fit on the print page.) The inking Losers not only are clever at spoofing the trivia genre, but they get the difference between satire and plain untruth: The former uses untruth -and writing that's is designed to make it clear, either subtly or in a comically over-the-top way that it's untruth -to make a joke or pointed comment about something that is essentially true. Or at least something that has the elements of a joke, not just an inaccuracy. It's the difference between The Onion ("Report: Only 40% Of Celebrities End Up Marrying Their Stalkers") and a hack clickbait factory like Empire News ("California Woman Shocked After Waking Up With A Drunk Channing Tatum In Her Bed"). But to tweeze out the gems of humor, I had to step over gobs of "Pierre L'Enfant's tomb is in L'Enfant Plaza" and "William Howard Taft was distantly related to Moe Howard of the Three Stooges." For the second straight week, the Inkin' Memorial -whose polyresin comes from the same Tennessee quarry as the actual Lincoln Memorial statue -goes to Rob Huffman of Fredericksburg, Va. As I noted to Rob last week, as he also marked his 100th blot of Invite ink along with his win, he's the 71st Loser to reach the 100-ink mark -and one of only six I haven't met in the flesh (and that includes numerous non-Washingtonians). So I'm really hoping that Rob comes up for either the March 22 Loser brunch or the May 30 Flushies (see below). The rest of the Losers' Circle is filled with other Invite veterans: Jeff Contompasis, with 435 blots of ink, is next in line to make the 500-ink Hall of Fame, and is already considering the Week 1112-style neologism contest based on his name. Frank Osen is "above the fold" so often that he just keeps a cot there. Fourth-place Thad Humphries, however, has seen fit to have a life; it's his 16th blot, dating way back to Week 263, when he sent his entry in by Pony Express. (He didn't get the auto-reply then, either.)The favorites this week of ace copy editor Doug Norwood: Chris Doyle's Brian Williams joke, Kristen Rahman's about President Ford refusing to go to the Lincoln Theatre, and Ivars Kuskevics's entry about the Capitol dome being named for Rotunda, the Goddess of Pork. Unprintables? Well, I sneaked in Art Grinath's factoid about the topiary at the base of the Washington Monument, but still thought it Too Soon for this one by Kevin Dopart: "Target sponsored the 1997 renovation of the Washington Monument; it was denied a similar role in the restoration of the JFK bust at the Kennedy Center." Huge blubbering thanks to 2014 Loser of the Year Danielle Nowlin and husband Ryan for offering to host the Losers' 20th Flushies awards, banquet and toilet paper toss at their house in suburban Fairfax County, Va. After several years of angsty arrangements with hotels, restaurants and caterers, the Flushies organizing team of Dave Prevar, Elden Carnahan and Pie Snelson will be able to disconnect their blood pressure cuffs once in a while. date and place for the Flushies! I'm thrilled to hear that both Beverley Sharp and Frank Osen plan to come in to Washington for the Flushies, from Montgomery, Ala., and Pasadena, Calif., respectively though surely not respectfully. Jeff Shirley also tells me that he'll be driving up from Richmond. Where the food will come from is still to be determined, but we now have time to work that stuff out. And you know we're going to have plenty of song parodies! We decided on the May 30 date -later than usual for the Flushies -because of some scheduling conflicts but also to give a chance for the out-of-towners to make it a Double Crazy Things From The Post Weekend: On Sunday, May 31, is the Post Hunt, the spectacularly nutty brain-teaser*scavenger-hunt*mass-gathering devised and run every year in downtown Washington by Gene Weingarten, Dave Barry and Tom Shroder, who created the original in Miami. Loser teams have been getting closer and closer to winning in past years. The Huntmasters haven't said too much about this year's event, but to give you an idea, here's the advance from 2014. Also with out-of-towners. At Paradiso on Franconia Road just outside the Beltway between the Van Dorn Street and Springfield exits. I'll be there doing my typical buffet overeating. This one is in conjunction with the Cherry Blossom Festival. Details under "Our Social Engorgements" at the Losers' website, NRARS.org; please RSVP to Elden Carnahan through that page. We had at least 20 people at our last Paradisofest, so it's important that we can give the place a head count. I got an e-mail from Mary Pershing, the daughter of 269-time Loser Mae Scanlan, who's been in and out of the hospital for several weeks. Mae was back in, Mary said, and was too weak to write -but she dictated some entries for Week 1111, and she was passing them on in time to make the contest deadline. There were 18 entries. ====================================================================== WEEK 1114, published March 8, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1114: Laughing Maters Add to list The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest By Pat MyersMarch 5, 2015 Think of all the different ways the contestants of The Style Invitational have offered up memorably witty humor in the past 1114 weeks or so. The neologisms, of course, in so many formats. The song parodies. The cartoon captions. The plays on headlines. The horse names. The crossword clues. The limericks. The obit poems. The joint legislation. Writing something that uses only the words in some other writing. Comparing two items from a list we give. Such a variety of ways to put your clever on. But for pure laughs, not surprisingly, the best Invite contest category is what I lump together as “jokes”: I’m including wry observations about, say, how to “improve” air travel, (“Serve the meals already in barf bags” — John Kupiec) as well as a contests specifically asking for jokes that could be used as funny airport announcements. (“At this time, we’d like all passengers who paid full price for their ticket to stand up so you can be mocked” — Seth Brown). And of course, the classic form of standup-style one-liners. We even ran a contest for Rodney Dangerfield-style “no respect” jokes, with Rodney himself weighing in on the finalists. (The winner: “In bed, I don’t get no respect. My wife’s favorite position is back-to-back.” — Chuck Smith) And certainly, the (Someone’s) Mama results of Week 1110 — like the original Your Mamas from Week 932 — will be Instant Invite Classics of the one-liner genre. Like those from the first contest, many of them use the brash-talking, terse standup rhythm but incorporate a variety of topical, historical and literary references. And — in another hallmark of Invite humor — a number of them give the reader the extra joy that comes from a second or two of figuring-out. (Kevin Dopart’s Descartes’ Mama might be the prime example this week.) I decided not to link to explanatory articles for fear of being heavy-handed — if you don’t get the reference, just Google the name. The contest was inspired by Tom Scocca and Joe MacLeod’s funny “Pope’s Momma” jokes on Gawker; I’m grateful to Tom’s brother Dave for suggesting it. Some of the jokes, I admit, would also work perfectly fine as a Your Mama joke; they’d also be funny without the famous son or daughter. Ted Weitzman, known in ancient Loserdom under the pseudonym Paul Styrene (we now ban pseudonyms), could have just as easily directed his “anal-retentive” joke to anyone’s Ma as to Felix Unger’s. That didn’t factor into my judging at all; I just went for the funny. Also, some of the jokes, including two of the winners, weren’t phrased as insults to the Mama, as the classsic YM jokes are; I didn’t care. I’m going to be featuring Week 1114 entries over the next week as graphics on the Style Invitational Ink of the Day page on Facebook — they’re perfect for that format. I hope people share them! It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial — indeed, the first blot of ink “above the fold” — for Dave Silberstein of College Park, Md., who’s yet one more in the Invite’s long roster of astronomers and other spacey people. This is Dave’s 10th ink since he first landed on the Invite surface in Week 957. Former Loser of the Year Robert Schechter (official Loser anagram: Sober Retch Retch) grabs second place and Ink No. 149 with the best of several amusing Brian Williams’s Mama achievements. Mark Raffman’s earnest Hemingway spoof gets him yet another Loser Mug or Grossery Bag — and hey, he seems to have blotted up his 200th ink this week, all since Week 979; and Ben Aronin gets No. 61, and his 11th above the fold. I got an unsolicited e-mail last night from my former copy desk colleague Courtney Rukan, who unlike me is still a fully functioning editor at The Post; she’s now a bigwig on what’s now called the “multiplatform desk.” Courtney had just finished reading this week’s results, and she wrote to tell me that they were “side-splittingly funny. Every last one!” So I asked if she’d share which were her particular faves: ADVERTISING “The Yo-Yo Ma joke is genius and the two Truman jokes made me giggle,” Courtney responded. “Here are the others that made me laugh out loud, particularly the naan pun and Stevie Winwood playing in traffic (the visuals on the two of those are vivid as well). As for Muhammad Mama, that is the best possible way to end, and I laughed so hard that I choked on my apple. (However, I will not say whether I saw 72 virgins during my near-death experience.) [Colleague] Martha Murdock pointed out that Muhammad was orphaned at an early age, which adds another layer of delight to the satire.” I’m happy to report that Courtney is game to be the latest person to weigh in weekly with her faves, as Lynn Medford (“Haw!”) and David Malitz (“With Malitz Toward ...”) used to do. What would be a good name for her weekly opinion? Her last name rhymes with “two-can.” (A few not-for-your-mother unprintable entries at the bottom of this column.) Look on the funny side: Be an Optimist for Week 1114 Hardboiled ink-stained wretch that I am, I admit that I said “Ewwww” when I got my first e-mail newsletter titled The Optimist, The Washington Post’s entry into the field that also includes the Huffington Post’s Good News and the site Good News Network. But I also admit that I sometimes can’t bring myself to read one more article today on the horrors of or another war or attack or disease or misuse of “whom.” And clearly, I’m not alone: Post subscribers were eager to click on the various links in the weekly newsletter, Optimist editor Dave Beard told Ivoh.org. “It may help that it appeared after a summer of unrelenting news from places like Ferguson, Gaza, and Ukraine.” And even some members of the Style Invitational Devotees, mostly a pretty jaded bunch, talked of how “I love my little good news email!” and “I looked through the titles for today. They’re great stories. I suspended cynicism enough to go ‘awww’ several times.” As soon as I published this week’s contest this morning, Loser Matt Monitto noted that it’s very similar to Week 902, the one that got him his first blot of ink. And so it is; I’d forgotten about that contest from four years ago, though it had some classic results. That contest was to find a sentence in a Post story that week and spin it into something upbeat. The winner: Original: Maine’s governor told critics Friday to “kiss my butt” over his decision not to attend the state NAACP’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations. Spun: Maine’s governor found it in his heart to turn the other cheek . . . (Dixon Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.) And Matt’s debut (he now has 64 inks): O: School board in N.C. . . . abolishes integration policy S: School board in N.C. takes a step closer to America’s roots This time you have much more source material — basically everything. It can even be fictional (it specifies that the event could be in the future), though I’d predict that actual historical or current events would be funnier to spin. I’ve been surprised many times before, though. Should have kept mum: Unprintable Mama jokes from Week 1110 Oedipus’s mama so hot, she was the original MILF. (Chris Doyle) Captain Ahab’s mama’s so loose, she’s known as Moby Vagina. (G. Smith) And not dirty, just too cheap a shot, but hahaha: Oedipus’s mama so hot, she was the original MILF. (Chris Doyle) Edward Jenner’s mama spread so fast, smallpox had to invent a vaccine against her. (Ben Aronin) (I didn’t think I could get away with “spread.”) And not dirty, and really funny but too much of a cheap shot for the Invite: Bristol Palin’s mama is so stupid, she’s Sarah Palin. (Robert Schechter) The snow’s coming down harder and harder here at Mount Vermin near the Potomac, and this column already crashed once, causing me to lose my thank-you note to Pepco allowing me to finish it without incident. Don’t forget to sign up to attend the Loser brunch on March 22 — see NRARS.org, and click on “Our Social Engorgements.” ====================================================================== WEEK 1115, published March 15, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1115: They’re slaying our songs Add to list The Style Invitational Empress discusses the week’s contest and results By Pat MyersMarch 12, 2015 I do really hate to waste paper, but I’ve discovered over the years that for some Style Invitational contests, the most efficient way by far for me to judge is by eyeballing a printout. I did feel a bit guilty, however, when the compilation of song title puns for Week 1111 ran to 382 pages, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 entries. My first “shortlist,” compiled from the entries I checked off from the printout, ran to 184 entries. Then I chopped it in about half and bounced that second pass off my regular, ultra-agreeable sounding board, the deposed Czar, the founder of The Style Invitational, who is continuing to enjoy his lengthy vacation in Ekaterinberg, especially the 60 minutes a day he is permitted to see sunlight. From that list, the Czar chose his 28 favorites, virtually all of which are included among this week’s inking entries. I then chose about 30 others from that same list, ones I couldn’t live without (including one of the four top winners). The pain of chopping worthy stuff was made.easier for me this week because each entry takes up so little space on the page, and so, even with both Bob Staake’s cartoon and the prize photo, I had room for a whoppin’ 57 entries, which turned out to be by 44 entrants (including double credits), four of them First Offenders. But just as it was for me (and to a factor of 100), the list should still be an easy, fun read. It was fun (though not really necessary) to find YouTube links for all the songs whose titles were punned on. (I know that some of the links have stopped working, probably because they were overridden by some typesetting code. I’ll be fixing a few of them later today; e-mail me if you see another fail.) The results form a great playlist , ranging from Christmas carols to recent pop hits. I didn’t choose entries to ensure a wide variety of songs, though; I just went for the puns. (By “puns,” by the way, I’m referring broadly to wordplay in general, rather than to only the sound-focused variety; for example, Jeff Contompasis’s “Pu Pu and Away” wouldn’t count as a pun by some restrictive definitions, but no way was I going to leave that one out.) Of course, even with so many songs to choose from, I inevitably ended up with many similar entries. Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” brought many entries with “Pair o’ Dice” about retro auto decorations. And here are at least most of the variations I received on “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”; none of the following entries got ink, but a couple of them made my short­list. A gourmet delicatessen specializing in pâté: 50 Ways to Love Your Liver (Nancy Schwalb) Hannibal Lecter’s Favorite Recipe Collection: 50 Ways to Love Your Liver (Ellen Raphaeli) A liquor store: Fifty Ways to Loathe Your Liver (Jeff Shirley) A luxury toilet fixture store: 50 Ways To Love Your Lever (Rick Haynes) A free Internet porn service: Thrifty Ways to Love Your Lever (Jeff Shirley) A store that sells axes, hatchets and butcher knives: Fifty Ways to Cleave Your Lover (Roy Ashley) A toupee and hairpiece groomer: 50 Ways to Weave Your Cover (Diane Wah) A very discreet funeral home: 50 Ways to Grieve Your Lover (Warren Tanabe) A weight loss clinic: 50 Weighs to Bleed Your Blubber (Bruce Alter) And for the alternative headline: 25 Ways to Love Your Loser (Phil Frankenfeld) It’s the third win — and 151st blot of ink in all — by John O’Byrne of Dublin, Ireland, who’s been playing the Invite since Week 334, back in the Czar Administration. John is fascinated with America and especially U.S. politics, I’m often surprised to learn that some rather insider joke about the U.S. Congress was from John. I was thrilled to discover that the second-place pun — “My Oaken Tacky Home” — was by Mae Scanlan, who’s been in and out of the hospital and rehab facility for months with heart trouble and then a violent reaction to a pacemaker. But almost every week since Mae was taken ill in January, she’s dictated entries to her daughter Mary, who sends them along. Mary reports that Mae is finally due back home in a few days, and promises to let us know when she’ll be up for a visit; “the fatigue is extreme,” she says. But not enough to stop Mae from entering 18 song puns! And — yes, yes — full parodies (her specialty) for Week 1113. I’m sure Mae can’t wait to have a Mr. Fart Noise Machine of her very own. George-Ann Rosenberg got an honorable mention in Week 91 — that would be early 1995 — and then wasn’t seen again on the Invite page for 17 years, when she got ink with a horse name. But suddenly, in just the past couple of months, George-Ann has burst back into the Invite with all puns blazing, and has been blotting up the ink practically every week, often twice or more in a week — 15 inks in all. This is George-Ann’s first ink “above the fold,” but whether she chooses the Loser Mug or the Whole Fools Grossery Bag, I have a strong hunch she’ll qualify for the other one before long. And No Not That John Glenn continues to enhance his amazing ATF-to-ink ratio, with his ninth Losers’ Circle ink in just 39 in all. Laugh Out of Courtney*: Asked for her favorite entry, copy chief Courtney Rukan gushed: “So many great ones this week.” She said that “Gary Crockett’s ‘Losing’s My Religion’ made me giggle most,” but she also “singled” out “I Only Advise for You” (Frank Osen); Davey FitzPatrick’s” Geico Killer; Bill Lieberman’s “Consultants of Swing”; Todd DeLap’s “Ice, Rice, Baby”; Chris Doyle’s “We’ve Only Just Big Guns”; from Carmiya Weinraub, also a First Offender, “Peaceful, Easy Stealing” for the investment fraud school; Gary’s “Boulevard of Broken Teams” and Christopher Lamora’s “I Got Yew-Babes.” (*Larry Gray’s suggestion for the heading.) What Doug Dug: And from ace copy editor Doug Norwood, my longtime close colleague: “Four Runts in My Life” [Robert Schechter]! “Geico Killer”! “That’s What Fiends Are For” [Dave Prevar]! “The Impassable Stream” [Beverley Sharp]! “Your Arse So Beautiful”! [Beverley again] “Can’t pick one ...” That’s okay, Doug. Five’s even better. Song titles too risque for airplay, or even Invite play, appear at the bottom of this column. Don’t read them if you’re offended by risque or sick humor. Loser Dy“nasties”: Today’s winner, John O’Byrne, is the brother of 19-time Loser Brendan O’Byrne of Saskatchewan. But also: Among this week’s First Offenders — with two blots of ink — is David FitzPatrick, of Rochester, N.Y., who happens to be the 15-year-old son of 63-time Loser Melissa Balmain (who got just one blot this week). And that’s not all: Melissa’s brother, Barr Weiner of Washington, has half a dozen inks himself. Can you imagine the Balmain*FitzPatrick*Weiner Thanksgiving dinner repartee? Meanwhile, Barry Koch and Gregory Koch, who both got ink today, are not related. (Barry’s name is pronounced “Cook” and Gregory’s is “Kotch.”) And so it would be very, very wrong to call them the Koch Brothers, even in Loserdom. REALLY mess with our heads: The Week 1115 contest If you’re familiar with our many “Mess With Our Heads” contests, you’ll know what to do here: The point is to write a “bank head,” or subtitle, that reinterprets the actual meaning of the headline. The twist this time, as it was in Week 804 and Week 940, when we also did this contest (results of Week 940 here), is that you first create a “typo” in the actual headline and then write the bank head to go with that. (Here are also the results of two of the classic-version contests: (Week 1073; Week 987). In general, these jokes will work best when the reader understands what the original wording was, without being told. But as I did last time, I’ll include the original word in brackets if I think it’s necessary. You must tell me what the original word was; as much as I love you all, I don’t want to track down the headlines to look them up myself. It’s fine to give me a link to the headline that you found online, but please do me a favor: Because of the way I now compile the entries, the links turn into a garble of code; so please don’t embed the links directly into your entries; put them at the end, where I can check them on your actual e-mail. The wiggle room I’m offering in “You may omit a beginning or ending phrase” is not an invitation to use little nuggets of the headline; what you’re playing on should still be the major part of the head. It’s going to be a judgment call, so please include the entire headline that you’re working with. (You can’t go wrong if you play off the whole headline.) What we’re calling a headline: Any header that has a block of text under it, including bank heads and jump heads (the headline in the print paper over the second page); plus online headlines that serve as links to the actual stories. A photo caption is not a headline, but a little head over a stand-alone photo will count. Thanks again to Dave Prevar for the squid hat. Brian Whitaker is an instructor at my local gym (he actually just moved on to another branch), and you might gather that he is not an especially reserved man, although he is a sergeant in the Army Reserve. One year on Halloween, he led a class while dressed as Richard Simmons, complete with short-shorts and a fright wig. When I asked him, “Do you want to wear this silly hat and get yourr picture in The Washington Post?” Brian replied, “Where do I stand?” The burgeoning buffet: Join the March 22 Loser brunch Elden Carnahan reports that there will be a healthy and hopefully hungry crowd at the next Loser brunch, at Paradiso on Franconia Road, March 22 at noon. It’s being held late in the month to coincide with D.C.’s Cherry Blossom Festival and the visit by Losers Kathy El-Assal and Becky Fisher from Wisconsin. So far, 20 people have RSVP’d to Elden, but the restaurant can accommodate more of us at adjacent tables. We have to give the management a number , though, so be sure to contact Elden; for details click on “Our Social Engorgements” at NRARS.org. Maybe Jeff Contompasis’s fan will stop by again. If you need a ride, let Elden know or post it on the Style Invitational Devotees page, and hopefully someone can give you a lift. The bestest policy The Invite works on the honor system; it’s the only way I can make the contest work — it’s not part of the game to see if you can put one over on the Empress. And so I was so happy on Tuesday night to get an e-mail from Loser Jon Gearhart, telling me he’d just noticed that the e-mail with his Week 1111 entries (the song puns) had more than the maximum of 25 entries; he’d sent me the untrimmed version accidentally. I hadn’t noticed the overlong list when I combined everyone’s entries and then removed the writers’ names, and by that time I’d already chosen the winners (including one by Jon). And I realized that I might have chosen one from the beyond-the-limit part of this list. So I asked him to send me the list of the 25 entries he’d intended to send. To my relief, “Omward Bound” was on it. An honorable mention indeed. Na na na na: Unprintable entries from Week 1111 A male escort agency called Penis From Heaven (Richard Silberg; Stephen Gold) Male escort service: Great Balls for Hire (Rick Haynes) Equine stud service: Great Balls of Sire (Steve Shapiro) A clinic that improves men’s stamina: A Day in the Wife (Tom Witte) A clinic that treats premature ejaculation: For Once in My Wife (more Witte) A swingers’ club: Got to Get You Into My Wife (Gary Crockett) A tattoo parlor that specializes in intimate areas: Paint Tit Black (even more Witte) A hospital wing for epileptic boys: House of the Writhing Son (Steve Langer) A store that sells naughty blow up toys to rural customers: The Farmer in the Doll (Roy Ashley) Congressional lobbying firm: Another Prick in the Hall (Drew Bennett) A Thalidomide victims support group: Mary Had a Little Limb (Jeff Contompasis) And a special prize for just the grossest title of the week: Thyroid doctor: Why Your Goiter Gently Seeps (Rob Huffman) ====================================================================== WEEK 1116, published March 22, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1117: A song for every occasion — and for none Add to list The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s parodies Nan Reiner shows a Florida “souvenir snowman” globe — featuring a melted snowman — at last weekend’s Loser brunch. With Bruce and Marsha Alter and Marty McCullen; in back, Rob Huffman. (Photo courtesy of Nan Reiner) By Pat MyersMarch 26, 2015 As usual, I was marveling at many of the hundreds of song parodies submitted for Week 1113, of The Style Invitational, which asked for “a song celebrating someone’s birthday or other personal occasion (rather than, say, a holiday).” In fact, I was so deeply into Marvel Mode that at first I didn’t notice that a number of the parodies didn’t meet that requirement even by a yogic stretch. Some were about recent news items; others summed up a dead person’s life story. And, yup, others celebrated a particular holiday. But, as the contents of her closets, cabinets and dressers here at Mount Vermin can testify, the Empress hates to throw away perfectly fine, usable things. Especially when they can work as a perfectly fine, usable contest. So while not all of those non-occasion parodies will be eligible for Week 1117, at least some will. I still have the marked-up, blindly judged printout from Week 1113, so I can just look back at where I wrote “NO OCCASION” in the margin, and reconsider them as “a topic or person lately in the news.” You won’t have to send those parodies again. The encore contest will, for example, be good news for the parody about an anti-vaxxer whose kid ends up sick, though still not for the “Stairway to Heaven” parody about a woman ashamed of “buying from 7-Eleven”). I also received a number of well-written parodies — they were in sets, from what I’m sure were two different submitters — that were obviously written for the birthdays, retirements, weddings, etc., of actual people they knew. It’s not that I forbid such songs to be used as Invitational entries — I used the “Bare Necessities” parody that Jeff Contompasis and his brother Stephen wrote to celebrate Stephen’s 50th birthday (and now can soon be used for Jeff’s). But these others were full of specific references about people we don’t know, and were also very laudatory — great big musical hugs, much like the parody paeans that the Losers write to laud the Loser of the Year at each year’s Flushies awards. I’m sure they were deservedly huge hits at the events they were performed at, but for an outside reader, it’s kind of like showing up at someone else’s party. I had a bit of trouble figuring out which parodies to use on this week’s print page, in addition to the top four “above-the fold” songs: For one thing, they had to add up to fit exactly in a certain space; for another, I wanted songs that readers were likely to know the melodies to. After trying out various combinations, I ended up using JeffCon’s “Downsized,” Chris Doyle’s “Amazing Grades,” Mark Raffman’s “Hey Dude,” George-Ann Rosenberg’s “You Can’t Come Home, Ed Snowden,” Matt Monitto’s “Feeding Vladi­mir Down by the Gulag” (sorry, Matt, for deleting the first verse), and Chris’s “And Last” about the Invite. I got very few parodies set to tunes written after 1980. Cannibal soup is m-m-good: The Empress models the squid-hat prize while finding a kindred spirit at last Sunday’s Loser brunch. (Photo by Nan Reiner) Obviously, Nan’s “Bloody Menses” wasn’t going to be greeting people’s Sunday morning coffee; it’s only online. (By the way, Bob Staake’s cartoon is depicting psychiatrist Ethel Merman, not psychiatrist Nan Reiner.) All four of the “above the fold” parodists today — actually, all who got ink — are Invite veterans. This is Nan’s 11th Inkin’ Memorial, a phenomenal number when you consider that she didn’t get her first ink until less than five years ago. Jon Gearhart is either a rookie or close to it; he’s most famous in Loser circles for his amazing facility for the anagrams with which he welcomes each new member of the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, but obviously he’s far more versatile than that. It’s just the eighth blot of ink for Ivars Kuskevics, but it’s his second trip to the Losers’ circle and he’s becoming more and more frequent a visitor to inkdom; I can now spell his name. And Frank Osen continues to bring it. What Doug dug: Features copy editor (or now, officially, “multiplatform editor”) Doug Norwood also chose Nan’s winner as his favorite, and shared her video clip; he also especially liked Mark Raffman’s “Hey Dude.” Laughed out of Courtney: From copy chief Courtney Rukan: “The Brian Williams one (by made me laugh out loud, as did the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial. This is a particularly clever line: ‘You’ve got trauma that could constipate Freud.’” She noted that the “Downtown” parody about an “involuntary employment transition” was “hilarious but hits too close to home, so it made me laugh and sent shivers down my spine!” And she loved Matt Monitto’s line “We’ll be feeding Vladimir down in the gulag.” Everything’s coming up ‘Everything’s Coming Up Moses’! Madame Rose’s psychotically upbeat show-stopper in “Gypsy” — she sings it desperately to her bewildered daughter as their lives have fallen apart around them — proves to be valuable parody fodder. Not only was it the source of Nan’s Inkin’ Memorial winner today (the link above the parody is to Nan herself singing it;) but also to two Passover-themed parodies by masterly Loserbards. This week there was Beverley Sharp’s excellent “Everything’s Coming Up Moses” — the same title as Barbara Sarshik’s parody from 2001. Here they both are: My daughter and I have been drafted to lead both my family’s seder and my synagogue’s community seder on April 3 and 4, and we very well might have room for both of these after dinner. First, Beverley’s: Who’s the mensch? Who’s the guy Who could part the Red Sea and stay dry? Who’s the prince? Who’s da man? Funny, everything’s coming up Moses! Burning bush — such a fuss! (Why does God speak to him, not to us?) Golden calves, bite the dust! Funny, everything’s coming up Moses... No more leaven — Now our bread will be flat; Laws from heaven — (Couldn’t we scrap six or seven?) Forty years — what a trek! (Sure, the manna got stale--what the heck!) Jordan’s here — time to cross; But (oh dear!) — where’s the boss? Now Joshua will have to see us through; Finally everything’s coming up rainbows and Promised Land, Everything’s coming up Joshua and Jericho; Everything’s coming up dreidels and Hanukkah; Everything’s coming up, Moses, for us — thanks to you! And Barbara’s, from her excellent collection of “Seder Songs” that I once again encourage everyone to download and savor — Barbara welcomes anyone to use them for free: Bang a drum! Spread the news! Things are looking real good for the Jews! We’ve escaped! We’re alive! And now everything’s coming up Moses! We were slaves. Now we’re free. ’Cause we made it across the Red Sea. No more whips! No more bricks! And now everything’s coming up Moses! We’ll eat matzo. We’ll drink wine till we burst! Pure de-lir-ium, Led by the singing of Mir-iam. Play a harp! Ring a bell! ’Cause we’re traveling to Yis-ra-el! Pack your bags! Grab a map! ’Cause now everything’s coming up Moses! Frogs, lice, locusts, Slaying of the firstborn. Say a prayer, “Oh, Thanks, God, for vanquishing Pharaoh!” Not by luck or the sword. No, we all owe our lives to the Lord. Say a prayer! Sing a song! Make it loud! Make it long! A-do-noy yeem-loch l’o-lam va-ed! ’Cause now everything’s coming up Moses Just like God has said! Squids! What’s the matter with squids today? Nothing, for sure, at Paradiso restaurant in Alexandria, Va., this past Sunday as close to three dozen Losers and their auxiliaries gathered for the monthly Loser brunch. Because we had several people joining us for the first time, I felt obliged to wear an identifying garment. And since my usual tiara was in the wash, I wore my beach tiara instead. The squid hat, you might remember, will be the second prize for Week 1115, the headline “typo” contest. And several Losers showed up with a bagful of future prizes, including the “Souvenir Snowman” globe that Nan is holding in the photo above: When you shake it, you get not “snow,” but some grayish threads of yuck. And also ceramic grass and, floating around, a little ceramic hat, scarf, buttons and carrot. It’s a Florida souvenir snowman, see. Nan found it in a thrift shop in Key Largo; it was so weird that the guy gave it to her. Thanks again to everyone who came out. It was fun to meet Wisconsinite Kathy El-Assal and her friends; as well as six-time Inkin’ Memorial winner Rob Huffman with his whole family in tow. (Kids clearly thinking: At least my mother doesn’t go out in public with a pink velveteen squid on her head.) The next Loser Brunch will be at Grevey’s, just off the Beltway in Falls Church, Va., at noon on Sunday, April 19. See “Our Social Engorgements” at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, to sign up. ====================================================================== WEEK 1117, published March 29, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1117: A song for every occasion — and for none Add to list The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s parodies Nan Reiner shows a Florida “souvenir snowman” globe — featuring a melted snowman — at last weekend’s Loser brunch. With Bruce and Marsha Alter and Marty McCullen; in back, Rob Huffman. (Photo courtesy of Nan Reiner) By Pat MyersMarch 26, 2015 As usual, I was marveling at many of the hundreds of song parodies submitted for Week 1113, of The Style Invitational, which asked for “a song celebrating someone’s birthday or other personal occasion (rather than, say, a holiday).” In fact, I was so deeply into Marvel Mode that at first I didn’t notice that a number of the parodies didn’t meet that requirement even by a yogic stretch. Some were about recent news items; others summed up a dead person’s life story. And, yup, others celebrated a particular holiday. But, as the contents of her closets, cabinets and dressers here at Mount Vermin can testify, the Empress hates to throw away perfectly fine, usable things. Especially when they can work as a perfectly fine, usable contest. So while not all of those non-occasion parodies will be eligible for Week 1117, at least some will. I still have the marked-up, blindly judged printout from Week 1113, so I can just look back at where I wrote “NO OCCASION” in the margin, and reconsider them as “a topic or person lately in the news.” You won’t have to send those parodies again. The encore contest will, for example, be good news for the parody about an anti-vaxxer whose kid ends up sick, though still not for the “Stairway to Heaven” parody about a woman ashamed of “buying from 7-Eleven”). I also received a number of well-written parodies — they were in sets, from what I’m sure were two different submitters — that were obviously written for the birthdays, retirements, weddings, etc., of actual people they knew. It’s not that I forbid such songs to be used as Invitational entries — I used the “Bare Necessities” parody that Jeff Contompasis and his brother Stephen wrote to celebrate Stephen’s 50th birthday (and now can soon be used for Jeff’s). But these others were full of specific references about people we don’t know, and were also very laudatory — great big musical hugs, much like the parody paeans that the Losers write to laud the Loser of the Year at each year’s Flushies awards. I’m sure they were deservedly huge hits at the events they were performed at, but for an outside reader, it’s kind of like showing up at someone else’s party. I had a bit of trouble figuring out which parodies to use on this week’s print page, in addition to the top four “above-the fold” songs: For one thing, they had to add up to fit exactly in a certain space; for another, I wanted songs that readers were likely to know the melodies to. After trying out various combinations, I ended up using JeffCon’s “Downsized,” Chris Doyle’s “Amazing Grades,” Mark Raffman’s “Hey Dude,” George-Ann Rosenberg’s “You Can’t Come Home, Ed Snowden,” Matt Monitto’s “Feeding Vladi­mir Down by the Gulag” (sorry, Matt, for deleting the first verse), and Chris’s “And Last” about the Invite. I got very few parodies set to tunes written after 1980. Cannibal soup is m-m-good: The Empress models the squid-hat prize while finding a kindred spirit at last Sunday’s Loser brunch. (Photo by Nan Reiner) Obviously, Nan’s “Bloody Menses” wasn’t going to be greeting people’s Sunday morning coffee; it’s only online. (By the way, Bob Staake’s cartoon is depicting psychiatrist Ethel Merman, not psychiatrist Nan Reiner.) All four of the “above the fold” parodists today — actually, all who got ink — are Invite veterans. This is Nan’s 11th Inkin’ Memorial, a phenomenal number when you consider that she didn’t get her first ink until less than five years ago. Jon Gearhart is either a rookie or close to it; he’s most famous in Loser circles for his amazing facility for the anagrams with which he welcomes each new member of the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, but obviously he’s far more versatile than that. It’s just the eighth blot of ink for Ivars Kuskevics, but it’s his second trip to the Losers’ circle and he’s becoming more and more frequent a visitor to inkdom; I can now spell his name. And Frank Osen continues to bring it. What Doug dug: Features copy editor (or now, officially, “multiplatform editor”) Doug Norwood also chose Nan’s winner as his favorite, and shared her video clip; he also especially liked Mark Raffman’s “Hey Dude.” Laughed out of Courtney: From copy chief Courtney Rukan: “The Brian Williams one (by made me laugh out loud, as did the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial. This is a particularly clever line: ‘You’ve got trauma that could constipate Freud.’” She noted that the “Downtown” parody about an “involuntary employment transition” was “hilarious but hits too close to home, so it made me laugh and sent shivers down my spine!” And she loved Matt Monitto’s line “We’ll be feeding Vladimir down in the gulag.” Everything’s coming up ‘Everything’s Coming Up Moses’! Madame Rose’s psychotically upbeat show-stopper in “Gypsy” — she sings it desperately to her bewildered daughter as their lives have fallen apart around them — proves to be valuable parody fodder. Not only was it the source of Nan’s Inkin’ Memorial winner today (the link above the parody is to Nan herself singing it;) but also to two Passover-themed parodies by masterly Loserbards. This week there was Beverley Sharp’s excellent “Everything’s Coming Up Moses” — the same title as Barbara Sarshik’s parody from 2001. Here they both are: My daughter and I have been drafted to lead both my family’s seder and my synagogue’s community seder on April 3 and 4, and we very well might have room for both of these after dinner. First, Beverley’s: Who’s the mensch? Who’s the guy Who could part the Red Sea and stay dry? Who’s the prince? Who’s da man? Funny, everything’s coming up Moses! Burning bush — such a fuss! (Why does God speak to him, not to us?) Golden calves, bite the dust! Funny, everything’s coming up Moses... No more leaven — Now our bread will be flat; Laws from heaven — (Couldn’t we scrap six or seven?) Forty years — what a trek! (Sure, the manna got stale--what the heck!) Jordan’s here — time to cross; But (oh dear!) — where’s the boss? Now Joshua will have to see us through; Finally everything’s coming up rainbows and Promised Land, Everything’s coming up Joshua and Jericho; Everything’s coming up dreidels and Hanukkah; Everything’s coming up, Moses, for us — thanks to you! And Barbara’s, from her excellent collection of “Seder Songs” that I once again encourage everyone to download and savor — Barbara welcomes anyone to use them for free: Bang a drum! Spread the news! Things are looking real good for the Jews! We’ve escaped! We’re alive! And now everything’s coming up Moses! We were slaves. Now we’re free. ’Cause we made it across the Red Sea. No more whips! No more bricks! And now everything’s coming up Moses! We’ll eat matzo. We’ll drink wine till we burst! Pure de-lir-ium, Led by the singing of Mir-iam. Play a harp! Ring a bell! ’Cause we’re traveling to Yis-ra-el! Pack your bags! Grab a map! ’Cause now everything’s coming up Moses! Frogs, lice, locusts, Slaying of the firstborn. Say a prayer, “Oh, Thanks, God, for vanquishing Pharaoh!” Not by luck or the sword. No, we all owe our lives to the Lord. Say a prayer! Sing a song! Make it loud! Make it long! A-do-noy yeem-loch l’o-lam va-ed! ’Cause now everything’s coming up Moses Just like God has said! Squids! What’s the matter with squids today? Nothing, for sure, at Paradiso restaurant in Alexandria, Va., this past Sunday as close to three dozen Losers and their auxiliaries gathered for the monthly Loser brunch. Because we had several people joining us for the first time, I felt obliged to wear an identifying garment. And since my usual tiara was in the wash, I wore my beach tiara instead. The squid hat, you might remember, will be the second prize for Week 1115, the headline “typo” contest. And several Losers showed up with a bagful of future prizes, including the “Souvenir Snowman” globe that Nan is holding in the photo above: When you shake it, you get not “snow,” but some grayish threads of yuck. And also ceramic grass and, floating around, a little ceramic hat, scarf, buttons and carrot. It’s a Florida souvenir snowman, see. Nan found it in a thrift shop in Key Largo; it was so weird that the guy gave it to her. Thanks again to everyone who came out. It was fun to meet Wisconsinite Kathy El-Assal and her friends; as well as six-time Inkin’ Memorial winner Rob Huffman with his whole family in tow. (Kids clearly thinking: At least my mother doesn’t go out in public with a pink velveteen squid on her head.) The next Loser Brunch will be at Grevey’s, just off the Beltway in Falls Church, Va., at noon on Sunday, April 19. See “Our Social Engorgements” at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, to sign up. ====================================================================== WEEK 1118, published April 5, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1118: In which we once again cry foal play Add to list The Style Invitational Empress ruminates on the week’s new contest and results Call them the Monu-Mentals: With Opening Day upon us, Loser and passionate baseball fan Nan Reiner has set up her nine Inkin' Memorials (the latest of them won last week) as a tribute to Bud and Lou. (By Nan Reiner) By Pat MyersApril 2, 2015 Are we beating a dead horse with this 21st running of The Style Invitational’s horse names contest (plus its many spinoff contests)? Not yet, I’d wager. At least if last year’s entries were any indication, Week 1118 is likely to continue to be the Invite’s most popular contest of the year for entrants (with the possible exception of the freakishly popular recent contest with song title puns). It’s also one of our most democratic contests — and by that I mean that your typical astonshingly brilliant Loser who tends to blot up vats of ink in a single week isn’t as likely to do so in this contest, now that everyone is limited to 25 entries apiece: And that’s because, over the years, the sophistication of the wordplay has risen over the entire entry pool. An entry such as “Take a Bow x Smithfield = Ham Actor” (Week 163) or “Keep It Strait x Take a Gamble = Inside Strait” (Week 216) wouldn’t get ink today, for example. In fact, I don’t think the winner of Week 163 — “Call for Change x Tiz the Whiz = Pay Toilet” — would even make my first cut today, and we’re talking of a first cut of perhaps 250 entries. Not that toilet humor is passe, of course; last year we had “Streaming x Financial Mogul = Wizzer of Wall St.,” from Laura Bennett Peterson, a lawyer who’s so passionate about horse racing that a few years ago she actually invested a chunk of money to be part owner of a real Thoroughbred, Thunder Quay, and followed his every move (including four wins) during his 11-race career, attending his races like a dutiful soccer parent. Inking entries these days tend to be (with numerous exceptions) of two types: (a) the name is a funny pun (“Effinex x Coastline = That Beach,” from Beth Morgan last year); or (b) the final name results from an alteration of Horse 1’s name by Horse 2. Some entries combine both types. Type B really cleaned up last year, with really all four of the “above the fold” entries in that category: Toast of New York x General A Rod = Toast in New York (Jim Stiles) Best Plan Yet x Cut the Net = Best Pla_ Y__ (Pie Snelson) I Earned It Baby x Undertaker = I Urned It Baby (Pam Sweeney; Gary Crockett) Russian Humor x Constitution = What Constitution? (Roy Ashley) I probably should have mixed up the humor more in choosing the top four, in retrospect. I had toyed with the idea of using a new format this year — one idea was to present a Group A of 10 or 15 horses, and you could breed a horse only to one of these. But I feared that I’d end up with too many clever names that I’d have to disqualify because too many people (i.e., three or four) had the same idea. I do, however, enjoy showing several different clever plays made with a single horse.name; occasionally I’ve run a little sidebar list. As usual, I started choosing my list of 100 names with 20 to 30 horses considered most promising to run in the Kentucky Derby, the first of the Triple Crown races, which always is held the first Saturday in May, the weekend these results will run — I love rooting for “our horses” in the Derby field (not to mention the winner’s circle). This accounts for a few of the less promising-sounding names on this week’s list, like El Kabeir and Mubtaahij (sure, take it as a challenge). After that picked names that seemed they’d be good for wordplay and jokes, and not too duplicative of one another. I’m a little apprehensive about names that are already puns, such as Mighty Mousse and Zip N Bayou, but we’ll see what we get. It’s a good thing we’re not literally breeding these horses; this year’s field of 3-year-olds comprises 97 males and three fillies: Take Charge Brandi, Condo Commando and Puca. And several of the males are geldings. (Some are also classified as ridglings, which are horses with one or both testicles that never descended from the abdomen.) The list I used also notes the sire and dam of each nominated horse, and I was disappointed in how few of this year’s names actually reflected both parents’ names — the original premise for this contest back when 101-time Loser and serious horseplayer Mike Hammer suggested it in 1996. Carpe Diem is the offspring of Giant’s Causeway and Rebridled Dreams, and Easy to Say comes from Eskendereya (ha!) and Wild Snitch. A number of them do reference the sire, though not very interestingly; Battle of Marathon was sired by War Front. And the few two-parent blends tend to be throughly lame-o: Papa Clem x Bold Robert = Bold Papa; Bellamy Road x Kiss the Diva = Kiss the Road. Let’s inspire the future generations! I tried to head off a few judging problems at the pass by including some requests at the top of the list online (if you’re going to use the list in the print paper instead — same horses, of course — please check the out these guidelines). And I’d like to add one more: In the new e-mail system The Post is using, when I combine all the e-mails en masse into one long list, the first line of text of each e-mail tends to run into the header information — which I delete before judging, so I don’t know who you are and I can’t be accused of caring who you are. (As if.) Anyway, it would be very cool if you’d start off your e-mail with some line that ISN’T your first entry. It can be your name, it can be “hello,” whatever — just something I don’t need to save. I have been taking care not to delete anyone’s first entry, so you don’t have to worry that I’ll lose your best joke, but this would let me do the erasing a little faster. (I’m not deleting this material forever; this is just the copy I use for judging. I do keep the original master list, and do read all your love notes, veiled threats, etc.— just not while I’m looking at your entries.) GOOD NEWS: A FEW OF YOU DIDN’T TOTALLY WASTE YOUR TIME ENTERING WEEK 1114 There was plenty of faux-upbeat snark among the entries in Week 1114, our homage to The Post’s popular (500,000-circulation) e-mail newsletter The Optimist, which offers a series of links to feel-good, inspirational fare among that week’s Post articles. Some of the jokes were just Too Soon, in terms of taste — and sometimes, 2,000 years is too soon. (See the bottom of this column for unprintable entries ONLY if you aren’t going to be bothered by very, very bad taste — or at least if you’re not going to complain about it.) A nice variety of approaches in today’s above-the-fold winners. It’s the 21st blot of ink and the second runner-up prize for fourth-place Kathleen DeBold, who got her first ink back in 2007 but all the rest of it only recently. Pie Snelson (Pie is a nickname, as in “cutie”) is known to all Loser event-goers as the person who keeps track of who went to what brunch; who made up the “I’m a Loser” and “I’m With a Loser” name tags; and who gives out a boxful of door prizes at the Flushies and the Post-Holiday Party. But along the way, she’s also managed to blot up 66 inks, with six above the fold including this week’s history lesson. Robert Schechter’s awww-story about the hamster is especially zingy in light of the fact that Robert is a regular contributor of children’s poems to Highlights magazine, in addition to being a 151-time Loser. And Mark Raffman grabs his eighth Inkin’ Memorial — as another big Nationals fan, Mark could soon set up his trophies as Nan Reiner has in the photo at the top of the column. Laugh Out of Courtney: Speaking of the Raffster: Post copy chief Courtney Rukan agreed with my choice of Mark’s milk carton joke: “The winner is so dark and twisted that it’s actually light and funny. I don’t know how Mr. Raffman accomplished that, but it’s a thing of beauty.” Courtney’s other faves this week: Jeff Shirley’s entry about the letter to Iran (the best of several funny entries on that topic); George-Ann Rosenberg’s “American Inventiveness”; Jon Gearhart’s falling tree (inspired by a recent tragedy on the Appalachian Trail); Warren Tanabe’s Mariupol; Kevin Dopart’s dig at the Secret Service (also my choice from many close competitors); newbie James W. Hertsch’s Ford’s Theatre joke (also well used). Courtney adds that Mike Gips’s item about the Berlin Wall “made me snicker; its understatement is rather elegant.” Artistes, all of you. Loser Brunch, April 19. Grevey’s. I’ll be there. The Royal Consort and I hope to chow down along with you at the next Loser Brunch, at Grevey’s sports pub right outside the Beltway at the Gallows Road exit. It’s at noon. Not a buffet, but the servers have been perfectly accommodating about separate checks. Contact Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”), I will not be wearing a squid hat this time, since I’ll have sent it out to the second-place winner of Week 1115 (headlines with “typos”), which I’m just starting to judge. Appalliana: Unprintable headlines from Week 1114 Too awful even for me, let alone The Post’s taste police: In PR Move, ISIS Switches From Beheadings to Lethal Injections (Chris Doyle) ISIS Beheadings Spark Renewed Interest in Brain Transplantation (also Chris Doyle, who doesn’t usually get into the Unprintable listings) Nov. 22, 1963: Area Crowds See Great Man’s Brain Up Close (Benjamin Yeager) And, just in time for Holy Week: . Jesus Revolutionizes Yoga With ‘Pinioned Eagle’ Pose (Rob Huffman) On that note, a Happy Easter and Chag Pesach Sameyach to you all. ====================================================================== WEEK 1119, published April 12, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1119: Our updated color scheme Add to list By Pat MyersApril 9, 2015 Some of our readers who are on Facebook see the Style Invitational Ink of the Day, a page on which I post a little graphic containing some entry from the past 1,118 sets of Invite results, with the hope that someone out there will share it and thereby spread the word about the ’Vite in general. The Ink of the Day is now in its third year, so I’ve put up more than 700 of these things, but still you’d think it shouldn’t take me more than a minute or two to dig up some classic entry from all the links on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List. But it turns out that a lot of Invite humor doesn’t really work in this form. Sometimes a contest is just too hard to explain; sometimes it’s a bit too highbrow; sometimes the humor in the contest comes from how well the writer met the challenge of the contest, rather than the intrinsic funniness of the entry (I’ve discovered this is true for cartoon captions; as clever as they are in context, they don’t tend to make very funny stand-alone cartoons). But perhaps the main reason old entries aren’t good for tomorrow’s Ink of the Day is that they’re dated. But of course humor doesn’t need to be timeless to be terrific. The Invitational has always been full of zingy topical humor, like so many of the entries I rediscovered as I read the results of Week 39. These entries are still enjoyable now, if you know the references, but their freshness must have made them that much more fun at the time: Fourth Runner-Up: Kevorkian: Description: A bright, light white. (Linda K. Malcolm, Silver Spring) Second Runner-Up: Rainbow — Description: Black. (Douglas Olson, Beltsville; also, Henry Lynton, Arlington, and Richard J. Swanson, Mount Airy) First Runner-Up: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Buttafuoco — Description: The color and oily texture of rancid margarine. (Kelly A. Lindner, Washington) Packwood — Just a touch of flesh. (Stu Segal, Vienna) Cincinnati Red — Multicolored, with a white flaky head. (Steven King, Alexandria) Ed Rollins — Toast. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Where’s William Kennedy Smith? — Cinnabar, usually. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Petit-Bone — Very pale. Soon to be discontinued. (Tom Lehker, Silver Spring; also, Steve Shearer, Alexandria) Twenty-one years later, surely there are so many more colorful characters ripe for an eponymous hue, so I’m confident that we’ll have lots of good entries for Week 1119. Rip ’em from the headlines. (Though less topical humor is welcome as well.) Meanwhile, some people just Never. Go. Away.: Rust Limbaugh -- A big fat crayon with no point, but very colorful. (Lowell Feld, Arlington) Err heads*: The results of Week 1115 *Jeff Shirley’s idea. I’m in a bit of a glass house this week — one of my sample horse names in last week’s contest was longer than the maximum 18 characters — but I’m still going to lament over how many entrants to Week 1115 ignored these very specific instructions: “Change a headline in an article or ad in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com from March 12 through March 23, by adding or subtracting one letter; substituting a letter; switching two letters; or changing spacing or punctuation.” This is not going to allow a change from “Some Nats extra careful about protecting bodies” to “Some bodies extra careful about protecting ’nads.” Or “abstract art” to “abs-tracked art.” Or “campaign” to “camping.” Enterprising though they were. As this week’s inking entries — and many others — prove, 10 days’ worth of Washington Post headlines offered plenty of funny “typos” to be found within the rules. I’m glad I said that people could use “upstyle” headlines when the joke involved a capitalized word, such as Brian Collins’s “Go Palestinian State.” (I didn’t make all the headlines consistently upstyle because they’re a bit harder to read in the narrow columns of the print paper.) The previous time we did this contest, Week 940, I didn’t think to (or didn’t know how to) use the strikeout function to show the original word when displaying the results; instead, I put the word at the end of the entry, in brackets. I think the strikeout method is better because it requires less work for the reader to go back and place the original words back in the headline. Or do you think the first way was better because it was less heavy-handed? Also, in most of the Week 940 results, I didn’t say the original at all; I counted on the reader to figure it out — which often makes a joke more fun. For when we (inevitably) do this contest again, which way should we do it? Any way you strike it, lots of fun stuff among the 35 inking entries from 25 Losers. Three of the four “above-the-fold” names — eight-time winner Gary Crockett and runners-up Frank Osen and Chris Doyle — have almost 2,100 blots of ink among them, and each had at least three inks today. But the coveted squid hat goes to Brian Collins, whose “Palestinian State” gets him only his second blot of ink ever — and his first was in Week 668, nine years ago. What Doug dug: Ace copy editor Doug Norwood, one of the few people who get paid to read The Style Invitational, “loved Palestinian State and the winner. too. [Elden Carnahan’s] ‘One-way crush’ and the subhead were nice. [Chris Doyle’s] ‘pot-seeded Terps’ and [Gary Crockett’s] ‘Student Acid Bill of Rights’ made me want to go back to school.” Unprintable entries at the bottom of this column. Loser Brunch, April 19. Grevey’s. I’ll be there. [Mostly reprinted from last week’s Conversational] The Royal Consort and I hope to chow down along with you at the next Loser Brunch, at Grevey’s sports pub right outside the Beltway at the Gallows Road exit. It’s at noon. Not a buffet, but the servers have been perfectly accommodating about separate checks. Contact Elden Carnahan at bit.ly*invitebrunch so he can get a head count. While I’ll be sending the squid hat to Brian, I still have a future-prize orca hat (courtesy of Cheryl Davis) that I can wear with my Sunday best. Headed for trouble: Unprintable entries from Week 1115 Sexual or scatological references about a particular real person usually lead to Convo-exile. I also wasn’t going to make the Japanese jokes. Japanese historians contest textbook’s description contest: textbook’s description of ‘comfort women’ Tokyoho and Nipponmybooty are favorite entries to replace outdated term (George-Ann Rosenberg) Rebels’ Defiance Could Tip Yemen Semen Into Civil War Boiling fluid more effective than oil for defense of fortified positions (Elden Carnahan) Netanyahu warns supporters he may lose election erection Will seek new handlers to increase odds of retaining his post (Jon Gearhart, as well as the same “typo” but a less racy bank head by Jim Kosinski in his first entry ever) Dulles passenger subdued after rushing cockspit Penalty for early withdrawal charged to compensate flight attendant (Jon Gearhart) Dan Balz, Washington Post chief correspondent, wins Toner Boner Prize Lives up to more than his name, says John Holmes Society president (Rick Haynes) Plane forced to land after blowing tire rite Crew breaks up passenger’s initiation into mile-high oral club (Chris Doyle) Struggling to save young sea lions loins Shore leave poses challenge for Navy as sailors continue contracting ‘crotch rot’ (Jeff Contompasis — would have been usable had it said “jock itch,” probably, but Jeff specified “’Verse Only” and so I didn’t consider it) Victorious Netanyahu faces feces host of troubles Post-election excitement creates slip hazards at celebration (Dave Prevar) And the Scarlet Letter goes to: A search for safe-deposit boxes safe deposit-boxes Men encouraged to check out brothels first (Elden Carnahan) ====================================================================== WEEK 1120, published April 19, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1120: We’re not pulling your chain — get ready to Flush Add to list The Flushies, the Losers’ award lunch & infestival: May 30 in Northern Va. The Empress and family pal around with Week 1120 second prize Barack Obama at their Passover seder. The handsome yet rather shallow president will make an encore appearance at the Flushies before being sent off to his new home. (By Scott Malcolm ) By Pat MyersApril 16, 2015 A number of people have asked me this past week about the plans for this year’s Flushies, which makes me realize that I buried the news too far down the page in previous columns. Not all the details have been hammered out, twisted out of shape, etc., but within the next couple of weeks, if you’re on the Style Invitational e-mail list, you’ll be getting an invitation to the 20th annual shebang, which this year — in a Flushies first — will be held a safe distance from public facilities: It will be at the home of 2014 Loser of the Year Danielle Nowlin and her understanding husband and tykes, on Saturday afternoon, May 30, in the D.C. suburb of Fairfax Station, Va. In recent years we’ve usually gathered in a meeting room of a suburban hotel, shoveling out close to $40 per person for suburban-hotel food and ambience, as we gathered to “honor” the Loser of the Year and other beleaguered souls. But this time, Danielle has offered her spacious, musically equipped house “as long as I don’t have to cook.” And if we do it as a potluck, with each of us showing up with a modest amount of food or drink, this year’s entrance fee will be close to (or at) zero. And you even have a good chance to be stuck with one or another of the door prizes. Flushies Pooh-Bahs Elden Carnahan, Dave Prevar and Pie Snelson are still figuring out what they need to buy or rent, but once things are pretty much set, I’ll send the invitation with RSVP directions. Given that it’s the 20th Flushies — named for the talking toilets (something like this) that used to be given out as awards — I’m hoping that we’ll reconnect with some Invite old-timers as well as meet the newer names. We already know that some far-flung Losers are coming in for the event: Frank Osen from California and Beverley Sharp from Alabama. And I’ve heard from two other faraways as well who are going to try to make it. Songs for the occasion are already being composed — and even though both Nowlins are professional musicians, they’re still going to let us sing them. Meanwhile, THIS VERY SUNDAY ... is a Loser brunch at noon at the sports pub Grevey’s, just outside the Beltway at the Route 50 exit near Falls Church, Va. Both the Royal Consort and I will be there. Not too many people have signed up so far, so I hope you’ll tell Elden Carnahan at bit.ly*invitebrunch that you’re coming. Re-airing our Differences: This week’s contest, Week 1120 Out of some inexplicable compulsion, or some weird sense of obligation — all I know is that I’m eternally grateful for it — Loser Since Year 1 Elden Carnahan maintains, for zero compensation, the Web site nrars.org. The URL stands for Not Ready for the Algonquin Round-table Society, the amorphous community that is now better known as the Losers. Along with the statistics tracking the some 5,000 people who’ve gotten ink in The Style Invitational since Week 1, Elden also maintains the literally marvelous Master Contest List, which contains a link to every last Invite contest, often in multiple formats. And because it’s Elden’s site, not The Post’s, views of the contests don’t count toward The Post’s “paywall” limit of articles you can read without a subscription. ADVERTISING I am probably the Master Contest List’s most avid reader, since I’m constantly checking whether we’ve used some idea or another in one of our previous 1,119 contests, and what the results were like. And Elden has also created more than 40 sub-lists for various contest categories: Cartoons, Horses, Poetry, Anagrams, etc. Sure enough, there’s a category called Differences — and so it was easy for me to click my way down the list to select the single item from each contest to use in Week 1120. Valuable as it is, though, the Differences list gives links to the weeks those contests were announced, not to the results. For that, you need to go back to the Master List, find the contest, and then look three or four weeks down. But in my Empressarial beneficence, I have done that for you, as a special prize for bothering to read this. If you’re entering this week’s contest, you do want to look at the old results, because even though these elements have been combined for the first time, there’s still a chance you can repeat a winning joke, something we’d like you not to do. There are just a few answers in each contest that feature any of this week’s elements, so you don’t have to read all the results (though of course they’re funny). (On each link, scroll past the new contest to the results of the Differences contest.) 1. Results of Week 155 ($4 haircut) 2. Results of Week 169 (Dilbert’s necktie) 3. Results of Week 199 (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) 4. Results of Week 276 (that not-so-fresh feeling) 5. Results of Week 402 (pizza-scented shampoo) 6. Results of Week 466 (offensive line) 7. Results of Week 563 (old socks) 8. Results of Week 628 (400-meter dash) 9, Results of Week 697 (Loser magnet) 10. Results of Week 738 (“American Gothic”) 11. Results of Week 754 (Gandhi) 12. Results of Week 821 (elderly Labrador) 13. Results of Week 883 (Elizabethan sonnet) 14. Results of Week 934 (Biden tattoo) 15. Results of Week 972 (Yemen) 16. Results of Week 1022 (overactive bladder) 17. Results of Week 1063 (three-cupped bra) I’m only a little bit worried that this revisiting contest won’t work. But hey, I can always fill the page with extra song parodies from Week 1117, which I’m judging now. Giggle Maps:* The results of Week 1116 (*Another good title from Tom Witte, who also submitted the one I used in the column,“Inking Globally.”) As usual when I run a neologism contest — in which the winning coinages are almost always plays on existing words — I said the entries in Week 1116 didn’t have to relate to the place whose name supplied the letters, but “entries are more likely to get ink if the definitions relate in some way to the place name.” This turned out to be true for approximately 100.00 percent of this week’s inking entries. It wasn’t quite enough that the definition acknowledged the place name, though; there had to be some logical connection. One that was pretty comically lacking: From “Ayers Rock”: “Oy! Rack!: Well-endowed outback rabbi’s wife.” Yes, the wilds of the Australian Outback are so well known for its rabbinical community. I expect to extract at least a week’s worth of Style Invitational Ink of the Day graphics from this week’s 30 or so inking entries, several of them from new or seriously infrequent Losers. While the rules said it didn’t matter if the new word contained all the letters of the place name — and I didn’t consciously choose entries because they did — all four of this week’s “above the fold” neologisms happen to be anagrams of the place name; it certainly does add to the niftiness. None more so in this week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner, the mordant transformation of “Russia” into “USSRia.” It’s only the 18th blot of for Invite ink Peter Jenkins since he First-Offended way back in the Czarist era, in Week 497 — but it’s the third time he’s won the contest, and he also has two runner-up blots. That is some high-quality ink in Peter’s little well. I had no idea until the winners were on the page that second and third place would go to the same person, but I wasn’t astonished that they were by Mark Raffman, who’s now been above the fold 21 times in his 207 inks since Week 979. I assume that Mark will opt for the second-prize Creepy Horse Man rather than a bag or mug (how dumb of me not to use that prize for the horse contest!). And what a happy return for Don Druker of Rockville, Md., who hadn’t been seen in Loserland since a sole appearance in Week 91. Don will move off the One-Hit Wonders list on Elden’s Loser Stats, but presumably will retain his excellent official anagram of Nuder Dork. Laughed out of Courtney: Copy desk honcho Courtney Rukan was positively gushy over this week’s ink, as she wrote to me in an unsolicited e-mail: “I LOVE the winner! USSRia is just perfect. “Baconrot [Bird Waring] is laugh-out-loud funny! Completely gross, but hilarious. I also like Off-blu [newbie Gregory Huyck] for the same reason. “Demnoises [Jim Stiles] is excellent, especially because Jim characterizes the politicians as “thundering.” Vivid language and so very true – and the sly reference to gopnoises really closes the loop. “Snobot! Lovely “2001” reference. [Julia Shawhan’s play on Boston was the most imaginative of several Snobot entries.] “Chattelover [from First Offender Amy Harris] is sassy and smart. “I like Anti-us [Frank Osen] because it’s true. “Dubbiah [Jack McBroom] is well played. Even though it’s not outrageous, this one might be my favorite (mainly because I’ll be saying Dubbiah in my head all night in the manner of a corn-fed Big 12 lineman – duhhhhhhbbiah.) “I almost choked on my water when I read Ponder, Texas. Nice inside joke from Ponder, Tex.” (Unprintable entries at the bottom of this page.) We’ll get back to you right away — really! After only many weeks of not sending Losers an auto-reply to their entries, followed by many more weeks of a NOT-auto reply in which I was actually sending the receipt e-mail myself when I got to a computer, our newsroom IT department seems to have fixed the problem. Now, whenever you send an e-mail to losers@washpost.com, you should quickly get an automatically generated response. If you don’t, please let me know so that I can make the day miserable for tell Will the IT Guy. Unsavory places: Unprintable entries from Week 1116 Lots of entries this week that the writers desginated “Convo only,” even those that weren’t all that risque. Among the clever-but-no-ways: From “San Antonio”: “Saint Onan”: Patron of lonesome cow hands. (Chris Doyle) From “Donner Pass”: Nadsperson: A really specific kind of cannibal. (Jeff Contompasis) Prince George’s County: No Pricey Negroes, a phrase often found on advertising circulars in Upper Marlboro slave markets in the 1840s (Elden Carnahan) But the Scarlet Letter this week goes to a typical tour-de-force from anagram savant Jon Gearhart, who we’re hoping is back to his amazing wordplay after suffering a scare a few days ago when he almost totally stopped breathing (Jon lost the use of much of his body after a horrific auto accident years ago): Harrisburg, Pennsylvania --> Lap Brushing Anniversary: April 1 is the anniversary of the first female fur trappers in Harrisburg. After washing their beavers in the Susquehanna River, they would brush them and stretch out to dry them in the sun. Also from Jon: Pierre, S. Dakota --> Troika-speared: Having a rare condition where a male is born with three prongs like a wall plug. They usually die lonely because woman can’t adapt. See some of you on Sunday! ====================================================================== WEEK 1121, published April 26, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1121: The author’s storied history with the Invite Add to list The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s contest and results “Book of Bad Days” author Michael Farquhar -- onetime Style Invitational Flunky and now some graybeard — at dinner with the Empress and Royal Consort last November. (Pat Myers) By Pat MyersApril 23, 2015 This week’s contest is your chance to outdo the Empress — something I’m sure you’ll accomplish easily. Just over a year ago, my long-ago colleague Michael Farquhar got hold of me. Mike, who’d grown up (-ish) to become a successful author with a series of popular-history books beginning with “A Treasury of Royal Scandals” in 2001, had another project for Book No. 7 — one that needed 365 headlines. So over the next several months last year, Mike would send me a month’s worth of fascinating historical vignettes, and I’d send back to him and his editor at National Geographic’s book division a heading for each one. Like these: Feb. 1, 2004: Keeping a Breast in the News: “On a day that saw two suicide bombings in previously calm Kurdistan, hundreds of pilgrims crushed to death in the Muslim holy site of Mecca, and continuing genocide in Darfur, media attention ... was focused on something else entirely: the brief exposure of Janet Jackson’s nipple ...” Feb. 2, 1685: Doctored to Death: After Britain’s Charles II woke up pale and unable to speak, the royal physicians began a five-day ordeal of “treatments” ranging from “spirits of the human skull” to burning his skin with hot irons to “draw out the bad humors from his brain” to the usual bleeding, till the poor monarch finally expired. And in a headline that I hoped readers would get — we went ahead with it after I tested it on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group last summer: Feb. 3, 1959: Bad News on the Doorstep: A small plane crashed into an Iowa cornfield, killing rock ’n’ roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “the Big Bopper” Richardson. The obvious heading, of course, would have been “The Day the Music Died,” but as I point out ad nauseam, making the reader think for just a moment longer results in a much bigger payoff — as long as the reader gets it. So this week’s contest is for more items like these. Of course, I’m not expecting you to go out and buy “Bad Days in History” (although it’s a really fascinating read, with many events that will be new to even you), so it doesn’t matter whether the book already features the same event you’re using (as long as it doesn’t happen to have the identical heading, a small but unavoidable risk). And as I mentioned in the instructions, you don’t have to know the exact day and date of some ancient history — it can be a longer-term event, like a war. But do write a concise description of the event, so that the point of the headline will be clear — anywhere from just a few words (“The Japanese invade Pearl Harbor”) to a short paragraph like those above. It does have to be an actual historical event, not something you make up. Remember that this is a humor contest, and Mike’s book, while written in a breezy tone, isn’t really a humor book. So I’m hoping that the Invite entries will be more funny-clever than poignant-clever. Even if you don’t win second place — for example, if you end up with the Inkin’ Memorial instead — you can still get Mike to sign a book for you: He’ll be appearing at Politics & Prose bookstore, in upper Northwest Washington, on Sunday, May 17, at 5 p.m. I’ll be there, too, to say, “I knew him when he was the Style Invitational Flunky.” Indeed, all this book-plugging is something of a restitution to Mike, who was the Invite’s aide — prize mailer, prize buyer, fax gatherer, etc. — when the contest debuted in 1993 and for a couple of years afterward. (There is no Flunky now; the Empress must self-flunk.). Mike went on to write for Horizon, The Post’s unfortunately defunct weekly section about history and science, until he started writing books full time. When he worked in the Style section in the 1990s doing mostly scut work, Mike also had the chance to write several historical-vignette pieces for the Sunday section, which was run by one Gene Weingarten. “A Look at History’s Least Compatible Couples,” “Pop Was a Weasel” (bad dads through history), etc., are what caught the eye of book publishers — and the rest, so to speak, was history. But under Gene’s editorship, that mean ol’ Czar of The Style Invitational gave Mike some clips like this: Week 240, October 1997: “This Week’s contest was proposed by Michael Farquhar, who worked for years as the Style Invitational flunky before he received a promotion. Now he is the Horizon section flunky. Why, in a few years, if Michael keeps his nose to the grindstone, he might rise to be chief executive Washington Post urinal attendant! Michael proposes that you come up with elegant insults ...” Week 273, June 1998: “This Week’s Contest was proposed by Michael Farquhar of Washington, who wins a handsomely embossed promise that we will no longer humiliate him in print every time he proposes a contest. Michael is a fine lad, a man of irreproachable moral character, a highly competent professional who, with just a few career “breaks” along the way, might have made something of himself instead of becoming a simpering lickspittle. Also — and we mean no disrespect here — Michael has absolutely no behind. It is as though God simply forgot, for a moment, at the birth of Michael Farquhar, that humans must sit, wear pants, and in his case, display the occasional “Kick Me” sign. Anyway, Michael suggests that you provide examples for any of the four above categories. ...” For the record: I have no recollection of the size or shape of Mr. F’s posterior, then or now, though I do think he was awfully cute back then, and still is, although the gray beard could go. He can’t fool me by trying to look grown up. (The photo above doesn’t show that he was wearing sneakers to the restaurant.) Clown Criers*: The news parodies of Week 1117 *Tom Witte’s non-inking headline A mere four weeks after another parody contest (for birthdays and other personal occasions) I was deluged — as I knew I’d be — with dozens of excellent song parodies about topics and people in the news. Of course, far fewer people enter a contest that requires so much skill and effort — there were fewer than 100 entrants, as opposed to close to 400 for the next week’s horse name contest — but still, so many clever lyrics have been robbed of ink, because you just can’t expect a reader to take in dozens of songs at once, especially while singing or listening along with the melodies. I’ve evolved over the years, I’ve realized, in how I run parodies; in earlier years, I would sometimes run only perhaps four good lines of a parody, so I could spread the ink around. But I’m more likely these days to run songs at length, and only rarely cut a song off before the end of at least a full verse. People who sent just a few lines with a good idea, but didn’t finish a verse, didn’t get ink. All four of this week’s “above -the-fold” Loserbards — Stephen Gold, Nan Reiner, Barbara Sarshik and Mark Raffman — have gotten lots of parody ink over the years; Nan, this week’s first runner-up, won the contest four weeks ago. By the way, the links for Nan’s parodies are to Nan singing them herself — you’ll see why she’s become the perennial entertainment at recent Flushies and Loser Holiday Parties. I will feature some “noinks” in the coming days on the Style Invitational Devotees page. ARE YOU GETTING THE E-MAIL? Well, obviously you found this column, and many of you reached it through the link your received in your weekly e-mail “newsletter” sent by The Post, with links to the Invite and Conversational. But some crazy thing seems to have happened: Hundreds of names among the more than 6,000 “Losers, aspiring Losers and hangers-on” fell off the mailing list. Fortunately, some people wrote to tell me that they hadn’t gotten their Thursday afternoon notification. If you’re in this boat, this seems to be the easiest way to fix it: If you’re not getting the e-mail, use this link — https:**subscribe.washingtonpost.com*newsletters*#*newsletters — to go to The Post’s newsletter sign-up page, and sign up (even if you’ve done it before) for The Style Invitational. The only information you need to enter is the e-mail address where you’d like to get the notification. For one thing, you don’t want to miss your personal invitation to the Flushies — the Losers’ annual awards lunch — to be held this year at Chez Danielle Nowlin, in Fairfax Station, Va., on Saturday, May 30. It’ll be a potluck, and the organizers just ask $5 a person to pay for the sundry Stuff They Have to Get. There will be a 60-person limit so that people’s elbows don’t end up too often in other people’s baked beans. I should be sending out the e-mail through the usual newsletter method in the next few days, perhaps as early as tomorrow. Until then .... ====================================================================== WEEK 1122, published May 3, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1122: Lining up 3,700 horses in the starting gate Add to list The Style Invitational Empress gives a turn-by-turn look back at this year’s foal name contest Loser Jonathan Hardis saved the Empress many hours and a lot of sanity with his program that sorted and cleaned up the 3,700-entry list of horse names. Here are two random snippets. (The Washington Post) By Pat MyersApril 30, 2015 Happy Derby Weekend to all, including you 58 presumably happy Losers and 312 presumably less happy ones. Judging The Style Invitational’s horse name contests is always a time-consuming, labor-intensive task; it’s always going to be when one person is pondering almost 4,000 crosses of two horse names and deciding whether each is funnier and cleverer than the others. But it’s one I always look forward to — I’ve judged this contest more than 20 times, if you count the “grandfoals” spinoffs — because the entries are just so dang good. And this year, the process became far less of a slog with the offer of help from Jonathan Hardis. Jonathan happens to be a PhD physicist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an expert in optical metrology who has been known to write up such juicy fare as “Enhancement of lanthanide evaporation by complexation: Dysprosium tri-iodide mixed with indium iodide and thulium tri-iodide mixed with thallium iodide.” But far more significantly, Jonathan is also a 42-time Loser who evidently likes to write computer programs (and loves the horse names). While working through the list pictured above at right — a combination of all 370 e-mails I’d gotten for the week, and then removed all identifying data from the entrants (a task I’ve been doing each week, though the pool is usually about half the size) — I posted to the Style Invational Devotees page on Facebook a screen shot of a snippet of the list in which the entrant had used some formatting that had caused the elements of the horse name to scatter about the page, plus one in which an embedded link had turned into a garble of code. The thread ended up with a 28-comment discussion about tab replacement and Excel possibilities, but the upshot was that Jonathan had a very cool idea, and he created a program on a Mac application called BBEdit that, after a fair amount of cleaning up on his part, gave me, the same evening, what you can see (if not read) in the left photo: all the entries sorted alphabetically, from 001 x 002 (Acceptance x Action Hero) to 099 x 100 (Your Thoughts x Zip N Bayou). He made it work even though some people started their entries with numbers; they’d numbered their lists. And they were all perfectly spaced, and in the same Horse x Horse B = Horse C format, no matter what had been submitted. But this part was the real time-saver: In the past, I searched through my whole master list of entries, one horse name at a time, copying out the entries I liked onto a shortlist. Each horse name, of course, was a part of many different entries, sometimes well over 100. So I’d just hit Find, Find, Find ... until I found all the entries for Horse 1. Then for Horse 2 — etc., etc., literally a hundred times over. The thing was: With this method, I ended up looking at all the entries twice — because the names also came up when I was looking for the matching horse: The entries featuring Horse 92, for example, had already come up when I did the previous 91 searches. I tried marking the entries I’d already looked at, but that took even more time than looking again. But under Jonathan’s alphabetizing, when I got up to Horse 92, I simply skipped over the list of “092 x 001; 092 x 002,” etc., and looked only at the few remaning Horse 92 entries I hadn’t read yet. I saved hours and hours and hours of judging time. Another thing: As I read through the lists , it was easy to mark the entries I especially liked with the letter A in front of the number at the beginning of the line. And ones I super-duper liked, I put “AA.” Then, at the end, I sorted the list alphabetically (it was in Microsoft Word) and my short­list immediately appeared on top — topped by the AA group of about 25 entries. The A-group was more than 300. Then I made my final list: All the AAs (with the four winners chosen from them) plus as many A’s as I could fit on the print page, once I finally looked up the authors of the inking entries: 63 entries, 58 people (including multiple inks for remarkably few people, and double credits for really remarkably few people). If you’re of the techie persuasion and would like to discuss details of the program with Jonathan, e-mail me and I’ll forward your note. I say this with a sense of shame rather than pride, believe me, but I still use words like “magic” when it comes to computers. And I shouted out “YESSSS!” in the middle of the newsroom on Tuesday when, near the very end of my Loser-name-looking-up task, I discovered that the 63rd inking entry of 65 was by (Jonathan Hardis, Gaithersburg). Arbitrary, somewhat. Subjective, very. Random, no. So why did some entries get ink and other clever entries not get ink? Sometimes, the same entry was sent by too many people. Ocho Ocho Ocho x Pain and Misery = Oucho Oucho Oucho. Great entry, but I’m not going to credit six Losers. Other excellent entries too frequently submitted: Carpe Diem x Far Right = Seize the Gay; Help From Heaven x Action Hero = Manna War; Acceptance x Itsaknockout = OKO. Just a slew of similar entries using In the Pocket that produced Happy to See Me, That’s No Banana, etc, that all canceled one another out. (Sometimes, though, I gave ink to an name that came from a better cross of parents than the others did.) Sometimes an entry would overshadow similar ones with one winning detail: There were several “Kneel Armstrong,” but only Matt Monitto turned it into a sentence with the comma making it “Kneel, Armstrong.” (If you indeed sent in an entry identical to one that inked and you weren’t credited, contact me ASAP.) But in large part, my choices rested on what I, at that moment, reacted to with a laugh or “hah, cute!” Judging horse names is much less objective than judging song parodies (our previous contest); for that, you can point to a line that doesn’t scan, or strained syntax, or a blah ending after a strong beginning, or a trite or screedy sentiment. It’s just that hundreds of entrants now get the horse names — they understand what we’re looking for. But I’m going to mail out only so many magnets — and I can tell you from experience that reading twice as many entries isn’t necessarily twice as fun. But yes, I did read every one, often while awake. Win, Place, Show, Other Show This week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner wasn’t just funny and creative, with a different approach from the usual puns and transformations that characterize most of this week’s entries. But it also managed to use the name Mujtaahib, one I’d included only because he had a good chance to do well in the Derby. And it was also the favorite of Bob Staake, who used it for this week’s cartoon. Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan has a page on the Loser website, NRARS.org, headed “Most Cantinkerous.” It’s a list of the 100 people who have the most Invite ink but have never won first place. Elden himself held the top (?) honor for a while (before going on to win 20 times), as have such future notables as Tom Witte (26 wins) and Jeff Contompasis (7). But for the past two years and change, topping the list — with 106 inkblots without a win — was Brad Alexander, an Amerian expat living in Wanneroo, Western Australia. I met Brad and his wife, Shani, a couple of years ago when they were visiting relatives in the States, and he told me that he made it a point to enter the Invite every week, even if were just a single entry or an idea for an honorable-mentions subhead. I’ll be sending Brad an Inkin’ Memorial, and he’ll have to hand the Cantinkerous crown back to former laureate Kyle Hendrickson, who has 83 inks and used to be the Cant himself. We’ll give the special Cantinkerous plaque back to Kyle at the Flushies banquet on May 30 (see YOUR invitation right here), when he’ll be serving as MC. None of the others in this year’s Losers’ Circle qualify for the Cantinkerous list; Doug Frank has two wins, Jeff Shirley has one, and Ben Aronin has five. Doug’s entry, Apollo Eleven x No Problem = No Movie, is a strong example of the “transformational” style, in which the result is a changed version of one of the elements; and it manages to get in a dig at Hollywood to boot. Ben’s Neil Strongarm is an ingenious (and unduplicated) combination of Apollo Eleven and Gangster. And Jeff Shirley, who actually understands fluent dentist, being a retired one, scores with the coffee-spitter Let My Pimple Go.” Both Courtney Rukan and Doug Norwood, both aces of The Post’s copy desk, are back this week to weigh in with their faves. What Doug Dug: Doug “loved all the American Pharoah and Apollo 11 entries. And the winner, of course.” Laugh Out of Courtney, who’s just back from vacation: “All four of the winners are fantastic and each got funnier from fourth to the winner. Love Let My Pimple Go and Chat With Dentist.” Courtney, whom I’m loving more and more each week, the way the woman agrees with me, did say that one honorable mention “might be my favorite of the bunch”: Medieval Knievel, sent by both Lawrence McGuire and Malcolm Fleschner. She also thought Mae Scanlan’s “Connery Row” was “brilliant.” Meanwhile, the Beyond Nerdiness entry of the week goes to this one, which I quote verbatim, complete with accompanying note: “Easy to Say x Data Driven = 45617379746F536179 (This is ascii hex code for ‘EasytoSay’ just in case you are not fluent in ascii codes. I would have done binary but that would have exceeded the 18 character limit. I could have compressed that with gzip but then might have lost about half the audience reducing the impact of the joke).” My favorite thing is how the person assumed that most readers would get that entry just fine, as long as he didn’t do it in binary and compress it with gzip, which would cause a 50 percent audience reduction. Foaling down: The next generation The grandfoal contest is a whole lot like the foal contest, but a little harder: First and less significantly, you have 65 horses rather than 100 to work with. More of a challenge is that most of the names are already puns: Your grandfoal might pun on the words or names in the foals name, or the names that they’re punning on. Times two, for the two child brides. The way out of it is not to try to incorporate all of these elements, but also not ignore the most conspicuous ones — an arguable standard, as you’ll see. Here are some winners from past grandfoal contests: Criminal in Tent x Lookn Mighty Fat = Osama Been Lardin’ (double winners Jennifer Rubio and Lois Douthitt, Week 814): The first element works both ways as “Intent” and “in tent” with bin Laden, and the second element wasn’t a pun; it was a transformational entry for Lookn Mighty Fast x Sumo. So that worked super-well: It was easy to read, and of course fun to mock Osama bin Laden. Myth Congeniality x Paul Bunion = Sandra Bull Ox (Kathy Al-Assal, winner of Week 969). Here, Kathy’s playing on both source names, rather than the pun names. Nothing about bunions or myths (well, the ox is also a myth). But it’s very clear and clever, playing on Sandra Bullock’s name and movie, and obviously it worked for me. &*^$ Mammogram x Clans Casino = Squish and Chips (Danielle Nowlin, winner of Week 1070). The first element isn’t a pun, so Danielle could work freely with that; then she ignored “clans” and really only tenuously alluded to its source, “clams casino”; okay, it’s a seafood dish like fish and chips. But just “chips” and “mammogram” were enough to make the funny pun. See what you can come up with. All I know is that Jonathan is going to run my list again. Note; Please do not break a single entry into two lines! This really messes up the software. Thankew. So sip your mint julep this Saturday and root for one of “our” horses — FOURTEEN of the 20 horses made our 100-horse list, out of the 429 I chose that 100 from. And 11 of them got ink today. And on Friday, you can root for Condo Commando and*or Puca in the Kentucky Oaks race for fillies. Get Flushing! RSVP for the Flushies, May 30 You should have gotten an e-mail invitation. Here it is online. It’s a potluck with just a $5 fee to defray costs for paper goods, door prizes, plunger rental, etc. Please RSVP to Elden; Danielle Nowlin can fit just 60 of us into her house, even if we sit on her kids. ====================================================================== WEEK 1123, published May 10, 2015 Yes, dear, I was wrong, you were right. Add to list Style Conversational Week 1123: JefCon’s perseverance pays off with the ScrabbleGrams By Pat MyersMay 7, 2015 Our now-perennial ScrabbleGrams contest met with my usual negativity when Next In Line For The Hall of Fame Jeff Contompasis suggested a “Hardscrabble Humor” Style Invitational contest to me in 2012. “I’ve been playtesting this” on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook, Jeff said, “and I’m now convinced it has contest potential.” He listed several very good examples. I said no because I didn’t think we’d have the room to print a list long enough to prevent too much duplication. Jeff proceeded to slap his head at my stupidity for an entire year. The next March, he tried again — noting that I’d recently run a long list of words in paragraph form, rather than a table, and remember that ScrabbleGrams contest? Also, the Invite had come into some more real estate: It now took up the whole back page of the Sunday Style tabloid — about 30 percent more space than we’d had since 2011. I was still hesitant. But Jeff did what does finally convince me: He provided several varied and inkworthy examples, demonstrating that entrants could take a wide variety of approaches. Looking back, I have to admit: Why on earth couldn’t I see what a suitable Invite contest this would be — over and over and over? Anyway, Week 1021 — headlined “’Gram Theft” in the print paper, “Nice Sets of Racks” online — proved wildly successful, of course. I listed 100 letter sets, and then: “I have 2 million Scrabblegrams neologisms,” I told my daughter in a late-night IM (thanks, Gchat archives). Bob Staake’s cartoon featured a drawing of Jeff himself, looking much wider than in real life but just as winsome, juggling seven letter tiles above his head. That week’s winner brought Frank Osen his second Inkin’ Memorial, no doubt because of his sample sentence: “AUFWRGF: Gruffaw: A mocking, dismissive laugh. ‘Listen, kid, if you can’t take the constant gruffaws, you’ll never make it big in the mime biz.’” Because there were so many good entries — and especially because it was fun to show several very different uses of the same rack — I ended up running 41 results at the usual time, then 48 more honorable mentions two weeks later. The next May, of course, I was eager to run the contest again. And in Week 1072 — Jeff got his cartoon again — I cut the list from 100 sets to 40. And the results were still plentiful, and plenty good. That week’s winner was by Brendan Beary: “AAURGJN → Uganja: Country ruled by the surprisingly mellow dictator Weedy Amin.” So here we are again: This year JefCon is acknowledged only here in the Conversational, but he is not the type to grouse about that. Is he. There’s something about this contest that brings out the newbies: In Week 1021, there were nine First Offenders among the two weeks of results. My theory is the list in the print paper: It presents readers with a prompt — a set of parameters that they can look at quickly, and think of something quickly as well And then, oh, they think of another one. Hey, this is fun! The foal name and “joint legislation” contests also feature long lists, and have always had both especially large entry pools and especially large numbers of first-time entrants. And remember, Loser Obsessives, regular doses of fresh blood are essential to keep the Invite, um, fresh-blooded. Note that I beg you, when you submit your entries for Week 1123, to include the original letter set before each entry, and in the same line: DON’T do: “ABCEDEFG: Entry 1 for that. Entry 2 for that.” This is because I hope to sort the entries alphabetically, as I did for the Week 1118 horse names, so that I’ll be able to judge the sets together, and also have not the foggiest idea of who wrote which entry. My little Sort function is rearranging what it sees as paragraphs; so if you hit Enter between the letter set and your word, it’s going to go astray. (I’ll still be able to find it — it won’t be totally lost — but it won’t show up with its pals from the same letter set.) I alphabetically sorted the entries for today’s results, and it worked close to perfectly. ADVERTISING DYE LAUGHING*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1119 *A non-inking entry from both Kevin Dopart and Jeff Contompasis Our contest for color names (reprising one from 22 years ago) echoes those for names of restaurant dishes, chemical elements, rooms in buildings, etc.: The inking entries feature lots of puns, and words that cleverly carry multiple meanings, with some zingy, timely jokes tossed in. Classic Invite. Because such entries tend to be very short, I was able to run the whole list of more than 30 in the print paper even though we also have the table of the 40 ScrabbleGrams names. With “Lilac a Rug,” John McCooey finds himself bumped off the Cantinkerous list with his first Inkin’ Memorial among his 33 blots of ink since Week 903. The Royal Consort and I had lunch with John and his wife near their his home in Rehoboth Beach when we were camping at Cape Henlopen a few years ago; I’m glad he continued to enter the Invite nevertheless. Edward Gordon, who logged a fair amount of time in hospitals recently, should find it especially fun to throw the Happy Pill against the wall as it laughs irritatingly. Among Ed’s 57 blots of ink are six “above the fold,” including his slogan “Certifiably Inane” for one of the 2009-10 honorable-mentions magnets. And I’ll deliver in person, perhaps right from a cake, the prizes for the other two runners-up: Frank Osen is flying in from Pasadena to attend this year’s Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual award banquet, for which, if you pay the $5 and bring some potlucky thing, you can get your own plastic fork and probably a door prize. And I’m also sure that Danielle Nowlin will be there on Saturday, May 30, noon to 4, because the event is at her house in Fairfax Station, Va. As of this writing, we can take about 20 more people; please RSVP to Elden Carnahan here ASAP if you intend to go (or, if you think you’re expected, if you intend not to go). By the way, I’ve seen a couple of the song parodies written for the occasion, and they’re classic. Laughed Out of Courtney — the faves of copy desk chief Courtney Rukan: “The winner is brilliant. It’s a great pun – and not an obvious one to make. Also love Indigo Montoya, Spinal Taupe, Andy Marooney, Goooooold, Inhofe, Bureaucratic Maize (nice to see Ink after so long!), Board of Directors Rainbow and Invisible Ink (great inside joke). Unred, Kiddie Pool Blue, Perple, Fuchsiashima, Obamatone and Beat Red made me laugh AND cringe. Another very strong week – and you can’t lose with Inigo Montoya and Cary Elwes.” I hope Courtney can come to the Flushies and gush over all of yas in person. What Doug Dug — from my longtime colleague and onetime boss Doug Norwood: “I liked all the runners-up and the winner, plus Gooooold, and Beiging and Board of Directors Rainbow and Rich Maroon — how is it that Trump jokes never get old?” Loser Blue: Unprintable ink from Week 1119 Two grossouts: Shartreuse: A brownish stain (Jeff Contompasis, and in even more graphic detail from Jon Gearhart) And one for which, even had the writer not included his own name, I would have known anyway: “Eff-white: The color of male eff-luent. Also known as tapiOca and uh-roe. Or, in my case, Cream o’ Witte and, unfortunately, Quick Bisque.” (I don’t get “uh-roe” and probably don’t want to.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1125, published May 24, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1124: The tale of the once-titillating sonnet Add to list The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest Fox’s New York affiliate didn’t want to offend the Nipple Police during its news report, so it helpfully smudged over the cubist breasts. (Taken from TV) By Pat MyersMay 14, 2015 This past Monday, the Picasso painting “Women of Algiers” sold for $160 million (plus hefty commission), shattering the record for a work of art sold at auction. Even though the 1950s work did not specifically criticize Barack Obama, New York’s Fox affiliate brought the news to its viewers anyway. Well, sort of. This screen grab from Monday night shows how the station protected its viewers’ eyes from depictions of female breasts. (Evidently, the curvaceous bare butt in the middle of the painting did not pose an ocular hazard.) I read about the Ridiculous Fox Blur just as I started writing this column today — two days after I did something not all that different, really. As his best entry in Week 1120 of The Style Invitational, Frank Osen — author of an award-winning poetry collection, as well as an incessant Loser — linked the categories of “an Elizabethan sonnet” and “a three-cupped bra” in the excellent full 14-line sonnet that gets ink as the last item of today’s results. Except that Frank’s original was a bit different. Frank’s little story-in-verse is about God originally making Eve as the first human — with three breasts — then using the third one to make a helpmeet for her. And it ended, originally, with this couplet: Then God said: Hold off thanking Me, a bit. Let’s see, where did I put that useless tit? My initial reaction was to put the poem only in the online Invite, because of its length but primarily because “tit” is considered a verboten vulgarism by The Washington Post, right up there with [deleted], [deleted] and [are you kidding? deleted!]. But I personally don’t think that term is very offensive if it’s not used in an offensive context — and this one wasn’t. And when I found on Tuesday that I actually had a fair amount of room in this weekend’s Style section, and found that Frank’s poem fit perfectly on the page, I added the poem at the end (this is why it didn’t end up as one of the top winners) and went to bat for it. I sent copy editor Doug Norwood this in an e-mail: “You’ll see that the very last entry is a perfect 14-line sonnet, beautifully done, plus funny. The last word is “tit.” If you*they insist, we can make it “[breast],” “t-t,” etc. But I think that would make us look awfully silly. The other 13 lines, as you’ll see, are not at all vulgar.” “The old 13-out-of-14-ain’t-bad argument! I like it!” Doug answered. But it wouldn’t be Doug’s call; he’d be obligated to show it to a higher-up editor. And in my experience, people don’t like to be asked to be daring if they won’t suffer by not being daring. I had also asked the opinion of my predecessor, The Czar of The Style Invitational, who coincidentally provides today’s “poetic” example. From Gchat instant messaging on Tuesday: Czar: of course they will [kill the poem]. you cannot put that in the paper. Pat Myers: i think it’s fine it’s not sexual and for 13 3*4 lines it’s not the least bit vulgar Czar: ARE YOU S---TING ME? you are toying with me. Pat Myers: no! i’m serious Czar: f--- = s--- = c--- = d--- = c--- = tit. [In The Post’s eyes, he meant; not his own.] And so instead, that evening I wrote to Frank and asked him for an alternative couplet, one that didn’t use The Bad Word. And within minutes, Frank wrote me back, without a word (to me) of grousing: Then God said, as he rummaged in his trunk, Let’s see, where did I put [that] [your] useless hunk? Then God said: Hold off thanking Me, a bit. Let’s see, where did I put [that] [your] useless bit? Then God said: I’ll need clay, a largish clump. Let’s see, where did I put [that] [your] useless lump? [could switch clump and lump ] Then God said: Help me search here in the grass. Let’s see, if we can use [that] [your] useless mass? Then God said: He won’t be a work of art. Let’s see, where did I put [that] [your] useless part? I chose the last one, allowing our print-paper readers to cast their eyes upon Frank’s art, just as the Fox5 news director felt he had to do with the Picasso painting. Just as silly? Feel free to discuss here or, preferably, on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. Meanwhile, lots of other ingenious comparisons among this week’s inking entries. There was a lot of duplication that sometimes canceled out all the similar entries, while other times I chose one that I thought was better than the others in some small way. How exciting to have a First Offender walk away with the Inkin’ Memorial this week! Jaclyn Yamada just missed getting ink when she first entered the Invitational one week earlier, and this time the New York mortgage banker came up with the super-nifty 3-snips-and-out*3-snaps-and-out comparison between a $4 haircut and the Redskins’ offensive line. (I had so many clever wordplays on football terms that I think I could have filled the results with only combinations for “offensive line.” But Jaclyn’s was especially clever, and appropriate for “offensive line,” as opposed to some that referred to catching balls and such.) While the first- and second runners-up, Brendan Beary and Elden Carnahan, are both Invitational Hall of Famers, such fixtures that new entrants sometimes refer to their celebrity in their entries, as if referencing Abraham Lincoln or John Wayne Gacy. But fourth place is shared this week by two much fresher names: It’s just the second blot of ink for Jack McBroom of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley; he first scored in Week 1111’s song-title-pun contest (Theme song for the National Super PAC Clearinghouse: “As Slime Goes By”). On the other hand, John Conti (no relation as far as I know to Loser Edmund Conti) has been entering with laudable discrimination all the way back to the Empress’s first year, 2004; this is only John’s 15th blot of ink, but it’s his fourth “above the fold” (including a winner). (A long list of unprintable entries cowers in shame at the bottom of this column.) What Doug Dug: Doug Norwood’s faves this week: Brendan’s second-place “Middle Eastern vs. You’re a peein’ ”; Mary Kappus’s idea of putting the $4 haircut and 3-cupped bra into “The 12 Days of Deep Discount Christmas”; Wendy Sparks’s “finishing Number 1” (overactive bladder, 400-yard dash), and Rick Haynes’s “16 quarters aren’t enough ($4 haircut, Redskins line) . Laugh Out of Courtney: Desk chief Courtney Rukan’s background is in sports news, and she did enjoy “all of the digs on the Washington Football Club,” but she picked as her top favorite another one of Brendan’s:”With an overactive bladder, you need to pee urgently; with a $4 haircut, you need a toupee urgently.” POETRY TO THE MAXIM: THE NEW CONTEST FOR WEEK 1124 I am foreseeing many Style Invitational Ink of the Day memes after I print the results of this contest, in which I gave five little bits of advice for everyday life (drawn from a long list of topics that occurred to me and the Czar) and ask for poetic versions of same. ADVERTISING Up-and-coming Loser Todd DeLap (36 inks since Week 1039) was inspired by something rather different from the contest topic: He’d seen an article about a county council in Britain that received a resident’s e-mail asking for a replacement trash can lid — and the request was in the form of a limerick. In response, the councilors (or I guess I should make it “councillors”) left her a phone message asking her if the “bin lid” would be for refuse or recycling. Also as a limerick. So Todd extrapolated that idea into “a poem usable in regular(ish) daily life,” resulting in today’s contest. The “eight lines or fewer” can mean eight long lines, with interior rhyme, if they’re wonderful; we had a little kerfuffle over this matter a couple of years ago, and I do not wish to rekerfuff. But as with all longer entries, they have to be really outstanding to make the print paper — and you probably can’t be one of the top winners if you can’t make the print paper. DON’T PULL OUR CHAIN: RSVP TO THE FLUSHIES We’re at only about 42 people who’ve told Elden they’d be attending this year’s Flushies Awards and Sillifest on Saturday afternoon, May 30. Are you still rooting around in the bottom of your purse for the $5, or what? We can take roughly (oh, baby, yeah) 18 more of y’all. See bit.ly*flushies2015 and RSVP to Elden. (And let me know, too.) I think we will demand that Frank Osen — who’ll be coming in from L.A. — read The Unexpurgated Sonnet. A-HUNTING WILL YOU GO? One reason that the Flushies are on May 30 is that out-of-towners can also participate in the Post Hunt — the annual spectacle in downtown Washington in which thousands of people run around trying to figure out diabolical brain-teasers cooked up by Gene Weingarten, Dave Barry and Tom Shroder (who all will be there as usual). A team of Losers got very close to winning last year — maybe this time will be the charm (and you get to split $2,000, not a bobblehead). Let’s see if we can get a couple of Loser teams together this time. I think the Devotees page would be best for coordinating it. Don’t dare compare: Unprintables from Week 1120 Among many more: Dilbert’s necktie and that “not so fresh” feeling: The first appears much higher in Google search results for “douche.” (Kevin Dopart) Pizza-scented shampoo and that “not so fresh” feeling are both recognized by the fragrance of Eau d’Anchovies. (Brad Alexander) A style invitational magnet and a tattoo of Joe Biden: Both involve the output from a bunch of pricks.(Rick Haynes) An elderly Labrador retriever vs. that “not so fresh feeling”: Neither one is suitable for heavy petting. (Tom Witte) An elderly Labrador retriever vs. that “not so fresh feeling”: One is a mangy Lab, the other is a mangy labia. (Witte again) Dilbert’s necktie isn’t like a Style Invitational Loser magnet: No drunk chick at an office party ever tried to Lewinsky the magnet. (Lawrence McGuire) Pizza-scented shampoo and that “”not so fresh”” feeling: Both are heavy on the extra-cheese and mushrooms. (Rob Huffman) The Redskins offensive line vs. an overactive bladder: Both are likely to result in pissing away an afternoon. (Larry Passar) Yemen vs. the 400-meter dash: There is contest for control of Yemen by some cunning runts, and the 400-meter dash is often contested by some running gents. (Roy Ashley) [Yeah, right, Roy. Big fix there.] An elderly Labrador retriever and Ruth Bader Ginsburg doing the Macarena: Them old bitches don’t move like they used to.(Jon Gearhart) What an amazing coincidence: Every one of the above entries was written by a man! ====================================================================== WEEK 1126, published May 31, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1126: Putting the cartoons before the horses Add to list The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results By Pat MyersMay 28, 2015 This week’s caption contest might be more challenging than usual. It wasn’t until late in the process that it dawned on me that none of Bob Staake’s four cartoons this week featured characters saying anything. While of course you can always just write a funny description of the person in the picture (or in one case, part of a person), it’s also handy to be able to use an amusing quote. Which is why I have decreed: Feel free to assume that the people in this week’s cartoons are able to speak perfectly well with their mouths closed, and that they could be speaking to someone just out of the picture. Really, I am very easy sometimes: As Gilbert and Sullivan put forth the Loser Mantra: They don’t blame you so long as you’re funny. . And I’ll also have you know that I’m easier than the folks at The New Yorker, which runs a cartoon caption contest every week, drawing more than 5,000 entries (but only one per person). For one thing, the caption can’t exceed 250 characters and you can’t enter if you live in Quebec — true fact. But even worse, all those captions are for one cartoon. The editors then pick three finalists, and readers vote for the winner, who then gets something possibly nicer than a bobblehead of the Lincoln Memorial statue — the original cartoon, valued at $250 (i.e., $250 of taxable income). Which you then get to frame yourself. I know that last part because at least two Style Invitational Losers have won this contest: 231-time Loser Gary Crockett and, before that, 217-timer Jay Shuck, who’s won it twice. But the duplication of ideas must be enormous every single week, with 5,000 captions for one picture. I know this because I get a fair amount of duplication in our caption contests, and I’m offering four to six cartoons to choose from, and get a total of usually fewer than 2,000 entries. I also know this because I had a sneak peek at the Below the Beltway column by Gene Weingarten in the June 7 Washington Post Magazine, in which Gene interviews Robert Mankoff, The New Yorker’s cartoon editor and the head of the contest. I don’t want to give too many details about the column, but Mankoff does mention that one particular word was used in a recent contest in sixty-eight different entries. In its strict and legalistic set of rules, TNY says that in the case of two or more entries that are absolutely identical, including punctuation, the one that arrived first gets the ink. Meanwhile, we have the Empress, whose fuzzy and illegalistic set of rules state that “when two or people send pretty much the same idea and their wording is equally good, either (1) I’ll use one person’s wording and credit both people, or (2) I’ll use elements of both entries and credit both people. When people send in the same idea but one person says it significantly better, that person gets the sole ink. If several entries are similar and all pretty much the same quality, I just toss them all or, very rarely, print the entry and credit no specific person.” But the real difference is that I am going to give ink not to one entry, but to perhaps 30. In fact, part of the fun of the caption results is in seeing a cartoon interpreted in wildly different ways. Like these from our most recent caption contest, six months ago. And all those entrants got prizes that no one will ever get from The New Yorker. And if you win the big one and you are tax-fastidious, you may declare income valued at $12. Jay and Gary have probably paid off their big-shot-contest tax bills by now, so I hope they’ll enter Week 1126. PUN FOR THE ROSES: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1122 It might seem no surprise that all four of this year’s “grandfoal” “breeders” are longtime successes in the Invite’s equine history — but it actually was to me. Over their 20-year history, and especially since the institution of the 25-entry limit, the horse names contests have provided more parity than many others. For instance, there aren’t that many people who are going to send me an elaborate, perfectly crafted song parody, and the people who win tend to be those who know just what I’m looking for. But so many people have come up with a clever way to play off two horse names and produce a pun or other joke. And! Just as with this year’s first horse contest, Week 1118, not only did i not know who wrote which entry, I didn’t even judge anyone’s set of entries in a block: Thanks to a program devised and run by Loser Jonathan Hardis, all the entries were sorted by “parent” name. And there were lots of good entries for practically every parent name on the list. But Jonathan Paul’s “NOT WITH TONGUE!!!” made me laugh out loud, repeatedly, sending him across the finish line first, as he did in the horse contests of Weeks 396, 810 and 914 (along with 21 wins in other contests). And with the super-synthesis of Absolut Zero and Look Ma No Hanes into Me and My Kelvins,* Pam Sweeney added to her amazing record with the ponies, which includes wins in Weeks 660, 712, 763, 863 and 918. And Brendan Beary and Chris Doyle, zub zub zub. *The levels of Pam’s breeding success: 1. Absolute zero is zero on the Kelvin temperature scale. 2. The famous slogan for Calvin Klein jeans: “Nothing [absolutely zero! and certainly not Hanes underwear] comes between me and my Calvins.” Also another huge horse week for Jeff Shirley, who had four horses in this week’s field, and special mention to Francis Canavan, who got his FirStink with Poise N the Hood in the previous horse contest, then came back to be magnetized with the pithy “Hertz!” Laugh Out of Courtney: Before she took off on a three-week vacation, Post copy chief Courtney Rukan shared her faves for this week. Her verdict: “Please send Pam Sweeney my regards; she is the ‘grandfoals’ goddess.” (Unprintable entries are at the bottom of this column.) LAST CALL FOR THE FLUSHIES! There are still a few more places left for Saturday afternoon’s Flushies, the annual award ceremony*meetup*songfest*potluck-pigout*humiliation sponsored by the Losers themselves. I’ve just seen the amazing sort-of-board game devised by emcee Kyle Hendrickson, and have printed out the lyric sheets for the song parodies written to “honor” the Loser of the Year and others. And I will bring a dessert that is guaranteed to be edible by the undiscriminating. To RSVP and to get the address of Chez Danielle Nowlin, RSVP right away to Elden Carnahan. Details here. Neigh neigh neigh! Unprintable ‘grandfoal’ names from Week 1122 I was going to try to run this one — Gone Tomorrow x Tough, Customer! = Tempus Fuggit (Frank Osen) — but went with Larry Passar’s slightly safer-sounding Zit Outta Luck. But no way for: Magnum, T.I. x Rush Lintball = Private Dick (Kathye Hamilton) Look Ma No Hanes x BobDylan’sMustache = Like Two Lolling Stones (Rob Huffman) Buzzed Aldrin x Prince Charmin = Orbiting Uranus (Rob Wolf) Prince Charmin x KO Pectate = Seeping Booty (Pam Sweeney — ewwww) Paternity Soot x Sphinxter = Ash Hole (Rob Wolf) A special bad-taste mention to Mike Gips for a reference I had to look up to refresh my memory: Kiljoy Was Her x Let My Pimple Go = MaryBeth Whitehead. Mary Beth Whitehead was the woman hired in the 1980s by a couple named the Sterns to be inseminated by Mr. Stern with her own egg, carry the fetus to term, then hand over “Baby M.” And then, 24 hours later, she changed her mind. The courts went back and forth, as did custody of the baby; now-adult Melissa Stern now lives in London. Anyway, I didn’t think we wanted to call the baby a pimple, or even Ms. Whitehead a killjoy. Clever as it was. Can’t wait to see more than 50 of you on Saturday! ====================================================================== WEEK 1127, published June 7, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1127: Everyone wants to hang with the Losers Add to list Notes from the 20th Flushies awards and sillifest President Obama, looking younger and even slimmer than usual, greets Loserdom at the Flushies: Clockwise from top left: Ann Martin; the Empress and Melissa Yorks; security detail Dave Prevar; Todd DeLap; Mae Scanlan; Dave Zarrow. (Photos by Mark Holt; collage by Valerie Holt) By Pat MyersJune 4, 2015 A tall, lean but somewhat stiff and, let it be said, rather shallow figure greeted guests Saturday afternoon just inside the front door of Chez Danielle Nowlin in Suburbia, Va. But setting politics aside (and nearly tipping it over), close to 60 Style Invitational Losers and various handlers and orderlies took over the house of last year’s Loser and Rookie of the Year for the 20th annual Flushies award “banquet,” failing to cause more damage than whatever a mis-tossed roll of toilet paper can do to a blank wall. The 19 previous Flushies — except for one ill-fated assembly in a public park — were held in either restaurants or hotel meeting rooms, some more appealing than others, but all of them requiring the organizers to haggle over room reservations, beg for permission to play music, guarantee a minimum or maximum number of attendees, dicker over food options and charges, etc., etc, etc. But near the end of the 2014 gathering in an undistinguished room at the College Park Holiday Inn (motto: We Kind of Share a Parking Lot With Ikea), Ms. Nowlin — flush with victory and perhaps a little celebratory wine — approached the Empress and said, “You know, Ryan and I just bought a big new house, and we could host the Flushies next year. If you like.” ADVERTISING Yeah, we would like. And even though Danielle would somewhat misplace priorities and dial back her Losing over the next year, getting less ink because of the distraction of a new baby this past January (she and Ryan now have three children age 5 and under), she made good on her offer, resulting in perhaps the most enjoyable Flushies I’ve been to — and I think I’ve now been to 13 of them. The Nowlins cleared away the furniture in their spacious living and dining rooms and let Elden Carnahan and his fellow Flushies organizers bring in tables and chairs for the potluck lunch, then set up an ad hoc auditorium for the afternoon’s program of awards, song parodies, and a PowerPoint “Leopardy” game devised by emcee Kyle Hendrickson, the current holder of the Most Cantinkerous plaque, for having the most blots of ink (83) without ever having won first prize. The attendance by three Losers in particular made the event especially memorable, and each of them was lauded with a custom-written song, each written in part by parody ace Nan Reiner: First up was the return of Mae Scanlan to in-the-flesh Loserdom after a nasty hospitalization caused her to miss the holiday party in January. For that occasion, Loser Melissa Balmain and Nan penned a rallying pep cheer to Mae’s new pacemaker, set to “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” and those at the party sang it into a camera and sent it off to Mae. It cheered her up so much, Mae said, that she asked for an encore at the Flushies. We happily obliged, with Loser Pianist Steve Honley once again handling keyboard duties. It was my turn, and pleasure, to induct Beverley Sharp as the 10th member of the Style Invitational Hall of Fame; she passed the magic 500-blot mark in February. Beverley and her husband, Dick Amberg, drove up from Montgomery, Ala., to be with us (and to visit others afterward) — and even passed up the invitation to the farewell reunion for her alma mater, the soon-to-close Sweet Briar College, the same day. The crowd laughed heartily at the dozen or so jokes I read from Beverley’s Hall of Fame swag, the booklet comprising all 500 inking entries (a surprising number of them concerning dog poop), and then we joined in with “Wouldn’t It Be Beverley,” written by Brendan Beary and Nan. Hugs ensued. Have you noticed what’s missing from this event? Snark. The sharply caustic wit that characterizes so many Invite entries is put away for the day — at least toward one another. It’s a bit of a secret, but even the most acerbic Losers tend to be teddy bears in person. Then there were the awards for Rookie of the Year — Todd DeLap, at his first Loser event; Most Imporved — Jeff Shirley, who wasn’t able to come up from Richmond; and Least Imporved, to Danielle herself; the annual milestone awards of tossed toilet paper rolls for those who’d reached 50 blots, 100 blots, etc.; and finally for Loser of the Year Frank Osen, the Loser poet turned jokester-of-all-trades, who’d flown in from California and boy were his iambs tired. And Frank was serenaded with — what else — “Little Old Loser From Pasadena.” That wasn’t all the singing: Dave Zarrow and Dave Ferry (visiting from Mississippi) made a partial reunion of the Dueling Loser Band, which played at many an early-years Flushies, and sang several classic-rock parodies with keyboard and guitar, such as “Hotel Where the Brunch Is,” to “Hotel California” (which the Loser crowd sang along with perfectly), and “One Inkblot,” set to the Wallflowers’ “One Headlight” (a little less perfectly). The latter is about managing to score ink in all 23 years of the Invite — something Le Zarrow himself has done, along with several others in the room on Saturday: fellow Hardy Perennials Chuck Smith, Elden Carnahan and Stephen Dudzik, Hall of Famers all. Kyle, known as Loserfest Pope for the elaborate weekend field trips he used to arrange (and says he may again), recruited three eager and able Losers to play his “Leopardy” game: parody master Matt Monitto (who’d driven all the way down from Connecticut), Latin teacher Ann Martin, and librarian Deborah Hensley, spouse of the Invite-ubiquitous Kevin Dopart. The categories in Single Leopardy: L, O, S, E, R. The categories in Double Leopardy: LL, OO, SS, EE, RR. The Final Leopardy answer: I forget. (I also don’t remember who won.) Not only did Kyle put up your standard trivia questions, but some “answers” required the contestants to act out an abstract word charades-style or to draw it on a whiteboard, using a marker embedded in a giant pool noodle. The whole thing would have flopped like a belly hitting pool water if not for the remarkable talents of both the contestants and the guessing audience. But it rocked. Finally, Queen of the Door Prizes Pie Snelson called out the ticket numbers, distributing everything from bacon-flavored lip balm to an artificial nose. But Barack Obama rode back in the car with the Empress and the Royal Consort, for future delivery somehow to Brendan Beary, who’d won him in Week 1120. The Flushies are over for another year (hey, someone else with a house, we’re waiting to hear from you about 2016!) but Loser events continue: This very weekend will be Sarah Gaymon’s Loser Olympics at her home out in Anne Arundel County, and the monthly Loser Brunches resume on Sunday, June 28, at Chadwicks in Old Town Alexandria, near the river, time TBA. As always, we’re always eager to greet new Losers and even just fans of the Invite at the brunches, as well as reconnect with the old-timers. RSVP to Elden here. (I should be able to come to Chadwicks.) Alternative Reality: The Week 1127 contest This week’s new contest was suggested by Jeff Contompasis on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page, and his example was so good that I just lifted it into the Invite. One reason it works so well: It doesn’t concern arcane details of the series; a reader who isn’t very familiar with the show can get the idea right from the joke. In fact, I’ve never watched “Say Yes to the Dress.” Note that you may use old TV shows as well as current ones (handy for those of us whose TV viewing has waned), and of course, funny writing will probably be the key to ink. Rack*tile dysfunction*: The ScrabbleGrams neologisms of Week 1123 *A non-inking entry from Beverley Sharp The Tile Invitational III happened to feature ScrabbleGrams racks that were designed to yield real seven-letter words, while the previous two installments of this contest used the ones that were supposed to have six-letter words. This made no difference whatsoever in the quality or quantity of entries; we had lots of both in Week 1123. Once again, the task of judging was made immeasurably easier by the sorting program devised and run by Loser Jonathan Hardis, which grouped all the entries by tile set, and also removed all the material in the e-mails that wasn’t part of an entry — a task I usually do manually every week. Almost all of the 200-odd entrants followed my direction to include the tile set at the beginning of the entry, and not to insert a line break within an entry (so it wouldn’t break apart in the middle during the sorting process). I think Jonathan or I rescued the violators (e.g., someone who used the letter set as a subhead, then followed it by three separate entries using that letter set), but if I didn’t, I’m not feeling any guilt about it. As usual, I didn’t look up the winners’ names until this past Tuesday, when I was fitting them onto the Invite page; otherwise I’d see how you’d think I was giving a five-ink thank-you note to Danielle Nowlin. And as always, it was exciting to find that a First Offender had written the winning entry; in fact, as far as I can tell, it was Ricardo Rodriguez’s first Invite entry ever. There were a number of entries coining the term “Filefry,” but Ricardo’s was the only one to play on two meanings of “bug.” Ric wins a FirStink for his first ink, along with the Inkin’ Memorial bobblehead, but he’ll have to keep entering if he wants to be a Loser. I sure hope he will. The runners-up, on the other hand, are well-known names to both Invite readers and the Style Invitational Devotees (who are not, I’ve found, entirely overlapping groups): Jeff Shirley continues his recent squatting in the Losers’ Circle, while Dion Black, who’s entered intermittently in the past couple of years, blots up Ink No. 56, and his seventh “above the fold.” And Jeff Contompasis continues his inexorable march toward becoming the next Hall of Fame member as he nears 450 ink-spatters, almost all of it in the past seven or eight years. Another well-known Loser name among this week’s ink-blotters, but it’s a different generation: Adam Beland, the young-adult younger son of Russell, of the 1,500-plus inks (and, if a recent Facebook photo is any indication, the spitting image of his father). Adam himself has 11 blots of ink, but most were joint entries with Dad. Bring it on, Adam — you might end up with one of the odd prizes that Russ donated years and years ago but I’ve never given out, like the Alexander the Great action figure. What Doug dug: Ace copy editor Doug Norwood reports that he “loved the example for the next contest, plus ‘glopess’ [Jeff Contompasis] and both ‘manlace’ definitions, but especially the tattered underwear [Jeff Shirley]. ‘Cellosy’ [also Jeff S.] was clever and ‘ratboil’ [Barry Koch] too.” The deposed Czar of the Style Invitational also weighed in this week, noting that he literally laughed out loud at “glopess,” “ratboil” and Danielle Nowlin’s “penism.” Better re-scramble those — the unprintables: Just a couple this week, and they’re not shockers: ACDILOR => Dicrol: A frankfurter bun (William Kennard) and HILSTXY=> Lixshyt: The scientific name for a fly (Bird Waring) Caption contests, continued As our Week 1126 Bob Staake contest continues, here’s a follow-up to my comments last week on The New Yorker’s contest: I noted that Gene Weingarten had interviewed TNY’s cartoon editor and contest honcho, Bob Mankoff, about duplication of entries, given that thousands of people are writing captions for a single cartoon. Here’s Gene’s latest Below the Beltway column, in which he reveals that his own entry was virtually identical to one of the three finalists. Which counted for bupkis. Sure, go ahead and enter that contest, people. But the Invite is a lot more benevolent. ====================================================================== WEEK 1128, published June 14, 2015 The Style Conversational: Give it a whirl Add to list The Empress on this week’s Style Invitational micro-drone contest and advice-poem results By Pat MyersJune 11, 2015 Jeff Brechlin used to enter The Style Invitational every single week, even when he didn’t have much of an affinity for that week’s contest — and he has the 382 blots of ink to prove it, most famously Ye Olde Hokey Pokey Sonnet , which he sometimes even gets credit for (but usually not ). But lately Jeff, who moved back to his native Minnesota after a few years in the D.C. suburbs, has dropped us a line only sporadically. But he’d recently read an article about the CICADA mini-drones shown off to the public at a recent Defense Department open house, and was inspired to suggest the contest that became Week 1128 , offering a deluge of ideas for how someone (especially an immature someone) might use them. I’ll let Jeff expand on his own ideas and enter the contest himself (suggesters are always welcome to do so), but what I think will be funniest — this is, remember, our goal — are colorful scenarios, not just the jotting of a vague idea. That’s why I gave a 75-word limit for an entry, a large one for the Invite. It certainly may be shorter, and I’ll most likely intersperse “long” and pithy entries. Masticating over the advice poems of Week 1124 Indeed, I got 21 poems about chewing with one’s mouth open that included some form of “masticate.” And while perhaps that’s a word no one should encounter more than once in a sitting, I gave ink to three of them anyway, including an uncharacteristically juvenile contribution from the World Court muckamuck Hugh Thirlway. It’s no surprise that many of the entries took a common tack; that was inevitable since the Loserbards could use one of only five themes of advice, and their poems couldn’t run longer than eight lines. But duplication of ideas isn’t a problem — on my side — for a contest like Week 1124 , because I can simply choose my favorite poem among the variations; they’re distinctive enough not to cancel one another out, as opposed to half a dozen of the same horse name or neologism definition. On the other hand, lots of inkworthy poems among the 600 or so entries were too similar to more fortunate entries to get ink among the 16 poems that will appear in the print Invite or the 11 others added to the online version . The main reason I didn’t ask for advice poems on any topic at all was that this way, I can run the contest again next year (or earlier). Suggestions welcome for new topics! (Write me at losers@washpost.com, with something in your subject line to tip me off.) The entry pool included verses in a Poetry 101’s worth of genres, tailored to the eight-line limit. There were, among others, limericks, haiku, double dactyls, cinquains, truncated sonnets (sonnetinas?) and a short version of a rondeau by Marcus Bales, who earns his FirStink for his first ink but is a prolific poet in various genres, appearing in journals and sharing poems frequently (daily?) on Facebook. Speaking of prolific poets: Yet again the Inkin’ Memorial goes to newly garlanded Loser of the Year Frank Osen, who found all too much inspiration about airplane seats on his flight back to Pasadena after visiting here for the Losers’ Flushies extravaganza (well, maybe it was just a regular vaganza). Jon Gearhart is better known in the Loser Community for his savant-like facility with anagrams — every time someone joins the Style Invitational Devotees , various Devs greet the new member by anagramming the person’s name ... and then Jon shows up with a little paragraph containg half a dozen more permutations. But Jon has gotten ink with song parodies, along with a variety of other contests, so I think it’s time to dub him a Real True Loserbard with his twist on the meaning of “parking brake” (as well as “accident’). Nan Reiner, as usual, inked up the joint with four poems, hitting the 250-blot milestone (including 34 inks “above the fold”), and Mike Gips is also no stranger to the Losers’ Circle, with 21 wins or runners-up among 194 inks. The warning to the passenger in front of you not to recline your airplane seat drew some pretty nasty threats-in-verse; while Beverley Sharp merely promised to slap the recliner’s face, several other Losers warned of nose-breaking, strangulation, skull-bashing, garroting and beheading. Honestly, people. No wonder they serve wine on every flight. (I won’t identify or quote their authors, but they’re free to post their “noinks” on the Devotees page along with everyone else.) If Ogden Nash had had no propriety ... He might have coined a “Natchez” limerick like the following one by Brendan Beary, re “Close Cover Before Striking,” along Nash’s own famous one : A naturist nympho from Natchez, Who’d always been careless with matchez – Not closing the covers – Now sickens her lovers With burn marks around where her snatchez. That’s our Scarlet Letter winner this week, for sure. Next Losers With Forks sighting: Old Town Alexandria, June 28 I should be able to make it to Chadwicks, right near the river, at noon. If the weather is nice, maybe some of us can walk around Old Town before or after. RSVP here . ====================================================================== WEEK 1129, published June 21, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1129: For once, I’ll make spelling count Add to list By Pat MyersJune 18, 2015 The Style Invitational has asked numerous times for poems featuring obscure words, or for ones on obscure topics: For the past 11 years, for example, our Limerixicon contests — which ask for a limerick featuring any word from some given sliver of the dictionary — have yielded verses that included “amplexus” (2004), “coprophiliacs” (2007) and “ecdysiast”(2009). And how about the time in 2005 when we asked for songs about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act; sea urchin sushi; or tungsten, bismuth and*or molybdemum? In fact, this week’s contest — for poems that include words used in this year’s National Spelling Bee — is almost the same as one the Empress ran in May 2007, except that the Week 716 contest offered 75 possible words; today you get to choose among a mere 50. (Fortunately, this week’s list features no words that were in Week 716; I totally forgot to check that.) Here are the top winners from the first spelling bee contest: 4. Oubliette, a dungeon with an opening only in the ceiling: With an old oubliette, one could just forget About terrorists like old Geronimo. So why must the press write of the distress At our new oubliette in Guantanamo? (the late Steve Ettinger) 3. Affliction by leeches -- hirudiniasis: Bloody disgusting, however you spin it. They trigger our deep-seated hygienic biases: But worst is that one of them’s born every minute. (Mark Eckenwiler) 2. Strigil, an ancient Roman tool to scrape dirt and sweat from the body: He comes, he sees, he takes a bath, For he is dirty. Crud he hath. He’s pulled another all-night vigil. Caesar takes his trusty strigil, Scrapes away all grimy matter, Then goes after Cleopatter. (Mae Scanlan) And the Winner of the Inker: Acariasis, a mite infestation: I’m sad to say my grandpa Zacharias is, Alas, no more. The doctor has suggested The cause of death was likely acariasis; With tiny parasites he was infested. The wee arachnids he indulged with bonhomie, For piety was one of his delights; Remembering the book of Deuteronomy, He loved the Lord his God with all his mites. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) While the Loser Community is not composed entirely of excellent spellers — almost every week, I see an entry that misspells “Barack Obama” — in general, of course, it’s a fairly literate bunch. And indeed, at least two Losers did extremely well in National Spelling Bees: 186-time Loser Mark Eckenwiler ended up in sixth place in 1974, earning the Pride of Tulsa a visit to the White House, where young Mark was photographed staring straight into Pat Nixon’s chest; and 16-time Loser Ned Andrews scored the grand prize in 1994, and later wrote a book on how to be a champion speller. Both Mark and Ned are now lawyers and presumably don’t mess up the Latin terms. Or stare directly into women’s chests. By the way, I pulled several of today’s spelling bee words from this entertaining quiz created by USA Today. So you should now get several of them right. ADVERTISING And while I didn’t prepare a list of the meanings of the 50 words, with links to the definitions, I wouldn’t be surprised if such a document appears within a few days on the Devotees page, provided by some in­cred­ibly generous Loser. Listen, it’s really worth joining Facebook (even with a pseudonym) just to join the Devotees, if you’re playing the Invite. Now that The Post’s blogging software is much more useful than it was when we formed the Dev page on Facebook, I was toying with the idea of moving the group back to washingtonpost.com. But The Post’s pages still don’t let commenters share pictures, start their own threads, and do some other things that make the Facebook page so much fun. But some Post people are working on a new project that seems perfect for the Loser Community, and I’ve already made contact with a member of the team. Editties: The winning and Losing truncated song titles of Week 1125 When I posted the Week 1125 contest four weeks ago, I fretted in the Conversational that “I don’t know how many song titles can lose their beginning and*or end to humorous effect.” That very afternoon, Chris Doyle posted on the Style Invitational Devotees page: “Have no worries!” And indeed, the entries had already started flowing in within minutes of my posting the contest, totaling some 2,400 by the end, from nearly 300 entrants. As I noted in the intro to this week’s results, there was a lot of duplication of titles, as well as of ideas. In addition to “Stairway (or [st]airway) to Heave[n],” many entries called “[B]lack Water” the new state song of California. Very few people didn’t follow the rules of the contest; a few took words out of the middle of the song, and a couple of them used the entire title. I enjoyed the variety of songs used; I didn’t link to them because it wasn’t necessary to the joke, except when the description included a short parody and you needed to know the melody. How embarrassing is it that I got to know (and like) the Bangles’ 1989 No. 1 hit “Eternal Flame” only through Jon Gearhart’s “Eternal Flam”? While lots of perennials got ink in Week 1125, the Losers’ Circle didn’t have All The Same Ol’ People, for once. Even second-place finisher Jeff Brechlin, who has 383 blots of ink (and now an even 50 above the fold), has been entering sporadically in recent years. And it’s only the 11th blot for Inkin’ Memorial winner Tom Panther Mellencamp, though it’s also his second win: Tom won an Inker, the Bobble-Linc’s predecessor, in the Week 907 “naming rights” contest, for “the Washington Redskins Defensive Line Center for Nonviolence.” Meanwhile, it’s only the second blot of ink for runner-up Ed Flynn, whose previous ink was in the Week 1097 contest to “clarify” an actual horoscope; Ed translated “A family member or loved one might wish that you would be a little more relaxed than you seem to be” to “Tell this person to **** ***.” And fourth-place Loser Josh Feldblyum, who’s been entering the Invite now and again ever since his tykedom in 2002, and following us as he’s moved from Maryland to Philadelphia to Louisville, grabs his 25th ink, and fourth above the fold. (There were quite a few unprintable song titles; I include some at the bottom of this column. If you think you might want to complain about off-color humor, please don’t read them.) Bury the hatchet (in my head) at the Loser Brunch June 28 I’ll be at Chadwicks in Old Town Alexandria, Va., at noon a week from Sunday, and Loser Nan Reiner tells me she’s coming with this prize. Have at me. As always, we’re always eager to meet new Losers (or even just Invite fans) and reconnect with the long-timers. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org (click at the top on “Our Social Engorgements”). SINGING THE BLUE[s]: Unprintable entries from Week 1129 Even the no-way stuff had duplication this week. Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come [Home]: Plea from a frustrated Mona Bailey (Neal Starkman, plus similar ones from a couple of others) Feel this Mom[ent]: An ode to MILFs. (Laurie Brink) Sweet Baby Jam[es]: A taste sensation, but what is the source of the sublime flavor? (Jeff Brechlin and several similar) Down in the Ho[le]: Least likely entry to get ink this week. (Roger Dalrymple) [D]ream On: Common, though generally unattributed, song in countless adult films. (Rob Huffman) Into the Great Wide O[pen]: Stedman’s job. (Amy Harris) [Another] Somebody Done Somebody [Wrong Song]: Parents come home early to a suspicious odor. (Jeff Brechlin, who’s just on a roll today) [Rain]drops Keep Fallin’ on My Head: Also known as “The Bukakke Song.” (who else but Tom Witte) ====================================================================== WEEK 1130, published June 28, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1130: What IS that cartoon? Take your pic. To me, a lot of the fun in cartoon captions lies with the variety (Cartoons by Bob Staake for The Washington Post; see bit.ly*invite1130 for the winning captions) By Pat MyersJune 25, 2015 We’re starting off this week’s online Style Invitational with the results rather than the new contest (they’re side by side in print): For one thing, the art at the top of the page comprises the four Bob Staake cartoons whose captions we share today. But also they’re really funny. While many of this week’s winners — especially those for Picture 1, the painter — would be funny in their own right as stand-alone captions, I always enjoy sharing several captions (sometimes a dozen per cartoon) that have widely differing interpretations for a single picture. Picture 4, especially: We have Hitler’s mustache, of course, but also Oliver Hardy’s. Not to mention a hula skirt, Satan’s bangs, tassels from pasties, and a Yorkie hanging from a towel ring. I think this makes the Invite’s caption results that much more fun to read than the big-deal caption contest from The New Yorker, whose editors post three finalists for one cartoon, and then invite readers to vote for the winner. Speaking of! This very week, 30-time Loser Kathy El-Assal is one of The New Yorker’s three finalists. You have till June 28 to vote for her caption here (remember to click “Submit” at the bottom). If she wins, she’ll join Gary Crockett and Jay Shuck in the baby pool of New Yorker-winning Losers. There was more duplication than usual in the Invite this time around (perhaps because I used only four cartoons this time, rather than the five to seven we’ve used in many of our 50 or so past caption contests). Both Picture 1 and Picture 4 drew numerous captions about selfies; and as I mentioned in the intro to the results, Wonder Woman and “the buck stops here” inspired dozens of entries among the 1,500 or so that I received. Lots also about carless drivers (I went with Ward Kay’s dig at Bing) and dozens with “the %#@*& stops here.” (It’s not a problem on the print page, but unfortunately the captions for Pictures 3 and 4 end up far from the pictures themselves online. I suggest right-clicking on the art, then selecting “Open in new tab”; then you can toggle back and forth between cartoon and caption.) Not all that often, a winning caption convinces you that Bob Staake must have had that joke in mind all along (though I guarantee he didn’t). This week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner, Jeff Shirley’s “put it in cursive,” has that rightness. Though Jeff didn’t start entering the Invite until Week 1005, he now is pushing 90 blots of ink (most scored in the past year or so), including 13 “above the fold.” And it’s his second Inkin’ Memorial; the first was from Week 1032, in which he discovered satanic messages in the aggressively wholesome comic “The Family Circus”: F is the sixth letter of the alphabet; assigning the other proper numbers gives you F+A+M+I+L+Y = 6+1+13+9+12+25 = 66! There are 6 letters in CIRCUS. So: FAMILY CIRCUS: 666! Now, look at the hidden message in the members of this “wholesome” family: GrandMa; JeffY Dolly; BARfy; Kittycat; BiLly; P.J.: Peter JOhn; GRanDdad: MY DARK LORD! Jeff Hazle was one of a half-dozen Losers who identified the serene lady in Cartoon 3 as Hillary Clinton, but his timely wordplay was the cleverest by far. Jeff has an especially high above-the-fold ratio, with 11 of his 52 blots of ink finishing in the Losers’ Circle. I do hope that Jeff doesn’t derive too much pleasure from shooting flies dead with his prize. Roger Dalrymple scores with the trick — we always have at least one example of this — of noticing some interesting detail of the picture, in this case that the lady in Picture 3 has breasts identical to her eyelids. (Actually, a few others noted this, but Roger tied them together with the idea of plastic surgery.) By the way, Roger once again will be leading his battlefield tour after the annual Gettysburg Loser Brunch (maybe I should make that “Loser Brunch of Gettysburg,” since you don’t have to be affiliated with the Confederate Army to attend). That outing is scheduled for Sunday, Aug. 16; we usually carpool up there from the D.C. area. Stay tuned for more details. And Danielle Nowlin scores yet another Loser Mug or Grossery Bag by going the pithy route with Cartoon 2, edging out many other entries joking on the pronunciation of the name on the plate. Laugh Out of Courtney: Copy chief Courtney Rukan is back from vacation and sent me a long list of faves for Week 1126: “Among the top four, Roger Dalrymple’s third-place entry made me laugh out loud. Dirty, dirty mind,” Courtney says. Courtney also singled out John Burton’s “Make a PROFIT, Muhammad” (“very clever – and ballsy”); Sylvia Betts’s “do not wipe off the numbers”; Robyn Carlson’s joke about the artist’s two missing ears (also noted by several); Andrew Hoenig’s Weiner joke; Dudley Thompson’s about Mrs. Whistler; Frank Osen’s “Wingdings font”; Mike Gips’s foulmouthed Bert of “Sesame Street”; the doubly credited “hoverbroad” for Picture 3; the Bride of the Invisible Man, by Bird Waring (and also Bird’s “Satan grows bangs”); Mark Raffman’s boob tassel and appendectomy scar; and Larry McClemons’s horeshoe*toothbrush. I can see that if Courtney had my job, she’d spend as much time as I do fretting over what should get ink. What Doug Dug: “All the winners were great,” ace copy editor Doug Norwood agrees correctly. Doug also gave shout-outs to the Bert entry and to Todd DeLap’s on Truman’s middle name; Ward Kay’s Bing zinger; and Doug Frank’s “fade-off Hitler.” There’s just one great unprintable entry this week, but it’s a doozy; see the bottom of this page only if you aren’t going to be upset by callous tastelessness. Encore! Another go at the foreign-phrase pun contest It’s almost a running joke about how reluctant I am to try a new contest that someone suggests, and in 2011 (possibly earlier) I gave the standard reasons to Loser Malcolm Fleschner for why his idea for a foreign-phrase contest wouldn’t work: It would be too obscure, everyone would use the same phrases, etc. Of course, the Week 936 contest was a huge hit. And even though Chris Doyle didn’t remember it when suggesting it recently as a new idea (given that he’s entered perhaps 800 Invite contests, I’ll give him a pass), it produced one of my favorite sets of results. If you’re entering Week 1130, do look at the results of Week 936 so you don’t send the same joke. The top winners that week: The winner of the Inker: Cogito ergo bum: Sudden realization of graduating philosophy majors. (Greg Deye, Kensington, a First Offender) 2. Altar ego: “I do, and so does she.” (Jim Reagan, Herndon, Va.) 3. Après moi le deluxe: My wife’s run off with a millionaire. (Barrie Collins, Long Sault, Ontario) 4. Bon voltage: What you wish a homeowner as the sky grows dark and the wind whips up. (Robert Schechter, Dix Hills, N.Y.) In case people didn’t know one or two of the actual foreign phrases, I embedded a link to a definition or use of each one in the online version. I’ll do that again. You don’t have to do it with your entry; in fact, please don’t embed any links within entries, because when I combine all the entries, the links turn into long strings of garbly text right in the middle of your prose. Anyway, if I can’t figure out the original from your alteration, it’s probably too wildly altered. What counts as foreign? If the expression came from another language, it’s okay, even if it’s also been an English term for a long time, like “alter ego.” So you have lots and lots to use — even the same phrases used in Week 936, if your joke is entirely different. Dine to meet you: Come to the Loser Brunch this Sunday Various Losers and I are heading for Chadwicks pub, near the river in Old Town Alexandria, for brunch at noon on Sunday. Right now, it’s a pretty intimate gathering, and so we can definitely fit in other brunchers. Here’s the pretty extensive brunch menu; the food is good. RSVP to Elden Carnahan so we’ll know how big a table to save. The Scarlet Cartoon A number of people spelled out various profanities that constituted the name in Picture 2, but the Scarlet Letter this week goes to another one for the same picture, alluding to something missing from the man’s body: “Of course this is the Thalidomide Resource Center, you twit.” Thank you, Jack McBroom. Or not. ====================================================================== WEEK 1131, published July 5, 2015 The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over the new contest and results By Pat Myers July 2, 2015 Talk about recycling: We’ve actually done a contest like Week 1131 before! Twice! Sort of. In one of the Empress’s very first contests, Week 550 (March 2004), the E asked for ideas to reuse, singly or in combination, these things “or other disposable household thingies”: Plastic milk jugs; those little rectangular bread bag closures; Washington Post plastic delivery bags; AOL sign-up CDs that come in the mail [remember those?]; coffee cans; packing peanuts; worn-out disposable razors. Week 550 is particularly dear to my heart because of one entry that wasn’t even above the fold: Worried at that early stage of my Empress-ship that I’d be called self-indulgent, I gave only an honorable mention to this work of art by Loser Kevin Mellema — an actual gallery-shown artist — incorporating every one of the materials listed. I forgot how Kevin delivered it to the newsroom, but a Post photographer put it on a Corinthian pedestal for display in the Invite (fortunately on a day we could use color). Kevin plastic milk jug for the face, a disposable razor for the nose, a sheared coffee can for the crown, plastic Post delivery bags for the hair, the middles of CDs for the eyes (this is really where Kevin’s artistic skill is evident; if I had cut those eyes, I guarantee they wouldn’t have had that compelling expression); bread clips for the earrings; and green as well as packing peanuts inside the jug to lend a interesting skin tone. I clearly robbed Kevin of an Inker, although the winner, by Anthony “Bird” Waring, was pretty cool, too: “Stand an empty coffee can on the ground. Prop two chopsticks against the can and a third one across the mouth. Glue a CD covered with duck sauce to the top chopstick. The mouse crawls up a chopstick and onto the CD for the duck sauce. The CD flips over, sending the mouse into the can, trapped by the CD on top. The world beats a path to your door.” But Kevin’s definitely had it over this runner-up from Scott Campisi, even though it contained such lovely sweat socks. And four years ago, in Week 909, we asked you to repurpose some Invite swag, among other things: the lnker, a Loser T-shirt, the Loser mug, a Loser magnet, the FirStink air “freshener,” pantyhose with a run, old National Geographics, a handful of pennies, a charger for your previous cellphone, one perfectly good shoelace, and tattered underwear. By then, obviously, I was no longer worried about being overly self-referential, and Kevin Dopart got an Inker for an arrangement featuring two of them. (I’m glad he didn’t create some tattered undwear for them.) Actually, we did a third recycling contest, but it didn’t work with a list of objects: Week 654 was in honor of Earth Day 2006 and invited recycling of anything except old Style Invitational entries. The results were topped by these four useful ideas: 4. Some people throw away their shredded financial records, and I’ve found you can make them into challenging jigsaw puzzles. Plus, once you finish them, you can sell them to this guy I know. (Russell Beland) 3. The White House could use the old Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, to reassure us about winning the war. (Yoyo Zhou) 2. Little paper circles from office hole-punchers could be tossed at newlywed bureaucrats. (Jay Shuck) And the Winner of the Inker: Use old prisons as office buildings. It’s a nice, secure environment for employees -- and they have restrooms right in their cubicles. (Dave Prevar) For Week 1131, I’m expecting written descriptions of the ideas for reusing the industrial products listed on RepurposedMaterialsInc.com, but it’s certainly fun to show a graphic, if it’s presentable enough. You can send a photo or other graphic as an attachment or as a link to a website where it can be downloaded, but do me a favor and, on the e-mail, say, “see this link,” “see attachment,” etc. That way, if I’m seeing your entry as raw text, which is what happens when I combine the entries into one big list, I’ll know to go back to your e-mail and take a look. Nutwork programming*: The results of Week 1127 *One of the few Week 1127 submissions by Mark Raffman that DIDN’T get ink. It’s no secret to Invite regulars that I watch almost no TV, myself; 26 years of working nights, combined with a reluctance to schedule time to watch recorded shows the next day, have left me totally out of the practice of sitting down on the couch and clicking the remote. Thanks to Netflix, in recent years the Royal Consort and I did fill in a bit of our TV-ignorance vacuum by working our way through “The Wire,” “Sherlock,” “The West Wing” and episodes from a few other series, but still, my knowledge of current TV tends to be secondhand. But as in most Invite contests, superficial knowledge is all you need to get the joke; when your audience is as broad as ours, thoroughly inside humor tends not to work anyway. And I this week’s results don’t require more than the most passing familiarity with the show — and sometimes not even that. Since I asked for spinoffs, not just our frequent “change the title and redefine,” I don’t think I used any entries that were totally unrelated to the content of the original show, such as “As the World Terminates: Reviews the disastrous effects of mankind on the environment.” Because it’s more fun to get a joke that hasn’t been explained to you, but also because it’s no fun not to get a joke at all, I published some of the answers in two ways: In the print version, I first name the show that Kevin’s “Pitcher, Houston Astro” is based on; online, I link to it from the title. I don’t know anything about the viewing habits of Mark Raffman (except that he watches Nationals games), but he certainly went to town in Week 1127, winning the Inkin’ Memorial, a runner-up and two honorable mentions (and there were more entries on my shortlist). Mark has amassed more than 230 blots of ink in only three years, so the corporate lawyer from suburban Virginia is clearly destined for the Invitational Hall of Fame, assuming that we’re both around for that 500th ink. Mark’s juggernaut echoes but doesn’t quite match that of Kevin Dopart, who will mark his first decade with the Invite in October. Even though Kevin’s astonishing ink-snarfing rate has settled down a bit in the past couple of years, he’ll average more than 100 blots of ink in each of those first 10 Loser years. (As we speak, Kevin on his family’s annual vacation in Greece; perhaps he’ll be bringing back some drachmas as a prize.) In much saner realms, but certainly no slouch in the Invite department, Rob Cohen gets his third above-the-fold ink and his 38th blot overall. .Laughed Out of Courtney: Copy chief Courtney Rukan says she liked all the top winners, “as well as the contest’s spirit animal, ‘The Cosby Show: SVU,’ by Bird Waring. She also enjoyed “ERR” (Jason Russo), “Crib Your Enthusiasm” (Mark Raffman), “Open Sesame” Street (Bruce Carlson), “Survivor: Gilligan’s Island” (Warren Tanabe) and Leave IT to Beaver” (Jeff Contompasis). But Rob Huffman wins my heart with the most subtle and deadpan entry of the week (“Jeopardy!” spun off to “Jeopardy.” With Stephen Wright.) It’s so subtle, in fact, that I read over it at first before the “Reservoir Dogs” voice popped into my head. Brilliant!” Next Loser Sighting: Sunday, July 19 It’s at Moose Creek Steakhouse, a.ka. the restaurant at the College Park Holiday Inn. Time TBA at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). They at least used to have a breakfast buffet, and that was pretty good. Right off the Beltway, plenty of free parking, and Ikea is right next door. Have a happy Fourth, everyone! ====================================================================== WEEK 1132, published July 12, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1132: Avocado’s Number — a parody by 4 Losers The guacamole-with-pea ‘controversy’ breeds a quickie collaborative classic By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 9, 2015 It’s an era of celebrity chefs and a food-fad culture in which restaurants try to outdo one another in weird culinary combinations, topping hamburgers with pumpkin-apple chutney or spreading beet puree on a steak. But a week ago, some of the bigger mouths on social media decided that novel food preparations should absolutely*not* extend to adding peas to guacamole. Perhaps it was the tone of the tweet that the New York Times posted July 1 with a link to its recipe: “Add green peas to your guacamole. Trust us.” Maybe people just resent being ordered around by some snotty Manhattanite. Or perhaps the tweeters were once again engaging in that sheepy junior high behavior of piling on because the Cool Kids have proclaimed some hapless target Something To Hate, like Nickelback or the word “moist.” Or maybe people really, really*are* wedded to a classic guacamole recipe and felt a need to protest any alteration to it without even trying the result. Whatever, the Twitterverse swiftly declared the recipe an utter outrage — joined in by @POTUS himself. In fact, in an astonishing show of bipartisanship, he was seconded by both @JebBush and even @TexasGOP . Of course, such an important issue could not remain unaddressed by Loserdom. Marcus Bales, an extremely prolific and clever poet who posts a new poem every day on Facebook — and who just recently got his FirStink from the Invite — posted this poem to the 950-member Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook the next day: *My Mother Said* *I’d like to cut this in a frieze and make it holy: the world is wide, and you should seize the high and lowly equally, and be at ease not being solely offended by what chalk or cheese seems trolled or trolly. Always try what’s offered, please — perhaps, though, slowly — even if they’ve put green peas in guacamole.* Marcus’s poem, which eloquently refused to jump onto the hate-it bandwagon, drew numerous “likes” from his fellow Devotees, along with the usual string of supportive wisecracks that usually follow a creative post on the page. But then the bar was raised. The same day, Barbara Sarshik — one of The Style Invitational’s ace song parodists — posted in the comments thread an anti-guac-pea verse set to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” ): *The President and I agree. We hate the brand new recipe For adding green peas into guacamole. So let us rise up with Barack Against this outrage to our guac. We’ll protest from Pomona to Paoli! Guacamole, guacamole. Guacamole, guacamole.* Then Barbara graciously added a line that must have been music to many a Loser’s ears: “Anyone can feel free to add more verses.” That evening, the amazing Nan Reiner offered up a pro-pea Verse 2 in response: *Nay, I must stand with Ms. Michelle;* *Nutrition-wise, we won’t do well* *To snack on chips and avocado solely.* *To get your kids to eat their greens,* *Each mother knows just what that means:* *You have to camouflage the flavors wholly.* *Don’t get slowly roly-poly!* *Calorie-lowly guacamole.* By the next morning, Mark Raffman — yet another parody winner and a collaborator with Nan on parodies for the Losers’ holiday parties and Flushies awards — had dipped his Tostito into the mix: *In Mexico, they all agree,* *In guac, put not one single pea;* *They’d rather get a bad case of E. coli.* *They’re furious, the hate’s intense,* *They talk of putting up a fence,* *To keep away the recipe unholy!* *Guacamole, guacamole,* *They’d control the guacamole.* Not to be outdone, Marcus Bales — the prolific poet who’d started the thread with his non-parody verse — joined the song with his objection to the traditional recipe: *Cilantro’s really awful, though — Those Mexicans, what do they know? I ask sincerely, not just merely drolly. If they can make it taste like soap, They can’t object to sweet peas — nope, Don’t put cilantro in the guacamole!* *Guacamole, guacamole...* Then the irrepressible Nan came back with another stanza — and in classic Invite fashion, it played off the political headlines: *And then along came Donald Trump (His toupee blowing in a clump) And said, “Beware of cooking Mexico-ly. There’s drugs and rape among that food! (Of course, some Mexican is good.) I’ll stick to ham and cheese with some aioli, Sipping slowly on some Stoli. Keep your lowly guacamole.”* Marcus supplied the last word on this fabulous impromptu compilation: *It seems as if it’s always best To use the democratic test To make the guacamole aproposly. The anti-pea and -cilantro crowd Are both unmovable and loud, So careful what you put in guacamole. Guacamole, guacamole. Guacamole, guacamole.* (Marcus eventually posted an all-Marcus full-length version about the whole kerfuffle. You can see it on his Facebook page .) For what it’s worth, I bet the peas are fine. On my regular lunch rotation is a “skinny guacamole” that I make by chopping up a zucchini, microwaving it till it’s soft (five or six minutes), then mashing it up with an avocado plus the usual lime juice, garlic, onion and hot sauce. It takes about 10 minutes in all to make. It has something like 75 percent fewer calories than the classic mix (and that’s not even counting sour cream) and is so tasty that I’ll eat a bowl of it with a spoon. Soldier: A bill of goods — the Week 1132 contest We’ve done so many fictoid contests by now that there’s even a page of them on Elden Carnahan’s Loser site nrars.org . (That page contains links to the*announcement* of each contest; to read the results, go to Elden’s Master Contest List and search on the week number of the contest you’re looking for; in the *right* column, the week number is a link to the week with the results. Now that Elden is newly retired from A Government Agency We Cannot Mention, perhaps he’ll add the results links to the Fictoid and other theme pages, so you don’t have to go back and forth.) Anyway, as always, the point is to spoof the trivia genre by making up something that sounds sort of like a factoid, but is (a) not true and (b) making a joke. Just (a) is not enough, people. The “military” theme is deliberately wide-ranging. It can be about wars, about military life, people, sites — I can’t see myself saying “But this isn’t the contest” unless there’s no connection at all. Our little dronies*: The results of Week 1128 **A non-inking entry from Jeff Contompasis.* Among the many genres of humor we call for in the Invite, most involve wordplay of some sort. But some are what I lump together as “jokes” — essentially standup comedy writing. That’s where I’d classify Week 1128, our contest for novel uses for one or a swarm of CICADAs, the new pocket-size(ish), low-cost stealth drones developed by the Navy. Contests calling for both creativity and writing tend to generate fewer entries than contests in which you work from a list and combine elements, move some letters around, etc., and sure enough, Week 1128 had perhaps our smallest entry pools this year, though some Losers gushed forth with full lists of suggestions for mischief with the little whirlies. For the second week in a row, this week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner was a runner-up as well (funny how this hardly ever happened back when the Czar and Empress had the entrants’ names in front of them when they were judging). Last week it was Mark Raffman with the TV spinoffs; this time it’s Lawrence McGuire, for his sixth win and 188th (and 189th) ink. Lawrence lives in the next town over from me here in Northern Southern Maryland, and I’ll be going to Waldorf anyway this Saturday, so Lawrence just might see some odd little creature placing a little box on his doorstep. Danielle Nowlin has shown her flair for comedy, as well as life-in-suburbia humor, many times in the Invite during her couple of years with us, and did it to miniature-sushi -winning effect this week, earning her Inks 166 and 167. Meanwhile, Danielle — the mom of an infant and two kidlets — shared this this morning on Facebook: “Note to self: Jokingly referring to the playpen as a ‘baby cage’ while you are setting it up will cause your older children to yell ‘ARE WE PUTTING THE BABY IN HIS CAGE WHEN WE GET HOME?’ while you are in public. #truestory” Note where fourth-place winner Mark Asquino is from! But he’s not just writing from Equatorial Guinea, a peanut of a nation nestled in that corner just below where West Africa juts out. Mark is the U.S. *ambassador* to E.G., which happens to be, per capita, the richest country in Africa, because it has oil. (Its citizens, alas, don’t tend to see the riches.) This is Mark’s 11th ink and his second “above the fold” since he started entering the Invite (now and then) since Week 900. *Laugh Out of Courtney:* Copy chief Courtney Rukan says she found Lawrence McGuire’s winner “hilarious” and added that Judy Blanchard’s “pithy brevity is lovely” in her two inking entries. Courtney also pegged Kevin Dopart’s Seder trick; Mark Raffman’s housefly substitute; Doug Frank’s Santa monitor; Warren Tanabe’s “HICKADA” on little cinder blocks; and the two last entries, Todd DeLap’s jab at the ’Skins and Ken Gallant’s smart idea about what everyone else would (and did) send in. ====================================================================== WEEK 1133, published July 19, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1133: Get your hahas out. And also your ahas. The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 16, 2015 Before I get to this week’s stuff: There’s a*Loser brunch this very weekend, * at noon this Sunday at the Moosewood Steak House, which is the restaurant in the College Park Holiday Inn, which is immediately outside the Beltway at U.S. 1, next door to Ikea. It might be a buffet. RSVP here to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website. We’ve had some fun brunches here in the past; people who live on the Maryland side of the Beltway and points north, here’s a convenient chance to do something Loserly. All are welcome, even you. -- You gotcher VIVO Style Invitational inventory this week: *Verse In, Verse Out. * In an otherwise not-so-great piece in The Atlantic this week titled “Why Do Puns Make People Groan?” — it’s pegged to the current*equivalent* of a groan, the snarky putdown on Twitter, which is now evidently the thing to tweet when someone tweets a pun — the author does cite an absolutely perfect phrase describing humor that’s more clever than laugh-out-loud funny, that prompts “Ah, I see what you did there,” rather than a gut-reaction guffaw: “They’re more about getting an ‘Aha!’ rather than a ‘Haha!’ ” That doesn’t, of course, explain why people should groan or otherwise denigrate puns. I can see why people denigrate*bad* puns, like the pathetically lame ones the author writes himself (“The reactions are the pun-der that comes after the lightning of the joke.” — gawd). Anyway, I just love the “aha*haha” line, which he pulled from, of all things, the title ofa psychology paper whose subtitle is “A Direct Comparison of Humor to Nonhumorous Insight for Determining the Neural Correlates of Mirth.” And while this week’s contest and results don’t center on puns, they do exemplify the part of Invitedom that skews more aha than haha — as opposed to, say, Your Mama jokes. Yeah, so? I*like* aha! Nothing wrong with having to respond with your head rather than your belly. It’s good to have both. And I think you’ll find lots of neural correlates of mirth inthis week’s spelling-bee-poem results , as well as these winning and Losing clerihews of Week 134, from October 1995. Wow, note all the Footnotes to History in the names below — especially figures in the O.J. Simpson case — who get ’hewed; my predecessor, the Czar, valued current-events humor as much as the Empress does. Note that the Week 134 contest does not include Week 1133’s rule (added by request to honor the tradition of the form) that the name must be at the end of the first line, to rhyme with the second line: *Fourth Runner-Up:* *Ross Perot,* jeez, His ears look like boiled pirogis. His voice is as shrill as a barking Chihuahua. It makes me want to turn on “20*20” and listen to Barbara Walters. (Joel Knanishu, Hyattsville) *Third Runner-Up*: *Socrates* Considered drinking antifreeze But decided on another poison, which he sucked up like a Greek-philosopher-Hoover, Which today, of course, we call the Hemlock Maneuver. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) *Second Runner-Up:* *Heath Shuler, *the multimillion-dollar quarterback, was a high draft pick, His greedy holdout made me sick. ThenGus’s star arose, And Megabucks is on the bench, picking splinters and his nose. (Jack Shreve, Kensington) *First Runner-Up:* Anyone who has heard the rock-and-roll singing of action star*Bruce Willis* Knows what shrill is. His whole notes howl, his half-notes warp and waver, But he’s been known to make a lovely Demi semi-quaver. (David Smith, Greenbelt) *And the winner of the Newfoundland lobster trap:* If the presidential race were to be enlivened by the candidacy of retired Gen. *Colin Powell,* He would run real hard and never throw in the towel, But what if his platform is rudely challenged as vague and overly elastic? Would Colin go spastic? (Jerry Belenker, Silver Spring) *Honorable Mentions:* Assistant District Attorney *Marcia Clark*, of variable coif, Tried her case but couldn’t pull it off. While defender Johnnie Cochran “played the card” and “talked the talk,” A silent O.J. “walked the walk.” (Joseph A. Pappano, Washington) Would I be worried if I were*Paula Barbieri* ? Very. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) *Caspar Weinberger *was Ronald Reagan’s secretary of defense. Did you ever get one of those ideas in your head that doesn’t make any sense? For example, when I see Cap on TV, I get this mental picture that I just can’t ignore, no matter what I do, I think: Dustin Hoffman at 72. (Greg Arnold, Herndon) *Christopher Columbus *thought he’d met his acid test: To find the East Indies he sailed far out into the west. “I’ve found them!” he cried at last, his confidence unshaken, He was mistaken. (William Bradford, Washington) When you’ve a name like *John F. Kennedy Jr.* The expectations could be enough to ruin ya Especially if folks expected to hear between yer Lines the voice of John F. Kennedy Sr. (David Smith, Greenbelt) It’s a shame that *Packy* got the boot. Although if he’d asked me I could have told the dumb galoot That it’s foolish enough to screw the girls and write about it in your diary, But to screw the good ol’ boys instead is sheer suiciary. (Mimi Herman, Baltimore) *Napoleon Bonaparte,* in his final St. Helena days, Was beset with cliches. Imagine some wag saying, “Face it, Nappie, you’re through” At last you’ve met your Waterloo. (William Bradford, Washington) Detective *Mark Fuhrman* Displayed sentiments which one would normally expect from a 1930s German . . . (Paul Briggs, Chestertown) Verily, the parking of*Stephanopoulos,* Doth parallel the laws of Darwin articulated after years of study in the Galapagos: When naturally selected, thou has a right to ignore the cars thou hittest, It’s survival of the fittest. (Phyllis Fung, Bruce Feiler, Andy Cowan, Washington) *Colin Powell* Is an entrant’s dream because his last name rhymes with bowel, And his first name Is a homonym for the same. (Joseph Romm, Washington) *And last:* Chuck Smith and poop Go together like sandwich and soup ... (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) --- Pretty clever*and*funny, I say. If the “aha” of poetry contest winners comes from recognizing the craft — the skill and ingenuity involved in forming a perfectly scanning sonnet or limerick or song parody — then the clerihews will provide less of that, since we say that they*don’t*scan well. So there has to be more “haha” to compensate. How to do that? Part of the fun of clerihews is that that they scan so terribly — they’re at heart a spoof of serious poems — but that joke goes only so far; the content has to be funny as well. Also, note the clever ways that the poems rhyme: While they all do rhyme, some of the rhymes come from comical stretches, like David Smith’s “John F. Kennedy Jr.”* “enough to ruin ya” and, most hilariously, Joel Knanishu’s “chihuahua”*“Barbara Walters.” It’s not a clerihew, but Ogden Nash’s breakout hit “Springtime Comes to Murray Hill” comes to mind as the epitome of spoofing lofty poetry with creative rhymes and deliberate meter-flouting. If you’ve never heard Nash read his own poetry, listen to him do this one in his full-blown Long Island Lockjaw accent: *Spring Comes to Murray Hill (1930) * I sit in an office at 244 Madison Avenue And say to myself You have a responsible job havenue? Why then do you fritter away your time on this doggerel? If you have a sore throat you can cure it by using a good goggeral, If you have a sore foot you can get it fixed by a chiropodist, And you can get your original sin removed by St. John the Bopodist, Why then should this flocculent lassitude be incurable? Kansas City, Kansas, proves that even Kansas City needn’t always be Missourible. Up up my soul! This inaction is abominable. Perhaps it is the result of disturbances abdominable. The pilgrims settled Massachusetts in 1620 when they landed on a stone hummock. Maybe if they were here now they would settle my stomach. Oh, if I only had the wings of a bird Instead of being confined on Madison Avenue I could soar in a jiffy to Second or Third. *DITSY SPELLS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1129* **A non-inking alternative headline by Brendan Beary* At least a couple hundred of us know some 50 more words than we did four weeks ago; the only ones on the Week 1129 list of spelling bee words that I’d ever used were “pyrrhuloxia” (the bird on the same page as the cardinal in the field guide) and “minhag” (what determines your choice to stand or sit during a certain prayer in the Jewish service). I’m pretty sure that every word on the list was used in some entry or other. As usual, some people didn’t follow the explicit directions in the contest — “the poems have to make sense with the words’ true meanings; you can’t just pretend they mean something else” — but most people made at least some connection with the actual definition. As in the similar Limerixicon contest (coming next month!), in which you have to write a limerick that features a word from a given sliver of the dictionary, some of the entries defined the word accurately in verse form, but didn’t make much (or any) of a joke while doing so, and so didn’t get ink. All of this week’s inking poems did, of course, topped by four Loserbards who’ve blotted up industrial-size inkwells in Invitational poetry contests over the years. I delete the ID information from the week’s entries before I judge them en masse, but I had guessed that the week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner was by Chris Doyle. Chris, of course, is the No. 1 Loser in History, with a particular specialty in highly structured poetry like double dactyls. But we have lots of good double-dactyl writers. The reason I guessed it was Chris is that the 71-year-old retired actuary* ballroom dancer* soccer player* world traveler was most likely familiar with Iggy Azalea. In previous years he’s given us parodies not just of Frank Sinatra and Patsy Cline songs, but also of Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok.” Hey, this marks Chris’s FIFTIETH win! (Second in the win department: Brendan Beary with 34.) Our Glasgow Bureau, Stephen Gold, wins the books (mercifully easy to ship) with his adorable “ ‘die’ in ‘diet’” verse using “cibarial.” Stephen began Inviting seven years ago in the Limerixicon, and has dropped by with his poems and song parodies to score 47 inks since then — nine of them “above the fold.” I would have been shocked had the brilliantly funny “Under D.C.” parody *not*been by Nan Reiner, who among our Loserbards takes particular glee in writing about local issues; before she retired, Nan was for many years a prosecutor for the D.C. government. Nice touch of Nan — who’s back in Florida tending to her ailing mother — to dress up in a lei to make her selfie video performing the “Little Mermaid” spoof for the word “hooroosh.” And then there’s the consistently delightful Melissa Balmain, whose husband is hoping like mad that people won’t think her “hippocrepiform” poem was about him. Of course it wasn’t — it was a “Dear John” letter, and Melissa’s husband is named Bill. *Laugh Out of Courtney: * The fave this week of copy chief Courtney Rukan was Nan’s parody (“I am a total sucker for Sebastian – and knocks on Metro”), followed by Chris’s I-G-G-Y. She also singled out Mae Scanlan’s terrific limerick for “collutorium” — of all our Loserbards’ poetry, Mae’s reminds me most of Ogden Nash — as well as Chris’s “tartarean* grammarian” couplet. See you next week! ====================================================================== WEEK 1134, published July 26, 2015 Style Conversational: Inside information on the word-in-word contest The Style Invitational Empress discusses the week’s new contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 23, 2015 The not totally forgotten Czar of The Style Invitational had been pestering me since May to do another “air quotes” contest. “I always loved that, because of its purity,” he recalled wistfully (he’s always wisting all over the place). “It’s like anagrams, in that you are simply using what is there.” Well, that’s not totally true, since this contest has always asked for a definition or description to go with the word-inside-word, and that’s often what won the ink. (See Jonathan Paul’s definition of “h‘airball’ ” below.) But it’s emphatically true that the four previous installments of this contest have yielded big steaming vats of great ink, and I’m confident there will be at least a few dozen blots more in Week 1134. I don’t want to repeat past jokes, of course, so if you’re going to enter, take a few minutes to read the results in the links below — not exactly a punishment, in my book. Since each week’s column begins with the announcement of the new contest, just scroll down to see the results. The links are to text files on Loser Elden Carnahan’s uber-useful Master Contest List and won’t count against The Post’s paywall, or monthly limit of free articles. *Week 336 (aka Week III), February 2000* . [After the Invitational went on hiatus in the summer of 1999, the Czar brought it back early in 2000 with a Roman-numeral system. This lasted for CLXII weeks, passing through weeks like CXLVIII, until in March 2003 the Czar regained his senses and resumed with Week 496, which was indeed the 496th contest. Elden sensibly went back and gave Arabic numbers to the Roman weeks.] *Week 405 (Week LXXII), June 2001 * *Week 826, August 2009* *Week 1031, July 2013 * For those not inclined to read over those contests, here’s a sampling of the “above the fold” winners and some honorable mentions: As always, you may send in the same word as long as your own description is a totally different joke from the one that’s already inked. **From Week 1031:* * Linke“din”: A thousand .connection requests from people you’ve never heard of. (Mike Gips) M“ale”: What’s inside a guy after a night of too much drinking; fe“male”: What’s inside a girl after a night of too much drinking. (Lela Martin) [I received a complaint about this entry, charging that I thought rape was funny.] Compe“nsa”tion: Fringe benefit entitling one to a multiweek stay at the Moscow airport. . (Yuki Henninger) B“eh”ind: An unimpressive posterior. (Denise Sudell) Au“tomato”n: She looked so hot yet turned out so cold. (Mae Scanlan) **From Week 826:* * Che“mother”apy: When I was a kid, it was cod liver oil and Vicks VapoRub. (Mike Ostapiej) AdChoices ADVERTISING Misc“once”ption: The myth that you can’t knock up your girlfriend the first time you have sex. (Lois Douthitt) Casan“ova”: A guy who leaves a trail of unwed mothers. (Tom Witte) Mi“shear”d: Wait, you said you wanted your hair to look like*Jessica *Simpson’s? (Erik Wennstrom) ‘Alas”ka: A state of regret. -- J. McCain, 16 Blocks Down Pennsylvania Avenue (Jeff Hazle; Brendan Beary) Ab“dome”n: The six-pack 20 years later. (Wayne Rodgers; Mae Scanlan) Dissem“bling”: Why would you think they’re not real diamonds? (Pam Sweeney) **From Week 405:* * M“ick” Jagger: A 60-year-old in spandex. (Russell Beland) T“rent” Lott: A politician who has not entirely sold out. (Mary Lou French; Ted Einstein) S“laughter”: Stop! You’re killing me! (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Con“nip”tion: What Secret Service agents throw if you have just one teensy-weensy little drinky-poo. — Jenna and Barbara B., Austin (Jennifer Hart) H“airball”: What you throw up when you are choking. (Jonathan Paul) Di“agnostic”ian: This doctor is just not sure what you’ve got. (Steve Fahey) Hu“bris”: The belief that one is a cut above everyone else. (Chris Doyle) [Chris has a long list of inking bris jokes.] Ca“nada”: A place where there is nothing to do. (Tom Witte) **Week 336:* * “Linger”ie: The tendency of men to spend hours lovingly perusing each page of the Victoria’s Secret catalogue. (Jennifer Hart) Ap“petite”: A ravenous desire for celery; see Bulimic. (Mary Lou French) A“bra”cada“bra”--That magical way a woman can somehow remove her underwear without removing her outer clothes. (Tom Witte) C“hick”en: Squirrel. (Will Cramer) Drug “DEA”ling: Selling coke to the nice young white guy in the suit. (Elden Carnahan) Dis“man”tling: The process by which a newly divorced woman removes all traces of her ex from her home. (T.J. Murphy) Pan“icky”: -How one feels after accidentally ingesting too much Olestra. (Meg Sullivan) Inaugu“rat”ion: The exchange of one varmint for another. (Tom Witte) ---- If there’s any particular technique that runs through those four sets of results (besides being funny), it’s that the entries tend to be especially fun when the interior word, by itself, is pronounced differently from the same letters in the larger word. That’s because of our general Delayed Gratification Rule of Humor: If it takes your brain a second longer to process a joke, that little bit of “work” increases the humor payoff. *QUEL DUMMAGE!* THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1130 * **A non-inking entry by Kevin Dopart* Speaking of running contests all over again without changing the parameters, because you know there’s just still so much out there: Lots of good stuff to choose from among the 1,700 or so puns on foreign terms that came in for Week 1130, and lots of room to run such short-form answers; all this week’s entries will appear in the print paper as well as online. All the links on the puns should lead you to definitions of the original terms; there are also a few explanations of the entries themselves, as for “In MoCo parentis,” Stephen Dudzik’s zinger at a much talked about local issue . “ ’Sup du jour” is the fourth win and the 15th ink above the fold from Bird Waring (official Loser Anagram: Grr! I Win Bad) of the New York area, who’s been getting ink since Week 455. This gives Bird — I don’t know why he’s called that — his 143rd ink in all. Stephen Dudzik is one of a very small group of Losers who’ve gotten ink in every one of the Invitational’s 23 years of existence — he started in Week 7; he’s now up to Ink 526, with 58 of them winners or runners-up. Stephen might be the only Loser to invite a group of other Losers to his wedding; I saw photos of several Losers wearing something other than silly T-shirts during Steve’s nuptials to Lequan in 2000. Nan Reiner, who’s keeping an eye on her mom in Florida, ends up in the Losers’ Circle yet again, as does Neal Starkman of our Seattle Bureau. They’ll both let me know if they’d like the Loser Mug, the Grossery Bag or a vintage Loser T-shirt. *Laugh Out of Courtney: * Copy chief Courtney Rukan wrote me to say that “all four top entries are great” — who am I to argue? She also especially liked Chris Doyle’s “Honorable Menschen (and Frauen) ” subhed, along with”singling out” about a dozen others: Liberté, égalité, maternité (Stephen Gold); Choreigami (Ben Aronin, Washington); Jindalaya. (Frank Osen); Non compost mentis (Danielle Nowlin); Persona non gratuity (Jim Stiles); Ladenfreude (Amy Harris); Rigor Morris (Jeff Contompasis); Coup de grass . (Marni Penning Coleman); La dolce feta (Sylvia Betts) Sheik semper tyrannis (John O’Byrne) Nom de fume (Pam Sweeney; Larry Neal) Pox populi (Jeff Contompasis) (“This one is particularly funny!”); Lardi Gras (Rob Huffman); Tardi Gras (John Glenn); and Tannenbomb (Emily Davis) *ANOTHER SIDE OF GETTYSBURG: LOSER BRUNCH, SUNDAY. AUG. 18* The annual after-lunch tour of the Gettysburg battlefields will change direction this week to focus more on the town — which the Losers who make the day trip never seem to have time to see. Loser Roger Dalrymple, who lives in Gettysburg and is an experience tour guide, posted this this morning on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook: “Did you know that on Aug. 16 at noon we will dine atO’Rorke’s Eatery and Spirits at 44 Steinwehr Ave., which is at the south end of Gettysburg? ... Afterwards we will be conducting our 6th (i think) bombastic tour of battle-related stuff; this time we’ll be walking through the borough and visiting the college, the train station where Lincoln arrived for the dedication of the new Soldiers Cemetery, the Wills House, etc. You can RSVP to either myself or Elden. Hope to see you here!” Do RSVP to Elden atthis page on the Loser website; though it’s still advertising last weekend’s brunch, it will be updated soon. In past years we’ve managed to carpool; ask Elden. ====================================================================== WEEK 1135, published August 2, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1135: Type A to continue ... — and what are you waiting for? Add to list On my list The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates all over this week’s new contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 30, 2015 And really, Week 1135 is a pretty straightforward contest, not requiring much elaboration from me. But my hunch is that, as with Week 1131, whose results run this week, it won’t draw as many entrants as a typical Style Invitational wordplay contest, or even a poetry contest. Contests like these call for, in addition to imagination, a flair for comedy writing, and the entry pool tends to be made up mostly of the week-in-week-out Losers — call them the season-ticket holders (but they can’t scalp their ink). This particular week, it will be a challenge to avoid — or at least deliver with great panache — the most common, overdone tropes of observational humor; I’m apt to welcome creatively funny, unique ideas of situations that ought to have some time limit, not to mention their appropriate penalty (please try to avoid graphic and*or sadistic violence). Okay, okay, let’s move on. Time’s a-wastin’. (Yet another appropriate Style Invitational motto.) *Refashionistas:* The results of Week 1131 * **One of the few entries by Kevin Dopart that DIDN’T get ink this week.* The Royal Consort, bless his heart, is constantly suggesting contest ideas to the Empress, with about the same success rate as suggesters from the Greater Loser Community (lousy). But I did like the idea of sending the Losers loose on the website of RepurposedMaterialsInc.com with nothing but their naked imaginations and a thirst for ink. Though not many more than 100 entrants reported back, many of them had fairly lengthy lists of cool plans for those rubber sheets, eight-foot tires, ski lift cable and sundry other cool things. (Also uncool things, like purple napkins.) At the Loser Brunch in Old Town Alexandria, Va., in June, the Empress used this week’s second prize as a substitute tiara. (Nan Reiner) Not surprisingly, it’s all familiar names “above the fold” this week. It’s the fourth win and 262nd ink overall for Dave Prevar, who got a single blot of ink back during the Czarist era in Week 339, but otherwise didn’t get going until the Early Empressionist. Matt Monittowon a Camaro last year on “Wheel of Fortune,” but until today he had never won a ceramic outhouse with a little ceramic embarrassed person inside. It’s also Matt’s 70th blot of Invite ink, and seventh above the fold. Mark Raffman and Ben Aronin will let me know whether they want mugs or bags, won’t they? (Also an option for these perennial bigshot Losers: one of the vintage-design Loser T-shirts donated by Loser Since Genesis Elden Carnahan.) *Laugh Out of Courtney: * Copy chief Courtney Rukan was partial to Jeff Shirley’s idea for repurposing boardwalk boards by putting them on the bedroom ceiling and thus “relive some Drifters magic.” Jeff’s entry didn’t spell out the name of the song in question (I link to it in the entry), and I wonder if that made it a bit more fun for Courtney, who does concede that “any old doo-wop references always make me smile.” *Awwww, Bob .... * If you’re one of the 5,000 “friends” of Bob Staake on Facebook , you know that he’ll often share some fascinating insights or various works in progress — his many children’s books, rearrangements to his studio, his technique of creating art with an ancient version of Photoshop. But despite the occasional awwwish shared photo of a tyke reading “The Red Lemon” or “Bluebird,” Bob doesn’t tend to get all sentimental — especially when it comes to his longest-running work relationship, not to mention the lady he tends not to exactly suck up to . So I was just moved to pieces — and reminded how lucky we are to have Bob every week — when I walked out of the gym yesterday evening, checked my phone, and read this Facebook post (I’ve hyphened out the profanities per Post rules): “For 22 [21] years now — rain or come shine ... sickness or health -- from FedEx to fax machine to email -- I have done a WEEKLY illustration for a newspaper called The Washington Post. Ben Bradlee used to illustrate all these articles, but then he started losing it. That’s where I came in -- with badass art director Michael Drew, then with Gene Weingarten, and then with my current editor, the lovely and tiny Pat Myers (I know, because next to 6’3”, DAMN that girl comes off as tiny). Happily, I could retire from drawing stupid cartoons years ago and concentrate on my children’s books — while continuing to draw stupid s[---] for just TWO clients: MAD magazine and The Washington Post. (NOT a good sign, right?) And THAT’s what I’m doing tonight; reading Pat’s manuscript for The Style Invitational; coming up with an idea, getting approval of a sketch — and then going to finish. For a kid who never went to an art class post-high school and instead majored in print journalism and international relations, this bizarre weekly gig has ALWAYS kept me on my journalistic toes. The day will come when I post a portfolio of 26 years’ worth of Staake WaPo art ... but i thank you, Mike, and Pat -- and KNOW that this sort of effusive bulls[---] makes Gene Weingarten run to the hills. I’m right behind you, a-h[---]!” So I got kind of goopy this morning to see this week’s cartoon come in right on time (as always), and know that Bob was moved to make those comments even though I’d rejected his first draft entirely (as less than always). *Please keep in your thoughts ... * ** Two of our most renowned and beloved Losers, Mae Scanlan and Beverley Sharp , both sent me e-mails in the past couple of days, both with their usual cheery, witty, upbeat tone. And with this tone Mae somehow let me know that she would be having surgery today for pancreatic cancer (“I’m feeling okay with this – I just want to get the operation over with, and get home so I can watch Donald Trump behave outrageously at the Aug. 6 debate”). And Beverley slipped in the news that a relapse of her breast cancer had been diagnosed, that she’d had surgery two weeks ago, and that she’d be going through a year of aggressive treatment (“I’m telling you this so that if I have to cut back on my entries, you won’t think it’s lack of interest!”). I hope that Mae’s daughter Mary Pershing will have a moment to give us updates; write to me at pat.myers@washpost.com if you’d like Mae’s address so you can send a card. Meanwhile, Beverley has been given the okay to go on a family beach trip before the treatments start, and even to take a long-arranged trip to Southeast Asia in October with husband Dick Amberg. So why do I think that both Mae’s and Beverley’s entries will continue to bump out yours, just as they have been through this very week? *While I don’t normally endorse political candiates ...* I may have to make an exception in the Virginia Senate race. If anyone in the Richmond area would like to procure a campaign sign, button, etc.., for this candidate , I would so give that away as a prize. *We got our auto- repaired! Just about!* One of the more embarrassing aspects of being Empress is having to admit that The Post’s newsroom e-mail system can’t be counted on to send an auto-reply when you send your entries to the losers@washpost.com “dropbox.” So for the past several months, most of the “auto-replies” you get are actually sent by me (which is why they sometimes arrive hours later). But this past Tuesday, the Real Auto-Reply kicked back in, and has been working since — except when it hasn’t. The IT folks are continuing to work on it. Meanwhile, I’ll try to keep an eye out for entries that weren’t auto-replied to (I can search the Sent Items list) and reply to those manually. If you haven’t heard anything in 24 hours, please feel free to ask me to check that it’s arrived. Handy tip on how to know if you got the Real Auto-Reply or the Empress’s Fake Auto-Reply: The real on will say “Auto reply” in the subject line; the E’s will say just “Re:.” *Remember the assault on Gettysburg! * The annual Loser lunch* day trip to Gettysburg will be on Sunday, Aug. 16 — and this time the tour will take in some spots in the historic town itself, not just the battlefields. See Loser Roger Dalrymple’s pitch in last week’s Conversational, near the bottom of the column here . *You’ll just have to build a plastic hockey rink or something* There won’t be a new contest next weekend: Four weeks from then, the Empress will be in Italy, marrying off her kid, and has learned from at least two experiences that it just doesn’t work to try to produce that week’s Invite from some hotel room with sketchy Wi-Fi and a big time zone difference. There will be a column, though, with something that can be produced ahead of time — either some great entries that weren’t published before, or some greatest hits. I’ll take suggestions over the next day or two. ====================================================================== WEEK 1136, published August 16, 2015 Style Conversational: You’ll have to wait 5 weeks for one of these guys. But you can help plan the Week 1139 Style Invitational contest. If you’ve won an Inkin’ Memorial but never an Inker, you might want one of these regifted guys if you win again. (I’ll send a new headbag for you to glue together.) (Pat Myers*The Washington Post) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 6, 2015 Because I’m going to be in Italy from Aug. 30 to Sept. 8, I need to have the Sept. 6 (online Sept. 3, I hope) Style Invitational done in advance, so that someone just has to click on “Publish.” (The last two times I was on vacation the day the Invite was supposed to post — in California in June 2013 and in England in April 2014 — this did not exactly work. But this time, copy chief*Invite fan Courtney Rukan is going to have my back.) Anyway, this means I have to have a new contest totally prepared before I leave (preferably a week before that), and because there won’t be a full set of results that week (since there’s no new contest this week ), I’ll have room to put up a contest that takes some space to describe. And ta-da! Loser Bruce Carlson wrote to me just the other day to suggest that we rerun one of the Invite’s most unusual contests, dating back to 2000, in honor of the upcoming 64th birthday of the Czar. It was called When We’re LXIV, because there were 64 possible challenges you could take up. This is what the original (Week 348, aka Week XV) put forth: **Formats:* 1. Write a short poem about . . . 2. Write an analogy or metaphor related to . . . 3. Design a slogan or aphorism involving . . . 4. Write a funny sentence beginning with “Did you ever wonder why . . .” with respect to . . .* **Subjects:* A. An undergarment B. NAFTA and its relationship to pending minimum-wage legislation C. A household appliance D. A 19th-century event* **Limitations:* (i) that is written in the style of a famous author. (ii) that contains an unfortunate factual error. (iii) that would absolutely enrage Marisleysis Gonzalez. (iv) that employs a clever double-entendre.* *This Week’s Contest was suggested by Russ Beland of Springfield. It is really 64 contests in one, because there are 64 ways to win. You have to fashion an entry by selecting one from each menu group above. For example, the following takes the path 1-C-(iv): Toast should be made like lovin’* Not half-baked, but aroused, I find* So I use no toaster oven* I prefer the pop-up kind. Make sure you indicate the path you took.* -------- I think it’s a great idea to do this contest again, but of course we would want all new subjects, some new limitations, and perhaps a new format or two. So how about if I choose among Losers’ suggestions? You won’t know until the contest is published which ones I choose, so you can’t get a head start before Sept. 3. I’ve already postedthis invitation in the Facebook group Style Invitational Devotees , and you could also suggest elements right here in the comments thread of the Conversational — after all, that was what the Conversational was created for; what happened was that back then in 2009, The Post’s technology and formats were terrible, and we finally resorted to the Facebook group for interacting (Facebook is still better , but not by as wide a margin). Or you could e-mail me your suggestions at pat.myers@washpost.com. I’ll credit you in some way, but probably not connecting you to your specific suggestion. (Unless a bunch of people suggested the same thing you did.) AdChoices ADVERTISING Footnote: The Czar’s 64th birthday, for all those interested in paying homage (I know there always are because people keep asking me), occurs around the time the results of this contest would run. Even more of a footnote: Marisleysis Gonzalez is Elian’s cousin who served as his mother figure during his stay in Miami. The top winners (there weren’t many overall) of the first contest: *Second Runner-Up:**(A short poem about an undergarment, in the style of a famous author, Allen Ginsberg)* I saw the best buns of my generation clad in bikini-cut briefs. High-hanging models gaunt-cheeked staring from bulimiaed pages of Victoria’s Secret, whose readers intoned impossible pantyhosannas. Who flipped through hip images juxtaposed in slick IPO capitalist layouts, flipping through a dark satin underworld S*M*L*XL, flipping backward and forward mumbling incantations of papercut delirium, a doomed hollow-eyed joyride endlessly seeking out London and France. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park, Md.) *First Runner-Up*:* **(An analogy related to a household appliance that contains an unfortunate factual error)* The vacuum cleaner is the FBI agent of appliances. Its job is to track down, suck up and bag the dirt of society. Then, just like its inventor, J. Edgar Hoover, it spends its off-duty time in the closet. (Susan Reese, Arlington, Va.) *And the winner of the buck grunt call:** **(A short poem about NAFTA and its relationship to pending minimum- wage legislation in the style of Dr. Seuss, that also contains an analogy, an aphorism and a sentence beginning with “Did you ever wonder why,” as well as references to an undergarment, a household appliance and a 19th-century event, while committing an unfortunate factual error, executing a clever double-entendre and including a statement that would absolutely enrage Marisleysis Gonzalez)* Did you ever wonder why The lowest wage is not so high? It’s the fault of Uncle Sam. Am I angry, Sam? I am! It started very long ago With a man named James Monroe Who made us one with other lands --With peons and their outstretched hands. James began the paycheck-steal. An act of Congress nailed the deal. And sired the monster that is NAFTA. (Can’t you hear the Mexicans’ lafta?) And now that the populace panics and panics We bring in bureaucrat budget mechanics! The boys in the press give this barely a mention As one Cuban brat distracts their attention. And now our poor wages NAFTA will gnaw, Which just goes to prove that clever old saw: “Government’s like a bad laundry machine: It goes round and round, yet our undies ain’t clean.” (Mike Elliott, Oberlin, Ohio) Mike Elliott, alas, was last heard from in Week 594, barely into the Empress’s reign, escaping with a mere 13 blots of ink — but two were first prizes and one was a second. Armed Farces*: The results of Week 1132 **A non-inking entry by Stephen Dudzik and I think several others.* I’ve pretty much learned not to panic while judging, and indeed I think this week’s results turned out fine. But Lordy, there was so much lousy stuff (I know not by whom, since I name-check only the good stuff): really lame wordplay, sexist and xenophobic “humor,” and a number of old-saw jokes that people must have remembered from their Army days. But we did end up, as virtually always, with a muster-passing parade of inking entries. It might not be fun to judge a contest in which 95 percent of the entries rot, but as long as the remaining 5 percent can fill the page, the stinkitude of the 95 is entirely irrelevant. In fact, I’m game for a few more fictoid categories, if anyone wants to work up some examples. Meanwhile, today’s victory parade is headed up by someone with a distinct military connection: The helpmeet of Yet Again a Winner Danielle Nowlin is the genialLt. Ryan Nowlin , assistant director of the U.S. Marine Band. I don’t think, though, that had too much to do with her Inkin’ Memorial- (or Inker?-) winning entry, a zingy dig at Congress. Danielle’s entry was so well done that my Copy Editor Reflex didn’t even kick in to note that “Congressional Medal of Honor” isn’t the official name; it’s just “Medal of Honor.” But even I am not so pedantic that I’d knock it off the pedestal for that. Runners-up Nan Reiner and Chris Doyle have hung out in the Losers’ Circle too many times to mention, but wow, what a week for Larry McClemons of suburban Virginia, who really took to this contest: Besides his runner-up entry, he also blotted up three honorable mentions — more than doubling his previous ink total. However, it’s already the second “above the fold” ink for Larry since he started Inviting this year: His first was his debut ink, a runner-up in another fictoid contest. It was this edgy one for fake sports trivia: “After their tragic experience with Lou Gehrig, the New York Yankees passed on a chance to sign Brian Alzheimer.” Another cool McClemons factoid: Larry’s new total of seven inks still places him three shy of his son Steve’s. Nothing like a burning familial rivalry. *Laugh Out of Courtney: * Copy chief Courtney Rukan, a Northern Virginia resident, was partial to Nan Reiner’s first runner-up about Gen. McClellan’s ill-advised plan to get out of D.C. in that direction on a Friday evening. Also, as Courtney points out, “McClellan surely would have selected the wrong time and the wrong route:” Speaking of military history: Let’s go to Gettysburg on Aug. 16 It looks as if the Royal Consort and I can join the Losers’ annual trip to Gettysburg, Pa., about an hour and a half north of Washington. We’ve gone at least twice before, but this time, Loser*Tour Guide Roger Dalrymple is adding some stops in the town itself along with some battlefield edification — and of course a hearty lunch, this time atO’Rorke’s Eatery , where the field trip starts at noon. It would be great to be able to carpool; contact Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ “Our Social Engorgements” page to RSVP and to say whether you need or can offer a ride. Dress is ultra-casual; T-shirts bearing Confederate flags are not advised. ====================================================================== WEEK 1138, published August 30, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1138: The zung remains the same Bill Gates, screen star, in 1995; NBC’s Robert Wright is at left, announcing that new joint venture MSNBC. (Marty Lederhandler*AP) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 27, 2015 Hi, everyone. This is the last you’ll hear from me for at least two weeks and maybe three: Royal Scion No. 1 will be doing the nuptial thing overseas, so I’ll be gone all next week and won’t get back until late on Sept. 8. That means I’ll already be a day past deadline for that week’s Style Invitational (the Week 1136 limerick results, which I’ll judge during the trip), and once I get that out of the way, I’ll probably then finally open my suitcase and get some sleep (yes, I am a cat). But I’m hoping desperately confident that the Invites for both weeks will go up as usual on the next two Thursday afternoons. (Ink-earners will have to be more patient than usual to get their little strips of slightly warped metal.) This week’s contest, Week 1138, is one that, until now, evaded my approximately 600 previous jaunts through the Invitational archives as I looked for successful, timeless contests to repeat. Perhaps it’s because it’s awfully wide-ranging; essentially the challenge is just to say something clever about anyone. And of course, clever observations and epigrams about specific people have found their way into virtually every previous Invite contest. But the Invitational *had* been going strong for close to five years when the Czar posted Week 240, and he didn’t seem to have any problem finding good results. See for yourself. (I’ve added links to a few people and events that haven’t been in the headlines too much since the 1990s.) (After going back and forth, I’ve decided that it’s better to give the subject’s name first, before the zinger, rather than how the 1997 results were presented; the first runner-up below, I think, especially suffered from the format. If a certain joke would work significantly better if the name is listed last, I won’t insist on consistency.) *Report from Week 240, in which you were asked to write elegant insults of famous people.* *Fourth Runner-Up:*He has something John D. Rockefeller and Howard Hughes never had — the ability to be the richest man in the world and boring at the same time. (Russ Beland, Springfield, on Bill Gates) *Third Runner-Up:* Guys like them put the “goober” in gubernatorial. (Sandra Hull, Arlington, on Fife Symington and Jim Guy Tucker ) *Second Runner-Up:* His strong suit appears to be a polyester blend. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon, on Bill Gates) *First Runner-Up:* He doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia, on Woody Allen’s comment that he wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have him as a member.) *And the Winner of the plastic Popeil doughnut maker:* His influence doesn’t spread, it metastasizes. (Phil Frankenfeld, Washington, on Rush Limbaugh) *Honorable Mentions:* He is statuesque. (Jerry Pannullo, Kensington, on Al Gore) The camera used to love her. Now she’s suing for alienation of affection. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge, on Elizabeth Taylor) He displays all the insouciance of a mortician doing the macarena. (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y., on Al Gore) She makes up for being fat by being mean. (Jeffrey Fenster, Bethesda, on Roseanne) He never met a blond, blue-eyed, non-Jewish, non-Catholic, non-handicapped heterosexual German he didn’t like. (Suzanne Fregly, Fort Washington, on Adolf Hitler) (Um, sure he did.) She is an entertainment legend who needs no introduction, but who will insist. (David Genser, Arlington, on Diana Ross) He is Howard Stern without the subtlety. (David Genser, Arlington, on the Greaseman ) I am so glad we have her to tell us what is good literature. Now I don’t have to depend on Reader’s Digest anymore. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park, on Oprah Winfrey) Oh, the perennial search for self! (Patrice Kyger, Free Union, Va., on O.J. Simpson’s quest to find the real killer) And he didn’t even have to grow up! (Bob Dalton, Beaumont, Tex., on Bill Clinton’s growing up to be president) The depth of his character was perfectly captured by Mobius. (Bob Dalton, Beaumont, Tex., on Prince Charles) As empty asCapone’s vault . (Bob Dalton, Beaumont, Tex., on Geraldo Rivera) How unfortunate that he did not have the opportunity to make Mother Teresa’s funeral as entertaining. (Bob Dalton, Beaumont, Tex., on Elton John) The ears have been unkind to him. (Paul J. Crystal, Arlington, onRoss Perot ) Pants down, he has been the greatest president of the late 1990s. (Russ Horner, Arlington, on Bill Clinton) How comforting it is to know that each of us, in his deepest, darkest hour of trial, can call for help by speaking a single name. Travolta. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville, on John Travolta) As an actor, he towers over Herve Villechaize . (Elden Carnahan, Laurel, on Steve Guttenberg) He is such a magician, only he could turn two gold-digging bimbos into cultural icons. (Chuck Snowdon, Arlington, on Donald Trump) He still rocks, but mostly in his chair. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg, on Keith Richards) History will record his mastery of two kinds of timing: good and two. (Philip Vitale, Arlington, on Bill Clinton) He is an inspiration for us all to consider early retirement. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon, on Mick Jagger) ----------- Snide one-liners about famous people are one reason that Twitter Inc. is valued at more than $11 billion. You won’t exactly be the only people out there coming up with zingers about Miley Cyrus or Josh Duggar. Please commune with your favorite search engine. (By “one-liners,” I’m not restricting entries strictly to single sentences. But they should have a certain snappy energy; don’t write a paragraph.) *Ahem, we do not have all day here? * *Okay, okay, here’s a very little about Week 1135. * Here’s one we won’t be repeating. We ended up with some funny ideas for time limits amid a slew of unfunny ones, many of those mining lodes of irked-person humor that have pretty much been strip-mined and then fracked for good measure. As I noted above about Week 1138, I was fine with departing from the standard format for the sake of humor, as for Mark Raffman’s entries about the impatient mother-to-be and formerly corporeal person. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial — but a highly impressive third blot “above the fold” out of only 10 inks in all — for Larry Carnahan of the Virginia suburbs. Larry is not, as I’d assumed, related to Uberloser Elden Carnahan, of the 544 blots of ink, the Losers website, the Loser brunches, the Flushies, etc. Larry’s runners-up: Week 1091: Good idea: Use power tools to keep your car functioning properly. Bad idea: Use power tools to keep your ear functioning properly. And for the Week 987 “Mess With Our Heads” bank-head contest: Head: Rookie Morris gives ground game just what it needs Bank: New Redskins chef makes perfectly seasoned squirrelburgers The runners-up this week are Mike Gips, Mark Raffman and Frank Osen. If you’ve read this far, you’ve read their names too many times to count. Oops, I hit my time limit. See you in September. ====================================================================== WEEK 1140, published September 13, 2015 ‘Style’ is a great name for something with style, but a bad name for ... Style Conversational Week 1140: The Empress ruminates all over this week’s Invitational By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 10, 2015 When Future Hall of Famer if He Doesn’t Screw Up Jeff Contompasis suggested we redo the good-name*bad-name contest, I answered, “You think we can just do it one more time, unmodified?” That was because I had it in my tattered little mind that we’d done this contest several times. But no — I just loved the Week 547 results so much, back in 2004, that I felt that they must be a recurring bit of Invitana. So I was thrilled that I could bring back this contest 11 years later for Week 1140 , without fear of running out of material — after all, the pool of product names (and really, just about any other proper noun) is virtually infinite, and of course lots of them didn’t exist back in 2004. Still, you do want to avoid the jokes from the Week 547 results, even the ones grouped in the introduction as too frequent. (You can still use some of the*names*as long as your joke is substantially different.) *Report from Week 547, * in which we asked for things that an existing brand name would be bad for: The Empress received 462 e-mails [wow!!! that is a LOT] for this contest, many of which contained dozens of entries each [there was no 25-entry limit back then], and almost all of which contained an entry suggesting that Microsoft would be a bad name for an erectile-dysfunction drug. Other entries too common to reward: Cheerios for a funeral home, Next Day Blinds for a laser eye surgery center, and Redskins for a football team. The category of laxatives really got you going, so to speak; the litany of bad names included Outback, Grey Poupon, Jiffy Lube, Chunky, Pump & Spray, Big Brownie Blast, Quicken and, but of course, IBM. *Fourth runner-up:* Rolling Rock is a good name for a beer but a bad name for an insurance company. (Jim Lyons, Arlington) *Third runner-up:* The Chrysler Building is a good name for a skyscraper but a bad name for an SUV. (John Conti, Norfolk, Mass.) *Second runner-up:* Antabuse is a good name for an alcoholism drug but a bad name for a magnifying glass. (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) *First runner-up, the winner of the cuddly stuffed Athlete’s Foot and Ulcer toys:* Wachovia is a good name for a bank but a bad name for a cemetery. (Michael Cisneros, Centreville) *And the winner of the Inker:*Virgin Airways is okay as a name for an airline but not for a cigarette. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Honorable Mentions: BP is a good name for a gas company but a bad name for a honey company. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Renuzit is a good name for a room deodorizer but a bad name for an acne treatment. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) Nine Inch Nails is a good name for a rock group but a bad name for a proctology clinic. (J. F. Martin, Naples, Fla.) Hi-C is a good name for a fruit drink but a bad name for a tutoring service. (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) Open Pit is a good name for a barbecue sauce but a bad name for a toilet bowl cleaner. (Ann Martin, Annapolis) [her first ink; we didn’t start noting that for several more years] Wawa is a good name for a convenience store but a bad name for an antidepressant. (Dave Komornik, Danville, Va.) Iran is a good name for an Islamic republic but a bad name for an infantry platoon. (Ted Einstein, Silver Spring) Newman’s Own is a good name for Paul Newman’s brand of condiments, but it would not be a good name for his brand of condoms. (Russell Beland) IHOP is a good name for a pancake shop but a bad name for a prosthetics company. (Larry Blue, Potomac; Tom Matthews, Fairfax Station; Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls) Ashburn is a good name for a town but a bad name for hemorrhoid ointment. (Karen Tierney, Ashburn) 3-in-One is a good name for a household oil but a bad name for a religion. (Mike Genz, La Plata) Domino’s is a good name for a pizza place but a bad name for a construction company. (Tiffany Getz, Manassas; Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) Nordic Track is a good name for exercise equipment but a bad name for an affirmative action program. (Larry Phillips, Falls Church; Russell Beland) Target is a good name for a retail store in America but a bad name for a retail store in Iraq. (Jeff Martin, Gaithersburg) Chick-fil-A is a good name for a fast-food outlet but not for O.J. Simpson’s next business venture. (Tom Witte) The Tinder Box is a good name for a tobacco shop but a bad name for an apartment building. (Dean Evangelista, Silver Spring) Twinkies, HoHos and Ding Dongs are all good names for snack cakes, but not for WNBA teams. (Blythe Marshall, Annandale, and Russell Beland [her stepfather]) Taco Bell is a good name for a Mexican restaurant but a bad name for a Mexican phone company. (Dave Ferry, Purvis, Miss.; Dudley Thompson, Raleigh, N.C.) Snickers is a good name for a candy bar but a bad name for a support group. (Briana Payne, Annapolis) First Impressions is a good name for a dating service but not a bungee jumping center. (Russell Beland) Ayds used to be a good name for a diet candy . . . (Paul Styrene, Olney) Kaboom is a good name for a stain remover but a bad name for a high-fiber cereal. (Kelly Wilson, Milwaukee) The Library of Congress is probably too subtle to be a good name for an adult bookstore. (Russell Beland) First Union is a good name for a bank but a bad name for a Boy Scout camp. (Michael Fribush, Burtonsville) Rent-A-Wreck is a good name for a used-car rental company but a bad name for an escort service. (Marleen May, Rockville) Boeing is a good name for an airplane company but not for a mattress company. (Peter Metrinko, Plymouth, Minn.) The Foot Locker is a good name for a sports shoe store but a bad name for quick-drying cement. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) Wanamaker is a good name for a department store but a bad name for a dating service. (Susan Thompson, Raleigh, N.C.) Excalibur is a good name for a security company but a bad name for a tampon. (Jeff Brechlin) Just Do It is a good slogan for Nike but a bad slogan for a suicide relief center. (Jeff Keenan, Severn) Miracle Whip is a good name for a salad dressing, a bad name for Mel Gibson to use formovie tie-in toy merchandising. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon; Elden Carnahan) Ram Cargo Van is a good name for a vehicle but a bad name for a driving school. (Jeff Brechlin) The Swimsuit Issue might be a good name for a week of Sports Illustrated, but it probably won’t work for Hustler. (Russell Beland) Air France is a good name for an airline but a bad name for a deodorant. (Danny Bravman, Potomac) Sizzler is a good name for a steakhouse but a bad name for a rectal thermometer. (Roy Ashley, Washington) Stove Top Stuffing is a good name for stuffing that you cook on the stove, but not for a book on how to get the romance back in your marriage. (Russell Beland) Kleenex may be a good name for a tissue, but it’s an excellent name for a divorce law firm. (Paul Kondis, Alexandria) --- I expect to be making LOTS of Style Invitational Ink of the Day posters four weeks from now. *WE’RE UP TO THE JEEZ: THE GA- LIMERICKS OF WEEK 1136* Judging limericks isn’t really too bad a thing to do while on vacation (my son got married in Italy, forcing me to spend eight days on sun-soaked beaches, visiting historic treasures, ingesting untold thousands of calories a day — none of which, I assure you, came from Kraft boxes). My 129-page printout of some 1,000 five-liners, along with an AC outlet between the airplane seats, let me pass the time in the plane when I wasn’t going to be able to sleep anyway (as well as when the Wi-fi decided not to work in our hotel room). The “ga-” parameters allowed for plenty of words and names, including some that were new to me, including “gamboge” (a yellow resin used as a pigment) and “gamahuche” (oral sex). The Style Invitational: So educational we ought to get federal funding. Alas, as in every limerick contest, lots of people didn’t check out (or get the message of)“Get Your ’Rick Rolling,” the Invite’s guide; or the many helpful resources at OEDILF.com , the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, the inspiration for and, I hope, the beneficiary of each year’s Limerixicon. And so there were numerous examples of Not a Rhyme and Not in Limerick Meter. I never checked who wrote any of the following Not a Rhymes: Keillor*failure*sailor; superfluous*garrulous*frivolous; strolling*gamboling; gastronomy*colostomy; bully*sully; gamy*grainy; Gaga*Prima; Butchie*Gucci; gadflies*applies; fantastic*gastric; gambler*yammerer; covet*none of it; Brobdingnagian*galleon; patronize*galvanize. But they did move the judging process along. (If you don’t get why the previous are Not a Rhymes: It’s the last ACCENTED syllables of the two words that need to rhyme; and any unaccented syllables after them have to be identical. So gas-TRON-omy doesn’t rhyme with col-OST-omy, because TRON doesn’t rhyme with OST. su-PER-fluous doesn’t rhyme with GAR-rulous. GAD-flies doesn’t rhyme with ap-PLIES.) The Not a Rhymes shouldn’t be confused with limericks in which a word is pronounced differently in different locales — usually because of different vowel sounds, and sometimes in accents. For example, as a native Philadelphian, I don’t rhyme “pollen” with “befallen”; I say “PAH-lin” and “be-FAW-lin.” But certainly many people do, especially in the South. And I had no problem picking up Kirk Miller’s nifty “a pollen” pun. And, as in every limerick contest, there were many entries that didn’t have (or convey to a first-time reader) the “hickory-dickory-dock* dickory-dock” rhythm that is essential to a limerick. Sometimes, the writer clearly didn’t know the rules: “Elmer Fudd, a hunter of dubious repute* Desired to shoot a long-eared galoot.” “I could only take to gawking* When I saw you out there walking.” “There once was a gambler* Who was an avid rambler.” But more often, a Bad Meter happened because the writer heard the correct rhythm in his own head, because he was accenting the words in his line differently from how a reader would. This is why I beg and beg y’all to have someone else read the limerick out loud, so you can see if the person comes up with the hickory-dickory-dock. This writer didn’t do this with these opening lines: “When music’s what I want to hear* With no MP3 player near.” If he’d asked a friend, the person would surely have read: “When MU-sic’s WHAT i WANT to HEAR.” The writer, however, was thinking: “When MU-sic’s what*I* want to HEAR...” (And no, you can’t just put the “I” in italics, unless the emphasis is relevant to the text of the poem.) Sometimes a line*might* be read in limerick meter, but not necessarily. Take this Line 3: “He must think we’re stupid.” You*could* read it “He MUST think we’re STUpid,” but you could easily (and probably) say “HE must THINK we’re STUpid.” The best solution in cases like this is to use a phrase that will be accented only one way, like: “He knows that we’re stupid”; since you’ll never accent “THAT,” the reader intuitively will emphasize “KNOWS.” I’ve found that the master limerick writers are especially good at finding words whose accents are unambiguous. (Also, you have a little more leeway in Lines 4 and 5, because the reader has already read previous lines in the same rhythm and is more apt to shift the accents himself.) Another thing I really value in limericks is natural syntax: light verse shouldn’t be a chore to read. It’s a great skill to write limericks whose word order is just as you’d talk in conversation (unless weird syntax is part of the joke, of course). I think today’s inking entries all have excellent syntax. Not so much for, say, “Definitions do not constant stay* From their meanings words oft go astray.” Almost never going astray — Invite-quality-wise — are this week’s top winners, all of them hugely successful in the Invite, with great sloshes of ink among them, including limerick and other verse contests. One thing, though: Among them, only first runner-up Robert Schechter was an experienced light-verse poet before starting to enter the Invitational; he found us after hearing about us from the poetry group Eratosphere (and then, bless his heart, recruiting such future Invite stars as Frank Osen, Brian Allgar and Melissa Balmain). Kevin Dopart, Craig Dykstra and Nan Reiner are just very smart, very funny people who took up the challenge of expressing their wit in yet one more form — and mastered it. Meanwhile, we welcome several First Offenders this week, including what might be our first Loser from Belgium. They’ll be getting their FirStink for their first ink, and I hope to follow it up soon with a real prize for their next loss (or even an Inkin’ Memorial win). So what was that limerick with the new-to-me word “gamahuche”? It was a very good one by the clearly British Bob Turvey, who charmingly rhymes “Clinton” and “intern” I would like to define “gamahuche”: It’s a sort of quite intimate touch. When President Clinton Did it with an intern; He said it was not sex “as such.” (I’d have replaced “DID it” with “ca-ROUSED.) Happy New Year to all — catch you in 5776! Oh, by the way: I could judge limericks on vacation, but I couldn’t mail people their prizes. Please bear with me as you await your swag from Week 1135 , in which you were asked to be impatient. Those who got ink in the second go-round of the Week 1133 clerihew contest should have their magnets* FirStinks now or shortly; if you got ink both times, you don’t get squat for Part 2. ====================================================================== WEEK 1141, published September 20, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1141: The principles of banking, Loser-style By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 17, 2015 Yay, my favorite contest! But even I experienced some momentary apprehension about running one more Mess With Our Heads contest, in which we ask you to misinterpret (or wryly comment on) a Post story or ad by writing a bank head, or subtitle. It’s not because we’ve done it too many times (by my count, Week 1141 is the 12th iteration, not counting a few variations); there are always headlines to choose from that are unlike previous ones. It’s more that bank heads themselves — as well as the “headlinese” that this contest often spoofs — may be starting to become an archaic form. Online stories rarely have bank heads, and both main heads and banks are less likely to be written in the word-stingy elliptical style that drops articles (e.g., “the”) and forms of “to be” so that the head can fit in a narrow column or two on the page. These days, even in the print paper, a headline reads more like an actual sentence. Or two. Nah, not to worry. For easy-to-misinterpret elliptical heads, we have only to go to The Post’s home page, which is full of tight head orders (though not bank heads). Just this morning, the lead headline was “Carly Fiorina subdued in victory lap after debate performance.” Bank head crying out to be written? “Envious Trump socks exuberant rival with toupee.” Actually, the ambiguity in that headline doesn’t even rely on the missing “is”; it’s because “subdued” can be a verb or an adjective. The evolution in headlines has caused us to redefine, over the years, what we’re going to count as a headline. I used to say it had to have text under it; after all, it’s a “head.” But it would be a shame to disqualify all those home page headlines or blurbs or refers or whatever they’re called these days. We’ll continue also to allow any heading that has text below: the “jump head” on a print story that continues to another page; a real bank head (they do exist online for those who’ve learned to click on the Special Hidden Methode Button; see this column and the Invite); a headline on a stand-alone picture, but not the caption to the picture. Also, as we have usually (but not always) done, you’re allowed you to use just part of a headline — but not to take just a little snippet, or to take that part out of context from the original head. In my sloppily scribbled-on graphic above, I circled some headlines and parts of headlines that would be okay to use for Week 1141. Then I attempted to put a wide, skinny X over part of it. And on the left, I put an X over part of one: The headline says, “Trump suggested vaccines cause autism. And no one stopped him.” While you may use “Trump suggested vaccines cause autism” (I can’t imagine how), you*don’t* get to use “Trump suggested vaccines.” Some headlines and partial heads that would qualify for Week 1141. The fragment with the sloppy X says “Trump suggested vaccines”; we don’t want you to pull snippets out of context. (Screen shot with scribbling by The Empress) The Invite’s first bank head contest was Week 391 (March 2001), and was suggested by Loser Greg Arnold. That was during the Czarist era, but it was during a three-month stretch during which the Czar was on leave and the Invite was being put out by the “Uberczar” (aka the Czar’s friend Tom Shroder, who was then heading the Post Magazine), who was responsible for the contests and chose the final winners; and by the “Auxiliary Czar” (yours truly), who read the entries and chose which ones would ink, then let the Uberczar select the final winners. The top winners of the 2001 contest, as usual often alluding to then-current events: Fourth runner-up: *Let’s Enroll Our Kids in Shooting Classes* *Frustrated, Michael Jordan Looks to the Future*(Charlie Myers, Laurel) [Jordan was at that time an executive for the Wizards, the beleaguered local NBA team] Third runner-up: *Police Warn D.C. Judge of ‘Hex’* *‘It’s Okay,’ Assures Judge, ‘I Shop at Sax’* (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) [Hecht’s was a Washington department store; Hecht stores are now Macy’s.] Second runner-up:*Croat Hard-Liners Seek Separation in Bosnia* *Cite Career Conflicts, Deny Scientology a Factor in Split* (Ben F. Noviello, Fairfax) [An allusion to the Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman marriage woes] First runner-up: *Buy One, Get One Free* *Latest Pardon Revelation Startles Even Die-Hard Clinton Supporters *(Ervin Stembol, Alexandria) [President Clinton, on his last day of office, offered pardons to 450 convicted criminals, including fraudster Marc Rich, whose wife had made big donations to Clinton’s campaign] And the winner of the festive Economic Report of the President coffee mug:* The Buck Goes There* New Patrons Don’t Know Tipping Etiquette, Exotic Dancers Complain (Sarah W. Gaymon, Gambrills) [Some things need no historical knowledge.] *How do I know you didn’t make up the headline you’re using?* For print headlines, please include the date and page number. For online heads — just make sure you’re copying them correctly; I’ll check them by just searching on the text in The Post’s records or through Google. Still, there has to be an element of the honor system, since some headlines just don’t stick around the Web for weeks on end. *Capitalization:* The Post’s headlines used to be “upstyle,” with major words capitalized, as in a book or movie title. Now they’re “downstyle,” which does remove some opportunities for ambiguity. If the headline is about “peace accords,” you can’t pretend that “accords” are a brand of car. On the other hand, a word that*is* capitalized in a headline — remember, you can use ads -- still tends to work as a joke to mean a common noun: “25% off Jockey” still works with “Pudgy rider makes weight as amputee,” as Pam Sweeney wrote in 2006. *TITLED PUERILITY: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1137* Week 1137 was basically a single joke: Use another meaning of a dirty-sounding expression to refer to something boringly wholesome. How much you’ll laugh at this week’s winners depends on how much of one joke you like to read. I thinkthis week’s results are pretty funny, but I also think you’d have more fun reading 28 of these entries than reading 1,200 of them. That said, the Loser Community did come up with a number of creative takes on the nah-it’s-not-really-dirty-after-all humor. While this week’s three runners-up all have long-term leases on plots in the Losers’ Circle, it’s only the eighth blot of ink — and the first “above the fold” — for Amy Harris of Charlottesville, Va. Amy has been in Loserdom only a few months, though, and I’m expecting lots more from her. One of her neologisms: “Ladenfreude: The collective American cheer when we learned that the Navy SEALs got their man.” Not surprisingly, when we ask for spicy titles, some are going to be *too* spicy — even when they’re jokingly presented as totally wholesome. It reminds me of theresults of Week 1090, in which we asked for poems that used — correctly — words that sounded dirty but weren’t, like “aholehole” and “cockchafer.” The editors ended up pulling most of the poems out of the print paper. This time, I was asked to cut this one by Rob Huffman: “Rim Jobs: The Evolving Workplace of the Grand Canyon Perimeter.” Given that they let me keep “The Joy of Doggy Style” (Frank Mann), “Young, Hot and Wet” (Jon Gearhart) and Frank Osen’s “MILF” joke, I wasn’t going to fight it. But at that point I realized that I shouldn’t run, even online: “Become a Master at Fingering and Tonguing: Etudes for Clarinet, Vol. 6” (Hugh Thirlway) or “A Guide to Digital Intercourse” (previously titled “The White Pages”) from Danielle Nowlin. *EAT HARD ALEE: LOSER BRUNCH THIS SUNDAY AT HEAVY SEAS ALEHOUSE* Loser Brunch No. 180 (!!!) is at a new venue, the Heavy Seas Alehouse in Arlington, just a short walk from the Rosslyn Metro station. I won’t be able to make it this month, but I know that a number of regulars will be there at noon. Remember, all attendees get a genuine Czarist-era Style Invitational bumper sticker, the honorable-mention prize that preceded our Loser Magnets. ====================================================================== WEEK 1142, published September 27, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1142: The mash game The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates all over this week’s contest By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 24, 2015 The challenge in this week’s Style Invitational, Week 1142 — to write a Twitter post from a fanciful hybrid of two people — is a new one, for sure. But it’s the scion of a long line of Invite portmanteau*mashup contests, and they’ve almost always been great successes. Today, a look back at some classic mashes from the Invite’s first decade. The first Invitational I could find that called explicitly for combinations of names was Week 54 (1994), “in which we asked you to come up with*“comical names resulting from marriage or other collaborations.” * The contest allowed for company names as well as human ones, as well as chains of several names, but most were about two people. Among the winners (complete list here ; scroll down past the Week 57 contest announcement): *If the daughter of mimeograph magnate A.B. Dick married the son of designer Edith Head, she would probably keep her maiden name. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge; also,Paul Styrene, Olney) If Queen Latifah married Michael Farraday, she’d be Queen Farraday. (Annie, Ben, Sandy and David Tevelin, Burke) If Mama Cass had married John Donne, divorced him and married Alexander Ptolemy, we’d get Mama Donne Ptolemy. (Al Hattal, Potomac)* Here’s one asking for*combinations of two products*, à la the spork(Week 265, 1998, one of the first Invites published online) : *Fourth Runner-Up -- The Slipscoop: A combination bedroom slipper and pooper scooper. No need to stop and bend over; simply slipscoop it up and place-kick it over the neighbor’s fence. Three points! (Sunny C. Doman, Falls Church)** **Third Runner up -- Rogocaine: A cross between Rogaine and cocaine. It grows nose hair. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)** **Second Runner up -- Gromit: Combination syrup of ipecac and tile grout. Makes triumph out of tragedy when you don’t quite make it to the toilet bowl. (Russ Beland, Springfield)** **First Runner-Up -- The F’c’w’le’ha: A combination forecastle (fo’c’s’le), gunwale (gunnel) and halfpenny (ha’p’n’y) I have no idea what it is, I just get a kick out of the idea that no one knows how to pronounce it. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)** And the winner of the Chinese Propaganda Record -- AK-486: A combination of an AK-47 and the RU-486 “morning after” pill. This assault weapon has an automatic-delay firing pin, permitting disgruntled postal workers to rethink their rage. (T.J. Murphy, Arlington)* Week 287 was the*“before and after” game *as on “Wheel of Fortune” and the occasional “Jeopardy” category. This one featured numerous portmanteau names. : *Sixth Runner-Up: Lloyd Bridges of Madison County: A rootless photojournalist and a bored housewife have an underwater knife fight. (Ralph Scott, Washington)* *Fifth Runner-Up: Rembrandt Van Rijn Tin Tin-The night watchdog. (Meg Sullivan, Potomac)* *Fourth Runner-Up: Heimlichtenstein: A small country firmly lodged between Austria and Switzerland. (Sandra Hull, Arlington)* *Third Runner-Up: Darryl F. Zanuck nyuk nyuk-A slapstick filmmaker. (Sue Lin Chong, Washington)* *Second Runner-Up: Roseanne Boleyn: Queen who kept talking after being beheaded. (David Genser, Arlington)* *First Runner-Up: Anais Nintendo Gameboy: The pocket toy you really don’t want to give your kids. (Greg and Kristine Griswold, Falls Church)* *And the winner of the snake wine: Thomas Jefferson Clinton: President who penned the famous introductory lines: “We hold these half-truths to be legally accurate ... “ (Douglas Riley, Reston)* Week 312 asked readers to *combine two works of literature*: *First Runner-Up: “Green Eggs and Hamlet”: Would you kill him in his bed?* Thrust a dagger through his head?* I would not, could not, kill the King.* I could not do that evil thing.* I would not wed this girl, you see.* Now get her to a nunnery. (Robin Parry, Arlington)** And the Winner of the Dancing Critter: “Fahrenheit 451 of the Vanities”: An ‘80s yuppie is denied books. He does not object, or even notice. (Mike Long, Burke)* Week 376 followed up with *TV mashups:** First Runner-Up: “Everybody Loves All My Children”--Sitcom**featuring typical suburban soccer mom. (Chris Shreves, Oak Hill)** And the winner of the Cuban constitution and Chilean handbooks:* *“L.A.P.D. Victory Garden”--Cops show how to plant evidence.* *(Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)* Week 476 was the first of several contests for *portmanteau words;* the two words had to overlap by at least two letters: *Fourth Runner-Up: Estrogeniality: The attribute that compels women to go to the restroom in pairs. (Joy Vizi, Sterling)** Third Runner-Up: Euphemistress: One’s “niece.” (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.)** Second Runner-Up: Nazionist: One truly mixed-up SOB. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)** First Runner-Up: Mulligangster: A hit man who is afforded a second shot when his first is not successful. (Mike Genz, La Plata)** And the winner of the human head replica: Rhinoplasterisk: Indicates that a person’s appearance on a “Most Beautiful” list may have been surgically assisted.**(Meg Sullivan, Potomac)* Week 489, *more name combinations*: *Third Runner-Up: Mr. T.S. Eliot: “I pity the fool, wanderin’ around half-deserted streets, walkin’ on beaches, talkin’ ‘bout peaches, mournin’ his lost manhood. I pity the fool.” (Dan Steinberg, Bethesda) And the winner of the sugar-cookie-scented Eggbutt Horseball: Al Frankenstein’s Monster: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, gosh darn it, I’m a big fat idiot.” (Beverly Miller, Clarendon)* Etc. Note that portmanteaux work best when it’s clear what both components are: If you have to explain it, the rest of the joke had better be wildly clever and funny to compensate. How to check most easily whether your tweet fits? Go on twitter.com and type in the “Tweet” box; the too-long part of the tweet will show up in red. (Well, yes, you would have to have a Twitter account for that, but it can be anonymous; just go to twitter.com*signup to create an account, or a second account if you use a different e-mail address.) . *GIBE TALKIN’:* THE INKIN’ INSULTS OF WEEK 1138* *Non-inking headline suggestion from Chris Doyle, who, yes, has at least most of his entries tossed*every single week* I started off the results of Week 1138 with a glib disclaimer because I*know* that some of these have been uttered*typed*otherwise put forth by someone at some time. In fact, some of them showed up in somewhat similar form on Google. But in those cases that I noticed, the citations were few, not widespread or well known, and*or years old. If you have encountered them before, well, good for you. Do your best to maintain your smug grin for the rest of the day. I would highly, highly doubt that any of the inking entries were consciously stolen. (Though whoever sent me “his emotions ran the gamut from A to B,” the ghost of Dorothy Parker Herself is flattered. Fun fact: Parker’s 1934 comment about Katharine Hepburn’s stage-acting ability didn’t appear in Parker’s review; she’s only said to have spoken it during intermission,) Regular readers of this column and the Devotees page know that 284-time Loser Mae Scanlan has had a rough year, with an unending series of nasty health problems that have had her hopping (best she could) from home to hospital to rehab center to home to rehab to hospital to home — and that’s not a piece of cake for someone whose younger elementary school classmate was John McCain. But through it — and I mean virtually every week — Mae has managed to send in some Invite entries, and sometimes all 25, even when she had to dictate them to her daughter. And they’ve been really good — Mae has gotten regular ink this whole time, especially for the light verse for which she’s renowned, as in this poem using the spelling bee word “vespiary,” a wasp nest: *Persons should be very wary Getting near a vespiary. Do not denigrate the wasp: It can put you in the hosp.* But while Mae is clever as all get-out, she has a sort of handicap when it comes to The Style Invitational: She’s not nasty in the slightest, and she “doesn’t work blue”; in fact, she’s told me that she does the “pastor test” on her entries: If she thinks she’d be embarrassed showing up in church on a Sunday when she’s gotten ink, she won’t send in the entry. But this week’s winner shows how you can get close to 300 Invite inks even without being crass or vicious. And I was just tickled to find out on Tuesday who wrote it. (Here’s the page from a printout of Week 1138 entries with the winner at the bottom. Really, I’m not seeing your names!) I’m not surprised that Mae doesn’t think much of Donald Trump (I personally know only a very few people who do), but I’d forgotten that just a few weeks back, she got ink with this clerihew: *The only way Donald Trump Could be less of a chump Is if he (the whole package: body! shirts! belts!) Were somebody elts.* David Garratt’s second-place quip appealed to the copy editor in me; I only wish I were able to emphasize his semicolon-making-all-the-difference; I just can’t do that sort of textplay in this publishing system. I think that’s what I’ll do graphically in a future Style Invitational Ink of the Day . *Laugh Out of Courtney:* The fave list this week from copy chief Courtney Rukan was topped by Frank Osen’s barb that the most enthusiastic greeting Obama’s gotten lately was from a salmon. Courtney also tagged The Gulf of Mexico just called Bobby Jindal and told him it’s running out of sharks to jump (Phil Frankenfeld) ; that Chris Christie “can fill an arena” (Warren Tanabe): that Trump’s favorite part of the Bible was Chapter 11 (Kevin Dopart); that when Chuck Talks, people listen — to George Stephanopoulos (Doug Frank); and that Kim Davis was not so much Joan of Arc as George Wallace — only not as cute (Duncan Stevens). *A BERRA BOOBOO — AND THE INVITE’S TAKE* In its haste to get out the news about the death of Yogi Berra last night, the Associated Press sent off a wire with the headline “New York Yankees Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Bear has died. He was 90.” Several publications put it right up on their websites. Including, at 2:40 a.m., The Washington Post. Meanwhile, this week the Ink of the Day will feature entries from our Week 271 “Berra-ism” contest (1998). You do need a Facebook account to see it. Unless you follow me on Twitter — hey, there’s a reason right there to set up the account. I’m at @patmyersTWP . ====================================================================== WEEK 1143, published October 4, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1143: Our mug runneth over with parodies Add to list On my list Virginia state Senate candidate Carl Loser (rhymes with "poser") with his new Loser Mug. When he thanked me and sent this photo, I immediately asked how I could get his shirt. (Courtesy of Carl Loser) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 1, 2015 Maybe he was just not in the mood to think too hard; maybe he was angling for a present for his birthday tomorrow. In any case, when I sent the Deposed Czar of The Style Invitational my list of proposed Ask Backwards categories for Week 1143 , he did not, as is his custom, suggest replacing, oh, about 15 of them with 15 of his own. Instead he said, “I have nothing to add except maybe testicle instead of clavicle?” Okay, then he sent me a few more e-mails suggesting more revisions. But still, I’ll take it as validation. And I guess I’ll take the poor schmo out to lunch tomorrow. (I would also take out Chris Doyle, who contributed “Poutine on the Ritz,” “L’Oreal and Hardy” and “19 Ids and Counting,” but I’m not going to Ponder, Tex.) The Czar’s own first set of Ask Backwards categories, from Week 24 (August 1993): *Janet Reno’s shoes * Herbert Haft’s hair * To get to the other side * Lorena Bobbitt or Hermann Goering ***Socks * Don’t ask, don’t tell * Michael Jackson’s face * The inventor of the urinary catheter * It’s the economy, stupid * Heidi Fleiss’s notebook * Just Do It * Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Madonna * Tax and spend * Because he didn’t inhale * Ooo-bop-a-loo-bop-a-loo-bop-boom * Marion Barry, Vaclav Havel and that guy in the Taster’s Choice ad* And the top winners (yes, we had more runners-up back then, usually: the 1990s were not a budget-conscious time for big fat daily newspapers): Sixth Runner-Up: Answer: Socks . Question: Who has also been neutered at the White House? (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Fifth Runner-Up: A. To get to the other side. Q. Why did the chicken enter Dan Quayle’s ear? (Mark A. Hagenau, Bowie) Fourth Runner-Up: A. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Madonna. Q: Name two women whose IQ plus bust size equals 180. (Debby Prigal, Washington) Third Runner-Up: A.Herbert Haft’s hair . Q: What is the only element in the Haft family currently not parted? (Mary Lee Fox Roe, Mount Kisco, N.Y.) Second Runner-Up: A. Socks. Q. What do the Clintons hide when hungry Arkansas relatives show up at the White House? (Audrey Kovalak, Springfield) First Runner-Up: A. Lorena Bobbitt or Mahatma Gandhi. Q. Who are two people whose spouse had a big red dot somewhere on their body? (Joey Zarrow, Herndon) And the winner of the fuzzy moose bedroom slippers plus tickets to a Bowie Baysox game: A. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Madonna. Q. What do you get when you combine Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Madonna? (Jacob Weinstein, Washington) I didn’t have to give a link to remind people who Lorena Bobbitt was, right? The Great Bobbitt Bobbing had taken place in Manassas, Va., in the D.C. area, just a couple of months before this contest. But Lorena and her soon-to-be-ex, John, have continued to provide Invitational fodder ever since. One of my favorite entries ever doesn’t seem to exist online: In 2001 I judged a contest (as Auxiliary Czar) in which people chose a single panel from a Sunday comic strip and write new text for it. Tom Witte chose a panel from the family comic “For Better or for Worse,” in which the wife, Ellie, and husband John are eating dinner; Ellie is holding up a piece of sausage on her fork. In that stunned expression she often had, Ellie says: “I don’t know what it is, but I found it by the side of the road in Manassas.” *Once again, as I note in the directions:* I usually judge this contest by searching through the entries for all the questions for the first answer, selecting the ones I like for a short­list; then going to the second answer, etc. This helps me see duplications and compare similar ideas. But I very well could miss your entry if my search doesn’t land on it. So if you’re writing 10 different entries for, say, “19 Ids and Counting,” and I search for “counting,” I might miss Entries 2 through 10 if you don’t include the word “counting” before them. This is why God invented the copy*paste shortcuts of ctrl-c* ctrl=v. *THE ’RUMP ROAST CONTINUES: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1139 * The novelty of the Week 1139 contest was that there were 64 possible combinations, long form, short form, jokes, poems, songs, politics, shoes. But it was inevitable that most of the space in the results would be hogged by song parodies — both because of their length and because there are*always* terrific entries. And just as inevitably, there will be excellent parodies that don’t get ink: They’re too similar to another parody, or they’re just one too many — we just can’t expect readers to get to the end of a 30-song list, especially because appreciating a parody really requires that you sing along with it (even if in your head), however long that takes; you can’t just eyeball it as you scan the page. Dave Silberstein’s “Everyone’s Drawn to the Loon” didn’t fail to get ink because it wasn’t good; it’s just that it wasn’t as good as the songs that did run. I was going to run just one verse, but the limitation Dave chose was to include all 26 letters of the alphabet, and they weren’t all in one verse. Here’s the first verse (with areally lovely melody , if you don’t know it): Rattles off nonsense designed to inflame, Crowds full of anger, eager to blame. Polls steadily rising since declaring in June -- Everyone’s drawn to the loon. Once again, my choices for the print page favored songs that I hoped the most readers would know, since even the cleverest parodies aren’t much fun to read if you don’t know the tune. Besides Mark Raffman’s winner and Nan Reiner’s and Frank Osen’s runners-up, the parodies appearing in the “fishwrap edition” (as Elden Carnahan refers to it) are Jon Gearhart’s on “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and Mae Scanlan’s on “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” — even though Mae’s two other inking entries are even better, especially the one on “Young at Heart.” *Speaking of Young at Heart: * Mae herself is certainly young at heart — and mind — when it comes to her humor and writing. But her corporeal, 84-year-old pumper has given her all sorts of hassles since the beginning of 2015, And just for the fun of taking on an even bigger challenge, Mae wrote these parodies — and several others! — between bouts of chemo for a misbeheaving pancreas. May the power of mirth and wit brighten her days as hers brightens ours. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that it was Mark Raffman who’d written this week’s Inkin’ Memorial-winning parody: not just because it was both flawlessly written and so freakin’ funny — “They do rapes! They do crimes! They drink beer with sliced-up limes!” — but because*he won’t stop using “Be Our Guest.”* First there was Week 1029, in 2013, and the contest was for song parodies that described particular movies, and Mark chose “Porky’s” : “See a chest! See a chest!* Tops are coming off with zest!* We’re awaiting an R-rating* When we show another breast!” That won Mark his third Inkin’ Memorial. And then, this past April, Mark had President Obama singing about Binyamin Netanyahu: (“He’s a pest! He’s a pest! With our atom talks he’s messed!”), and that was a runner-up. And now he racks up Bobble-Linc No. 10 (!!!), once again with the backing of composer Alan Menken and (unheard but important for the wit of the parody) Howard Ashman. *A LOSER SINCE THE DAY HE WAS BORN* Two weeks ago we gave away a first-runner-up prize (oh, yeah, that was to Mark Raffman, too) of a “Loser for Liberty” tote bag, courtesy of the Virginia state Senate campaign of Carl F. Loser of the Richmond area, who is perhaps the only current Libertarian candidate to have his owncampaign rap song . Richmonder Jeff Shirley procured a bag and sent it to me, and I e-mailed the Loser campaign to ask how Mr. Loser pronounced his name. The candidate got back to me himself, explaining that while it actually rhymes with “poser,” he doesn’t correct people who pronounce it our way “because I find that they remember the name better.” At first I didn’t explain why I was interested in the Loser campaign and paraphernalia, but I felt guilty and wrote back to fess up. And I told him I’d send him a Loser mug or T-shirt if he’d pose with it and send me a picture. To my great relief, Carl has a great sense of humor and was delighted with his swag. When he sent me the photo above, I immediately wrote back to ask, “How do I get one of your shirts?” I haven’t heard back. Meanwhile, while Mr. Loser lags slightly behind his District 10 Democratic opponent in fundraising, $679,000 to $4,648, we hold out hope that he’ll be able to continue pronouncing his name his own way come November. *COMING SOON: MEET THE PARENTHESES* While the monthly brunches, annual Flushies awards and holiday parties are among the niftiest aspects of the Loser Community, we’re a worldwide operation and so some of you are just never gonna meet these people in person. But who is this Doyle guy who keeps importing vats of ink to Ponder, Texas? Where did they get this (Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.) with all the songs and the silly-prize donations? Starting, I hope, next week, I’ll be instituting a Style Conversational section called “Meet the Parentheses,” in which one or two veteran Losers will introduce themselves in short-answer format. To start off, let’s feature people who are among the top 20 Losers this year in Elden Carnahan’s standings at nrars.org. You guys, please e-mail me responses to these questions. You can answer either straightforwardly or smart-alecky, but if you’re smart-alecky it has to be funny, not tiresome. You are funny people! You can do this. Name, age: Where you live: Your official loser anagram plus a couple of alternatives if you know some: What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? (This is where you can put stuff about your background, occupation, family or whatever you’d like to say. It doesn’t have to be monosyllabic but don’t write a whole page. Let’s say about 100 words.) How much ink do you have; how long have you been playing? What brought you to Loserdom? What are two favorite entries you’d like to share? What’s an example of something you do (or an anecdote about something you’ve done) that confirms your Loserosity? (Another opportunity to be funny and creative.) Also, please send as an attachment a photo of at least 500Kb resolution. Don’t worry, I won’t plaster it across the top of the page unless it’s truly marvelous; a regular photo will go midway down the left side of the page, at a decorous size. If there’s some information you really don’t want people to know, such as your age, prior convictions, etc., no biggie. I was going to start with Ye Olde Chris Doyle, but Chris does make the case that I’ve written about him many times already, as when he scored his 1,500th blot of ink (he’s now up to 1,718). So: the rest of you Top 20s. Send them to pat.myers@washpost.com. ====================================================================== WEEK 1144, published October 11, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1144: Turn bad into good without any effort! By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 8, 2015 As soon as I realized that we hadn’t ever repeated the classic Week 547 contest, I had no worries at all about doing it again 11 years later in Week 1140 — except that I might get too many great entries. Well, that did happen — my “shortlist,” culled from some 2,000 entries for a bad use for a brand name, ran nine pages (out of 168 for the total). But this week’s results are short-form enough that I could share 30 of them on the print page and 40 online, and many are still making me laugh out loud after repeated readings. It’s pretty obvious what made the funniest entries: ones that used a different meaning of a word, or a literal rather than figurative one, to become inappropriate in another context. And, as is true so often, it’s the moment or two that the reader spends to figure out that new context that makes the joke so rewarding and memorable. In almost all the inking entries this week, it was that make-you-think quality that set them apart from, say, Gain or Hefty as a name for a diet plan. And why using a joke-named product, like Arrogant Bastard or Smuttynose beer, isn’t as funny as a plain ol’ regular name. Definitely requiring a moment of puzzling — I hope not too many moments — is this week’s winner, that Facebook would be a bad name for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. (This was also the favorite of my predecessor, The Czar.) It’s the fourth win, but the first Inkin’ Memorial, for Drew Bennett, who won most of his 124 blots of ink in the 2000s and has tailed off in the past few years, wasting his time on such hobbies as being chancellor of Missouri State University-West Plains, getting married, etc. I’m glad to see that in recent weeks, Drew has been properly adjusting his priorities. Currently No. 16 in the Style Invitational standings, anagram whiz (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines) is Victim No. 1 in our new Convo feature “Meet the Parentheses.” See below. ( Courtesy of Jon Gearhart* ) Our SoCal Loser Bureau grabbed second and third place this week, with yet another “above the fold” ink for Frank Osen and a welcome return from Jane Auerbach, who made a big Invite splash in the mid-2000s — and even flew out to Washington from Los Angeles to meet the Losers at the Flushies awards — but hasn’t Invited much recently. Now that Jane has upped her ink total to 97 blots, I’m hoping she’ll go all out to reach the 100-ink mark and get that commemorative roll of toilet paper at next year’s awards. And it was a spectacular week for fourth-placer Kristin Rahman, who got three inks today (and several more of her entries made the shortlist). Many of this week’s inking entries went for Ye Olde Sex and Toilette Humour, and it should surprise none of you that many of those many went too far. A string of examples — along with some jaw-dropping tastelessness in other subjects as well, appears at the bottom of this column. (If you don’t like jaw-dropping tastelessness, you will not look down there to read it and then complain about the JD tastelessness.) Sometimes entrants helpfully explain their jokes to me — and it really is helpful, since it lets me more quickly conclude, “Oh, so I*wasn’t* missing anything funny.” If people can’t get your joke without a long explanation, it’s almost always the kiss of death right there. But this Nerdo Entry of the Week, from inveterate (but not invertebrate) biologist Mike Creveling, is so goofily erudite that I had to laugh: “Erysipelas* makes a good name for a painful, blistering, red bacterial rash, but a bad name for a sports team. [*Greek: from erythros (“red”) + pella (“skin”)].” It reminded me of the funnier winners in our 2002 contest “Asterisky Business,” which asked for jokes so esoteric that they had to be explained with an asterisked footnote. *Meet the Parentheses! * **This Week:*(Jon Gearhart, Des Moines) * We’re beginning this regular (or semi- so) Conversational feature — in the labor-saving form of a little questionnaire — with a Loser who’s become an Invite fixture, even though he didn’t get his first ink until 2014. That was an honorable mention in an anagram contest, Week 1051 (“If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it” anagrams to “A flunky like you? You’re one cheap pathetic liar”). Very nice, but nothing compared with what followed a few days later: I got an e-mail from Jon containing both the full text of the letter I’d sent accompanying his prize --- and a letter in response *that was entirely an anagram of my letter, using every character.* Just look at ithere! *Your official Loser anagram plus any others you know: * The official one on the Loser Stats list is Jargon Hater, but you could also go with The Organ Jar and my personal favorite, Earth Jargon. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? * Two score and four years ago my parents perpetrated a great travesty on mankind--me. I grew up in the small town of Brooklyn, Iowa, in the shadow of five older siblings. Their incessant teasing and warbling made me both a smartass and a music lover. I learned to play guitar by ear, which was hard on my lobes but not as hard as it was on everybody else’s. After college, I had a big change. A car accident left me paralyzed from the chest down. Good thing I do my best work from the neck up or I’d be bitter. I came to realize the inconvenience of walking had been holding me back from learning patience, understanding and humility, but then I met the Style Invitational Devotees and realized how humiliating humility can be. Now it’s my middle name. (Click here to read Jon’s account of his car accident) *What brought you to Loserdom?* Fellow Loser Kirk Miller knew I enjoyed anagrams and wordplay and suggested I check out the contest in Week 1051, so you can blame him for my first entry. The fact that the Empress honored my debut with ink and invited me to join the Devotees group on Facebook means she deserves the ultimate blame. *What are two favorite entries you’d like to share? * I can’t imagine trying to pick favorites, but as Pat asked nicely, I’ll go with this haiku from Week 1090, a contest for humorous poems incorporating one of the obscure words listed, “clatterfart,” a busybody.: *Expressed through its tale, The clatterfart’s breath takes flight On gossiper wings.:* And more recently, from the contest to make boring books more marketable with spicy titles (Week 1137): *CATHOLIC SCHOOL HOOKERS! *Home Ec Projects Vol. 2: Crochet a Prayer Shawl *What’s an example of something you do that confirms your Loserosity? * Every day I try to come up with at least two entries for the current contest while staring at my Loser magnet collage on the front of my file cabinet. Who’d like to be the next Meetee? If you’re one of the Top 20 Losers in the current standings , e-mail me and answer the questions Jon did, or add or substitute a couple of your own. Also, please attach a photo of 500KB or better. The current queue: 1 person. *ALE, COLUMBIA: THE NEXT LOSER BRUNCH, OCT. 18* Especially if I get a ride, I should be able to come to the next Loser brunch, at noon on Sunday, Oct. 18, at the Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia, about halfway between D.C. and Baltimore. RSVP to Elden Carnahan here . Elden and his henchmen try to stage the brunches all around the area; see the plan for the full year at the RSVP page, which you can also reach through the Our Social Engorgements link on the Loser website at NRARS.org . *BAD NAME, BAD TASTE, EVERYTHING YOU’D WANT IN AN UNPRINTABLE ENTRY * *The following entries from Week 1140 range from a wee bit short of usable (under Style Invitational standards) to a full ARE YOU @#*&%^ ME. If you might be offended by tasteless humor, please don’t read the rest of this page.* Hacky Sack is a good name for a footbag but a bad name for a vasectomy clinic. (Jon Gearhart; Jeff Contompasis) Busch Gardens is a good name for an amusement park but a bad name for a nudist colony. (Dion Black) The Limited is a good name for a women’s clothing store but a bad name for a special ed school (Jane Auerbach) Tuna Helper is a good name for a food product but a bad name for a vibrator. (Jeff Shirley) Krispy Kreme works for a donut shop, but not for a sperm bank. (Robert Schechter) Little Sizzlers is a good name for pork sausage but a bad name for child car seats. (Chris Doyle) Redbox is a good name for a movie rental company but a bad name for a tampon. (David Friedman) Otterbox is a good name for a phone case but a bad name for underpants. (Janelle Gibb) Soft & Dri is a good name for a deodorant but a bad name for a dildo. (Chris Doyle) Jack in the Box is a good name for a restaurant but a bad name for a sperm bank. (Dion Black) And the horriblest: Garbage Pail Kids is an okay name for novelty trading cards but an appalling name for an abortion clinic. (Larry Gray) . . ====================================================================== WEEK 1145, published October 18, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1145: Four — all it’s worth The Tour de Fours contest, plus one of the Invite’s most dogged contestants Style Invitational Hall of Famer (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) with Milo (right). Brendan is the subject of this week’s “Meet the Parentheses,” below. (By Terri Griest) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 15, 2015 I concede that there’s no intrinsic oh-neat quality about our annual Tour de Fours neologism challenge: It’s not like, say, the one in which you made up a new word by spelling a real word backward (and usually relating it to the original); or even the classic task of changing the word by one letter. Here, the words simply have to include a totally arbitrary block of four letters; it’s just some way to reduce the scope of the contest from All the Words in the World. Still, our 11 previous Tours de Fours have yielded plenty of clever neologisms every year we’ve run the contest. . Here, as random example, are 10 entries from 2013, for S-A-N-E (I just noticed that the top three winners were all named Christopher): 1.*Senatorpedo:* Cruz missile. “The tea party’s vaunted senatorpedo self-destructed shortly after its launch.” (Chris Doyle) 2. *Snyder sneak:* A football play in which the team owner dives backward while everyone else continues to move forward. Usually used only for short gains. (Chris Damm) 3. *Condé Nasty:* A guide to the places you definitely don’t want to go on vacation. (Christopher Lamora) 4. *Stanes: *An unsuccessful brand of underwear. (Rob Huffman) **Sea snot:* Raw oysters. (Larry Gray)* *Prattlesnake:* A person who spends half an hour encouraging you to let it all out, then turns around and tells everyone what you said. (Kyle Hendrickson, Danielle Nowlin) ** *Buyenas:* Vicious creatures that attack big-box stores in feeding frenzies the day after Thanksgiving. (Ben Aronin) *Bellyjeans:* What you need to change into after too much Easter candy. (Randy Lee) *Congressmensa: *Washington’s most exclusive club — no one qualifies for it. (John Bunyan) And Last: *Inanesylum: *The Style Invitational. (Frank Osen) Note that while there’s no*requirement* that the neologism be a play on an existing word, most of our winning entries are. Also note that six of the 10 are portmanteau words, overlapping two existing words. And there’s even a spoonerism: Randy Lee’s “bellyjeans.” So while we’ve had separate contests for those forms, we’ve had great ink for them in the Tours as well. *Note to Week 1145 entrants:* It’s not necessary to boldface, capi­tal­ize or otherwise highlight the DICE block in your word; the boldface will get lost in transit from e-mail to my compiled One Big List of Entries, and I definitely won’t be capitalizing the pertinent letters in the results. The Head-Messers (and Mses): The results of Week 1141 Mess With Our Heads is probably my favorite of all the contests to judge. (Song parodies are my other favorite, but they require a lot more hours of judging time.) Not only do I enjoy spoofing newspapers and headline-writing in particular (since I used to be paid in U.S. dollars to do it), but I*always*find myself laughing out loud at dozens of entries. Certainly that was true in Week 1141, for which my short­list ran to 120 bank headlines. I noticed that a disproportionate number of the heads used were from the week’s print editions, which meant that a lot of people ended up using the same headlines — often with the same general joke. But usually there was one entry that outearned its ilk for ink. Its ink-ilk. As I’d noted before, I tended to go with heads whose actual meanings were more or less obvious; that way the reader can laugh more easily at how you reinterpret it This one by Frank Osen almost made it anyway, but I cut it in the final trim: Reports suggest Clinton has gained 2 inches since her last run. But how? *Benghazi committee chair wants her nose measured before and after testimony* The story , oddly enough, was actually what the headline says: Feature stories in 2008 described Hillary Clinton at 5-5, but recent ones say she’s 5-7. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence that all four of this week’s “above-the-fold” ink blotters are from the D.C. area and (I’m going to assume because I want to) read hundreds of headlines every week in the print Post they subscribe to. Whatever, it was the perfect venue once again for Danielle Nowlin’s fresh, tuned-in humor, giving her a seventh first-place win, 24th above the fold, and her 176th blot of ink — and 177th, 178th and 179th. Meanwhile, it’s the fourth ATF ink for first runner-up Rob Wolf, the 38th overall for the suburban Maryland wrestling coach, for his Exhibit A for How a Peepee Joke Can Be Brilliantly Clever. Duncan Stevens gets his very first trip to the Losers’ Circle with his Palin dig (it also was short enough to go out on today’s tweet linking to the Invite). And it’s Ink No. 80, 10th above the fold, for Pie Snelson, whom all Loser event-goers know as the woman who keeps track of who’s who at the brunches and who gives out so many door prizes at Loser parties. (Pie’s first name is a nickname, by the way, as in Cutie Pie. Her real first name is Crème Brûlée.) *Dug by Doug AND Laughed Out of Courtney (AND the Czar): * Not only did I rob Frank Osen of ink with the Hillary headline, but it was unanimous among my go-to Post editors that the week’s funniest entry was his honorable mention “Name the panda Elvis”* “CIA reveals Bin Laden’s cryptic last words.” Copy chief Courtney Rukan, my former boss Doug Norwood and my predecessor in Invitedom Gene Weingarten all told me (separately) that that entry was their fave. MEET THE PARENTHESES: (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) As the second in our series of showing you the people behind the ink blots (see last week’s Conversational for the one on Jon Gearhart), we present Hall of Famer — who’s almost at the doorsteps of the Double Hall — Brendan Beary, who sent in the following, answering the questions I posted on the Style Invitational Devotees page. Brendan, who has won The Style Invitational 36 times, is enormously self-effacing; I, not he, added the links to entries and poems he refers to. *Name, age: * Brendan Beary. Age 53. And a half. People are always surprised; they say I look like I’m 54 already, but no, still 53, I’m just big for my age. *Where you live: * Great Mills, Md., down in St. Mary’s County. I don’t have anything funny to say about that. *Your official Loser anagram , plus a couple of alternatives if you know some:* It used to be “B, A NEARBY NERD,” but at some point it got changed to “RAN BEERY BAND,” which I don’t like quite as much. I just discovered while cogitating on this answer that it could also be “BEANERY BRAND,” and my wife and dogs can attest to the fact that, owing to certain gastrointestinal traits, this might be more appropriate. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as?* What they know of me can be summed up in a single word: “Who?” I occasionally write poetry that gets published elsewhere (sometimes even real ink-and-paper published, but mostly just 1s-and-0s), but aside from that, I’m a spectacularly dull person. Sloths come and observe me when they develop anxiety disorders and need to learn to relax. *How much ink do you have; how long have you been playing?* On the day I looked it up for this assignment, I was at 976 – but that doesn’t count the massive haul I got in today’s results, including the winner, right? (RIGHT??). I’ve been entering since 1996, though the first few years, and these last few years, have been sort of sporadic. Right now I’m just plugging away till I get to 1,000, because that when Mr. Graham said he gets us fully vested in the Post’s pension plan. *What brought you to Loserdom? *I moved to Maryland in 1996, and when I saw how distressingly few fart jokes were in the Baltimore Sun, I started reading The Post. The first time I found the Invitational, I could hardly believe it; it was as if Mad Magazine had managed to sneak into the pages of a real honest-to-gosh newspaper. I loved the air of freewheeling anarchy (as opposed to an air of deliberate introspective anarchy) that it gave off; it was like listening in at the smartass kids’ table at your high school lunchroom. Eventually I overcame my awkward sense of hero worship and started attending Loser events, at which point I concluded: No, it’s more like the smartass table of a middle school lunchroom. *What are three favorite entries you’d like to share? * A lot of what I ink with is verse contests [such as this one ], which tend to run long, so in the interest of brevity I’ll go with some other stuff. *Week 547 (corporate good names*bad names*: No Nonsense Sheer Endurance: it’s a good name for pantyhose; it’s a bad name for an escort service. *Week 580 (combine 2 countries and describe the result):* Netherlands + Fiji = Netheriji – but I don’t know anything about it; I’ve been warned since age 12 not to play with Netherijians. *Week 671 (Hyphen the Terrible):* Trou-droponic: adj. Clintonian. *What’s an example of something you do (or an anecdote about something you’ve done) that confirms your Loserosity? * I go through the entire Wikipedia aggregation of “Recent Deaths” as preparation for the year-end Dead Letters contest. According to Wikipedia, about 3,000 people die every year; can you believe it? This is great for finding obscure people to write elegies for, and I’ve gotten ink in the past with somereally obscure ones , but unfortunately Wikipedia seems to be strongly biased in favor of cricket players and Estonian legislators – two groups that don’t tend to generate a lot of Invitational ink, or at least not as much as they used to. --------- Brendan is pictured on this page with his dog Milo, but it was his dog Otis whom he immortalized in an absolutely lovely poem, one that he read last year at a program of light verse at Catholic University. It singlehandedly disproves any snobbish argument that poems in strict meter, with perfect rhymes, with very funny lines throughout, cannot be *art* of a high order. Here it is in the poetry journal Light. It’s long, but you should take time to read every word. WATCH THE EMPRESS OF THE STYLE INVITATIONAL EAT FRENCH TOAST The Loser Brunch Tour makes its stop this month north of the Capital Beltway: Brunch No. 181 will be this Sunday at noon at Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia, Md., not far from I-95 between D.C. and Baltimore. Losers or just abject fans in the vicinity who’d like to join us (we’re currently at 14 people), RSVP on Elden Carnahan’s Loser website at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements” at the top). Or just use thishandy-dandy link . Drop me a line, too. ====================================================================== WEEK 1146, published October 25, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1146: The Invite’s lode of magnets Some of the first Loser Magnets shown with one of our best prizes ever: a stained-glass magnet box crafted and donated by Loser Peyton Coyner in 2005. (Julia Ewan*The Washington Post) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 22, 2015 Back in the Czarist Era, The Style Invitational’s first 10-plus years — which coincided with the Age of Newspapers With Big Circulations and Big Budgets — the prizes were bigger, too. (Mostly.) The Invitational debuted March 7, 1993, in a revamped Sunday Style section under a new section editor, Gene Weingarten. That same Sunday, Gene also instituted a weekly essay, “Noted With ...” — with a different noun each time. That first week, “Noted With Disdain” was by Gene himself, and was a rant against President Clinton’s Timex Ironman Triathlon, “a plastic digital watch, thick as a brick and handsome as a hernia.” (Here’s a link to it from another paper that printed it and still has it online.) That piece ran on Page F1. And on Page F2 was Week 1 of The Style Invitational, a contest to come up with a new name for the Washington Redskins. The grand prize? “An elegant Timex ‘Ironman Triathlon’ digital watch, valued at $39.” In Week 2, a contest for a new motto for Maryland, the prize was “a huge, tasteless Maryland crab-motif cheezy souvenir” valued at $50. And the inaugural runner-up prize was announced (though not yet shown)): “the coveted ‘Style Invitational’ loser’s T- shirt” — a prize that, in numerous models, would be sent to runners-up until just a few years ago, when I went to mugs and then also tote bags. Two weeks later, the Czar awarded five runner-up T-shirts, but nothing to the honorable mentions. In fact, it wasn’t until nine months later, Week 41, that the Czar announced a contest to create a Style Invitational bumper sticker for the HMs. Three weeks later “Shirt Happens” (by Elden Carnahan) and “How’s My Drivel? Fax 202-334-4312” (by Stephen Dudzik, using the fax phone number for entries) got to be the first of a long series of HM bumper stickers. They were clever, if often insidey (another was “F2 2U2”), but they had a few shortcomings as prizes: 1. They were ugly — plain black and white, with unattractive, amateurish type. 2. They were permanently stuck to whatever you stuck them to. And so, surely also because of (1), nobody ever seemed to use them. 3. They were remarkably expensive for such crappy-looking prizes. Not only did the Czar’s flunky (those were the days) order them for close to $1 apiece, but they also were too long to fit flat in a standard envelope, which meant that The Post was paying something like triple the regular postage. Get inside the noodle of Loser (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.) in the Meet the Parentheses section of the Conversational. (Dave wore this to the 2013 Flushies and later donated it as a prize.) (Nan Reiner) And so, as the Empress-in-Waiting was getting ready to depose the Czar in late 2003, the Style section office manager trooped us both into a meeting and said: We need to stop sending out those bumper stickers. Which turned out to be win-win-win-win: Since Jan, 18, 2004, we’ve been issuing two new magnets (with the occasional reprint) every nine months to a year — all of them colorful, masterly artworks by Bob Staake, and all featuring Loser-supplied slogans. They’re easy to mail, they don’t take up much room, they’re portable, they will usually stick to your car for a while before fading or falling off, and they run us about 21 cents apiece. Meanwhile, if you’d like to have one of the vintage bumper stickers, just come to a monthly Loser brunch , where Pie Snelson will give you one of the hundreds that Elden Carnahan amassed during the Czarist Era, and regifted along with his Loser T-shirts (one of which an Inkin’ Memorial winner or runner-up may request in lieu of the usual prize). So now in Week 1146 , it’s time for two new Loser magnets; as usual, I’ll order 500 of each design that Bob makes (I’ll also be seeking his view on which ideas will work best). Below are the ones we’ve done so far; click on each link to see what it looks like. Often they came not from magnet-slogan contests, but from also-rans for the Loser Mug or Grossery Bag. Wouldn’t they make a great poster, all together? 2004: The Style Invitational Makes Me Gag (Dave Zarrow) The Pen Is Mightier Than the Mind (Josh Borken, repeated for 2005-06 and also 2008-09) 2005: Surely I Jested (Marty McCullen, repeated for 2005-06 and 2008-09) I Empressed (Cecil Clark) 2006-07: Near-Do-Well (Howard Walderman) I’m Ink-competent (Dave Zarrow) 2007-08: It’s a Dishonor Just Being Nominated (Bruce Carlson) Aging Quippie (Tom Witte) 2009-10: Honor Among Dweebs (Lee Dobbins) Certifiably Inane (Edward Gordon) 2010-11: Putting the Rude in Erudition (Craig Dykstra) Mirth Certificate (Kevin Dopart) 2011-12: Sunday Drivel (Tom Witte) Middle-Wit Champion (Tom Witte) 2012-13: Not(e)worthy (Bruce Carlson) Discredit Card (Beverley Sharp) 2013-14: Po’ Wit Laureate (Roger Hammons) Puns of Steel (Jennifer Hart) 2014-15: The Wit Hit the Fan (Jon Hamblin, Bird Waring) Hardly Har-Har (Barbara Turner) As I noted in this week’s Invite, I still have a few weeks’ worth of the current magnets, which (unless it’s your slogan that ends up on the new magnet) I’ll mail to you until I run out of them — unless you e-mail me with a request by the Monday after the results are announced. *Speaking of alternative prizes: * The Post will be moving in December to new offices a few blocks away in downtown Washington, and I’ve been told that there won’t be any room to keep prizes there. So I’m slowly cleaning out the Invite Prize Closet and bringing home boxes of stuff to sort through. And I’m finding a lot of little items that are fun or at least nutty but don’t really merit being second prizes — a number of books, plus various small novelty items. If, in lieu of the prize you win in a certain week (say, if you already have a dozen of the same magnet), you would rather choose *something from the Mystery Grab Bag * — you don’t get to choose, and I won’t put much thought into it either — e-mail me with your request by the Monday after the results are announced. *Twicky tweets: The results of Week 1142* Week 1142 — the contest to write a tweet penned by your creation of a hybrid of two people — seemed like a novel idea. But as soon as I started judging, a lot of the entries sounded awfully familiar. And that’s because we’ve run*several* “Before and After” and portmanteau contests that asked you to combine two names, and then quote the resulting person. I started to comb through the results linked to in Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List , and discovered that not only had we given ink to Marion Barry Bonds saying “The pitch set me up,” (Dave Zarrow, Chris Doyle, 2003), but we had also given ink to Marion Barry Bonds saying “Pitcher set me up!” (Mike Gips, 2012). And in Week 287 (1998), Pollyanna Karenina was described as “someone so annoyingly cheerful it makes you want to throw yourself under a train (Susan Reese). In Week 489 (2003), Pollyanna Karenina “cheerfully threw herself under a train” (Jennifer Hart). And then, in a literature mashup contest, this won first runner-up: Pollyanna Karenina: “Oh, my — isn’t that the most beautiful train?” (Brendan Beary, 2005) If there are let’s-call-them encore jokes among this week’s inking entries, oh, well. They slipped through. Gary Crockett’s “OrangeJulius” gives him his ninth first-place win and 30th “above the fold,” to add to his 250-plus blots of ink. And while the instructions said to “combine two well-known names,” I really didn’t hesitate to bend the rules a millimeter in favor of the week’s cleverest, particularly timely idea. Gary’s entry was also the favorite this week of ace copy editor Doug Norwood. John Glenn’s runner-up was my favorite of several “Trumpelstiltskins” (for the Invite’s sake, do I want this guy to win the GOP nomination?). @JFKanye earns only the third blot of ink for Lela Martin — but it’s her second runner-up entry: She was also a runner-up in Week 1031 for the “air quote” contest: “M‘ale’: What’s inside a guy after a night of too much drinking; fe‘male’: What’s inside a girl after a night of too much drinking. (That entry drew a complaint from a woman accusing me of being a victim-blamer and rape-condoner. ) *Laugh out of Courtney: * Copy chief Courtney Rukan loved David Friedman’s “Swedish Chefferson” (“but I’m a Muppets fiend”). She also especially liked John Glenn’s “Trumpelstiltskin,” Warren Tanabe’s “RonaldonaldReagantrump,” Gary Crockett’s “JackLordByron” and Duncan Stevens’s “GeorgeR.R.MartinLutherKing.” *Blue Bird: * This week’s cleverest unprintable tweet was by Chris Doyle: @MarcAntonyWeiner: The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their boners. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.)* Although once in a job interview, the secretary announced to her boss that “Mr. Pervert is here to see you,” Dave prounounces his name PRE-var. Dave’s 269 inks — all but one from the Empressive Era — place him at No. 24 all time, but local Losers know him best as one of the organizers of the annual Flushies award “banquet,” where he often steals the musical segment of the event with his phenomenal playing on cowbell, clapper and, once, triangle. Here are Dave’s responses to some questionnaire items, including some he added: *What is your official Loser Anagram? *Pravda Diver is better than some other names I have been called. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite (and some who have) know you as?* I consider myself a native Marylander, because it was just a car ride to Washington, D.C. to be hatched. I officially retired this year after nearly 44 years of being a Fed, and I am on two Volunteer Service Agreements with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. My first government job was as a “climbing ranger” for a summer at Devil’s Tower National Monument, Wyoming, and my career continued in ups and downs until I became a biologist at the National Institutes of Health. Eventually I changed gears to the NIH Division of Safety, then USDA, where I became a manager to keep researchers and the environment healthy. *What did your dogs know you as?* Alpha Dog. *What brought you to Loserdom?* I noticed the SI around 1999 after exploring more of the paper beyond the comics. I was over-analyzing the rules and my entries (thanks to being science-oriented all my life) before loosening up at the end of 2003 about the time the Empress ascended to the throne. The SI became stress relief. *Name three of your favorite entries.* One of them is a favorite because I usually don’t get ink in poetry contestst.*From Week 935 poems about disasters: *High life for Romans! Pompeii was for living! None heeded omens of blast unforgiving, Years after quaking, Vesuvius building, Growing and waking to smother the gilding. Heat would benumb this, the masses were punished; Pummeled with pumice, Pompeiians were none-ished. *Week 784: bad endings for a novel: * He had been in a long, slow denouement. He rocked rhythmically on the porch, at once hesitant to turn the next page of his life, yet resolved to face his fate. With a deep sigh and exhalation, he turned the page. The page was blank. The third was picked up by the “Car Talk” guys for their radio show. A friend in Florida told me she heard my name and the joke while driving, and had to pull over, laughing. *Week 685, things to be thankful for:* That dogs don’t know everyone else hates you. *What’s something you do or have done that confirms your Loserosity?* I re-created the now-extinct Inker statue winner prize on my refrigerator, using only Loser magnets and a small paper bag resembling the tiny one that went over the Thinker’s head. Other Losers, I’m waiting to hear from you. ====================================================================== WEEK 1147, published November 1, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1147: Grid expectations with Word ‘Find’ And in Meet the Parentheses, (Nan Reiner, Alexandria) pitches herself some questions A passionate Nats follower, Nan Reiner got to be Fan of the Game on the day this photo was taken a couple of years ago. To those familiar with Nan’s brassy personality, this will come as zero surprise. See “Meet the Parentheses” below. ( Courtesy of Nan Reiner) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 29, 2015 I know that we’ve been going heavy on neologism contests lately, but it’s been more than a year since we debuted our word-“find” contest, and — given the thousands of entries and the very good results — I was eager to do it again for Week 1147 . I put the grid together just as I did in Week 1089 , with the aid of an instant word-search (and rudimentary crossword) maker, puzzle-maker.com. You just type in the words you want to include in the grid — for example, if you’re a teacher and want to use the week’s list of vocabulary words — and in no time, you get a PDF of the smallest puzzle that would hold your words in the classic word-search format: with each word embedded in a straight line going straight from left to right (or right to left); or up or down; or diagonally up or down, toward the left or the right. So all the words I fed the constructor appear in the grid in one of those straight-line directions, amid the random letters that fill the rest of the spaces. And once again, I generated those words at random, by clicking at wordgenerator.net. What words were there? Mostly weird ones! *expurge* (i.e., to purge) *waly* (a Scottish interjection of sorrow, like “O woe”!; I knew it from the gorgeous folk song “O Waly, Waly” )* coafforest*(it’s a verb! To convert into a forest) *bookworm* *tue* (the only definition I can find for it as an English word is as an abbreviation for “Tuesday”; not really a word but so what)* plantigrada* (animals that walk on the full soles of their feet, like humans and bears; dogs, horses, etc., walk on the equivalent of the balls of our feet) *disconsolation* *Goldilocks* (in addition to the fairy tale character; a term meaning the happy medium, as in the bed that is not too hard or too soft) *verbarscarus* (a Mediterranean fish) *vire* (an old kind of arrow) *coherently* *stram* (the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs way back when; also to spring or recoil with violence) indistinguishing *fitly* (i.e., fittingly) *dire* *sylvine* (an ore of potassium) *debilitate* *assumptive* Not that it matters, of course, because they’re only 18 possibilities — and not very likely ones — out of the 3.1415926 bazillion words you can “find” by tracing your finger or arrow up and down and back and forth. You*will* find some brand-new words in there. The trick, of course, is to define it in a clever, funny way. If you like, though, feel free to use any of the above words as well. The tricksters in Week 1089 were certainly in top form. Here’s the “above the fold” ink from last year; scroll down in Week 1093 to see all the results. *The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:* *F-12: CRIMEA VISIT:* Term for guests who overstay their welcome, and then announce they own your house. (Mark Raffman) 2.*D-11: NOTIGAN:* The sweater your aunt knits for you, every birthday, every year. (Frank Osen) 3. *F-12: CLINTONHOLE:* A term conservatives use in front of their children while talking about someone they don’t like. (Rob Wolf) 4. *J-8: DANGRY: *Only mad enough to use pseudo-curse-words. (Pam Sweeney) Meanwhile, as I write this column, Imminent Hall of Fame Loser Jeff Contompasis has already typed up and posted a grid on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook that you can copy and use as searchable text. The results of Week 1143: What will deplete the Invite prize closet by 26 items? As*always,* there were lots of clever and varied approaches to the odd “answers” in this latest Ask Backwards contest. It’s the nature of the contest that the entries’ humor tends to come from the writers’ ingenuity in responding to the prompt, rather than as a self-contained joke. (This is why they don’t tend to work asInk of the Day cards.) Also as always, there were many answers with roughly the same idea; sometimes they canceled one another out, and sometimes I chose an entry that had something to edge it past the rest (that something is*not* transmittable via PayPal). Four out of the five members of this week’s Losers’ Circle are habitues (and, while I didn’t do the research, probably are all Ask Backwards vets as well): Runner-up Neal Starkman has his 53rd ink since starting in Week 944, while Bird Waring, who’s been entering since 2002, blots up Nos. 147 and 148. But at another level altogether — you might call it The Stratum of the Ridiculous — are this week’s winner and second-place finisher, who are No. 3 and No. 1 in the Invite all-time standings. It’s the 27th first place for Loser Since Week 7 Tom Witte, and his 1,358th blot in all, while Chris Doyle notches Inks 1,725 and 1,726 — and his 155th runner-up prize. SWARM OF LOSERS TO INVADE VA. NOV. 15 The next Loser Brunch is at a place we’ve been to many times: It’s The Front Page in the Ballston section of in-town Arlington. There’s a buffet and also a Bloody Mary bar. The restaurant is inside an office building, and the last couple of times they’ve set up our long table in the building’s sunlit atrium lobby. And if you come, Pie Snelson will let you have a vintage pre-Loser Magnet Style Invitational bumper sticker. I plan to be there; RSVP to Elden Carnahan here. Everyone is welcome, even the Merely Curious. *MEET THE PARENTHESES* *This week, meet one of the Invite’s most memorable Losers. Nan Reiner not only inks up the joint every time we have a song or verse contest, but she’s become a fixture at the Flushies awards and holiday parties while performing parodies written for the occasion. And under the moniker Kitty Ditty on the Style Invitational Devotees page, Nan often comments moments after a baseball game — in instantly composed limericks.* *(Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.)* “Otherwise known as ‘this [insert glowing superlative here] with all the songs and the silly prize donations.’ ” *Official Loser anagram? * RAN ERNE IN, in tribute to my years as a prosecutor and my natural habitat among the seabirds at the beach. (Alternatives, RERAN NINE or INNER NEAR… sorry, there’s not much you can do with this array of letters.) *Age?* Um… less than 60. And let’s just keep it there, shall we? Playing by “Jewish diaspora rules” (i.e., time everywhere on earth is determined by what time it is in Jerusalem), I will gladly receive felicitations for my 15th birthday on the last day of this coming February. *Where do I live?* For the past 35 years, I have called AN AXED LIAR (Va.) home. I hail from GET CANKER (N.Y.), and in the near future I expect to come to rest in O, NOT A CRAB! (Fla.). But not until at least one or two more Loser events wherein I can inflict song parodies on the not-at-all-unsuspecting assemblage. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know me as? * Pretty much the same. At the tender age of 7, I discovered summer camp. Where it was a tradition to write topical new lyrics to existing songs. And thus the monster was unleashed. Countless school and camp shows, Law Revues, and Purim Spiels later, my parents’ hard-earned investment is paying off, in precious inkblots. The Capitol Steps’ loss is the Invite’s gain. (More on that below.) Also, in no particular order: Tireless denizen of the D.C. attorney general’s office, sometime cantorial soloist, a cappella fanatic, and perpetual cheerleader, among many other things. *How long have I been playing and how much ink do I have?* I entered on a lark in the summer of 2010. Since then, it’s been more or less regular, depending on the contest and what normal people call “life”. I have somewhere north of 250 inkblots. (According to the Omniscient Stats Man, my current tally is 272.) I’d like to make it to 500 someday, if I can. *What brought me to Loserdom? * Retirement. As an attorney for the D.C. government, there was no way I could rev my snark engine – almost totally fueled by current events – in print and sign my name to it. Then, some months after I hung up my government lawyer shoes, a stroke of serendipity cast my eye on Week 877 of the SI. On a lark, I sent in a few couplets, including one skewering the sitting mayor (my erstwhile boss); next thing I knew, that couplet was above the fold, and I had a T-shirt, a stinky tree, a signed column and delightful letter from someone called The Empress, and an invitation to brunch. The Loser drug was too intoxicating – I was powerless to resist! I was hooked. *A few favorite entries I’d like to share?* Well, there are the song parodies… but they’re way too long-form to be included here. (You can find many of them in the results of Weeks 929, 982, 1004, 1074 & 1113.) Equally fun for me have been the light-verse contests, in particular those which had me writing poetry in forms I’d never tried before. To wit (at least to half-wit): *Week 978, Framed Couplets (2 or 4 lines, 9 syllables, first & last rhyme), from 2012:* GOP’ers wail about Barack: “He puts forth a socialistic crock!” Say the Dems, “Well, Mitt and Ann are snobs.” Hey — do you guys have a plan for jobs? (Alas, not much has changed since then…) *Week 1095, TankaWankas (haiku-ish, with 2 more 7-syllable lines), from 2014 – this about “Gamergate,” harassment of women in the gaming world:* Gamer dweebs all say Girls are not supposed to play. Hey, guys: Get a clue. We have learned what we can do With our joysticks, without you. *And Week 1030, cinquains (5 lines of 2-4-6-8-2 syllables), from 2013, in reference to an unfortunately photogenic Member of Congress:* Weiner — “Carlos Danger”! — Rears his head in hubris. Doesn’t need our votes, he needs a New bris. *Something Loserly I did? *Or, rather, something Loserly that got did to me. In 1987, while pregnant with my first child, I played the 17-year-old Japanese ingenue Pitti-Sing in Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Mikado” for a local community theatre. (Which is funny enough in itself, especially for those who know my upper-body configuration un-pregnant, let alone prenatally engorged.) As was my wont – and also my will – I supplied much of the parody material for the updated song reprises in the show. And as luck would have it, two of my fellow players were members of the Capitol Steps. Who promptly approached me about joining the troupe. At that time, though, it was a requisite that all members be employees (or alumni) of Congress, which I was not, so the founders kiboshed that idea. To which I say, in the words of the immortal Calvin Coolidge, “Capitol Steps – you lose!” *And something Loserly I do now?* Traipse through as many flea markets and schlock shops as I can, in search of Objects of Questionable Taste and*or Quirky Amusement for the Imperial prize hoard. You’re welcome. ====================================================================== WEEK 1148, published November 8, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1148: Does counting to 31 make you do this? The Empress ruminates all over the new Style Invitational contest and results Year 22 Rookie of the Year (Todd DeLap, Fairfax, Va.) aims to mortify his school-age children. Todd spills a little about his Loser self in our Meet the Parentheses section below. (Family photo) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 5, 2015 Next June I’ll be participating in a workshop at the West Chester Poetry Conference (near Philadelphia) on light verse and song parodies. The sessions will be led by two award-winning poets who are also “award”-winning Style Invitational Losers -- Melissa Balmain and Frank Osen — while I chime in with Great Imperial Wisdom about What Works. Perhaps we’ll be using some of the winning TankaWanka from Week 1148. And from our inaugural TW contest a year ago, Week 1095 . Last year’s winner, it turns out, sadly, could have been pulled from this month’s headlines as well, as the SXSW expo in Austin recently canceled two panels on harassment in the gaming world because of threats of violence: Gamer dweebs all say Girls are not supposed to play. Hey, guys: Get a clue. We have learned what we can do With our joysticks, without you. (Nan Reiner) For that matter, the second- and third-place entries — oh, goodness, they’re by Melissa Balmain and Frank Osen, respectively — are almost as timely as well (except, thank heavens, for the ebola epidemic): Midterm votes are done: Optimism’s fading fast That the folks who won Somehow will — unlike the last — See that more than gas gets passed. (Melissa Balmain) Runners-up can now choose the newly unearthed First Edition Loser Mug, instead of the current mug or the Grossery Bag. (Design by Bob Staake; slogan suggested by both Chris Doyle and Beverley Sharp ) Sunni on Shia, Russian troops in Crimea, Ebola, ISIS, Worldwide crisis and drama — As per Fox: Thanks, Obama! (Frank Osen) Only Perry Beider’s fourth-place TankaWanka, about Renee Zellweger’s plastic surgery, refers to news that’s already become trivia. Note that the TW form absolutely demands 31 syllables spread exactly 5-7-5-7-7 over five lines, and demands one rhyme. However, the Empress is a wee bit flexible on what constitutes a single syllable: “hour,” for example, could be one syllable or two. And note that — and I’m sure this wasn’t conscious on my part; I’m just seeing it now — Nan’s, Melissa’s and Frank’s poems each had*multiple* rhymes: Nan’s scheme was AA-BBB, Frank’s AA-B-CC, and Melissa’s an even niftier A-B-A-BB. On the other hand, I did realize that I was favoring TWs that ended in a rhyming couplet; only three of that week’s inking entries didn’t have what functions as a two-line punchline. An artfully constructed poem won’t get ink if it’s not witty in its language and point as well. But when I’m trying to choose between two witty, funny sentiments, craft is often the deciding factor. A note about this week’s example: I tend to greatly favor natural syntax over convoluted “poetic” word order. But I thought that Gene Weingarten’s Line 4 was spoofing such awkwardness with “It should right out at you jump!” And it was a single line amid four straightforward ones. In general, though, try for lines that sound like real English. *RAISIN’ BRANDS: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1144* Given that people were already coming up with good entries for this contest while they were working on its progenitor, Week 1140 — repurposing a brand name in an*unfortunate*way — I was sure we’d have plenty of inkworthy entries. This week we ended up with more than 40 blots of ink spread out among almost three dozen Losers — we’ll be draining the rest of the current magnet supply pretty quickly (see the section below for alternatives). Once again, there was a little gray area about what constituted a better use for a name; calling the GOP undercard debate The Who isn’t exactly flattering. But I didn’t use such clever entries as Duncan Stevens’s for a Thayer speech therapy clinic; that’s a deliciously*bad*name for a speech therapy clinic. ​The three Bob Staake Loser Mug designs are all very nice, but only Todd DeLap, of the 51 blots of ink but no 3rd- or 4th-place finishes, gets this one, custom-painted for Dad by 10-year-old Juliet. ( Photo by Todd DeLap* ) I also didn’t use entries in which the sound was significantly different from the original. I didn’t give ink, for example, to Tostitos bedroom slippers (as in “toasty toes”), though I did for Fritos sandals (Ami Greenberg). Among the most frequently recommended repurposings: Jiffy-Pop for a sperm bank, and The Washington Post for the Washington Monument. And whoever began an entry “Kum ’n’ Go is a good name for a convenience store . . .” Oh, no it isn’t. It’s not a good name for anything. (Anyway, too obvious for Invite ink.) It’s the second Inkin’ Memorial win for Frank Mann, but only the second ink ever for Janice Haas, who earned a runner-up prize as well as her Firstink air “freshener” in Week 972 to compare two items on a list: “ ‘Desperate Housewives’ has a cast of many good-looking, complicated, disturbed, egotistical characters who cheat, lie and cover up lies. John Edwards: Cast of one.” I’d love to see a lot more from Janice. John McCooey gets his third ink “above the fold” with his makes-you-think-a-second Fanta entry, and a double credit for fourth place gives a bag or mug to both ATF fixture Larry Gray (10 trips to the Losers’ Circle) and ATF rookie Laurie Morrison. *Laugh Out of Courtney:* “Pop Rocks rocks!” enthuses Post copy chief Courtney Rukan of Janice Haas’s slogan for the Bernie Sanders campaign. Courtney also singles (doubles, triples, etc.) out The Who for the GOP undercard (Steve Glomb), Cialis for the looking glass (Mark Raffman), AMF for your ex (Pie Snelson), FedEx for Ben Bernanke’s memoir (Jaclyn Yamada), Citgo for a dog trainer (Dave Komornik), Southern Comfort hemorrhoid cream (John O’Byrne); the “fabulous kicker” of Lowenbrau for the Invite; and one that “made me spit out my water. Didn’t quite expect that”: Chris Doyle’s Oral-B porn movie rating. *The Unprintables:*The energy drink Beaver Buzz drew many predictable entries, as did the candy bar Butterfingers. But my favorite was this clever one from Paul Kocak: Bona is a great name for a hardwood floor cleaner but an even better name for a human hardwood provider. Also Nunn-Bush (shoes) for a Brazilian wax parlor, from Larry Gray. *LOSERS CAN BE CHOOSERS: VINTAGE PRIZES REEMERGE!* Just a week or so ago, 150-time Loser Howard Walderman, in a sorry fit of decluttering, mailed the Empress a stack of some 60 assorted Loser Magnets for honorable mentions, all the ones for which he had duplicates, dating back to the earliest models. And several Latter-Day Losers have requested a Vintage Waldermagnet in lieu of yet another Wit Hit the Fan or Hardly Har-Har — or even a runner-up prize. (Check out the Week 1146 Style Conversational to see all the magnets.) If you’d like one of these instead of your designated ink, e-mail me before next Tuesday and I’ll see what’s left. But then came the real stunner. I share the Invite Prize Closet with Style Section Staff Intellectual Phil Kennicott, who was clearing out his many stacks of books this past Tuesday in preparation for our office’s move next month; I had the bottom shelf and the floor; he had all the other shelves, which went up to the ceiling. And late in the afternoon, he came over to my desk to tell me what he’d just found: two full cartons of our first Loser Mugs — I think about 50 mugs in all. We had ordered four cartons of “This Is Your Brain on Mugs” in 2009 to replenish the 2007 original shipment, but two of the cartons had gone missing. Two years after that, as we finally used up the remaining two boxes, we issued a new model, “My Cup Punneth Over.,” and in early 2014, the current LOVE*Loser version. So we have yet another options for winners and runners-up: This is a BIG 15-ounce mug, designed by Bob Staake, and the slogan suggested by both Chris Doyle and Beverley Sharp. If you finish “above the fold” and want one of these babies, let me know before next Tuesday. *WHEN THE GOING GETS TROUGH: LOSER BRUNCH, NOV. 15* I’m planning to go the Loser Brunch at noon on Sunday, Nov. 15*[corrected from Nov. 14 earlier],* at The Front Page in downtown Arlington, Va., and as always, I’m eager to meet new Losers or Just Fans as well as to oh-it’s-you with the regulars, in between my multiple trips to the buffet. Regular brunch coordinator Elden Carnahan will be overseas, so e-mail me if you’d like to come, and I’ll tell Other Coordinator Pie Snelson. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (Todd DeLap, Fairfax, Va.)* *Todd made his debut in Week 1039, almost exactly two years ago, when we asked people to write things using only the words in the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy; in the midst of the government shutdown, he offered “A resolution for the law’s delay is all we wished. But no. So fly not to the office. — J. Boehner.” Then the hits kept coming, and Todd finally showed up at his first Loser event, last year’s Flushies awards, to get plaqued as Rookie of the Year.* *Just this past week, Todd wrote me to offer a computer program he wrote to check the validity of the word-search neologisms ofWeek 1147 — to make sure the letters in the entries were traceable on the grid. Oh boy, am I going to take him up on that. (Can’t promise him ink, though.)* *Todd responded below — with some alterations — to a general template I posted. Meanwhile, the Loser Community awaits the next subject. If you’re one of the Top 25 in the current Loser standings or one of theall-time top 100 , e-mail me with a bio that answers the questions below or questions of your own. Or you can choose another format.* *Age:* 48 (physical), 14 (humorical) *Where you live: * The D.C. suburb of Fairfax, Va., but I grew up in Central Florida so, technically, I’m “Florida Man”! (Which is usually thought of as something like this , but I always think it should be said like this .) *Your official Loser anagram plus any alternatives:* I’m officially “Added Plot” but I always thought of myself as more an “Addled Top”. But now that you’ve made me think about this, I’m going to request a change to “Do Pelt Dad.” *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? * Husband, Father, Professional Computer Geek, Duke Basketball Fan, Juggler, Science Fiction Geek, Cub Scout Leader, Computer Gamer, Geek-of-all-Trades. I am regularly silly and make excessive use of voices and accents. I am an inveterate whistler. I yell “ly!” at the TV when people should have used an adverb. I put two spaces after a period.   I am the Man of a Thousand Dad-Jokes (“Why do baby ducks walk softly? Because baby ducks can’t walk, hardly!”). *How much ink do you have; how long have you been playing?* I’m at 50 inks and holding (unless this was an exceptionally good week, in which case, 51 inks) in just over 100 weeks. I should make the Hall of Fame in just another 18 years. Meanwhile, I still haven’t won a Loser Mug, which made my 10-year-old daughter, Juliet, feel so sorry for me that she took mattersinto her own hands . *What are your hopes and dreams regarding the Invite?* To get a “Star Wars”-themed gag printed. Thus far, my record is Redskins-esque. *What brought you to Loserdom? * My wife and I used to read the Invite together on Sunday mornings, back before the kids killed the whole “cup of cocoa and peruse the paper” thing. She even got ink (on her*only* attempt) in Week 532, four-word movie reviews (“Never Cry Wolf”: Nunavut is worth seeing.) About 500 weeks later, I was looking for an intellectual activity to keep my brain occupied during my commute. Nothing good presented, so I went with the Invite. Now it’s become a family affair with my son getting his FirStink in Week 1140. *What are two favorite entries you’d like to share?* Week 1077 (Tom Swifties): “Everyone would agree that I am very tall, correct?” the North Korean leader stated unambiguously. Week 1093 (Business Tactics for Squeezing Customers): At the Golden Jade Dragon Restaurant, the first chopstick is free. (It took me over a dozen tries to find a realistic sounding Chinese restaurant name that Google couldn’t find.) Also, there was one from Week 1095, the TankaWanka contest, that didn’t get ink because the poems were supposed to be about something in the news. (But the Empress did note it in the Conversational.): Kirk and Spock agree: There’s no reason to quibble About what they want Because they’re all about that Space, ’bout that space. No tribble. *What’s an example of something you do that confirms your Loserosity?* Large computer databases can be divided into “shards.” I keep calling them “sharts.” This has led to statements like “We can really improve our throughput if we increase the shart-count” and “We’re going to keep that shart in memory.” So far, nobody has admitted to noticing. *Sheez, the guy really IS a geek.* ====================================================================== WEEK 1150, published November 22, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1150: So many ways to say I Lov-ish You The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results Invite phenom (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.) mugs for the camera as this week’s Meet the Parentheses Q&A, below. (family photo) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 19, 2015 So many just-right slogans this week for our new set of Style Invitational Loser Magnets for honorable mentions — we clearly have enough workable ideas for years to come. In fact, Bob Staake sent me sketches for seven different slogans, and I could have happily gone with any of them. The new magnets are the latest in a Staake collection dating back to 2004 (see them all in my Week 1146 Style Conversational column), and as in most recent years, we have a horizontal and a vertical — just to challenge the Refrigerator Mosaic skills of Losers-in-Volume. A different company is printing them up for us this year — for a compelling reason: Shortly after the slogan contest was announced four weeks ago, an e-mail came to losers@washpost.com from a new person, a Julianne Weiner. It contained a few slogans, followed by a note from Julianne: She’s a longtime Invite fan, she said, and would love to have her company, Sonic Promotions of Gaithersburg, Md., print the next round of magnets for us. She’d even match whatever price we’d been paying. So sure — but I did tell Julianne I’d have to throw out her entries for this contest. (I never did look at them — for all I know, they duplicated the winners.) We just sent the designs to Julianne yesterday, so they probably won’t be delivered for two weeks. SO: If you are one of the 30-odd (or 30 odd) Losers who got ink this week, you may opt to wait for one of the new magnets (e-mail me before Tuesday at pat.myers@washpost.com with something obvious in the subject line). Otherwise I’ll send you one of our last“The Wit Hit the Fan” or “Hardly Har-Har” magnets. In addition, I still have a stack of magnets from past years, and at least one extra of almost every design since 2004. If there’s a particular one you’d like rather than a current one (or rather than your “above-the-fold” prize), let me know. And for tax purposes, we have recently raised the monetary value of a Style Invitational Loser Magnet from 21 cents to $590,401. Because it is certainly worth more thanthis. It’s not just the fourth win for 150-time Loser Howard Walderman; it’s his second slogan to be used for a Magnet; Howard also did “Near-Do-Well” back in 2006-07. (He also was one of those who offered “My Cup Punneth Over” for the Loser Mug pictured in the photo above.) Howard just regifted me about 60 magnets from past years, but I figure that he’ll still want a “Jest Falling Short.” “Magnet Dum Laude,” meanwhile, wins Rob Cohen his 41st ink or so (Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan is touring Australia and New Zealand and might not have updated them for a couple of weeks); Kevin Dopart scores his 25,378th ink (or so it seems) with his better-for-locals “Dork Losing” (Washington’s Metrorail cars will close right on your arms, and so instead of preventing that, there’s a recorded warning). But it’s the first ink “above the fold,” and just the third overall, for Nancy Della Rovere. Welcome to the Losers’ Circle, Nancy. We’ve run several clever slogans even though they’re not actually good choices for magnets: One of my favorites from the 2001 contest was “Losing: My Religion,” by Mark Raffman; feel free to think what piece of blasphemy Bob would have drawn up for that one (don’t feel free to tell everyone). This year’s “Scratching My Jocular Itch” and an Indian-themed “Mini Haha” would not be something we’d run right above the Washington Post masthead. *What Doug Dug: * In addition to this week’s winner, ace copy editor Doug Norwood also especially liked Nan Reiner’s “I’m So-So Special,” Danielle Nowlin’s and Frank Mann’s “Better Yuk Next Time,” and George-Ann Rosenberg’s “Nearly Beloved.” *THE LOWER-THAN-LOWEST FORM OF WIT: THIS WEEK’S NEW CONTEST * And by that, I mean punning on someone’s name. But yea, verily, we will surely exalt it! Or at least get a few yuks out of it. Week 1150 is a straightforward contest, especially to readers familiar with the Invite’s long tradition of change-one-letter challlenges. While this contest may be the only change-a-letter restricted to people’s names, we did do a broader contest that included names way back in Week 19, in 1993. (Scroll down past the Week 22 contest tosee the results ,, which include “Hillary Rodham Clingon,” “George Tush” and”Arsenic Hall,”) There are also, no doubt, some people’s names sprinkled throughout our numerous generic change-a-letter contests. Fortunately, you all have many people’s names to choose from — and even if you accidentally use the same pun that’s already gotten ink, you’ll probably have a considerably different description. Dang — it occurred to me too late that I ought to have used Week 1150 for a contest with a Washington Post theme, given that — until Dec. 10 — our headquarters are at 1150 15th St. NW. Not a problem, though: We just have to hold on till Week 1301 (K St). Three years — hang in there. We had ink today for both Mark Raffman (of at least 270 blots of ink) and his wife, Claudia (of at least 2). But the Invite isn’t their only brush with WaPo immortality, I’ve learned: They were also both featured in a 1998 article as regular participants in an annual themed potluck*cooking contest; I wasn’t surprised that, for a dish required to “knock ’em dead,” Mark produced “Attack Dogs,” pigs-in-a-blanket with habenero jelly hidden inside the pastry dough. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.) * ***Most Style Invitational Losers, including some of the best, started off with a blot of ink here and there as they entered a series of contests; some of them became more and more successful over the years as they caught on to what we’re looking for and hone their craft of Invite-writing. Then there’s Danielle Nowlin. Danielle got ink on her first try, three years ago this month; then some more a few weeks later, and within three months was getting big splashes of ink practically every week. And at the Losers’ own Flushies awards in the spring of 2014, Danielle inevitably ended up with the plaques for both Rookie of the Year and — as the youngest ever (age 32) — Loser of the Year.* *And that very day — just as we all were marveling at Danielle’s smarts — she said something that made us wonder if we’d been terribly mistaken. Danielle came up to me in the hotel banquet room, with husband Ryan as a witness (as was, unbeknownst to us, a future third Nowlin child), and said, “Next year, we could have the Flushies at our new house.” This past June, more than 50 of us enjoyed arguably the best Flushies ever (and there have been 20), and certainly the one with the friendliest atmosphere.* *As have our Meet the Parentheses volunteers of past weeks, Danielle followed a Q&A template I offered, with some alterations.* *Danielle Nowlin, age 34* **Where you live:* * (Fairfax Station, Va.) most weeks. Occasionally in my credit line, the Empress sends me back to my previous home in (Woodbridge, Va.), where I started writing for the Invite. I left because (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) lives there and the town wasn’t big enough for the two of us. **Your Loser anagram:* * My official Loser Anagram, or “Granola Smear,” in theLoser Stats is “Nailed Linen Owl,” though my name anagrams to lots of fun things (e.g., “Ill-Won Alien Den”). The best possible anagram of my name, however, was pointed out to me when I joined the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page: “All-New Online ID.” **What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? **In my house, people who have never heard of the Invite know me as Mommy. Actually two of them know me as Mommy and the third knows me as Dada, but he has a limited vocabulary. Before these little people showed up and started calling me names, I taught middle school band and orchestra in public school. I chose to be a music teacher because why teach roomfuls of middle school students when you can teach roomfuls of middle school students equipped with noisemakers? [One of the best moments of the Flushies was when Danielle picked up our Loseaphone, a “horn” that wasn’t much more than a plastic tube with a funnel on the end, and trumpeted out a fanfare. — The E] **How much ink do you have; how long have you been playing? **As of this writing, I have 180 inkblots since late 2012. My inkwell has been temporarily drier since that third kid showed up and forced me to trade some of my late-night writing time for late-night sleeping time, but I still play regularly. (In fact, Danielle got two inks today for magnet slogans: Better Yuk Next Time and Punderachiever.) **What brought you to Loserdom? **I found the Invite shortly after moving here from Ohio and subscribing to the Post in 2010. I was initially under the impression that people who got ink came up with their hilarious ideas instantaneously after reading the contest description and were able to formulate their thoughts into properly scanning limericks at will, so it didn’t occur to me that I would ever be able to enter. I finally jumped in the pool when I had a “lightning bolt” thought hit me for Week 995’s Ask Backwards: Answer: Wikipedia Jones. Question: Which neighbor does Encyclopedia Brown find it impossible to keep up with? That entry didn’t make it in, but one of the three or four others I sent in with it did — online only. I REEEEEALLLLY wanted to see my name in print, so I entered some more contests and the rest is history. (I’ve since learned that people who get ink are ones who spend time writing entries, but you’ll never convince me that some of the regulars can’t in fact formulate their thoughts into properly scanning limericks at will.) **What are two favorite entries you’d like to share? **One entry I still know by heart was the second-place limerick in Week 1033 (Fa- words): Shaping cookies like books? Oh what fun! Call them “bookies,” and when they are done, Eat ’em up…Drat! Or not! Guess my oven’s too hot Set at Fahrenheit 451. My husband’s favorite entry of mine, which I wish he would quit quoting to people in polite company, was an online-only honorable mention in Week 1029 (song parodies describing movie plots), the only time I ever entered a song parody contest. *Movie: “Sally Hemings: An American Scandal”** To “White Christmas”* I’m dreaming of my black mistress You know, the one I’m glad I own. Oh, her soft lips glisten, I can’t help kissin’ My dear Sal when we’re alone. I’m dreaming of my black mistress; Who says you can’t buy love outright? May she be free (but just at night) And may all our children pass for white. **What are some of your all-time favorite Invite entries from other contestants? [This was Danielle’s own question]** For sheer virtuosity: Chris Doyle’s double dactyl from the letters of JFK’s name: Fiddledy diddledy Johnny F. Kennedy Hero at thirty-three, Hat in the ring. Idol, Lothario, Egalitarian, Rake or a leader? Joker or king? For still-laughing-out-loud-about-it factor: From the contest to dumb down a literary passage: John Donne: “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Loser Mike Ostapiej: “Ding dong. It’s for you.” *What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? *The most Loserly thing I did for a contest was for Week 1039 (write something using only the words from Hamlet’s soliloquy). I bought a package of printable magnet paper and made my own set of magnetic poetry so I would be able to manipulate the words without worrying about using a word too many times or accidentally deleting any. I played with the words on a cookie sheet all week. For my efforts I did not get any ink. The most Loserly thing I did otherwise was to host the Flushies at my house, including providing Doody Darts (turd-shaped things with Velcro on them I won as a second-place prize) to be used as category selectors for the trivia game. Ya know, like any good hostess. ====================================================================== WEEK 1151, published November 29, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1151: Here, we’ll spell it out for you Style Invitational contestant Roy Ashley poses in front of a movie poster in Madrid, October 2015. (Photo by Inge Ashley*Photo by Inge Ashley) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 25, 2015 Dave Prevar gave me the book “Dear Asshole” — hey, nobody’s reading this column except people who won’t go all aflutter reading a book title — a while back at a Loser brunch ; it has 101 perforated pages with fake-handwritten notes on them, ostensibly for tearing out to put on someone’s windshield, the refrigerator at work, an offending tattoo, etc. As I mention in the introduction to Week 1151 of The Style Invitational, I didn’t think I could use it as a prize but thought it had contest-fodder potential. What I didn’t note explicitly in the introduction was that I found the book really lame, if it’s supposed to be amusing. As in the example I cited about the restaurant patron, the rants aren’t witty; they’re just strident and grating. “The only thing you are an aficionado of is how to be annoying”? Yeah, speaking*of.* Maybe it’s*not*supposed to be amusing; maybe it’s just for people who want to vent. I was amazed to see that this book from 2011 is ranked around 1,500 on Amazon’s list of top sellers. That’s a very high number even for a new book that isn’t by a famous author; Gene Weingarten’s collection “The Fiddler on the Subway,” 2010, is currently at No. 244,000, and even his “Old Dogs” photo book, which always sells better in the Christmas season, is around 30,000). Anyway, this contest demands more than the wordplay we treasure and reward so frequently in the Invite. You actually have to write an imaginative, funny gripe. We’ve run several rant contests in the past, but they’re usually making fun of the ranters; we ask people to complain stupidly about things they misunderstand or are unduly upset about, like the “letter to the editor” in which J.J. Gertler is shocked to see The Post endangering the Republic by publishing column after column of “Classified” information. I didn’t give a length for the rant, but I’m expecting to give ink to entries that range from a couple of sentences to a longer paragraph. Not a one-liner, not a whole essay. Fortunately, there’s lots of writing ability among the Greater Loser Community. Not to mention lots that they’re irritated about. *AS THE WORD TURNS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1147* **Dave Prevar’s alternative headline for the change-a-letter contest Week 833, but really more appropriate for this one* Our second annual neologism contest based on a word-search grid proved once again to provide more than enough clever entries and definitions, with lots of variety though some surprising duplication (“golygon” or something close was used in several entries about Gomer Pyle’s geometry class). And not one person sent me a clipped-out page from the paper with various words circled, announcing that he’d solved the puzzle. The task of checking the entries to confirm that their letters were all adjacent inside the grid, in whatever direction, was taken off my hands entirely by Loser Todd DeLap, who wrote me soon after I announced the contest that he’d worked up a computer program for just this purpose. Rather than follow his long list of directions to download and install the program, I asked if I could just send him a list of words — something he did for me yesterday morning, mere hours after I finally sent him the 50 or so words on my short list. Todd found only one mistake — and it was my own mistyping. Todd also noted that I’d failed to include any of*his*words on the list. So I’m hugely grateful to Todd, even if I don’t express gratitude with Invite ink (on the flip side, I don’t express irritation or anger with a*lack* of Invite ink; it’s comforting to know that I can’t do either of those even unconsciously). Many of this week’s 41 inking entries by 29 Losers (36 entries in print) were just clever new words, while some — including the winner, “Barbiest Ken” — were also pretty amazing finds in the grid. And then there was Kevin Dopart’s “BTFXPBLKJQ,” which was not so amazing a find. Kevin wangled a runner-up out of that one, as did the more conventional but equally nifty entries from Nancy Della Rovere and Ann Martin. Nancy, who didn’t get her first ink until Week 1135, now has two runners-up in two weeks; her “No Cigar” slogan for the new honorable-mention magnet got her a Loser mug. Don’t get spoiled, Nancy. Plus, I hear that there will be some nice new magnets very soon without your idea on them. Meanwhile, it’s the 11th ink above the fold for Ann Martin, of a total of at least 72 blots (Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan decided to stay a little longer on his Australia*New Zealand expedition, so the stats might not be totally current), while Kevin’s ink totals now require exponents. And Jestin’ Jeff Shirley nabs his third Inkin’ Memorial and saunters further past the 100-ink marker. *Rank and Foul **(Jeff Contompasis’s suggested title for the unprintables; he often sends in headings for this department, even though Conversational ink counts for zip in the standings):* Given that Kevin Dopart’s “semensa,” especially with the play on “spunk” in the definition, got actual Invite ink (online, not in print), I guess I could have also gone (online) with Jamie Martindale’s “pantiforest: the ‘before’ picture at the bikini waxing salon.” But not with this one, which surprised me not one iota that it was by Tom Witte, except that this most pithy of entrants doesn’t ususally use extraneous words like “slang for”: K-3: Eelnog: Slang for semen. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (ROY ASHLEY, WASHINGTON) * *(I met Roy at my first Loser event ever — a brunch in the summer of 2001 — and he and his wife, Inge, are among the most reliable attendees at Loser functions. At our most recent brunch, they brought an excellent solar waving Buddha that will surely be a future Invite prize. As with all the bios in our Meet the Parentheses series, Roy modified my Q&A template as he wished.)* **Age: **Psalm 90:10 says “The days of our years are threescore years and ten”, hence the saying that after age 70 you’re playing with house money, which I have been doing for three years. **Where you live:** Grew up in North Adams, Mass.; I’ve been in Washington since 1966. **Do you have any comments on your official Loser anagram, “Horsey Lay”? **Neigh. **What brought you to Loserdom? **I read and enjoyed the Invitational for a couple of years, and decided to enter in Year 3. **What do like about the Invite? **I enjoy it if a friend says he*she enjoyed my entry, but I also like meeting the other Losers — I probably wouldn’t enter nearly as often if Inge and I hadn’t met so many really nice Losers at brunches and parties. **Some favorite entries?** *Week 120, bad analogies:* “From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and ‘Jeopardy!’ comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.” This was my first ink, and it happened to be in a contest whose results keep showing up all over the Web as “Actual Analogies and Metaphors Found in High School Essays.” A teacher I know told me that a colleague came into the teachers’ lounge eager to share the bad writing. the teacher saw my name and then explained. *Week 487, Bad writing about sex: “*Oh, Chad, Chad, rip my bodice!” implored the middle-aged librarian who had let down her bun and removed her glasses. *Also from Week 487:* Clem led the way to the haystack, and soon Bobbie Sue forgot all about that half-eaten possum-and-tomato sandwich . . . **What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? **I am a sucker for all-you-can-eat buffets. When visiting my daughter, Susanna, at St. Louis University nursing school, I made a reservation for us at supposedly the best buffet in town, at one of those revolving rooftop restaurants. Brunch hours were something like 11 to 3; We arrived before noon, and I proceeded to load up on the raw bar offerings. When I returned to refuel, I was furious to discover that all the good stuff had been removed — there were only rolls and butter. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that the food was all still there — our table had rotated away from the main serving area. **What else? ** In 2008 we were staying in a hotel in Missouri, and of course I had to check the Invite results, for which I had to use the hotel’s computer in the lobby that night. For the contest that week, people sent in their own pictures to illustrate any of five given captions. In one, Jeff Brechlin had Photoshopped a classic nude painting to make it look like a bondage picture. As I was viewing it, the night clerk rushed over to me: “You can’t look at porn in the lobby — if the police came in now, they could shut us down.” I didn’t think it was worth explaining, so I tucked my pervy tail between my legs and left. **What are your Invitational goals?** I’d like to get 500 points — about 150 more — and be in the Hall of Fame, but there are so many talented people entering now, and they prevent me from getting ink. I guess I’ll have to put out contracts on quite a few Losers. You know who you are. **Do you have any decent stories? **When I was 12, my father took me to Boston to see the St. Louis Browns play the Red Sox, and I saw Satchel Paige pitch in Fenway Park. True. ====================================================================== WEEK 1152, published December 6, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1152: Even if you first succeeded ... The Empress revisits The Style Invitational’s revisiting contest Loser (Larry Gray, Union Bridge, Md.) has won The Style Invitational four times, but he says the celebrity in this picture is the tree. See our Meet the Parentheses section below. (Family Photo) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 3, 2015 Style Conversational: Even if you first succeeded ... The Empress revisits The Style Invitational’s revisiting contest The Style Invitational has been doing second-chance contests like Week 1152 for almost as long as there’s been something to look back on: The first one was in Week 94, Jan. 1, 1995, and it invited readers to enter any contest from Week 1 through 93 with “an answer you may have thought of after the contest deadline was over.” The results contained entries to 17 different contests from 14 people. I know this because for the past several years, links to the Week 94 results — and all others — can be found on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. But no such website existed in 1995, three years before the founding of Google. The Invite itself wasn’t even online until well into 1995 (The Post has since gone back and put up old Invites and many other old stories from the archives). It wasn’t until Week 54 that the Invite even started accepting e-mailed entries, judging from this announcement that betrays a little fuzziness about e-mail vs. websites: “This week the Style Invitational goes on line. You can submit entries through the Internet at this address: losers@access.digex.net.” So the entrants in Week 94 most likely either had to remember their favorite Style Invitational contests of the preceding two years or had saved paper clippings. The situation was probably the same, at least for most contestants, in 1997, 1998 and maybe even 2001. What weirdos! Just after the Empress took over the operation at the end of 2003, she was able to refer Week 538 entrants to the index of 100 previous contests atwashingtonpost.com*styleinvitational, the same automatically compiled index that we use today. It wasn’t till 2005, though, that we started limiting the contest pool to those from the previous year, rather than Of All Time. Now that the old contests are so much easier to access, though — both through washingtonpost.com and, usually more completely, with art, through PDFs on Elden’s list — maybe we should have a contest to reenter contests from 1998 or whatever. *General guidelines (though often broken) for retrospective contests: * Short entries are more likely to get ink than longer ones, BUT I almost always run a couple of lengthy entries as well, especially song parodies. This is both because I want to provide an interesting mix of contests and because so many worthy parodies — often the most impressive work of the year from the Losers — lose out on ink the first time around because of space limitations. Also, caption contests and others involving graphics are unlikely to ink; we might reprint one cartoon in the results, but it takes a lot of space when there’s also the new contest on the page. And if a contest requires a long explanation for someone to understand the entry, that’s also a big strike against it for this contest. (I try to limit the descriptions to what’s really pertinent: For example, for Week 1118 I would say “‘Breed’ two racehorses from a list we provided” and not bother to explain that it was a list of 100 names of horses nominated for last year’s Triple Crown events, that the limit was 18 characters, etc. In the early days of the Invite, there was a rule against resubmitting an old entry; I dropped that condition when I took over. My predecessor, the Czar, thought that was a big mistake because my judging could prove to be inconsistent. And perhaps it has; a few resubmissions have indeed gotten ink. But in general, that’s because I didn’t have room for them the first time around. And there’s always a chance that you’ll get ink with an entry that someone else — or several someones-else — sent the first time around, and went inkless. Unfair to the first people? Arguably. But as long as the entry (or one like it) didn’t already run, I won’t disqualify it just because it was submitted earlier, even if it reveals some inconsistency on my part. Readers will enjoy the humor — what’s it to them if it had been submitted by someone else; I’ll save untold hours of research into my entry archives; and whoopee, you get a 20-cent magnet that that first person didn’t. But don’t, of course, send an entry that you*know* someone else submitted earlier; on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook, and in the Yahoo e-mail group Losernet, contestants sometimes share their “noinks,” and come on, I know that none of you would be such a cad as to consciously steal them. *THE TIGER OF TANKA: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1148* If you belong to theStyle Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, you’ll see numerous posts from someone who writes under a pseudonym and whose profile photo shows a woman wearing a tiger costume, her face covered by striped makeup. That would be Nan Reiner, a huge fan of the Princeton Tigers and a huge ly good writer of verse that plays off today’s headlines. And so I wasn’t shocked in the final stage of judging Week 1148 — the part where I search through my e-mail to find who wrote each of the inking entries — that over and over, Nan’s name kept showing up. This week’s Inkin’ Memorial gives Nan her 13th Invite win, and an amazing 41st ink “above the fold” among her 280-some blots of ink. On the other hand, it’s just the 10th blot for the less Invite-addicted but clearly talented first runner-up Perry Beider, who gets our Ecumenically Tasteless Holiday Pack: the ugly white “Jewjitsu” T-shirt and the Christian jelly beans (“Red is for Christ’s blood). And the Losers’ Circle is filled out as is often the case, with zings from Beverley Sharp and Gary Crockett. I was going to reluctantly self-censor First Offender Michael Rolfe’s TankaWanka about Germaine Greer, so I’m glad I consulted first with copy chief Courtney Rukan and ace editor Doug Norwood, who both thought saying “lop off your penis” in this context was all right even in the print Invite. However, I thought the following two very good TWs were better suited for the Conversational: *National Knee Day (October 22)* He told her, “Well, jeez, Today’s in honor of knees. To show my respect In a manner that’s correct, I’ll say: Get down on them, please!” (from the often saucy Brian Allgar) And this one from the usually highly decorous Matt Monitto, who shows that today’s world can drive anyone to bad language (especially if it’s a foreign one): The Paris attacks: Mankind’s resolve never cracks. We stand and issue A response to this crisis: “Va te faire foutre, ISIS.” *FAVORABLE CURRY: THE NEXT LOSER BRUNCH, DEC. 13* I can’t wait to return to the buffet at the sun-splashed London Curry House in the spit-spot Cameron Station section of Alexandria, Va. We’re having our first Loser Brunch there, and while I know it’s a crazy time of year, I hope many of you will join me. RSVP to Elden here . We’ll start at noon, as soon as the restaurant opens; I’ll need to leave by 1:30. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (LARRY GRAY, UNION BRIDGE, MD.) * *In his 4 1*2_years with the Invite, Larry has spent a lot of time hanging around the Losers’ Circle; he’s won four Inkin’ Memorials and six runners-up. His first ink was a neologism from the recession era: “Sellulose: Superabsorbent substance that sucks value from whatever it touches; commonly used as home insulating material in the past decade.” While Larry lives way out in the middle of nowhere, close to the Pennsylvania line, he’s come down for several Loser events and joined us on at least one of our annual Gettysburg day trips. As usual in our Meet the Parentheses series, Larry modified the Empress’s basic Q&A to answer what he felt like answering. Maybe all the Losers should participate in a political debate.* *Age:* 50-mumble *Where I Live:* The bucolic outskirts of Union Bridge, Md. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? *Larry. What? Oh, you mean, “What do they know about me?” Well, as a young’un I aspired to follow in the footsteps of noted naturalist and keeper of the Wild Kingdom, Marlin Perkins, and I studied hard so that I could sell Mutual of Omaha Insurance. No, wait ... I attended West Virginia University, where I majored in wildlife management. I graduated just after the election of that great environmentalist Ronald Reagan, who apparently believed that “preserving wildlife” meant “making spotted-owl pickles.” Result: I never found a job working with the woodland critters. I got the last laugh, though; I rode the Ronnie wave and landed a job with the Defense Department. (From one kind of Predator to another.) Now, I spend as much of my time as possible acquiring expensive wood and reducing it to sawdust; playing a game called Whackdammit (which more coordinated people call “golf”); and making sounds come out of a guitar that should never be permitted in a civilized society. *Closest Brush With the Famous:* See photo. It was taken in Mount Victoria Park in Wellington, New Zealand, and I’m perched in the tree from “The Lord of the Rings” under which Frodo and Sam spent their first night as they fled the Shire. That tree is a celebrity. *What’s Your Loser Anagram?* My official Granola Smear is “Ay, Grrrl, Ay!” but if I could use my full name (with middle initial) I’d be “Crawly Avenger.” Who wouldn’t want to be “Crawly Avenger”? *When Did You Start Losing?* I submitted my first entries (and scored my first ink) in Week 923 in 2011. So far, I’m at somewhere north of 75 official blots plus a few unofficial mentions in the Conversational. *What’s Your Favorite Ink?* My favorites tend to be submitted by others, but here are two of my own that I’m particularly fond of: *Week 949, analogies:* “A hand on a Bible is to a politician’s honesty as truck nuts are to a driver’s virility.” Week 955. pair a word and its anagram: “Has-been banshee: Roseanne Barr.” *Proof of Loserosity:* None needed. But I can give it up any time I want to. Really. ====================================================================== WEEK 1154, published December 20, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1154: All God’s critters got a place in our choir The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results 74-time Loser (Ann Martin, Falls Church, Va.) reconsiders ordering the Texas-size pork dinner. She (Ann) is the subject of this week’s Meet the Parentheses, below. (Photo by Lucy Martin) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 17, 2015 Don’t you love Bob Staake’s art for Week 1154 ? He sent me four totally different sketches and took me about 0.3 nanoseconds to opt for the “Abbey Road” parody. Even if the Feline Four’s faces don’t look very catlike, the tails are all you need. I should always give an extra week for song parody contests. I don’t see any reason why that can’t be a regular thing. I figure that I’ll be getting numerous parodies set to tunes from “Cats” or other animal-themed songs, although any well-known (or, for the Web Invite, at least linkable) song is welcome. Remember, though, that your lyrics have to be about — or addressed to — animals; it can’t be something like this fabulously clever (if very partisan)seven-minute medley of “Cats” songs about the GOP candidates. Do tell me what song you’re parodying! The results of this contest won’t be posted till Jan. 14, but hopefully there will be some to share at ... *THE LOSERS’ POST-HOLIDAY PARTY: SATURDAY, JAN. 9, RESTON, VA. * Many thanks to Loser Couple Mark and Claudia Raffman for their quick, merciful and generous offer in response to my plea in last week’s column for someone to host this season’s Loser party, which since 2010 we’ve been holding after New Year’s in hopes of avoiding conflicts with all those other seasonal events. I hope that if you’re on the Invitational’se-mail list , you received an invitation around 7:30 a.m. this past Tuesday. I know that some people didn’t get it, and that some people did get it but the link to RSVP didn’t work for them. We’ll send it out again after the first of the year, but don’t wait for that, even though it includes Craig Dykstra’s nifty graphic. Here’s the text: *Do Your Revel Best: Party With the Style Invitational Losers* Yes, you are so goshdarn fun to be with that you’re invited to the *Style Invitational Losers’ Post-Holiday Party* Saturday, Jan. 9 6:30 to 10p.m. At the home of Mark and Claudia Raffman Reston, Va. It’s a potluck -- Mark and Claudia will put out the plates, utensils, napkins, ice, etc., and some soft drinks, and we bring the rest. Spouses and other handlers are welcome. What to bring: Anything to eat and*or drink. If we end up with 17 cheese plates, we’ll be having cheese. If you really want some particular thing, bring it. Dress: Please do. (In any manner.) Reply to Pat Myers, Empress of The Style Invitational, and she’ll provide the address and further information. (I’m not messing with links here: Reply to pat.myers@washpost.com.) Need a ride or want to carpool? Let the Empress know and she’ll see what the Loser Community can do. Or post a request on the Style Invitational Devotees page. With malice toward none, With parody for all. ------------ So far I’ve heard from about 20 people, including some who’ll be attending their first Loser event, but also from such Invite Legends as Chuck Smith. And I was heartened to hear that Mark Raffman will be working once again with fellow Stellar Loser Parodist Nan Reiner — who’ll be flying up from Florida for the party — to create some songs just for this event. It’ll be hard for them to top their duets at the two previous Loser parties, at the homes of Stephen Dudzik and Craig Dykstra, but they somehow always manage. And Loser Steve Honley, a professional musician, has volunteered once again to accompany them on keyboard. So I hope that you — yes, even*you* — come to your party with your meal-offering or sin-offering. I’ll be there in one of my assorted tiaras — either that or the pumpkin-pie hat prize that the winner didn’t want. If you’re not one of the regular Loser, brunch attendees, or Devotees, I’ll likely chat with you a little by e-mail before giving you the address and other party details. *WE’RE TERRIBLE WITH NAMES*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1150* **A non-inking entry by Danielle Nowlin* When I decided to do this contest to change one letter of someone’s name and describe the result, I knew that we’d have lots and lots of great ink four weeks later. And we did. But between those two moments, I wasn’t sure. I don’t have an exact count — I’d have to do it by hand — but the entries to Week 1150 definitely numbered in the thousands. Seventeen of the entrants hadn’t entered an Invite contest before, at least for the several years I’d been keeping lists of new people. Yay!! But man. Page after page of lame entries. I’d check off one name on two pages of the printout, comprising 50 entries. Some were just lame-lame; many others came up with funny names with less funny descriptions: I didn’t think joke justice was done to such funny monikers as Cookie Mobster, Doobie Howser, John Elvis Bush, Matt Damn, Run-Tin-Tin, Sinfeld, Madeleine Alright, Addle, Sinfeld, Vladi­mir Pupin ... But, as I repeated have to remind myself:*It doesn’t matter how many bad entries there are. It only matters whether there are enough good ones.*And of course there were. I’m running 47 entries, and there are others that Losers should use again for next December’s retrospective contest. Jeff Brechlin is the author of probably the best-known single Style Invitational entry, the “Hokey-Pokey Sonnet,” which won the Invite back in 2003 and lives on ubiquitously on blogs and social media, occasionally with his name attached . But Jeff also has close to 400 blots of Invite ink, and this week marks his 14th contest win. Jeff hasn’t been entering often in recent years, so it was especially fun to see his name pop up with “Napoleon Blonaparte.” Which still makes me crack up. Our other Big Jeff takes the second spot with “Jugs Bunny” as a name for Jessica Rabbit . It might be coincidental that Jeff Contompasis and family actually own pet rabbits, presumably fluffier than Jessica. And the Losers’ Circle is rounded out by Double Hall of Famer Chris Doyle and longtime Loser J. Larry Schott, who recently relocated from Florida to West Plains, Mo. — also, weirdly, home to Loser Drew Bennett. Something in the Ozark water? We do have a First Offender this week — Beth Karp of Portland, Ore., with “Tinderella” — and it was exciting to see the return of 236-time Loser Christopher Lamora, who’s moved back to the D.C. area from L.A. Week 1150, Bad Porno Names Division: The Unprintables We did run Frank Osen’s “Bashar Al-Asswad” this week, even in print; as I argued, of all the people in the world to call a vulgar name, Assad will draw the least objection. But I didn’t think these would past the Taste Police checkpoint: Alfred Itchcock: The director liked his leading ladies a little too much. (Chris Damm) Andy Warmhol: [oops, can’t share what I came up with here] (Arnold Berke) David Lee Froth: Rick Santorum’s favorite rock singer. (Chris Doyle) Dick Trace: A detective who specializes in solving sex crimes. (Tom Witte) Lyndong Johnson: Carried a bigger stick than Teddy Roosevelt. (Rob Huffman) *Meet the Parentheses: (Ann Martin, Falls Church, Va.), previously (Ann Martin, Bracknell, England) * *Ann decided to dispense with the Empress’s Q&A template, though she ends up answering most of the questions in it. Want to be next? If you appear somewhat regularly in the Invite these days, or are one of the top 100 or so ink-blotters of all time, the E hopes you’ll introduce yourself to the Greater Loser Community. Your current position in the queue: 1 — i.e., I have no bios left to run. For inspiration and guidance, take a look at previous weeks’ Style Conversationals at washingtonpost.com*styleconversational , and then write to me at pat.myers@washpost.com.* I am a Washingtonian born and bred, and a Post reader from my youth up. I can’t remember when I first became aware of the Style Invitational, but I was amused and mystified by it, holding(Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) in awe and puzzling overthe Ear No One Reads . It took a long time to think that I, too, might submit something. First Ink came in the days of the Czar (“Open Pit is a good name for a barbecue sauce, but a bad name for a toilet bowl cleaner”). I am a teacher of Latin and German and whatever else you’d like me to have a go at. At one point I discovered that the mother of a student in my middle school Latin class was … the Empress of The Style Invitational! I hoped I could parlay this into increased success, but the Emp never cut me any slack; all my attempts at Classical jokes involving Ganymede or the ablative absolute case fell flat. I did my best to infect the rest of my family: my brother in Wisconsin now has his Fir Stink, and my son, daughter and son-in-law have submitted entries. Fortunately I come from a depraved family. Eventually I even entered the thrilling realm of Loser Brunches – which I could rarely attend because I am always ringing the bells at Washington Cathedral around noon on a Sunday. (Let me know if you want to learn — e are starting a new course in January.) One time, I cleverly got around this by inviting the gang for an early brunch near the Cathedral and then taking them up to the tower. It was at least half an hour before they were thrown out. (I also was a member of the U.K. Loser branch for six years when I taught Latin near Windsor Castle.) My other hobby besides ringing is solving, and occasionally setting, British cryptic crosswords , in which the clues often contain anagrams (hence my preference for anagram contests). My favorite of my own clues (not using anagrams): “Why tin cups might be appearing in ‘Hamlet’ ” (10 letters). This experience has proved a handicap when I write clues for the Invitational’sbackward crosswords ; I keep forgetting to make them funny instead of precise. I qualified three times for the Times of London’s crossword competition, but never came near to the top finishers (the kind who time their eggs by how long it takes to solve the daily puzzle). I’m having a great time getting to know my fellow Losers. Keep the cheesy puns coming. Oh, the tin cups in “Hamlet”? Well, obviously the answer is “For tin bras.” --- Hope to hear from you soon, both with your entries and with your RSVP. ====================================================================== WEEK 1156, published January 3, 2016 The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 30, 2015 Happy holidays, all. For the third time in four weeks, The Style Invitational’s schedule was moved up to publish on Wednesday instead of the usual Thursday — which, combined with some extra-Invite obligations, made for even more blunderations than usual. Thanks heaps of bunches to the eagle-eyed Losers who alerted me immediately to a “check date” note that wasn’t supposed to print but did last week, and to various other mistakes that I was able to fix before the print paper went to press. Our Week 1156 contest for obit poems — I’ve been running these contests every January since 2004 — produces consistently great stuff.. Part of the fun is providing a mix of the best-known past-tense people and the more obscure. In the interests of today’s rush schedule, I’ll link to my comments in Week 1105 Style Conversational for guidelines about what we’re looking for in an obit poem. And you can see last year’s winners here. By the way, if you are in any way confused by Bob Staake’s cartoon about Madame Claude: The pink “meat” swinging from the hook at the Paris charcuterie is the especially shapely bottom half of a woman’s torso. It’s a biting commentary on the degradation of sex work. *THE WHOLE SCHMEAR: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1152* As I mention in the intro tothis week’s results , I got tons of great material, as always, from our annual retrospective contests, with the vast majority of the past year’s Invite challenges represented among the entries. But there’s only so much room, and only so much that a soul can take in at once. There weren’t all that many *entrants,* but more of them sent full cards of 25 entries than in a typical week. This will always be a contest to draw a higher proportion of regular Losers, both because it requires diligent research and because so many of them — clearly — were eager to resubmit entries that some idiot failed to award ink to the first time around. (In some cases, they were right. A number of this week’s inking entries had been sent earlier in some form, though I believe the “above the fold” entries are all new.) But we did end up with a First Offender — yay, Al Larsen — and two people who got just their second ink — including one of the runners-up. I had lots of fun judging the entries — it’s much less taxing to consider a variety of contests all at once, and more important, they were good. I remembered a lot of the entries from before, because I’d put them on my shortlists for those contests. (I almost gave ink to one especially good clerihew about Justice Scalia, until I checked and saw that it had gotten ink the first time! It had run three weeks after the regular results, in Week 1139 , so Mae Scanlan might have missed it. ) I ended giving ink to entries from 19 contests (a couple of the song parodies could have gone to any of two or three). Next year, I’ll remember to ask people to remind me briefly what the contest was, as in the way I indicate it in the results. Among the parodies — a number of which were robbed of ink once again in the interest of variety — Matt Monitto’s “Tomorrow” tune and Mark Raffman’s “Uptown Funk” made the print page. I especially enjoy seeing parodies of contemporary songs , since they’re more of a challenge to fit witty words to — and also because it’s important that the Invite not act as if an entire generation’s worth of music doesn’t exist. The Invitational will soon, inshallah, celebrate its 24th birthday, and I’m thrilled that many of us have been along for the whole ride. But we don’t want to ossify. But some of the very best ink of the week went to parodies and poems that ran only online, for space reasons but also because they were set to tunes that readers weren’t likely to be able to sing along with without the link. A very clever Your Mama*Yoda joke makes the first win ever (though he’s had three runners-up) for Gregory Koch, bringing him to 21 inks in all. Gregory first started getting ink in the Invite in 2011, when he was a freshman at the University of Connecticut; now that he’s graduated, he’s come down to work in the D.C. area, and showed up at our December Loser brunch in Virginia. Also breaking into the Invitational at the same time was another college freshman,*from* Connecticut but attending Elon University in North Carolina: A philosophy major but a theater kid, Matt Monitto immediately proved himself brilliant at writing parodies of show tunes. This week’s second place is Matt’s 75th blot of ink starting with Week 902 — and his fifth runner-up in addition to three outright winners. But it’s only the second blot of ink at all for Michael Weiner, for a pun that really did make me laugh out loud. On top of that, I think Michael sent just that one entry, for Yoplait as the name for a New Jersey kids’ gym. I hope to see lots more from him. And Rob Cohen hits the Losers’ circle for the second straight week, with his Mess With Your Heads bank headline. I’m looking forward to meeting Rob for the first time, at the ... *LOSERS’ POST-HOLIDAY PARTY, SATURDAY EVENING, JAN. 9* For which it is not too late to RSVP. Schmooze with some of your favorite Losers, munch the potluck food, and sing along with Master Parodists Nan Reiner and host Mark Raffman, who, I believe, are collaborating on a new number about the Invite, set to a medley of familiar tunes played by Loser Steve Honley at the keyboard. Nan is flying up from Florida just for the event, while Mark is coming down from the shower upstairs. The festivities start around 6:30; please contact me at pat.myers@washpost.com to get directions Chez Raffman. We’re currently up to about 35 people. *WON TOO MANY? ALTERNATIVE PRIZES * If you’re in that terrible situation of having won so many Invite prizes that you’re rolling in duplicates, e-mail me shortly after you get ink and let me know if you’d rather have an alternative. If you’re a winner or runner-up, you can choose a vintage Loser T-shirt as an alternative to the Inkin’ Memorial, Grossery Bag (just a few left, though), Love*Loser mug or This Is Your Brain on Drugs mug, a vintage or regular magnet, or something from my Mystery Bag. Magnet winners can ask for an older-model magnet — there are at least 20 designs — until I run out of the stash. Happy New Year, all, and dang, we made it to 2016. ====================================================================== WEEK 1157, published January 10, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1157: Wishing you grid luck The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over (eww) the week’s new contest and results 275-time Loser Mark Raffman in front of his magnetic rap sheet . Mark introduces himself in this week’s “Meet the Parentheses,” below, and he’s hosting this weekend’s Loser Post-Holiday Party. (Selfie by Mark Raffman) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** January 7, 2016 I ran The Style Invitational’s first backward crossword —“Haven’t Got a Clue” — in December 2006, using a solution to a daily puzzle that had appeared a little while before in The Post and I’d chosen at random. The Post subscribed to the crossword’s syndicate and had already paid for the rights, so I didn’t bother to contact the writer, Paula Gamache — until I received an angry e-mail from crossword constructor Vic Fleming, castigating me for disparaging the work of one of the best constructors around. (I’d said the original clues ranged from “ooh-clever to ah-that’s-funny to nothing-special. This week: Make all the clues ooh-clever or at least ah-that’s-funny, even the little words.”) So I wrote to Paula to make up, and not only was she gracious, but she even weighed in with her favorites among my choices, and went on to choose two other puzzles for me. And I’ve continued to run a backward-crossword contest at least once a year, sometimes twice, since it always draws lots of entrants and lots of good results. Most of the time I used crosswords provided me by Bob Klahn, owner of the CrossSynergy syndicate, who sometimes created a puzzle just for the Invite, and who has a few Invite inks of his own. A couple of times we’ve had a twist in which we shaded out some letters in the solution, so that not only could you create your own clues, but you could create your own grid words as well. That’s what we did last year. But given that The Post just installed Evan Birnholz in the plum post of constructing the big crossword that runs every Sunday in the WP Magazine andonline, I was delighted that for Week 1157, he agreed to let us use one of his own, smaller puzzles featured on his website, Devil Cross . (Evan isn’t putting up any new puzzles there for now, so he can devote more time to his Sunday gig, but you can look at more than 60 earlier ones there.) *If you’re entering this contest (especially if you’re new to the Invite): * Keep in mind that we’re running a joke contest, not a puzzle contest; and the goal isn’t to put together a doable crossword. In fact, I probably won’t be running a clue for every word in the grid (while I well might print three varying clues for the same word — whatever’s the funniest). I did make a whole separate set of clues one year and invite people to try to solve it, but it was a big hassle and almost no one bothered anyway. The best way to get an idea of what we’re looking for is to look at some of our many past Invites. You’ll notice that extreme brevity isn’t that important, since we don’t have to fit a clue in for every word. And we don’t use the crossword convention of ending a clue with a question mark to signal that wordplay is involved; with us, that’s pretty much a given. However, the clue should be of the same part of speech as the word; if the word is a noun, the clue is in noun form; if it’s a verb, the clue would begin “to” or have “-ing.” Here are some links to old results (scroll down past the new contest to see the results): Week 691, the first contest (a text file) Week 953, 2012 Week 1052, 2013 *Hey, wait, this contest doesn’t even NEED a grid, right? * Absolutely true. It’s just a novel, eye-catching format. If it’s easier for you just to make a list of all the words and work from there — sounds like a good plan to me. In fact, I can almost guarantee that some altruistic Loser out there will compile such a list within a couple of days and post it on the Style Invitational Devotees page in Facebook, right under the link to this week’s Invite. By the way, given that so many people out there will be writing clues for 25 of the words in this puzzle, there’s a strong likelihood that one or even many other entrants will make the same joke you did. When this happens, I’ll either double- or triple-credit people or choose the one with the best wording. (If four or more people sent the same entry, I’ll toss it, or run it and credit no one in particular, something I’ve done extremely rarely,) Note that the clues, however lengthy and full of wordplay, are all American-style rather than British-style: They’re definitions or synonyms, and they’re of the same part of speech that the words are: i.e., if the word is a noun, the clue is in noun form; if it’s a verb, the clue would begin “to” or have “-ing.” British-style clues are very different, often being a non-definition sentence that includes an anagram of the word in question. Please use American-style clues. *THREES: A SMALL CROWD — THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1153* Boy, I don’t know if we should run this contest again in the same format: comparing two things that have the same three-letter abbreviation. Week 1153 didn’t draw a whole lot of entries, and so little of what came in was very funny, even in a wow-is-that-a-crazy-wordplay sense. (“Kounter Productive Attitudes is a tech company, maybe it insures gentry, the Korean Peoples Army sent injuries, and the Karen Peace Army is for insurgency.”) Maybe it was just that it was a busy season and people didn’t want to keep clicking on Wikipedia links of “TLAs.” But it seemed that even the wiliest wordplayers were stretching awfully hard. I’m happy with today’s inking entries, but also happy that we have a nice big crossword grid on the page, as well as a sizable Solar Buddha. (That thing is great, by the way — it’s on my desk right now, nodding and waving away, even on a very gray day. And it’s about as big as your hand. Thanks again to prize donors Roy and Inge Ashley.) Chris Doyle wins the contest for the 342nd 51st time, for a total of 36,782 1,748 blots of Invite ink. Recent Fixture Jon Gearhart gets his third runner-up prize and an honorable mention that might push him up to the 50-ink milestone. Jeff Contompasis edges ever closer to the 500 inks that will spring open the combination padlock that secures the portal to the Hall of Fame, and Jeff Shirley adds a 15th piece of runner-up swag. One entry that was going to get ink was this one by Kevin Dopart: The Kalamazoo Public Library and the Korean Peasants League: The second believes that Weeding Is Fundamental. Pretty cute pun, I thought. But, to my total surprise, it was viewed with alarm by several editors, and killed. They were concerned that it would sound like mocking of Asian accents. I argued that it’s R’s and L’s, not R’s and W’s, that get blurred in an Asian accent — and that the Asian aspect didn’t even factor into the joke , that it’s just Librarians vs. Farmers— but no go. Later I asked Loser* Style Invitational Devotee Diane Wah, who’s of Chinese descent, what she thought about it. Diane offered that “I think it’s just very funny and not at all offensive,” and on further thought, said, “The humor is all the more delicious because the R*W switch can be seen as a jab at those who play on the R*L switch.” But it’s not at all irrational, in this time when there’s so much widespread “shaming” on Twitter, etc., for something that people have decided to take offense at. I can see why The Post wants to avoid such accusations, however unfounded. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to persuade someone otherwise when someone decides to label you a racist, rape-enabler, etc. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) * *Mark has been a ubiquitous presence in the Invite Losers’ Circle ever since he First Offended in August 2012 with a Way to Tick People Off: “When you’re on jury duty, bring a daisy into the deliberation room and start to pull out each petal while saying ‘Guilty . . . not guilty . . .’ ” Since then, he’s gotten ink almost every week, in all kinds of contests, most brilliantly in song parodies — leading to 276 blots of ink , including 10 first prizes — in just over three years. You can meet Mark and his wife, Claudia (also a Loser), at their home this weekend as they host this year’s Loser Post-Holiday Party (see section below for last-minute details).* *As with the Losers we’ve profiled earlier, Mark modified a suggested Q&A list to fit his humor needs.* *Mark S. Raffman* *Age:* Old enough to know better. *Where you live:* Reston, Virginia. We moved from Maryland in 1993, so by now I’m quite comfortable with “y’all” as second person plural. *Can you improve on your official Loser anagram, “Frank Farm, Ma”?* No, but I’m thinking of changing my name to Lord Damp Nut so I can get a different anagram. *What brought you to Loserdom?* Though I had been enjoying the Invitational for 20-plus years, I didn’t enter until my kids left home and I no longer had a captive audience for my ridiculous jokes. *What do like about the Invite?* I enjoy a fresh challenge each week, and having an excuse to clear the mind. And there’s the validation; I’ve gone from being just a dweeb to being a Celebrity Dweeb among friends and colleagues who read the Invitational. *Some favorite entries?* I seem to have made a second career writing song parodies to “Be Our Guest,” taking on adolescent movie fantasies (”See a Chest”), Bibi Netanhayu (”He’s a Pest”) and the Trump campaign (”He’s Obsessed!”). But my favorite all-time entry was from Week 1108 — a fictional valentine that was too blue for the ’Vite but won a Scarlet Letter here in the Conversational (so be forewarned!). *For the postman:* Not rain nor snow nor sleet nor hail Can keep away my favorite male So here’s a love note for the hunk Who each day stuffs my box with junk *What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? *When my kids were young, we used to compose group limericks on long car trips, each person taking the next line. We found there are a lot of words for poop, and even more words that rhyme with those words. *What do you do when you’re not composing Invite entries?* I practice law, play blues harmonica in an oldies rock band, and watch a lot of hockey with my favorite Caps fan, my wife, Claudia. Last year I wrote a screenplay that nobody will ever read, and if this year goes according to plan I will write a musical comedy for the same audience. *What are your Invitational goals?* I’d like to be the youngest, sexiest member of the Loser Hall of Fame.*[The “youngest” part isn’t gonna happen unless Brendan Beary is banished for using limerick-enhancing drugs and Jeff Contompasis quits the Invite with 12 inks to go. The other element is still in play. — The E]* *Do you have any decent stories?* I had one line to deliver at my wedding, and I muffed it. Also, I once held a door open for Al Gore (then Vice President), but did not recognize him. It’s a good thing the Empress judges our entries anonymously. *What is your favorite color?* Oh, um, uh, aaaargh ... ------ *LAST CALL FOR LOSER PARTY RSVPS: * Now that you know Mark from his bio, wouldn’t you like to sneak a look into his medicine cabinet? We’re up to 52 guests for the Loser Post-Holiday party this Saturday evening, Jan. 9, at the Raffmans’ house in Reston. There will be numerous Names People Recognize in attendance — Jeff Contompasis, Nan Reiner, Elden Carnahan, Mae Scanlan, Roy Ashley, Barbara Turner, Chuck Smith, Danielle Nowlin, Rob Cohen, to name a few — along with people who are attending their first Loser event, including some just-fans. And of course I’ll be there too. There will be brand-new song parodies! It’s a potluck; bring whatever you like. Contact me at pat.myers@washpost.com for the address. -- *OOH, REMEMBER WOULD-BE SEN. LOSER? * A few months ago we gave away a campaign tote bag emblazoned “Loser for Liberty,” promoting the campaign of libertarian Carl Loser for a state Senate seat from the Richmond, Va., area. We even sent him a Loser Mug. Well, he didn’t win. But Loser (rhymes with “hoser”) did get himself back in the news this week, when he was charged with assaulting a police officer by rolling up his car window on his hand “after debating a speeding ticket,” according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch . But he’d already had amug shot in the paper. ====================================================================== WEEK 1158, published January 17, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1158: Not every dog song had its day The Empress ruminates all over the Style Invitational animal-themed song parodies Despite the contents of his cranium that he advertises on his sweatshirt, Loser (Edward Gordon, Austin) is an active member of Mensa. He’s featured below in Meet the Parentheses. (Courtesy of Edward Gordon) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** January 14, 2016 Week 1158 marks the third time we’ve done a contest in which we show you some unambiguous objects and you show us that*nothing* has to be unambiguous if you try hard enough. The first was in Week 421 , in October 2001; while I didn’t ascend to Empressness for another two years, I happened to have judged while filling in as Auxiliary Czar. Among the winners (all of them are here ): *A. Butter stick with a pat knifed off: *Carving the very special Thanksgiving Tofu Turkey. (Jennifer Hart) Corporate Headquarters, Land O’ Lakes Inc. (Kelley Hoffman) *B. Hypodermic needle: * ** This magical beast can turn from horse to monkey. (Russell Beland; a runner-up) *C. Keyhole: * This image was submitted as a centerfold photo for the Taliban Monthly Review, but was rejected for its prurience. (Gene Gross) What old keys dream of at night. (Chuck Smith) Transamerica Pyramid meets Goodyear Blimp. Transamerica Pyramid wins. (Richard A. Creasy) Hitler wearing a clown nose. (Jean Sorensen) *D. A die, one of a pair of dice: * A prostitute in Lego Land. (Chuck Smith; a runner-up) After hours of persistent twisting, Charlton Heston’s Rubik’s Cube meets an untimely end. (David Moore) Captain Hook appears to have had trouble getting his ice out of the tray. (Russell Beland) After the tragic accident with the trash compactor, there were only 100 Dalmatians. (Jennifer Hart — that week’s winner) *E. A Chinese restaurant takeout container, with the little metal handle: * Purse by Givenchy (shown actual size): $3,500. (Leslie Hughes; Jennifer Hart) The attache case of Condoleezza Rice. (Russell Beland) The Social Security lockbox. Once you dip into it, you want to do it again an hour later. (Russell Beland) *G. Roll of toilet paper standing on end: * Christo wraps the Washington Monument. (Stephen Dudzik) Though it proved quite effective, the new masonry prophylactic never became very popular. (James Noble) It would take centuries for early man to realize that it would work much better on the curved side. (James Noble) A confused marshmallow who is wearing a yarmulke AND holding rosary beads. (Jennifer Hart) Then we did it again in 2009, in Week 819 , with a teapot, Christmas tree, mailbox, paper clip, hair comb and push pin. Among the winners: ** *Comb:* The one thing that drove Mr. Centipede nuts: his wife’s pantyhose draped over the shower rod. (Brendan Beary) — A giant hot dog fails to hide behind a white picket fence. (Vic Krysko) *Mailbox: * It’s a mailbox without a post, signifying that people don’t get The Post delivered anymore. So it’s a visual metaphor for the death of print journalism. I’m pretty sure this is right, because I got the answer from Wikipedia. (Brendan Beary) The most successful invention of Albert Gore Sr. (Tom Lacombe) So you get the idea. Usually I ask Bob Staake to make his cartoons somewhat ambiguous, to allow for a wide range of interpretations in the captions. A contest like this makes you think a little harder. *WE’LL HAVE FAUNA, FAUNA, FAUNA: THE PARODIES OF WEEK 1154* Oh, wow. There were so many clever, well done, really interesting parodies — and sources — in Week 1154, our contest to write a song to, for, about — and I also took “by” — cats and other animals. It was relatively easy to choose entries for this Sunday’s paper; the limited space and my inability to provide links to the melody excluded both long songs and less well known ones. The 13 songs in the print invite comprise the four winners plus Pizza Rat (to “Yesterday”), “Benji’s at the Vet’s,” the two to “Be Our Guest,” the “Fox-Gnus” ditty, the centipede song to “One singular sensation,” the cat songs to “Tonight” and “You’re the Top,” “My Ken-L-Ration” — plus, to make it fit perfectly, “Soft Kitty.” But there were*so*many songs that I had marked “Web” — not for the paper, but certainly deserving. And finally, last night, when I was expanding the print Invite for the online version, I had to face the reality that a lot of people’s finely crafted, ingeniously clever creations were going to get bupkis. So in the coming days I’ll be using the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group to post Jon Gearhart’s multi-verse story song culminating with “You picked a fine time to jolt me, juiced eel”; Melissa Balmain’s play on “The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends,” featuring the Elephant and the Donkey; Kathy Hardis Fraeman’s song about Internet “dog shaming”; Gary Crockett’s about laser pointers to “I Saw the Light,” and other gems. I judged the entries first for the humor in the lyrics, and the creativity and originality in their ideas, and whether the humor stayed fresh and interesting through the length of the song. After that, I considered how well they parodied the original songs, and I aimed to include a mix of music genres, though the final results do mostly consist of the show tunes and ’60s-’70s songs that reflect the age and interests of most of our parody contest entrants. I did post on the Devotees page a fun parody of Lana del Rey’s“Summertime Sadness,” called “Reindeer Sadness” andsung on video by new Loser Nathanael Dewhurst. And I don’t hear much country music; the beautiful George Strait song “Amarillo by Morning” — which I will now and forever link with Drew Bennett’s “Armadillo, I’m Warning” — was new to me. The whole song didn’t hold together enough for ink, but my cat, Joey, and I could certainly relate to the opening lines of Judi Levy’s parody of Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” : Where is my cat when I need him the most? He’s lying around on The Washington Post. Judi’s rhyme, by the way, improves on Powter’s, which is “most”* “lost.” Many of our winning parodies over the years have had better rhyming than the originals, which can get away with “near rhyme” because the music compensates, and because the assonance of vowels is often more prominent than the rhyming of consonants. (And because precise rhyming is just more clever.) It’s the fourth win and the 51st (and 52nd) blot of ink for the Glasgow Loser Bureau, i.e., Stephen Gold, who over the years has inked with a series of brilliant song parodies, limericks and other verses, among other entries. No one who attended last Saturday’s Loser Post-Holiday Party and heard Nan Reiner and Mark Raffman sing a series of holiday song parodies they co-wrote will be surprised that each of them ended up in this week’s Losers’ Circle for the umpteenth time. Meanwhile, Duncan Stevens might have gotten his first ink back in Week 970, but it’s just recently that he’s caught fire Invite-wise, soaking up ink every week for something like two months straight, in a variety of contests. So that lifetime total of 24 blots should be turning into a vat before long. One tack that didn’t work for me: I know that the Invite often rewards edgy, irreverent humor. But I’ve never taken to sick humor about cruelty or suffering. I’m sure it was just an effort to be outrageous, not sincere, that prompted various Losers to include parody lyrics fantasizing about the gratification of drowning, hanging, or pulling the claws out of an irritating cat, burning animals alive, seeing them shot, etc. Ugh. (As an aside: I’m convinced that the it’s asick-comedy shtick, not real political opinions, that Ann Coulter uses as her stock in trade. Just: “What’s the most outrageously nasty comment I can possibly make?”) *BAGGING IT, FOR NOW* I have just one Grossery Bag left, the runner-uptote bag with the “Whole Fools” logo . Meanwhile, I have a bunch of Mug 1.0 — the brain region design with the slogan “This Is Your Brain on Mugs” — that we discovered when moving offices last month. So for now, future runners-up may opt for either that mug or the LOVE*LOSER mug — or choose one of the assortment of vintage Loser T-shirts of past years, some of them gently used and regifted. Or a Mystery Prize from my Bag O’ Little Stuff. *Meet the Parentheses: (Edward Gordon, Austin)* *Ed Gordon has been entering the Invitational, on and off, from various locations, since Week 422 (back in the Czarist era) and fairly regularly now. He’s acquired 61 blots of ink in the process, including a win and five runners-up. As with our previous subjects of Meet the Parentheses, Ed modified the Empress’s basic Q&A template to answer what he felt like answering.* *Have you been getting a fair amount of Style Invitational ink recently, or are you one of the top 100 or so all-time Loser? Introduce yourself to the Greater Loser Community with a short bio. E-mail the E at pat.myers@washpost.com; your current waiting time in the queue: 0 minutes. I am out of bios.* *Age:* I am so looking forward to the ad nauseam parodies of Beatles songs next September. *Home:* Yes, I’m an ex that lives in Texas — both my wives were good house keepers, and they kept them. I was raised in Marblehead, Mass. I’m proud to be a Magician — had I gone to nearby Salem High instead of Marblehead, I would have been a Witch. *Official Loser Anagram:* My Granola Smear is Good Nerd, given to me somehow in the days before Facebook. Works for me, for it is appropriately nebulous and vaguely complimentary. *What compelled you to start entering the Invite? * I was working for a federal consulting firm — a “Beltway bandit” — in the D.C. area back around the turn of the century, and my wife and I would sit around the house on Sunday and read The Post, rather than cleaning. I thought the SI was a support group for the certifiably inane (more on that later), and so I entered, and got an ink. After I moved to Fort Lauderdale, it was a while before the Internet found me and I started entering again. I think I wasn’t credited for two of my entries: a parody of a “BC” comic strip, and another to some individual named Magnum Steel or something like that.*[Ed is referring to this runner-up entry in Week 700. from 2007, for campaign slogans. We don’t have records from back then of entries that didn’t get ink, so we’ll take his word for it that he sent entries much like these.]* *Favorite entry:* By far, it’s the one that saves me from being in contention for Most Cantinkerous: the magnet slogan “Certifiably Inane,” which won me a sketch by Bob Staake. I think I would have gotten more ink over the years if I’d been willing to embarrass myself more; my recent ink for suggesting “Beanie Babies” as a good name for a Jewish preschool didn’t go over well at the synagogue. *Proof that I’m a Loser: The Empress spent a whole week trying to teach poetry to me by e-mail, and failed.* *What do people know me as outside of the SI:* Well, a high school friend still calls me “Mr. 5-by-5,” for my svelte physique. I’m a retired software engineer, and have done more than my share of teaching Anonymous how software security is ripe for the intrusion. Now I write books that nobody reads; I intentionally use titles that are so terrible that people won’t pick them up. *What do I want to be when I grow up:* Besides Chris Doyle, a foot taller. ====================================================================== WEEK 1159, published January 24, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1159: You’re darn tootin’ it’s a game contest It’s hard to outdo an actual family fart game, but I have faith in you No Loser offered a bio for our Meet the Parentheses feature, so instead we’ll show you, um, Sheldon. Donated by uber-prize-giver Cheryl Davis, he goes to this week’s first runner-up, Christopher Lamora. (Cheryl Davis) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** January 21, 2016 Unfortunately, we’ve given out the Doggie Doo game (at the Loser party, after the original winner declined it), because that might have been the only extant game to be worse than “Ewww, Who Tooted?” Doggie Doo consists of a large plastic dachshund into whose mouth you shove Play-Doh-like “food,” then vigorously pump a bulb to propel it out the other end. Especially because it did not work. (Video here of the Empress, the Royal Consort and donor Nan Reiner trying to make it work.) This week’s contest, Week 1159 , is pretty wide open: It can have topical humor; it can be a really stupid idea; it can be nifty but impractical; it can be cerebral. It doesn’t have to have a board as such, but it shouldn’t be something that would be called “sports” or be on a large scale. “Board-type game.” Don’t bog down into a complex scenario; remember, at bottom, you’re telling a joke. Jokes can be long if they’re fun to read; they’re tedious if they’re not. Writing in a conversational, story-telling style helps. *AI-AI-AI, WHAT A CONTEST! THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1155* When Kevin Dopart suggested this “Vowel Movement” contest — complete with title and clever examples — I went right for it, because it had so many elements of successful Style Invitational contests: an almost infinite pool of source material (books, movies, plays, TV shows), and the opportunity to play on those sources in wholly different ways. And of course it was in the alter-the-word genre that Losers never seem to tire of. In the contest, Week 1155, you first deleted all the vowels from the work’s title, then added vowels to the remaining consonants — whichever ones, as many, and in whatever location you liked. After I posted the contest four weeks ago, a discussion ensued in theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook group over what would constitute a vowel, but I don’t think it ended up being much of an issue. More of an issue was that a sizable number of entrants — or maybe just a few entrants who submitted a lot of entries — didn’t heed the instruction to alter the vowels “to create a new work”; they just used the altered title as some phrase to be described. Given that the contest encompassed books, movies, plays and TV shows, “a work” could be a lot of things. But not one like this: “Raging Bull”→ “Arguing Bill”: Though Congress is supposed to do the latter, they usually do the former. Compare that with: “Raging Bull” → “Rouging Belle”: In this sequel to “Beauty and the Beast,” an aging Beauty tries to regain her self-esteem through lip gloss. And with: “Raging Bull” → “Rug on Gay Bill: The Hair Club for Men documentary. (None of these got ink, but the second and third at least followed the instructions.) I was blessedly saved from the slog of vetting the entries — making sure that none of them gained or lost consonants as well as vowels during the alterations — by Loser Todd DeLap, who wrote to the Empress with an unsolicited offer of a computer program he’d devised to check this very thing. Hot dog! On Monday night I sent Todd a list of several dozen pairs of original plus altered titles, without the descriptions or the entrants’ names (which I didn’t know at this point, either). Then I went ahead and made my choices, hoping they’d pass the Todd Test, and started looking up the names of their writers. The next morning, Todd sent me back a list of six “problem children”: Animal Farm → Namely a Loafer (too many L’s) Lady and the Tramp → Lardy and the Trump (added a consonant, R, not a vowel) Lady and the Tramp→ Lordy, End “The Trump!” (ditto) The Sting → Thirsting (ditto!) War and Peace → War on Peace (dropped a consonant, D) Roger & Me → Our Ego Ruined ’Em (extra N and D — that one, of course, was easily solved by replacing the ampersand with “and”; it got ink for Ellen Ryan). Todd added: “Nice to know I made the short list.” At that point, I decided to see who’d written the “problem children.” And the first one, “Namely a Loafer,” was by . . . Todd DeLap. “You didn’t use this program you devised FOR YOUR OWN ENTRIES?” I replied. *Todd: “Yes, I did. I think I did. Okay, I’m pretty sure I did.* *“* *“Okay, I didn’t. But that is because I suck. I truly suck. I really, really suck. What’s worse is I didn’t even recognize that [“Namely a Loafer”] as one of mine. Okay, well, at least I got a good story to tell, a story of my total suckitude.* *“(* heavy sigh *)”* It was another entry on my short­list that Todd did recognize as his own; it didn’t get ink either. Loser. I really had no idea, until I checked, of who’d written which entry. Except for this week’s winner. I would have been mildly surprised had it turned out to be anyone but Chris Doyle: virtuoso wordplay (“Much Ado About Nothing” turned into “A Much-Eyed Booty in a Thong”) combined with a a juxtaposition of high and low art. A classic Style Invitational entry. Also devilishly brilliant was Christopher Lamora’s second-place entry of “The Interview” → “The Nature View” with its double-entendre about photographers out to “shoot the North Korean cuckoo.” This entry is Exhibit A of the trick of making the altered title reflect theplot of the original . That’s 237 blots of ink for Christopher, who’s back Inviting and back in the D.C. area after a West Coast hiatus, when he was heading the L.A. passport office. Howard Walderman gets Ink No. 152 with his D.C.-friendly “Ennui Hill,” and George-Ann Rosenberg — who played the Invite a few times many years ago, then popped up this past year to ink up the joint week after week, grabs the final spot in the Losers’ Circle. I don’t know if you’d call it “unprintable,” but I don’t go for ethnic stereotyping, even if it’s supposed to be complimentary: “ ‘Jeopardy’ → ‘Jew Parade’: One particular group tends to dominate a game show that requires knowledge and intelligence.” Nah. Okay, this one is unprintable: “Smells Like Teen Spirit” → “Smells Like Tuna, Sport”: Nirvana’s tip to adolescent males. (Chris Doyle, who sent that in as a Conversational-only entry.) *SAVE THE DATE: THE FLUSHIES! SATURDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 21* Whoohoo — we didn’t even have time to start our annual fretfest about when and where the Flushies award “banquet” will be* will it cost too much* will we have enough people* will they throw us out etc.: At this month’s Loser Post-Holiday Party, 15-time Loser and mcedo prize donor Robin Diallo offered, unsolicited, to host a Loser event at the horses-and-all spread in Anne Arundel County, Md., where she’s finally settled down after zipping around the world (including in Malawi, Manila, New Dehli, Dakar and Kabul — I know this because she’s sent entries in from each of these places) for the State Department. Robin even has a llama. We chose this date because (a) we’ve traditionally held the Flushies in May; and (b) it worked best for Nan Reiner to come up from Florida (where she plans to relocate permanently after many years in the D.C. area) — and she writes all those song parodies for the occasion. And can sing them. The cost will be minimal because it won’t be catered; we’ll just bring stuff to eat and drink. May is usually the nicest month of the year weatherwise in the D.C. area. Robin’s house is out in the sticks in Lothian, Md., about 15 miles east of the Beltway, but we should be able to organize some carpools, as we did to Reston, Va., for the party*chez *Raffman. And she says that “of course” we can pet the horses, and spit back at the llama. *MEET NO PARENTHESES* I’ve had no more volunteer Losers to supply bios for this column’s “Meet the Parentheses” contest. In reply to my last-ditch plea on the Devotees page, someone suggested that we spotlight the Empress of The Style Invitational. I thought: ugh, haven’t I already bored everyone already? But I do remember that my predecessor, The Czar, once hated all the entries one week, and decided to fill the page by answering questions that people had sent in. So if there’s anything you want to know about me, e-mail me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll see what we get. But really, it’s the Losers whom I’d like to introduce to readers. Write to me if you’re a regular or longtime Loser and would like to tell about yourself. ====================================================================== WEEK 1160, published January 31, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1160: Top o’ the mourning! The Style Invitational Empress on the week’s new contest and results More than 3 inks per year of age: 79-time Loser — and 3-time winner --(Matt Monitto, Bristol, Conn.), this week’s Meet the Parentheses subject. See below. (By Tom Monitto) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** January 28, 2016 As sure as taxes, this year’s obit-poem contest, Week 1156, yielded hundreds of tributes and, um, “tributes” (maybe just “butes”) for those who died in 2015 (As well as for Robin Williams, who died in 2014, and .  . . Ray Charles, d. 2004.) How do you write about someone’s death for a humor contest? This week’s inking entries — as well as dozens of other very fine ones — display a variety of tacks: 1. *Choose someone who’s pretty anonymous who died in an ironic or stupid way,* but stop short of being gleeful or saying that the person deserved to die. This strategy was used especially frequently this year, with fruitful results — Kathy Fraeman’s Inkin’ Memorial winner for the woman who fatally adjusted her bra holster; David Friedman’s for the burglar who got caught in a chimney; Nan Reiner for the burglar on the lam who was the victim of an alligator; and Brendan Beary’s for the man who died when the condom machine he was trying to rob exploded. In most of the cases, the person’s name wasn’t even used. 2.*Keep the tone light and warm and skip the nastiness while also avoiding being saccharine. *This is a challenge for regular Invite entrants, who on other weeks can win valuable interesting prizes with deftly wielded daggers. One frequent strategy is to make some wordplay on death that's related to something the person was famous for saying or doing or being; the majority of this week’s inking entries are good examples of this tactic; Brendan Beary’s “passing” play, in reference to Garo Yepremian’s least stellar moment in the 1973 Super Bowl (see the video in the link in the entry), seems inevitable only because Brendan thought of it. 3. *Or at least choose an indisputable villain.* Stephen Gold could be as nasty as he liked to mark the death of “Jihadi John,” while wisely not spelling out the man’s horrific deeds, or wishing the same for him. 3. *You might talk only about the person’s life, not his death.* I’m thinking about Melissa Balmain’s rumination on Pet Rocks, the creation of the late Gary Dahl; and Brendan Beary’s little dialogue between Omar Sharif and Barbra Streisand on the reaction to their onscreen romance in “Funny Girl.” But almost all the inking entries referred to the person’s death. 4. *And as always, using a light-verse form *— strict rhyme and meter, sometimes bent for humorous effect; as well as natural, readable syntax — reminds the readers that we’re out to be both gentle and witty. All four of this week’s “above-the-fold” winners are renowned in the Invite for their poetry ink. It’s the second win, but the first Inkin’ Memorial, for Kathy Hardis Fraeman, a musical-theater buff whose parodies are the cream of her 74 blots of ink, 12 of them in the Losers’ Circle. Stephen Gold just won the Week 1154 parody contest on animal themes; that one, for Cecil the Lion, could have been used for this contest as well. And Nan Reiner once again scores multiple poetry ink with her amazing long-line verses. But it’s first runner-up Brendan Beary who’s the unassailable Invite Obit Odist: Since I started running this annual contest in 2004, a few weeks after starting this job, Brendan has had, by my count, 45 obit poems published: In Week 643, there were*eight.*In Week 748, there were*ten.* Four have won the contest, and that many more were runners-up. And while of course I marvel at his ink this week, my favorite Brendan Obit Poem is this one for Fred Rogers from 2004 (Week 539) — one of two Mister Rogers entries that brought him ink. I can’t say I’m brokenhearted To find out that he’s departed. You laud his life and wipe a tear; Not me — he ruined my career. I should have left him years ago; He never let me change, or grow! I had to play some half-wit babbler; I’d done “Streetcar”! “Hedda Gabler”! Now I’m typecast, just some joke, All from those stupid lines I spoke. So mourn his passing if you choose, I’ll lie in the sun and snooze, And wake to arch my back and hiss: “Yo, Fred Rogers: Meow meow THIS.” — Henrietta Pussycat , Pittsburgh *REDEFINE PRINT: FINISHING OUT THE DICTIONARY IN WEEK 1160* This week’s contest — the last of the genre unless we can come up with a twist on it, or if we think we can mine the same lode yet again — is straightforward, and in this week’s introduction I link to the two sets of results that contain P- through Z-words, the section of the dictionary we’ll be using; if you’re entering this contest, be sure you’re not sending in the same joke (though you could send an alternative definition for the word). While I regularly speculate on joke definitions for obscure Scrabble words, I think you have a better chance of getting ink in this contest if you play on a fairly common word; if the reader isn’t familiar with it in the first place, it’s not as funny to see it misinterpreted. (We do have a perennial contest for the other type, when I list weird-sounding words from the Oxford English Dictionary and ask people to make up definitions; we ought to do that one again soon.) *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (MATT MONITTO, BRISTOL, CONN.)* *Matt has been wowing Loserdom since his freshman year of college with his amazingly accomplished song parodies, as well as a wide range of other entries (including this week’s). And while I’m sure he values his three Inkin’ Memorials more, Matt also scored a Camaro and a bunch of student loan payments with the grand prize in “Wheel of Fortune” in 2014. We’ve had the delight of meeting Matt in person during the THREE times he’s driven all the way to Washington to come to the Losers’ annual awards funfest, the Flushies: twice from college in North Carolina, and last year from back home in Connecticut. We hope he can make it back on May 22!* *About me:* Age: 24 going on 11. Located in an unorthodox state of mind, usually in a body in Bristol, Conn., also the home of ESPN and of ESPN. Part-time community theater actor, part-time freelance sportswriter, full-time snarker. *Official Loser Anagram (aka * *Granola Smear): * “Man Tit Motto,” which I suppose would be “Now: lactose-free!” *What brought me to the Invite:* I heard a few Invite entries on “Car Talk,” including Week 672’s road signs and Week 736’s “make the Car Guys laugh.” I then forgot about the Invite for a few years. During freshman orientation at Elon University, while a small group of us were being given the “don’t drink and drive” spiel, I said, “Because you can’t spell ‘felony’ without ‘Elon.’” No one laughed. A few weeks later I stumbled on the Invite again. I sent in one entry for Week 902,it got printed, and I kept going. Being a philosophy major, I found plenty of time to attempt to come up with entries (emphasis on “attempt”). *Proof I’m a Loser:* My introduction on “Wheel of Fortune” included my three Invite wins. *Favorite entry: * Excepting song parodies for length (Week 1011’s American*“Major General,” Week 1101’s Peter Pan*“Defying Gravity,” and Week 1152’s “expel Muslims”*“Tomorrow” are highlights), my favorite entry is probably my third win, the Week 1033 “fa-” limerick. I came up to it while turning into a church parking lot where I was about to play Jesus at a Vacation Bible School. *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.* My other wins also have odd stories: I came up with my Week 1009 winning entry a few seconds before sending them in, and my computer crashed the day I was going to send in my Week 935 poems; I was able to rewrite the winner with a new fourth line. On the Devotees Facebook page, Ward Kay mentioned that a computer crash is usually a sign of a good entry. He was right. Thanks, Ward! *What do you do outside of the Invite?* I act in community theatre shows whenever possible, and also do some freelance sportswriting, where the concept of printability is even more important. I spend far too much time reading at bookstores, and not nearly enough time reading at bookstores. And I sing all the time – in the shower, driving, in line at the grocery store, testifying before Congress, etc. *What do you want to be when you grow up? * **Well, “up” may be tricky, as I’m 5-foot-3 and was often used as an armrest by fellow students. *NEXT LOSER BRUNCH: SUNDAY, FEB. 7, NOON, AT KILROY’S* I should be able to come to brunch at one of the regular places on the Loser rotation. It’s still at noon, but the Kilroy’s buffet is all breakfast food these days (but a less costly $12). For drivers, it’s conveniently right off the Beltway at the Braddock Road exit near Springfield. RSVP to Elden Carnahan from the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). As always, we’re always eager to meet new Losers and even those who are just Invite fans, as well as get together with the Usuals. ====================================================================== WEEK 1161, published February 7, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1161: What better match than Politicians + Lies? The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest and crossword-clue results Above and below, pages from “The Trump Coloring Book” by M.G. Anthony, this week’s second prize. Pencils in red, white, blue and unnatural yellow not included. (Post Hill Press ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** February 4, 2016 We’ve done an impressive series of bogus-trivia contests over the years — most recently about the military, in Week 1132 — but I’d forgotten about Week 739, a contest for lies about politicians. That contest ran in late 2007, which meant that candidates Clinton, Obama, Edwards, McCain and Romney were already busy throwing the misinformation around, but before the advent of Sarah Palin, who otherwise would surely be all over these results. And, of course, while Style Invitational contestants have beenmocking Donald Trump since Year 1 in 1993, it wasn’t yet mocking Trump the politician. Somehow I think we’ll be hearing about him a bit inWeek 1161 . Here are the Week 739 results: *4.* Little Johnny Edwards’s dog was killed when it ran into the back of the ambulance they were chasing. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) *3. * LBJ’s mother used to pick him up by his ears. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis) *2. *John Edwards’s campaign has released documents proving he now pays well below the average rate not only for his haircuts, but also for his weekly manicure, pedicure and mango-avocado-yogurt facial peel. (Larry Yungk, on vacation in Bangkok) *And the Winner of the Inker: * The venue for JFK’s visit to Germany was changed from Hamburg on the advice of his speechwriter. (Joel Knanishu, Rock Island, Ill.) But wouldn’t he be in a yacht? (From “The Trump Coloring Book,” Post Hill Press ) *Lying Low: Honorable Mentions* Vice President Cheney’s prolonged absences from public view reflect times he has checked into Bethesda Naval Medical Center while shedding his exoskeleton. (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) In addition to fear itself, FDR was terrified of circus clowns. (Barry Koch, Catlett, Va.) Kay “Bailey” Hutchison got her nickname from her father’s favorite cartoon character, Beetle Bailey. (Steve Fahey, Kensington) Hubert Humphrey named all his pet cats Bogart. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich is the secret love child of Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. (Randy Lee, Burke) As a child, Winston Churchill once told a teacher, “Yes, m’am, I am tardy, but tomorrow I will be on time, and you will still be ugly.” (Jeff Brechlin) Mean Mr. Mustard — or maybe “Here comes old rat-top ...” (From “The Trump Coloring Book,” Post Hill Press) In 1989, to prevent voters and political opponents from associating him with America’s enemies, Barack Moammar Castro had his name legally changed to Barack Hussein Obama. (Mike Fransella, Arlington) Joe Biden once held his breath for 12 seconds. (Ira Allen, Bethesda) Though James Buchanan was the only bachelor president, he had a deep platonic relationship with rookie White House reporter Helen Thomas. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) Al Gore may not have invented the Internet, but he did invent a great electronic storage application for Internet porn. (Ralph Scott, Washington) Bill Richardson has the most cleavage of any presidential candidate. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) As a kid, Steny Hoyer was never teased about his name. (Randy Lee) Rep. Tom Tancredo once rode in a taxi driven by an illegal immigrant -- and he gave the driver a tip. (Horace Labadie, Dunnellon, Fla.) Mitt Romney has never spent more than $1.50 for a haircut, as he has been bald since 1958. His current “hair” is a plastic cast made from a bust of Ronald Reagan. (Steve Fahey) Lincoln was the first president to wear briefs. (Russell Beland) Walter Mondale made an interesting comment on Nov. 14, 1983. (Jeff Brechlin) Newt Gingrich was named for the New Testament. (Randy Lee) When he was living in Indonesia, Barack Obama was enrolled in Hadassah. (Bruce Alter, Fairfax Station) Stephen Douglas used the line “I know you are but what am I?” four times in his debate with Lincoln. (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis) Ron Paul has a secret love child, Rudolph, or “Ru.” (Roy Ashley, Washington; J. Larry Schott, Gainesville, Fla.) Dennis Kucinich only seems short because his wife is 8-foot-4. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) Because of the troubles with subprime mortgages, the Romney campaign has yet to be able to work out its purchase of Iowa. However, they’re close to settlement over New Hampshire. (Cy Gardner, Arlington) Hillary Clinton has amassed a huge campaign war chest from monies freed from the accounts of Mrs. Sese Seko merely by paying administrative fees of only a few thousands of dollars US. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn) Sen. Larry Craig has just announced that after leaving office he will be the national spokesman for a campaign to raise awareness of Restless Leg Syndrome. (Dale Hample, Silver Spring) Dennis Kucinich took steroids as a third-string high school quarterback, but they were placebos. (Kevin Dopart) Early in their marriage, Dick and Lynne Cheney decided that if they had a son, they would name him Anakin. (Dale Hample) Hillary Clinton has submitted entries to The Style Invitational 13 times since 1996, but has never seen ink. (Chuck Koelbel, Houston) ---- So once again, you can choose from any politician of any era to lie about, but I’d imagine that most people will go with the current crop. And as above, the point of the untruth is to make an ironic or satirical point, not just say something that’s just wrong for no satirical reason — something thatcertain fake-news sites do with disturbing frequency . *HA CROSS PUNS: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1157* I’ve been filling in crosswords most every day lately, and while I’m no super-speedster like some in the Loser Community — I usually fall in the top 10 to 20 percent on the New York Times leaderboard for its late-in-the-week puzzles — it’s become a lot easier for me to pick up on the wordplay clues sprinkled throughout them. But if you don’t do such puzzles — including Evan Birnholz’s Sunday crossword for The Washington Post Magazine — some of the clues among this week’s inking entries could mystify you. In fact, Evan has started a blog, CrossTalk, in which he discusses his Sunday puzzle each week and explains some of the clues. And here’s our own explainer for the trickier entries in Week 1157. *BEAT: Follows “A: Get up” on a forgetful person’s to-do list *(Frank Osen). This one was explained by the punctuation in the clue — one reason it worked well at the top of the results; it might get people in the necessary frame of mind. *FARMS: Rejected terser, saltier title of Hemingway’s novel (hyphenated) *(Duncan Stevens) . Recasting “A Farewell to Arms” to “F Arms.” This was the most interesting of numerous “F arms” entries. *RELAY: When you truly can’t eat just one * (Barry Koch) As in the famous slogan for Lay’s potato chips. *REAR: Talk like a pirate again *(Danielle Nowlin) Re-“ar.” *ONTO: He rides with the One Ranger *(Selma Ellis) (T)onto* (L)one Ranger *LOBE: Stud’s hangout * (First Offender Donald Ramsey). As in the stud of an earring. *FARMS: A long-distance girlfriend* (Chris Damm). A far Ms. *EKE: The middle of a weekend *(Kevin Dopart) WE EKE ND. *OMIT: Nike’s new yoga-wear slogan: Just __ __* (Ben Aronin) “Just Om it” *PLESSY: X + Y = P. Solve for X*. (Todd DeLap) P less Y. *BERG: What Dan Snyder told Kirk Cousins not to do *(Mark Richardson) Be R.G. (the beleaguered Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III) *ESSEX: The most contorted position in the Kama Sutra* (Peter Boice) “S” sex *SIDING: Contributing something to Thanksgiving dinner *(Kevin Dopart) Bringing a side dish *SIDING: In Barcelona, the answer to “Does that bell make a sound?”* (Jeff Shirley) “¡Sí! ¡Ding!” *EYESORE: Gloomy donkey’s ugly brother* (Brendan Beary) As in Eeyore from “Winnie-the-Pooh.” *ARGUE: What pirates say in a cussing match *(Jon Gearhart) “Arg You!” (Yeah, I know, two pirate-talk jokes. So sue me.) *BEAT: What Miss Philippines did to Miss Colombia, and what Miss Colombia should have done to Steve Harvey* (Danielle Nowlin) Because he announced the wrong Miss Universe winner. *FATES+WEIRDO: The word “SO” in Comic Sans *(Kathy Hardis Fraeman) The widely detested font has a Fat S and a Weird O. *SIRED: Fourth choice at a sperm bank *(Andrew Hoenig) Sire D. *ERIES: Drunken Clevelanders might see two or three of these *(Duncan Stevens) Blurred vision in seeing Lake Erie. ** *STOLEAKISS: Item on an expensive call girl’s price list *(Ward Kay) Price for a kiss: a stole. *TETE: It was on the cutting edge in 1789 *(Beverley Sharp) “Tete” is French for “head.” After reading through the thousands of entries, I shared a not-very-shortlist with Evan and asked for his favorites. His faves, “in no particular order,” included only one of today’s “above the fold” entries, Duncan Stevens’s F-ARMS. Evan also cited ONTO, with the One Ranger; PLESSY as “fully of pless”; WEIRDO as the Yankovic blood type; SIDING for Thanksgiving; SIDING as Si! Ding! (and also one that didn’t make my final cut: SIDING, “agreeing with Mr. Vicious,” by Dave Komornik); ROBS for the Rob Schneider dig; ARTFORMS as a sentence meaning “(stuff) happens” (plus the non-inking ARTFORMS, as “The Garfunkel, the Carney, the Linkletter ...” by Barry Koch); ERIES for the drunken Clevelanders; UNCLEREMUS as to remove the cleremus (there’s a good example of an inking entry that wouldn’t work at all as a real crossword clue, but is laugh-out-loud funny); TETE as being on the cutting edge in 1789; and PORN as a job in which openings are filled (though he didn’t think that was printable — we do recommend that Evan not use such clues in his own puzzles). Evan added: “And I’ll still offer my own (for no prize potential at all....was just having fun): SIRED: Your majestied.” I judged this contest by searching on each word through all the entries, anywhere from 20 to 100 for each word. And I had NO idea, not even a guess, who’d written any of them until they were already chosen and put on the page, at which I looked up each one up with a search through the e-mail. As always happens when everyone’s working from the same word list, there was a lot of duplication. If there were too many that were essentially identical (ABUSE as 10 minutes of sit-ups, etc), I didn’t run it; other times, I decided that one entry was in some way better than similar ones. With his eighth first-place win and 491st blot of Invite ink, Jeff Contompasis heads into the final nine steps to the Hall of Fame Big Door Knocker. Which leads me to think I’ll be able to induct him in person at ... *THE FLUSHIES AWARD LUNCH* POST HUNT WEEKEND: MAY 21-22* As I mentioned earlier, this year’s Flushies — the Losers’ own awards “banquet”*songfest*toilet paper toss — will be at the country home of Loser Robin Diallo on Saturday afternoon, May 21; like last year’s festivities, it’ll be a potluck with negligible extra cost. And also like last year, it will fall the day before the Post Hunt, the huge , spectacular gathering in which thousands of people race to solve a series of diabolical brain teasers dreamed up by the team of Dave Barry, Gene Weingarten and Tom Shroder. So out-of-town Losers can take in both events. Save the date! *LOSER SIGHTING THIS SUNDAY: JOIN US FOR BRUNCH * Bid farewell to Loser Nan Reiner before she relocates permanently to Florida, and meet Loser Josh Feldblyum as he visits from Philadyelphia at this month’s Loser Brunch on Sunday at noon, at Kilroy’s, one of the regular spots on the yearly brunch rotation; it’s right off the Braddock Road exit on the Beltway. There’s a $12 breakfast buffet plus a regular menu. RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). Everyone is invited — we’re always eager to meet new Losers and even Just Readers. Currently we’re a pretty cozy group; it won’t be one of these Big Event brunches. We can all chat. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (David Friedman, Arlington, Va.) * *David First-Offended in 2009, but almost all his 26 blots of Invite ink have been scored in the past couple of years — most recently and notably in last week’s obit poem about the burglar who got caught in a house’s chimney, which had perhaps the single best line in the whole contest: Christmas stole the Grinch.” As with our previous Parentheses, David adapted the Empress’s Q&A template to answer whatever he liked.* ***If you’re one of the top 25 or so current Losers or are one of the top 100 or so all-time, the E would be happy to have you introduce yourself to the rest of Loserdom. E-mail her at pat.myers@washpost.com.* ** *Where you live:* All over the U.S. So far I’ve represented Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia in the Invitational, but none terribly well. *Do you have any comments on your official Loser anagram, “A Farm Dividend”? *Not now, but something may come up eventually. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? *Lightning Jack, Rambling Awesomeness (or ‘Ramble’), The Juggler, or Lawyer Dave. To elementary school students, I’m “MISTERDAVID!!MISTERDAVIDCANI....” *What do you do when you’re not composing Invite entries? *Underemployed as a lawyer and occasionally underemployed as a visual*performing artist or teacher. Vocationally arguing, throwing things, scribbling, and being the center of attention. *What brought you to Loserdom?* In 2009, I sketched “Dennis the Phantom Menace” for the comic strip mash-up challenge before realizing the contest just wanted a title.*(The title and description did get David his first ink.)* I went on to lose at other things until a far more talented Loser’s challenge caused this relapse. *Closest Brush With the Famous: *I was “The American” of a busload of college students hired for prom security where Prince William went to university. Had more fun getting nearly locked in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History while touring the entomology lab filmed in “The Silence of the Lambs” with my family. Better stories, fewer injuries, and the curator didn’t hit anyone with a bottle. *Some favorite entries? *Even though they didn’t get ink: *Week 1111: Song title parody for store names:* “Steers in Heaven” steakhouse; “Bohemian Wraps ’n’ Tea” sandwich shop.* Week 1149: What to do for Lawyer Appreciation Day:* Become the affect of their objection. *Week 1142:* Tweet from a celebrity mash-up: Anne Frank-Lloyd-Wright: By combining utility and obscurity, even a simple attic can bring entire families together. *What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? *Within months after performing in what turned out to be a DUI stop training video for Maryland police, I acted in an international television station’s documentary about LSD. Beltway traffic isn’t the only thing that terrifies me about local driving. *What are your Invitational goals?* Having never placed in the top five, I’m hoping someday the E m p r e ====================================================================== WEEK 1162, published February 14, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1162: 42 giraffes and 21 ‘Screams’ later ... The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results Loser and pack mule (Duncan Stevens , Vienna, Va.) with Loser-in-Training Simon. Duncan supplied this week’s Meet the Parentheses bio; see below. (FAMILY PHOTO) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** February 11, 2016 Washington Post writers were admonished this week by management to “respect our readers’ time” and write shorter articles. If the Empress really gave a hoot about her readers’ time, she wouldn’t ask them to write elaborate song parodies in return for a 2-by-3-inch scrap of metal with a cartoon on it (if that). But if for no other reason than to send you to work more promptly on (or at least laugh at) this week’s Style Invitational, she’ll try to show a little more self-discipline. When the entries started coming in forr Week 1158, I got a few gripey notes that Bob Staake’s artsy, shaded drawings of seven everyday objects were harder to misinterpret than the stark doodles he’d done the first time we did such a contest , back in 2001. But they didn’t seem to deter the 200 or so Losers who entered this time around, and who revealed their minds to be warped in many different directions. Still, I’m glad that this contest, like all our caption contests, offered a choice of pictures to work with: When 200 people are looking for something funny in a single simple picture, a lot of them are going to have the same general idea. At least 21 entries — probably quite a few more — evoked Edvard Munch’s iconic “Scream” painting in the description of the electric plug; and the mottled shading of the peanut in Picture 4 prompted 42 entries mentioning giraffes — giraffe-moth hybrids, giraffe larvae, giraffe slugs, giraffe seeds, giraffe coffee beans, giraffe testes, giraffe scrotum, giraffe goiter, giraffe sperm, giraffe poop, giraffe wearing camouflage, a boneless giraffe, filet of giraffe. I ended up going with Kathy Hardis Fraeman’s giraffe in the snow, which imaginatively incorporated the negative space of the picture. Melissa Balmain, who’s an award-winning poet and editor of the light-verse journal Light , often blots up her Invite ink in various verse contests. But her family-focused humor has also served her well in a variety of other ’Vites; this Inkin’ Memorial — for seeing a flashlight battery and the positive-side “+,” and thinking of Fisher-Price exorcists — marks her seventh contest win and 81st blot of ink, all since Week 941. (Hmm, I’m thinking we’d want to Meet These Parentheses, no?) Meanwhile, longtime Loser Edward Gordon gets Ink No. 62 and his eighth “above the fold,” while Bruce Niedt (also a published poet ) gets just his sixth ink but a second trip to the Losers’ Circle. But the milestone news is for Really Longtime Loser Roy Ashley, who this week smears his shirt pocket with his 350th blot of ink — scoring with an entry that didn’t interpret Picture 5 as anything but a paintbrush, but did so in a very funny way. *AREA NEWSPAPER STEALS FROM OTHER PAPER, CALLS IT ‘HOMAGE’* I adore the Onion — the proliferation of totally craven, unwitty fake-news sites only puts the Onion’s pointed, almost always perfectly aimed satire into sharper relief. And I wasn’t surprised that so many in the Loser Community were able to produce Onion-quality and Onion-toned headlines in our Week 794 contest back in 2009. The Onion has been through a number of changes since then; most notably, it had to fold its print edition, and recently was bought (this is true! not the Onion!) by the Spanish-language broadcast network Univision. But its satire of both Great Issues and Quotidian Life continues to use the form of deadpan straight-news newspaper articles, complete with headlines. If you haven’t read a lot of Onion heds, I strongly suggest you go to TheOnion.com and sample a variety of them. As with this contest, the actual articles aren’t necessary, though they’re often worthwhile. Our first Onion contest, by the way, was inspired by a fascinating cover story in The Washington Post Magazine. If you have the time — trying to be respectful of it here — it’s worth the read. *A little thing I wanted to address ... * My requests on datat to include with entries has varied over the years, as I’ve started different systems to keep track of Losers’ addresses. Some years ago I’d told the regular entrants that they need not include their mailing addresses week after week, since I’d already entered them into a database. But these days, when I look up Losers’ entries before I send out their prizes, it’s handy to have the address right there, so I don’t have to go to another list. Not a yuge deal, but in a week in which I’m sending out 30-plus letters before the post office closes (I’m talking about you, backward-crossword), it does help me out to have the address right there on the e-mail every time. Actually, now that I’m hand-writing the envelopes rather than making labels (this actually saves me time), I’ve managed to memorize the street addresses of a bunch of Recidivist Losers. But I still need to double-check the Zip codes. (I promise I won’t stalk your house.) *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (DUNCAN STEVENS, VIENNA, VA.) * *Duncan got his first ink back in 2012, in Week 970. But it’s been just the past few months that he’s emerged as a Loser Phenom, winning prizes so often — including this week, for his 30th blot of ink — that the Empress knows his street address by heart. She’s still looking forward to meeting him in person, however, since he hasn’t appeared yet at a Loser event. As with our previous Meet the Parentheses contributors, Duncan adapted a basic Q&A template.* *Age: *Evidently not old enough to know better. *Official Loser Anagram (aka Granola Smear):* Unscented Vans. Though I’m also partial to Nuns Dent Caves and Nuns, Vets Dance. *What brought me to the Invite:* I had been enjoying the Invite ever since I moved to D.C. and started subscribing to the Post in 2000, but I would glance at the contest, think “hey, I should enter,” and almost never get around to it. But last summer I said to myself, “Self, this is lame. You like wordplay. There’s a lively wordplay contest in your paper every week. You have no excuse.” So I started sending in entries more or less every week, and I found that a lot of contests that I had never thought to try — like neologisms or snarky notes to “glassbowls” — were a lot of fun once I put some effort into them. *What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? * I’m a longtime Ultimate Frisbee player, and it’s a tradition (though a waning one) that each team makes up a friendly cheer for the other team at the end of the game. I’m the designated cheer-person for our team, and I’ll often do a song parody or limerick, like this one for a team called Fifi’s Nasty Little Secret: We got on the phone with our scout, Who said “Fifi’s great, there’s no doubt!” But the whole NSA Was listening that day, So now Fifi’s secret is out. I also sometimes spoof hymns for my church choir: “Jesus Christ is risen today*Man, that guy won’t go away.” *Favorite entries:* I was proud my long parody of the Sesame Street song “I Love Trash!”; it was about the movie “Wall-E.” Some of it got ink in Week 1029 : Oh, I move trash! After centuries of mankind’s excesses, They’ve left me to clean up their messes, So I move trash! I’m a robot compactor of unit class Wall-E, I clean up the residue of human folly; At night I sit back and rewatch “Hello, Dolly!” By day I go out and move trash! (the whole thing is on Facebook here ). *Some non-inking entries I was similarly proud of:* *For Week 924, fake facts about U.S. history:* Before Francis Gary Powers’s U-2 plane was shot down in Soviet airspace, his last words to his CIA handlers were “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” *For Week 1041, answers to questions posed in songs:* Q. Does anybody really know what time it is? (Chicago) A. At the sound of the tone... *For Week 1142, tweets from a hybrid of two people:* Nikita Khrushchevita: Don’t cry for me, Soviet Union* The truth is I never left you* I gave long speeches* Till you were woozy* And at the UN* I banged my shoesies. *How about favorite Invite entries by other contestants? * Beanie Babies is a good name for stuffed animals, but a bad name for a Jewish preschool. (Edward Gordon) Post headline: Doesn’t get any easier for Virginia Bank head: Tyke to be told there is no Easter Bunny (Mark Raffman) Name the panda Elvis CIA reveals Bin Laden’s cryptic last words (Frank Osen) Fake facts about U.S. history: As a community organizer in the Windy City, young Barack Obama walked down eight roads before someone called him a man. (Jonathan Hardis) *What do you do when you’re not composing Invite entries?* I’m an attorney at the FDIC, where I worked with famed Loser parodist Barbara Sarshik before she retired. I sing tenor in the choir at my Episcopal church in downtown D.C., where I also serve as treasurer, bread-baker and homeless-breakfast cook. I also play Ultimate Frisbee, and dabble in improv comedy. When not doing those things, I’m often playing with my proto-Loser six- and three-year-olds, who wish the Invite involved more Sesame Street and Thomas the Tank Engine. *Do you have anything else to say for yourself? * 1. When I was 4, I went to see “Peter Pan,” twice. There’s a point when Tinker Bell gets sick and the audience has to clap to make her better, so the second time I started clapping long before she got sick. Preventive medicine, you know. 2. I’m descended directly from two Civil War Union generals, one of whom was the other’s son-in-law. 3. As an attorney in private practice, I once helped represent the natives of Bikini Atoll in their (unfortunately unsuccessful) attempt to get compensation from the U.S. government for the irradiation*partial obliteration of their native islands. *What is your favorite color?* Blue. No, yellow. ====================================================================== WEEK 1163, published February 21, 2016 Style Conversational: Where the elyts meet The Invitational Empress talks about the Week 1163 backwards-word contest This sign was just won by Week 1159 second-placer Chris Doyle -- what a nice decoration for his new home in Denton, Tex. But many more prizes lie in wait at the Empress’s palace, Mount Vermin. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** February 18, 2016 I was prompted todo this week’s contest upon receiving an urgent message from my predecessor, the deposed Czar of The Style Invitational, from his dacha in Yekatrinburg: “Contest idea! Take any word or name, spell it backwards, new definition. Urabus — a mobile urology clinic. . . . This is a naturally good idea.” I didn’t disagree, but explained (as I often do) that, oh, we’ve done that one, repeatedly. But then I checked Ye Olde Master Contest List and discovered that “repeatedly” meant once in 2004 and once in 2006. We’re not changing it at all this time around, but I’m counting on (a) the fact that the dictionary has a lot of words in it and (b) we’re allowing names, too, and one or two have emerged over the last 10 years or so. I remember getting the suggestion for this contest back in 2004, my first year of Empressing. It was from Richard Grantham, the Australian word whiz who’s a big part of Anagrammy.com and its Anagrammy Awards competition, which has been showcasing astonishing anagrams (including some from the Loser Community) since 1998. And my introduction to Week 545 (my 10th contest) expressed the same immediate conviction that the Czar just did that this one would be a sure winner. AdChoices ADVERTISING I think the results of both Week 545 and the follow-up, Week 684, bear that out. (Not to mention that the Empress remarked on the “thousands of entries” each time; this is a contest that more readers are likely to try, because in just a minute or two you can think of*something*. I love hearing from new contestants.) What guidelines can we glean from the inking (and non-inking) entries for these contests? One is that if you’re going to do a name or term that’s on everyone’s mind right now, you’d better write a very original, clever definition, or it will end up in the “too many” pile. On the other hand, back then there was no 25-entry limit, so maybe some of the repetition wouldn’t have occurred had several Obsessive Losers not sent me lists of 200 entries. Second, the backwards-word has to be reasonably pronounceable. Third, there has to be some relationship between the original and backward words. This quality is common in all our neologism contests, but I made it a requirement for this one. And because of that, it’s going to be hard to make an effective joke if you use an obscure word or name. Finally: No. Although I’ve been known to stretch the parameters of a contest a bit to allow for some hilarious entry, if your word isn’t totally backward — if, oh, just a couple of li’l ol’ letters are out of order or missing — it’s no good. Don’t even ask. And check your spelling! I’m looking forward to using a series of inking entries in Week 1163 on my Style Invitational Ink of the Day page on Facebook. *GAMES OF GROANS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1159* **a non-inking alternative headline by Nan Reiner* As a contest requiring writing (even a couple of sentences) , the Week 1159 contest for novel board or parlor games drew relatively few entries. And a few of these were put forward earnestly as actual plausible games, rather than jokes. A couple of people put forth page-long descriptions of how the game would work. Quite a few entries were allegories for the presidential campaign or some other mockable situation, and not surprisingly, many titles for the new games were plays on real ones. Such as this week’s brilliantly concise winning entry, “Klu: Mr. Black did it. Game over.” And Mr. Black did it this week: Dion’s first win knocks him off the Most Cantinkerous list at NRARS.org — the list of high-scoring Losers who’ve never ended up with the top prize; with 64 blots of ink, including seven runners-up, Dion had made it up to No. 4. The three runners-up are all veterans of the Losers’ Circle: It’s Chris Doyle’s ridiculous 158th runner-up, Mike Gips’s 16th (in addition to his seven wins) and the fourth from relative newcomer Jon Gearhart — who now, with 56 blots of ink but no win, moves up to No. 6 toward Most Cantinkerous. *JUST TOO GAMY: THE UNPRINTABLES* We might get some blowback on Bird Waring’s inking entry for “Doin’ Time,” particularly the “prag” reference, which I used instead of “prison bitch.” (Maybe I should have gone with “special friend.” But these two I’ll run just here. The first one, by Kevin Dopart, is very good satire, but just too graphic and upsetting: Whac-an-Infidel: You’ll be headed for a night of fun when the Great Satan’s spawn pop up and you have just 30 seconds to decapitate as many you can with a plastic sword. Easily reattachable heads means each round can start without delay. Upload videos of your best games to YouTube. Had Jeff Contompasis not designated this one “ ’Verse Only,” I might have run it. I’m glad Jeff cares more about his reputation than I do: Aunts in the Pants: From the makers of Taboo, it’s the game that brings families unacceptably closer together. *BULLETIN FROM THE PRIZE BUNKER * I spent a whole afternoon last weekend making*some* progress in returning an upstairs room at Mount Vermin, the imperial palace, back into a reasonably presentable space, rather than the “Hoarders”-eligible sprawling mess it had been since I had to empty a decade’s worth of gewgaws from the Invitational Prize Closet two months ago and bring it all back to my house. I wouldn’t say that I have the perhaps 100 individual prizes (in addition to Inkin’ Memorials and mugs) perfectly sorted, logged in, etc. But they’re at least consolidated in boxes and I know what’s here, mostly. Some of the prizes are substantial; many of the items are little novelty things, not really at the level of what I’d give to a second-place winner even of the Invite. And some of both kinds, I’m embarrassed to say, no longer indicate who gave them to me (or possibly even to the Czar before me). I would very much like to send the little stuff out to people who’d opt for a random Mystery Prize rather than a magnet or whatever else they won in a particular week. So if you get ink regularly and have enough of the usual prize you’d get, e-mail me to say you’d like a Mystery Prize, and I’ll send you that instead. Let me know as soon as possible after the results run, and no later than the Monday afterward. *Also: If you’ve donated a prize that I haven’t sent out yet (not the ones in the past few weeks; those I’m on top of), let me know and I’ll make sure that your name is attached to it. * I*probably* know, but ... (Some of these prizes were left at my house during the times the Royal Consort and I hosted the Loser Post-Holiday Party, in 2010 and 2013.) Also: Remember that Inkin’ Memorial winners may opt for an Inker, the previous, chronically fragile first-place prize. I have two unscathed ones plus one more that is okay except for a missing, broken-off base. (Really, is it all about that base?) Also: If you’re a winner or runner-up, you can opt for either mug or for a genuine Loser T-shirt, which we produced in many versions over the year. A couple dozen have been regifted to us by previous winners; some are brand-new and the others are very gently used. Almost all are size XL; there might be a couple of L’s. (We don’t have any more of the “My Cup Punneth Over” mugs, the one that we used between the versions we have right now. Also, we’re out of Grossery Bags: I’m vacillating on whether to order more of them.) In any case, if you’re a runner-up, I would like to hear from you by the Monday after the contest runs, about what you’d like me to send you. I don’t want to have to ask; for one thing, I tend to forget to until Tuesday, when I mail prizes from the newsroom. *‘MEET’-LESS THURSDAY * No “Meet the Parentheses” this week, since no more Losers have stepped up with a Q&A bio. If you’re one of the Top 25 or so in the current Loser standings or one of the all-time top 100 or so, e-mail me with a bio roughly in the form of our previous Meet the Parentheses (see previous Conversationals at washingtonpost.com*styleconversational ). Or you can choose another format, but talk to me about it first. ====================================================================== WEEK 1164, published February 28, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1164: Can you do an NPR A-B-C? The Style Invitational Empress ruminates daintily all over this week’s contest and results Lanky as Honest Abe, (Roger Dalrymple, Gettysburg, Pa.) once again invites us up for brunch and a tour. See Meet the Parentheses below. (By Bob Dreyer) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** February 25, 2016 I don’t watch much TV, but I listen to the radio almost nonstop, and I’ve been an NPR junkie for decades. On weekend mornings — both Saturday and Sunday on D.C.’s WAMU — I’ll usually catch at least part of “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me.” And I’ll always find myself laughing out loud at something or other. The very funny Peter Sagal hosts the hourlong show out of Chicago before an enthusiastic live audience, offering up a variety of ways for his three panelists — a rotating roster of writers and comedians — to get in lots of quick, sharp quips; I’m especially partial to the brilliant Mo Rocca. Listeners get to call in to play as well: “Wait Wait” might be the only big contest with less valuable prize swag than The Style Invitational; winning listeners get NPR eminence Karl Kasell’s voice on their voicemail. The show (see all sorts of clips and transcriptshere ) starts off with a news quiz with both serious and offbeat questions about news of the past week, and there’s a gimme bit where a caller has to guess the last rhyming word in a limerick. But most of the segments are various multiple-choice guessing games, one of which we’re ripping off honoring in Invite Week 1164 . *This is going to be a hard contest *because an entry can’t just be a quiz question; it has to be a quiz question that’s interesting and even funny. First of all, you have to find an interesting fact to ask about; while “Wait Wait” uses recent news items, I’m opening it up to all sorts of trivia (though recent news might still work best). And then — and I think this will be the harder part — you have to write two interesting *wrong* answers. The “Wait Wait” writers do this very well, and I have a hunch that I’ll be appreciating their work more and more as I begin to grimace in despair over a slew of boring and*or unfunny entries. But you know, it’s*fine* if there’s a slew of boring and*or unfunny entries — because the only ones that matter are the good ones. And I’m confident that the Loser Community will yield the dozen or 15 terrific multiple-choicers that will fill the Style Invitational page four Sundays from now. *Yes, of course *you need to tell me which of your choices is the right answer! In fact, I’d like you to cite a source for your Amazing but True fact, preferably one that I can easily look at. Please don’t embed links in the middle of a sentence, because it will turn into gibberish when I combine everyone’s email into one big text file for judging. This would be a good format for entries: Question: A. xxxxx B. xxxxxx C. xxxxxxx ( correct answer is B; I saw it on the New York Times’s website last week) (link to Times story) I’m of course excited that “Wait Wait” panelist Roxanne Roberts agreed to help out and weigh in on the finalists. I’ve worked with Roxanne in The Post’s Style section ever since she started as a copy aide in the 1980s, then as she put on high heels night after night covering big-ticket social events as Style’s “party reporter,” and then for her many years as the co-writer (with Amy Argetsinger) of Style’s gossip*celebrity column, The Reliable Source. In recent years Rox has been able to live a marginally saner existence as a reporter on everything from power grabs at the Kennedy Center to the planning that’s already going on for the next Inauguration. Most recently she covered the Scalia funeral. And of course she regularly jets out to Chicago to do “Wait Wait.” So I’m delighted that Roxanne has given her blessing to Week 1164 and that she’ll weigh in on the finalists. And maybe — it would be many months from now — I can persuade her to give the winner one of the amazingly gorgeous and intricate Christmas cookies she makes every year. *FAUX-WORD MARCH!* THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1160* *(Non-inking headline suggestion by Beverley Sharp)* Our contest for new meanings for existing words brought forth some 1,700 entries, of which only 1,500 or so stank. Which means that even though I gave ink to more than 50 entries from Week 1160, perhaps 150 others were inkworthy as well. Did all 25 of your entries make my anonymous short­list only to get bupkis? Maybe! The only names I checked were those for the inking entries. So go ahead, overestimate yourself out. The entries I received fell into three types, two of which I used. Most retained the pronunciation of the original word, but made you think of different meanings of the word (“scatterbrain” as a stage direction) or make you think of a different word with the same pronunciation (“yo-yo” as a greeting between friends). The second type is the opposite: You have to change the pronunciation so that you’ll be evoking different words with the same spelling (e.g., “pageant” as “page ant”; “Testicles” as a Greek philosopher). The second type is more of a challenge for the reader, but perhaps more rewarding for the investment of a second or two to figure it out. Because I stated in the directions that the definition “shouldn’t be a cynical interpretation of the word’s actual meaning,” I tossed that third type, the “Devil’s Dictionary”-type definitions, for which we’ve had several contests already. These included such otherwise worthy entries as “Trickle down: when the indigent get the effluent of the affluent” (Kel Nagel) and “Sleep: Most common object lost by adults” (Robyn Carlson). As I’d advised in the Week 1160 Style Conversational , fake definitions for obscure words probably wouldn’t be as funny as fake definitions for familiar words, because the reader can’t say, “Ha — I never thought of those letters as meaning *that*!” So a play on “vernalagia” or “tarantism” isn’t going to work as well as a play on “Oregon” or “stud poker.” Frank Osen, the Losers’ current Loser of the Year, marks his 12th win. Because Frank has been playing the Invite just a few years, all those wins were for the current Invite trophy, the Inkin’ Memorial. So this time I’m going to send him my last intact Inker, the paper-bag-headed “Thinker” statuette that the Empress gave out from 2004 until she couldn’t find any more and had to switch trophies in 2012. I have one more Inker after that, courtesy of Loser Christopher Lamora, who gave all six of his back to me; it’s just missing the base. Meanwhile, runners-up Howard Walderman and Danielle Nowlin are familiar denizens of “above-the-fold” territory, but it’s the second trip to the Losers’ Circle, and the 16th blot of ink in all, for Joanne Free, who gave us “scatterbrain.” I’m glad I bought more stamps last week — I’ll be sending prizes to, I think, 35 Losers among the 51 inking entry. *What Doug Dug* and *Laugh out of Courtney:* My copy-editing colleagues hadn’t been weighing in lately with their faves because they’d been working on other projects. But this week Doug told me he especially liked all four top entries plus Andrea Dewhurst’s “pothole,” the two different “testicles” entries (by Mark Raffman and First Offender Thor Rudebeck) and Mark’s “twist.” Courtney says she was “tickled” by Frank’s winner; her other faves were “typeface” (Ben Aronin), “paleontology” (Danielle Nowlin). *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (Roger Dalrymple, Gettysburg, Pa.) * *Roger is one of several members of our Gettysburg Loser Bureau (along with Marty McCullen, Bill Collinge and Christina Courtney). Over the years, he’s come down to the D.C. area for many Loser events, but Roger’s most notable, Loserwise, for arranging — every year since 2008 — a Loser brunch and then leading a several-stop tour of the Gettysburg battlefields, to explain the fateful events of the unanticipated three-day fight in July 1863 that turned the tide of the Civil War. This year’s brunch*tour, as Roger notes below, won’t be in authentic midsummer heat.* *Age*: 67, but i don’t feel nearly that old. More like 65. *Where you live:* Gettysburg is our retirement home — Pam and I moved up here in 2001 from the D.C. area after I spent 34 years with the Department of Defense, mostly in arms control. Gettysburg has the benefits of being near family (okay, that’s a mixed bag); a college with a lot of cultural programs that get us out of the house now and again .. oh, and some history that happened here. I’ve given a lot of tours of the battlefields and other landmarks — including, for several years, a tour following the annual Loser brunch. (See below.) *What would someone be surprised to learn about you? * I’m an accomplished liar. I often throw semi-outrageous statements at family, friends, coworkers, etc., just to see if anyone calls me on them. Normally, they don’t. And now, a bunch of guys at work think a particular candidate for public office has an IQ of 63. Also, Loser Dave Prevar was my classmate at Landover Hills Elementary School. (We reunited through the Invitational, a few years later.) *Your official Loser anagram: * “Elderly Program.” Hmph. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? * Opa (I have five grands), Husband (46 years and counting), Dad (two fine sons who, I do not believe, know I am a Loser), Retiree, Volunteer (Habitat for Humanity, Ruth’s Harvest, Road Scholar, ESL, etc.) and an inveterate smartass. *How much ink do you have; how long have you been playing? *I have 95 inks, including a couple of wins, but I’ve been doing this forever, something like 15 years. I’ve always been glad that Pat doesn’t print our “inking average”; mine would be ridiculously low. I’ve always wanted to be Loser of the year, but people who are actually good at this keep getting in my way. I do already have a draft of my acceptance speech. *What are your hopes and dreams for the Invite? *To meet the Czar would be awesome. However, so far, he’s avoided every event I’ve attended. *What brought you to Loserdom? * I just kind of bumped into it in The Post; I mailed in my first entry on a postcard. (Pam and I used to create our entries together: I would do the first draft and she would tell me how lame it was.) I found that I enjoyed slipping one past the goalie now and again, and still find it bizarrely rewarding to see my name in print — it’s funny how many friends and family and even a few strangers have seen my name in the contest. One young lady even asked for my autograph, but declined to pay for it. *Some favorite entries you’d like to share?* One of my first inks was when the Czar was still on the throne: for a contest for bad job choices, my entry was “Superman: Kryptonite salesman.” (The Czar disqualified but cited my idea for Bill Clinton: internist.) Much more recentlyin Week 1126 , the caption for Drawing 3: “Joyce regrets that the same doctor did her eyelids and her breast implants.” *So what’s in store for this year’s Gettysburg Loser Brunch and Tour? * First of all, the Losers — a record 17 — who sweltered through last year’s heat-of-summer event will be happy to know that this year we’ll be gathering on Sunday, Nov. 13. for lunch at one of our many eateries. For this year’s tour, we’re thinking of walking the Soldiers National Cemetery, then driving over to visit such famed battle sites as Little Round Top, where Chamberlain saved the Union left flank, and perhaps the bloody angle, where Pickett’s charge was repulsed. But with a bit of notice I’d be happy to add or substitute sites of particular Loser interest. *So if you’re an accomplished liar, what did you lie about in here? * Well, technically, I don’t dream about the Czar. ====================================================================== WEEK 1166, published March 13, 2016 The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results (Frank Mann, Washington), this week’s Meet the Parentheses subject, selfie-poses in front of a poster by Gary Taxali, who designed the cover of the album “@#%&*! Smilers,” by Frank’s sister. (Selfie by Frank Mann) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** March 10, 2016 Welcome back tothe contest we’ve been calling Questionable Journalism since 2005. It goes back a lot further, though: In Week 254 (1998), the Czar of The Style Invitational introduced a contest called, God knows why, Double Jeopardy. It was suggested by Jacob Weinstein of Los Angeles, who went on to accumulate 36 blots of ink — and an amazing five wins — until disappearing from the Invite a decade ago. Jacob got several of those inks in that first contest but not for any of its successors, headlined “Sentence Us to Death” and “Deform of a Question” before we settled on, for some reason, its current title. When I realized last weekend that we hadn’t done this contest for well over a year, I asked the members of the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook if they’d like to offer some examples from that’s day’s Post — since the Week 1166 restricts the sentences to papers from March 10-21, tipping them off to the contest topic wasn’t going to matter. There were several funny suggestions;you can see the thread here along with the complete results from 2007 (if you haven’t joined the group, go to on.fb.me*invdev and ask to join and I’ll wave you in; in return, the Devotees will anagram your name every which way). For further inspiration in Week 1166, here’s a sampling of winners and runners-up from 10 previous contests. If you want to see the complete sets of results, go to Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List and search on the week numbers below (or the word “questionable”); then look at the right column three or four weeks down to find the link to that week’s results. (Nonsubscribers to The Post: The links on the list don’t count toward The Post’s monthly limit of free articles.) *Line from The Post:**Great legs in a short skirt make me melt.* *Question it answers:* Hey, Pillsbury Doughboy, why won’t you work with Tina Turner? (Jean Sorensen, runner-up, Week 254, 1998) A.*We gain information, via photons, of distant objects.* Q, How does Al Gore challenge the notion that he is too wooden and remote, and that he lacks vision? (Russell Beland, winner, Week 415, 2001) A.*I know I have to get up in the morning and put my underwear on first and my pants on next.* After receiving some helpful advice on the subway today, how will I change my dressing regimen tomorrow? (Marc Leibert, winner, Week 561, 2004) A.*To some, the smell is an unpleasant mix of volatile organic compounds (including benzene and acetone), mostly given off as gas from the vinyl and other plastic materials, plus adhesive and sealers.* Q, What’s it like to be in an elevator with Cher? (Brendan Beary, runner-up, Week 621, 2005) A.*I feel for the guy.* Q, Ms. Hilton, what do you do upon entering a darkened room? (Kevin Dopart, winner, Week 667, 2006) A.*They must also not appear partisan.* Q. In addition to being partisan, what’s expected of a U.S. attorney? (Russell Beland, winner, Week 706, 2007) A,*Adjö, Saab.* Q. Can you really type with your eyes shut? (Jeff Contompasis, runner-up, Week 847, 2009) A.*“We’re working our way happily and steadily through the process of production.”* Q. What did the mechanical engineer reply when his mother-in-law said, “We hope you’ll soon make us proud grandparents”? (Cathy Lamaze, winner, Week 962, 2012) A.*“I think it’s a shame. The whole process of buying a record was so special.”* Q. What was Mark McGwire’s reaction to baseball’s latest steroid suspensions? (John Folse, winner, Week 1053, 2013) A.*Will begin to wane on Wednesday night.* Q. What was the phrase that persuaded the Weather Channel not to hire Elmer Fudd? (Beverley Sharp, Week 1099, 2014) *FAQ about the Q: If you’re entering Week 1166 * *Can I quote a question to answer with my own question? * Yes, a question is a sentence. *How about a sentence fragment? What’s that vague “most of a sentence” supposed to mean? *Yes, you can use a fragment (a phrase that doesn’t have both a subject and a verb); see Beverley Sharp’s quote above from the weather forecast. By “most of a sentence,” I mean that you don’t have to include “Jones said” or even a sizable part of a long sentence, as long as you’re not just excising a few words. Certainly don’t cobble together disparate words within a sentence to make it say something else. That said, sometimes there’s humor to be found within the attributions and other seemingly throwaway words; for instance “Jones said” might originally refer to Quincy Jones, but you could direct your question to Geraldine Jones. Russell Beland, who was for many years the Invite’s No. 1 ink-blotter — and an ace at this particular contest — told me he prided himself on figuring out how to incorporate those in-the-way elements into a funny entry. *How about capitalization and punctuation? * You have to leave it as it is, except that you may omit the quotation marks in a quote. You can’t add punctuation either, though a sentence doesn’t have to have quotation marks for you to use it as a quote; see Kevin Dopart’s “I feel for the guy” above. (Of course, if you’re omitting the beginning words of a sentence, you should capi­tal­ize the beginning of “your” sentence.) *Can I use a headline? * No, because the directions say “not a headline.’ I know someone’s going to send me headlines anyway. *How about a photo caption?* Yeah, that’s okay. *How about the sentences that appear on The Post’s home page online? *All right. See next paragraph. *I don’t get the print paper, and I didn’t even buy even the $19-a-year super-deal digital subscription to The Post. How can I do this contest if I get to read only 20 free articles a month? * Find a few really long stories and use them. Use the sentences on the home page. Also, articles shared through Facebook and Twitter shouldn’t count against the paywall. Give them a try. Or, you know, subscribe. *I do subscribe. But why are you forcing me to look at every story in The Washington Post for the next 11 days so I don’t miss the very best sentences for this contest? *Go take a nap or something, Mr. Contompasis. *ONION RINGERS*: THE HEADLINES OF WEEK 1162* **A non-inking alternative headline suggested by both Chris Doyle and Mark Raffman, and possibly others* Clearly a lot of you really*get* the Onion and its headlines. I was going to say “unparalleled headlines,” but I think we made it to the same plane in Week 1162 . I read through 135 straight pages of nothing but one-line hea dlines, and culled a short­list of well over 100 entries. After finishing the print version of the Invite, I was planning to run more headlines on the Web, but then realized that I’d already included 42 heads. I expect to see some wuz-robbed entries in our yearly retrospective in December. We ended up with a good mix of the news-satiric and the everyday-events-satiric, juxtaposed as they are in the Onion itself (as well as an online publication can do it; the Onion folded its print edition a few years ago). Some of them would no doubt be great sources for actual articles, but the Invite doesn’t have the format for that. Anyway, the headlines are funny in themselves, and often the stories in the Onion often just reiterate the joke that’s already told so pithily in the headline anyway. (One thing that’s not a hallmark of the Onion is the pun headlines. So for once, I mostly ignored the numerous pun entries.) Neal Starkman’s ISIS tote bag — I read it just as my local NPR affiliate had started its pledge drive — showed that you can indeed do a printable ISIS joke. It’s the third win for Neal, and his 57th blot of ink overall. Second place, though, goes to a new name to me: Mark Briscoe. Mark had just eight blots of Invite ink, and only one them was during the Empress Era — in 2005. But I’m delighted he’s back; among those eight blots were a contest win and two-runners up. And now he’s 4 for 9 “above the fold.” (Early ink from Mark, in a contest for cynical takes on sweet sentiments: “Every dog has his day. Of course, his day consists of smelling other dogs’ butts.”) Filling out the Losers’ Circle are edgy headlines by a couple of Invite big shots, 200-time Loser Lawrence McGuire and Virtually at 500 Jeff Contompasis. *Amor of Vincent:* The Invite was edited this week by super copy editor Vince Rinehart, whom I hired decades ago for the Style copy desk — home of the pun headline in the 1980s — in part because of a cover letter consisting largely of fish puns. So of course I asked Vince for his faves, and not surprisingly he kind of liked Megan Durham’s grammar joke: “I just got to the copy editor headline, and have to change my pants now.” After he freshened up, Vince also cited Art Grinath’s Chipotle joke, Bruce Niedt’s weather forecast, and ink from two First Offenders: Brian Finch on Chris Christie’s “I Participated” trophy, and Michael Ginsberg’s “Schindler’s List on Ice.” *The Onion might run these, but we wouldn’t: * The Onion has always been very edgy with its satire, sometimes considerably edgier than even the Invite. In any case, I wasn’t going to run these admittedly clever entries: Abstinence-Only Group Kicks Off ‘Who Doesn’t Love Hand Jobs?’ Ad Blitz (Brendan Beary) And even edgier: Scalia Very-Late-Term Abortion 79 Years After Birth Enrages Conservatives (Jeff Brechlin) And with that, let’s ... *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (FRANK MANN, WASHINGTON)* ***Frank first dipped his toe in the inky Invite water in late 2012, but it’s the last couple of years that he’s amassed most of his 42 blots of ink so far, including two wins and four runners-up. Like our previous Meet the Parentheses subjects, Frank used the Empress’s basic Q&A template, adding and deleting whatever he wanted.* *About me: *Age: mathematically speaking, there are three 19-year olds living inside me. Residing in Glover Park, whose pronunciation is still TBD (does it rhyme with “clover” or “lover”?); DEA lawyer; former TV reporter; brother of Aimee Mann (hush hush, keep it down now). *What brought me to the Invite:* Visited a museum and learned about these things called newspapers. Read one and realized this was a way to make a lot of money. Actually, I started sending in entries hoping to get my name in the paper and make all my ex-girlfriends regret dumping me. *Proof I’m a Loser:* Alfred E. Neuman is still my hero. *Favorite entries:* The super-dumb ones. Like Week 1046, in which we crafted a word or phrase containing the letter block SANE (in any order) and then defined it. I wrote: “Mouse anus: Where one can easily fit every good justification for the government shutdown.” I’m also proud that I pushed the WaPo envelope in Week 1137 in the contest for spicy titles for boring books: “The Joy of Doggy Style: 50 Cute Outfits for Your Poodle.” *What do you do outside of the Invite?* Practice guitar; annoy people by playing guitar; ruin perfectly good dinner parties by whipping out my guitar in lieu of socializing; read Thomas Pynchon novels and Samuel Beckett plays and pretend I understand them. I also made two 48-hour films — short films, 5 or 6 minutes, that you have only 48 hours to write, cast, shoot and edit — that were politely applauded during their premieres and never shown again. Here they are: “French Toast” (I’m the “French chef”) “48 Hours to Nowhere” (a western featuring a rubber duck) *Who do you want to be when you grow up?* Walter Mitty. *Do you have any decent stories?* As a TV reporter in Baltimore, I did a live broadcast from the Great Blacks in Wax Museum. While helping the photographer drag in the cables, we accidentally sawed off Marcus Garvey’s index finger. Hoping the curator wouldn’t notice, we placed the severed digit out of view, but he noticed it right away. Something tells me he wanted to give us the finger, just not the one we amputated. I also spent an entire morning chatting with Gilligan, the Professor and Mary Ann, and I interviewed Barbara Eden at Elvis’s grave. And people think my*sister* is some big deal. ====================================================================== WEEK 1167, published March 20, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1167: Make a difference! The Invitational Empress shares the best of the compare-and contrast contests By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** March 17, 2016 Happy Irish Cliche Day, everyone. Before we get to this week’s contest and results, I wanted to share a song along this theme by the great, hilarious a cappella group Da Vinci’s Notebook — which just happened to feature 20-time Style Invitational Loser Paul Sabourin. It’s called“The Irish Drinking Song.” And do check out Da Vinci’s several albums, such as my favorite, “Brontosaurus” ; they’re full of brilliant parodies and other funny songs that hold up amazing well after more than a decade even though they’re full of topical humor. *WE BEG YOU TO DIFFER: OUR WEEK 1167 CONTEST* This week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1167 , seems so daunting: How many ways*can* someone compare — with humor — a pair of items from that list (even if it’s one of the longer ones)? The thing is, though, that we always have that fear when we do a Spit the Difference* Same Difference* Etc. contest — and we’ve done so many that Keeper of the Master Contest List Elden Carnahan has sorted them onto their own page — but the combined wits of the Loser Community always make it work. (Should combined wits be called Knit Wits?) Here are some of the best compare-or-contrasts from the Invitational’s history, starting back in 1996. *From our first of these contests, Week 155, called Comparison Shopping:* * Runner-up: The difference between a bowling ball and the devoted followers of Pat Buchanan:* *One tries to knock over white, red-necked things, and the other tries to recruit them. *(Andy Glendinning) *Winner: The difference between a bowling ball and the devoted followers of Pat Buchanan: A bowling ball requires an opposable thumb.* (Chuck Smith) The Czar liked the results (and ease of construction) of the contest so much that he repeated it 14 weeks later: Week 169: How about this makes-you-think entry from Ted Weitzman, whose pseudonym Paul Styrene was grandfathered in for a few years after The Post’s no-pseudonyms rule came down: *First Runner-Up: What is the difference between a chain saw and Directory Assistance? 500.* (Paul Styrene) Then again, Week 199: Here’s a wuz-robbed honorable mention: *What is the difference between a genuine Pickett slide rule and an ethics lecture from Newt Gingrich? The slide rule gives answers to three significant digits; the lecture only requires one. * (Greg Arnold) The winner of Week 276 (1998): *What is the difference between the human navel and a 1998 VW Bug? In the case of the navel, most people would rather have an innie. In the case of the Bug, most people would rather have an Audi. * (Russell Beland) First runner-up from Week 402: *The difference between intimations of mortality and performance anxiety: With intimations of mortality, you’re concerned about going too soon.* (Art Grinath) First runner-up from Week 466 (2002): *The difference between poetry by Yeats and a Wall Street Journal editorial: Poetry by Yeats waxes allegorical, whereas a Wall Street Journal editorial waxes Al Gore.* (Milo Sauer) First runner-up from Week 563 (2004): *The difference between the next Redskins season and Ivory Soap: With the soap, at the end the owner will end up with a ring. * (Chuck Smith) Honorable mention from Week 628, showing that we were plenty crude back in 2005 as well: *How the 400-meter dash is like Deep Throat’s throat: Both have been the venue for many climactic finishes. * (Jeff Brechlin) The winner of Week 697: *The difference between a prescription for Levitra and a Mini Cooper convertible: You hope the prescription will keep women from saying, “Ooh, that little thing is sooo cute.” *(Dave Komornik) HM from Week 738: *“American Gothic” and Lindsay Lohan’s handbag: One represents the American Farm; the other, the American Pharm.* (Tom Witte) Winner of Week 821 (2009): *A Buckingham Palace guard is like third base at Nationals Park: Just stands there and watches visitor after visitor go by.* (Dan Ramish) Winner of Week 883: *The difference between a dental appointment and a Real Housewife of D.C.: For one you use a phone to make it; the other uses a moan to fake it.* (Craig Dykstra) Winner of Week 934: *The difference between a toilet brush and a tattoo of Joe Biden: One’s a bristly Number Two tool; the other’s merely the depiction of one.* (Rob Huffman) Runner-up, Week 972: *Beethoven: Roll over. John Edwards: Heel.* (Brendan Beary) Winner of Week 1022: *The difference between a 23-year-old Geo Prizm and a vacation in Pyongyang: If you find yourself with a 23-year-old Geo Prizm, you chose the wrong career. If you find yourself on a vacation in Pyongyang, you chose the wrong Korea*. (Mike Gips) Winner of Week 1063: *A Fleetwood Mac reunion vs. the Arizona legislature: One will have you singing “Don’t Stop”; the other will have you screaming, “Don’t! Stop!” *(Dave Letizia) And the winner of our most recent of these contests, in which we used items from the previous contests: *A $4 haircut and the Redskins’ offensive line: With one, three snips and you’re out; with the other, three snaps and they’re out. *(Jaclyn Yamada) And that, dear Loser Community, is why I have faith. Note the various forms in which these jokes are presented. I’ll take any of them, though I might end up condensing them to save space. *DINE WITH THE LOSERS: SUNDAY AT NOON, BRION’S IN FAIRFAX* I’ll be partaking of the buffet at Brion’s Grille in Fairfax, Va., this palmy Sunday at the Losers’ monthly brunch. Want to join us? Anyone is welcome — Losers or just Invite fans. Witty repartee might or might not be on tap; more likely it’s sitting, eating, chatting, eating, throwing the occasional muffin ... RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org, the Losers’ own website; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” *LOSERCULTURE!!* The Royal Consort and I have tickets for the April 2 matinee of“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Md. — which happens to feature 14-time Loser Marni Penning as Mae, the sister-in-law, as well as some ofD.C.’s best-known professional actors . The explosive Tennessee Williams classic runs March 30 through April 24; we got discount tickets through Goldstar.com. *READ THIS BACK FOR US*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1163* **A non-inking headline by Brendan Beary* This elegantly simple neologism contest — just spell a word or name backward and define the result — once again produced a slew of entries, many of them very good ones: The 40 entries that got ink today were drawn from a shortlist of almost 200. The other 160 worthies might well have included yours; I checked the names only on the entries I ended up running. The inking entries this week provide a nice mix of topical and timeless humor, of the very pithy and the less pithy. There were surprisingly few cases — well, maybe not that surprisingly, since you could use any word or name in existence — where I chose from many definitions of a particular back-word. Some were so close I gave credit to two writers; in others, I chose my favorite. For REDYNS, however, I ran two entries with different approaches: First Offender Francis O’Donnell made the best of several cases to use that as the new team name for the Washington football team, while Todd DeLap’s more personal dig against the beloved-nahhhht team owner earned him a runner-up. Brevity is often an asset in telling a joke, especially in a contest for witticisms. Francis’s somewhat lengthy entry didn’t feel too long to me because it was broken up into several short elements. This one, on the other hand, did: “REDYNS. adjective, being deliberately dismissive of or completely oblivious to public perceptions of one’s words or actions on multiple occasions or in multiple circumstances; being repeatedly scornful of most concepts of common decency.” Or this one for KNUBED: “adj., vb. condition of a false statement or outright lie that becomes generally accepted as true after being conclusively refuted due to continual repetition; to so entrench that false statement as popular belief through repetition.” Sposta be a joke, not a legal contract. Another drawback to some entries were back-words that were close to impossible to read, or at least didn’t look like words: ELBATALUCRIC, GNIMRAWLABOLG. While you can of course patiently read it backward, you can’t really read it forward, let along grasp the joke. But so many entries were very fine. I wouldn’t be surprised if some got ink this December in our annual retrospective contest, which invites you to enter or reenter any of the previous year’s contests. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial but the fifth ink “above the fold” among 31 blots for writer-editor Ellen Ryan; Her word QARI was used in an earlier backward-words contest — alas, Iraq has been in the news a long time — but she had a fresh new definition. I’ve met Ellen a number of times at Loser events, but hadn’t realized until recently (or had forgotten) that she’s the sister-in-law of Ubiquitous Loser Jeff Contompasis. Todd DeLap, who didn’t start Inviting till Week 1039, grabs Ink No. 58, his third above the fold (along with the “Wanna Rub My Butt” barbecue apron. Jesse Frankovich — who got his first ink many years ago but only recently returned by storm, with ink almost every week — blots up Inks 39 and 40 and his choice of mug or Loser T-shirt. And Kevin Dopart, blah blah. *ELBAT NIRPNU!: Martian warning meaning “don’t read these if you have any taste”* Many unprintables this week, even if spelling them backward makes them a*little* more subtle. (Not enough.) I won’t use all caps so they don’t unduly call attention to themselves. Remotsuc: Important part of phone sex company business plan. (Jeff Brechlin) Noparts: Anatomical problem-solver. (Ivars Kuskevics) Sir Otilc: Forgotten Knight of the Round Table was a popular ladies’ man who found many a “Holy Grail.” (Jeff Shirley) Smutorcs: Per Tolkien, shriveled and hairy things that throb excitedly after watching porn. (Jerry Pohl) Lana: You know that girl; she’s the one who’s up for anything. (Craig Dykstra) Sucum: To die with a mouthful. (Diane Wah) Redic: To get back in-… (Tom Witte) Suna: The lowest social caste, also known as “the unshinables.” (Tom Witte) Tom also enclosed an entry that I couldn’t even bring myself to list here. When I post this column on the Style Invitational Devotees Page on Facebook, I’ll include it in the thread of comments. See you Sunday! ====================================================================== WEEK 1168, published March 27, 2016 Style Conversational: Easy as A, B or C ‘Wait Wait’s’ Roxanne Roberts weighs in on the Style Invitational quiz questions By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** March 24, 2016 “risky, imo.” That was the prognosis last month, via Google Chat, of The Czar of The Style Invitational , the Empress’s predecessor and continual sounding board, when I broached the idea — suggested by the Royal Consort — of doing a contest in the mold of the multiple-choice quiz questions on NPR’s “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me.” “this calls for a lot of clebberness,” the Czar continued in the idiotic lowercase-and-stupid-spelling format that we’ve used for decades with each other while instant-messaging. “of course you only need ten.” right, I concurred in similar failures of capitalization. Then the conversation turned to whether the term “bucco-genital” was too spicy for The Post, even in a quote from a 1926 sex advice manual that was being given away as a prize (upshot: It was deleted from the print Invite for Week 1162, ran in the online version, got zero complaints). Anyway, one thing the Loser community has in abundance is clebberness. Many, many entrants in the Week 1164 contest knew just what we were looking for: a multiple-choice question about a Ridiculous but True news event (we also allowed for historical or general trivia), along with two wrong answers that were entertaining in their own right — either because they were ridiculous but marginally plausible, or because they made a good joke. Even the Czar agreed, lauding 20 of the entries I showed him and selling only a few short. But one neat part of the “Wait Wait” contest was the chance to hear from my longtime Style section colleague Roxanne Roberts, who’s been a regular Waiter for years, and perhaps the highest-scoring panelist on the show’s news quiz. On Tuesday I sent Rox a list of 27 entries, all of which I’d researched online to check against contemporary news stories. That afternoon she came over to my desk with a printout marked with her favorites — but wait! wait! She also had highlighted four entries that she remembered from the show itself, one of which she remembered answering recently. “Wait Wait” posts a number of transcripts online, but I was striking out trying to search for specific questions through either Google or the show’s own site, and so I couldn’t see if the Loser versions might be the same as (or even — gasp — inferior to) the Wait. So I dropped those entries from the Invite itself and share them below, after lauding the winners and Losers. Unfair? Just bad luck? Either way, it’s the life of a Loser. *Opinion from the Roberts court: Roxanne’s favorites * “My entirely unscientific and arbitrary favorites are based not on the weird-but-true answer because the entire Internet exists because of weird-but-true and I’m mad at Bill Gates for thinking of that first. No, greatness lies in the twisted fake answer that sounds real (aka lying), which ‘Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me’ has transformed into to a respected art form. So my personal favorite is #23 [Kevin Dopart’s question about the date 11*11*11], based on C: ‘Most like a fence, according to Donald Trump’s Veterans Day remarks at the New York Military Academy’ – a perfect mix of the topical and the absurd, not unlike the GOP presidential campaign. And my second is #21 [Duncan Stevens’s entry about the East Chicago, Ind., election], because the world would be a better place if dogs were elected to public office.” The Empress liked those entries, too, obviously, but as usual, her results varied when it comes to the tippy-top of the list, where she gave the ink to four others. It’s the fifth win and 83rd blot of ink for Larry Gray of Middle of Nowhere, Md., who — just as I’d chosen his Burger King entry and looked up who’d written it — messaged me urgently on Tuesday afternoon re Week 1164. Whuh-oh, was he suddenly ashamed of his joke about onion rings? No, he was suddenly ashamed of a different entry, submitted back on March 6: *Why have badly needed repairs to the crumbling road infrastructure in Brussels, Belgium, been delayed?** ** A: The city's legislature has been paralyzed by a particularly vicious and sometimes violent lobbying war between the concrete and asphalt industries.** ** B: The discovery of unexploded WWII ordinance has prompted one Belgian politician to claim that they've uncovered secret terrorist bomb caches.** ** C: The construction plans for a number of key road tunnels were apparently eaten by mice.** **Answer: C.* **So yeah, that would have been extremely unfortunate, considering. So we’re glad it worked out for Larry otherwise. Duncan Stevens, one of this year’s Invite phenoms, should be able to get a sort of weird radio job if he tires of his current federal-lawyer gig: He scored not just the second-place International Barf Bag but also three honorable mentions out of the 21 inking entries in this week’s results — and there were more on the shortlist. Today’s ink bumps his total to 35, five of them “above the fold.” And filling out the Losers’ Circle are frequent squatters Lawrence McGuire and Kevin Dopart, the latter of whom has been asking for honorable-mention magnets lately, rather than the runner-up mug or vintage T-shirt; it’s rumored that he plans to assemble them into some Garment of Shame. And here are the entries on the topics that Roxanne remembered from the show (and you know, if it turns out that Rox was remembering something similar but not*exactly* this topic — well, that’s why we’re glad we’re not handing out prizes of monetary value in this contest): *A chunk of hard whale vomit sold for $16,700 at auction last year because:* A. A diamond ring was visible inside. B. It was wanted for use in perfume. C. It was once owned by Herman Melville. *Answer: B (bbc.com) *(Dave Prevar) *What action did some women in China take to ward off men who kept ogling them?* A. Bought stockings that simulated very hairy legs. B. Carried blow-up male dolls by their side to pretend they were escorted. C. Aimed laser pointers at them to zap their lecherous eyes. *Answer: A.(chinasmack.com) * (John McCooey) [there’s a little question whether this product was ever marketed, anyway] *Officials at Britain’s ancient Salisbury Cathedral have relocated a 20-foot-tall statue because: * A. The headless Anne Boleyn was frightening children. B. People were walking into it while texting. C. The nude depiction of Winston Churchill was deemed inappropriate. *Answer: B* (Reuters) (Frank Osen) And Rox remembers answering this one herself: *What made it easier for Escambia County, Fla., police officers to find and arrest Donald “Chip” Pugh on DUI and other charges?* A. He was the Escambia County chief of police. B. He had sent a mug shot of himself, saying the one on the wanted posters didn't look very good. C. He started a “Help Me Avoid Arrest on My DUI Charge” Kickstarter campaign.* Answer: B (cleveland19.com) * (Yet another one from Duncan Stevens) (Today’s headline was a non-inking hed suggestion by Jeff Contompasis) *PUTTING THE ERR IN ‘ERUDITE’? THIS WEEK’S CONTEST* I’ll admit it — I’ve been wary of repeating Asterisky Business — a contest that requires specialized knowledge to understand the punchline of a joke -- though I’ve gotten numerous requests for an encore. For one thing, my mantra is that explaining a joke is a good way to kill it. I do see the humor in telling a joke that’s ridiculously specialized, and also in a dull explanation that explains something else more: that the teller is an incorrigible nerd. But a whole list of dull explanations? But Washington has so, so many highly educated people — several of the instructors at my gym have graduate degrees — and the Loser Community is even more overrun with them than the general population. Last week on theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook page, I posted the results of Week 485 and asked whether we should give this contest another go. Lots of Likes. (Along with endorsements like this from biologist Mike Creveling: “I thought some of them dragged on. But I like to read long tedious passages with big words.”) Finally, I — yet again — consulted the Czar; he’s the one who ran the contest last time. I showed him the results (once again via Google Chat): Czar: okay, i f[very much] LOVE these results. i would count this among the great contests. ... the winner is fabulous, as is the first honorable, the one about latin. i love how convoluted it is. Here’s the winner, by Seth Brown: George Bush: Who's* on first? Ariel Sharon: Me?* George Bush: No, the guy on first base. Ariel Sharon: Me? George Bush: You are on first? Ariel Sharon: No, I'm asking you. Me? George Bush: Who? Ariel Sharon: Wait, you mean that fellow over there? George Bush: So he* is on first? Ariel Sharon: What are you talking about? There are no girls on this team. George Bush: So who's on first? Ariel Sharon: Me? *In Hebrew, the word meaning "who" is pronounced "me"; the word for "he" is pronounced "who"; and the word for "she" is pronounced "he." Here’s the first honorable mention: Physicist 1: What's new? Physicist 2: E*h* *In physics, photon energy (E) divided by Planck's constant (h), is the frequency, expressed as the Greek letter nu. Okay, people, let’s go for it — worse comes to worst, we can run more Wait Waits. One issue that will inevitably arise:*“That’s* not obscure! Every literate person knows*that!”* Okay, fine, you can feel smug once or twice four weeks from now. There’s no scientific standard for joke nerdiness; I’ll ask around about some of the entries, probably, but will mostly go on my gut; although I can spell better than you can, I’m probably not as well educated; I finished my higher education after four years and three summers when you could get into the University of Maryland by paying $25 to the person who came to your in-state high school a few months beforehand. No essay, nothin’. I’d say that jokes requiring knowledge of a foreign language, or those using technical, academic or otherwise specialized terms that don’t usually appear in newspapers, should work. *Important note! *Your erudite joke doesn’t have to be a bad joke! In fact, I fervently hope for all truly funny jokes. Listen, if you can explain the punchline of a joke and still make the reader laugh, that is a good joke. *Other important note! * YOU HAVE TO THINK OF THE JOKE YOURSELF. We’re not interested in running the funniest nerdjoke you ever heard. This is true for every Style Invitational contest. I see that a couple of years ago, The Post’s Health and Science blog ran some “Popular Science readers’ favorite science jokes” ; I liked this one: “I was going to tell a joke about sodium, but Na.” Not quite erudite enough for this contest, though. Asterisky Business reminds me of one of my favorite Steve Martin standup bits , where he pretends to be telling a joke to the plumbers in the audience: “This lawn supervisor was out on a sprinkler maintenance job and he started working on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom 7-inch gangly wrench. Just then, this little apprentice leaned over and said, “You can’t work on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom-inch wrench.” Well, this infuriated the supervisor, so he went and got Volume 14 of the Kinsley manual, and he reads to him and says, “The Langstrom 7″ wrench can be used with the Findlay sprocket.” Just then, the little apprentice leaned over and said, “It says ‘sprocket,’ not ‘socket’!” ====================================================================== WEEK 1169, published April 3, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1169: Beary picking, and a too-early goodbye Longtime Loser Jan Verrey, in one of the tinfoil hats she made for trivia parties. A friend remembers complimenting Jan on her “Elizabeth Taylor eyes”; Jan’s reply: “Bite me.” Jan died this week; see below. (Eileen Shankle) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** March 31, 2016 (Click here to skip down <#report> to the reminiscences about the late Jan Verrey) *** *In an even more brazen than usual exploitation of Loser loyalty, I’ve invited each of the five people who’ve scored 1,000 blots of ink to judge a Style Invitational contest in commemoration of that big K. The first Loser to reach 1,000 was Russell Beland in 2006, and I think it was his own idea that judging Week 664 would be a fitting reward. Chris Doyle and Tom Witte inexplicably declined the fabulous opportunity, for no monetary compensation, to read through more than a thousand pathetic attempts at humor to tweeze out a few dozen that were less so. But in January 2014 Kevin Dopart jumped at the chance to — for the first time since he began Inviting in the fall of 2005 —*not* enter the contest, but to judge it: it was his idea in Week 1055 to ask for neologisms in which K’s were added to or subsituting for the letters in an existing word. I was mildly surprised that Brendan was interested in judging Week 1165 , and he agreed to it as soon as I asked. And it was his own suggestion to follow Kevin’s lead and do a neologism contest with B’s instead of K’s (his first idea was to require BB’s but decided that was too limiting). As I note inthe introduction to today’s results , I sent Brendan a list of all 1,200 or so entries, with no clue who’d written what — it’s the same type of list that I use myself every week. It wasn’t until the Invite was posted online today that he got to see who’ll be friending and unfriending him on Facebook. I asked Brendan to share some thoughts on this week’s entries and on judging the contest in general. (I see that he encountered a lot of what I term screediness.) “First I want to say I’m a little disappointed. “Knowing that I’d be judging the contest, I spent all of about five minutes actually thinking about it: What would be the commonly repeated entries that*tout le mobbe*would all submit, with varying degrees of cleverness*incoherence in the definitions? “Clearly, there’d be ‘bonerous’ (painfully, challengingly hard), ‘bestes’ (a man’s very, very closest friends), ‘banal sex’ (I didn’t think of a definition for that one, so sue me), ‘the Pubic Wars’ (ditto), and more just like them, right? If I drummed up those in five minutes, then other Losers –some with well-deserved reputations for funnily filthily edgy neologisms – would get those and more with a week to work on it… “ …er, not so much. The four listed above were all goose-eggs. “Sure, there were plenty of good entries – clever constructions I’d have never come up with, nicely wry and sly definitions that worked on multiple levels, and a few laugh-out-loud ones. (And while it didn’t win, worthy of special note is [Gary Crockett’s] “In the beginning, Bob created the heavens and the earth.” It’s goofy, it’s just a little itsy-bit trespassing the contest instructions to “change a word, phrase or name” (in the same way that Putin is just a little bit trespassing in Ukraine (or Syria (or your mama))), but sometimes audacity needs to be rewarded.) “And yes, there were repeats: about a skazillion riffs on ‘Bashington,’ Tolkien’s lost classic ‘The Bobbit,’ ‘Billary,’ ‘babeball,’ ‘Faceboob,’ and a few others, but so many were depressingly… tame. Tepid. Torpid. Where was the edginess? Were we becoming… respectable? Conventional? Banal (in the non-edgy sense of the word, that is)? “And while we’re on or near the topic of ‘Billary,’ let’s talk about the other elephants and asses in the room. Yes, we’re all suffering election fatigue over a campaign that’s been going on for three years and is going to seem like another three years over the next seven months. But ... still: Oy. Oy and double-oy. So much anger and rant and screed in some of these entries – sure, trying for topical humor is a good idea, but just dropping a ‘b’ seemingly at random into the names of this candidate and that candidate (and especially THAT candidate, if you take my meaning), and launching into a diatribe -- this is supposed to be a humor contest, remember? Unless you’re Lewis Black, anger plus rant plus screed doesn’t equal funny! Lighten the buck up! “(It was at about the time when I reached this mental state while reading the list, that I posted that thingie on the Style Invitational Devotees page about Mr. Bezos not paying Pat enough for doing this job. If I had to try and face this task week in and week out, and be sociable, and welcome newcomers, my tiara-topped head would’ve been in the oven long ago. She must be on some reeeeeaaaally good meds, and there’s no way they can be cheap. (Well, yes there is: We could live in a first-world country with a sensible health-care system. But work with me here.)) “Well, before I turn into Mr. Crankypants here, I’ll shift gears here and talk numbers . Beautiful, bland, non-judgmental numbers. “All told, there were approximately 1,200 entries for the contest – not a yuge amount, but probably more than would’ve yielded from a poetry contest, which Pat had first suggested. And since they’re quick little bada-boom-bada-bing one-liners, I got to dole out 50 inks, which was the main reason I preferred a contest like this – I don’t expect to get another chance like this (unless I somehow fall out of Pat’s favor and she needs to punish me). So as long as Daddy’s handing out the candy, he’s gonna dish out LOTS. “So, knocking out the skazillion repetitive ones, and doing a first cull, the initial 1,200 or so was cut down to about 160. And yes,*of course* all of yours survived the cut; in fact, I actually had that one of yours – you know the one I mean – making it into the paper, but you know Pat with that whole column-inches thing, as if the paper were a tangible physical object – I mean, really. So she’s the one who cut it; I thought it was hilarious. A nice, nothing-to-be-ashamed-of, 52nd-place hilarious. Maybe 53rd. “All in all, it was a fun experience, but maybe not as much fun as I thought it would be. Were it not an election year, maybe it would’ve been great fun – a huge, madcap laff riot of sublime immaturity, resulting in episodes of coffee laughed out noses onto expensive electronics; and underwear, trousers, skirts, and seat cushions ruined from laughter-induced bladder failure. I know you can do it. Leave your rants at the door, and I’m sure you have it in you. “But I still just can’t believe that no one came up with ‘bonerous.’ ” ---- Given that most of the Usual Suspects got ink from Brendan this week, I don’t think it’s much more than coincidence that this week’s “above the fold” entries are all by people who aren’t (yet) regular denizens of the Losers’ Circle. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial and 16th ink overall from Ivars Kuskevics (it’s Latvian), who’s also scored two runners-up since he started Inviting in Week 1001. We’re still waiting to meet Ivars in person; hopefully he can make it to the Flushies on May 21. And Lee Graham, Brendan’s second-place finisher with “barbinger,” got his Fir Stink for his first ink just three weeks ago for his Onion-style headline “Trump To Drop Presidential Bid After Encounter With Younger, Prettier Country.” Lee now wins the Sorry, the insult to Indian culture commissioned by the Empress and created by Barbara Turner from several old Loser T-shirts. We*really* want to meet Lee at the Flushies, wearing the Sorry. For one thing, we don’t know if Lee is a Mr. or a Ms. We hope that a Loser Mug makes it intact to Michael Rolfe in South Africa as he scores his fifth blot of ink and his first above the fold (or maybe he’ll opt for a vintage Loser T-shirt, which might not shatter into pieces in transit), while David Silberstein ups his ATF yield to a win and two runners-up in just 14 blots of ink — an impressive ratio. What Doug Dug: The faves this week of ace copy editor Doug Norwood included all the top winners plus “the Pabst is prologue” (Gary Crockett), “Borsche” (Christopher Lamora, Lela Martin) and “ne’er-do-bell” (Chris Doyle). Sad news about one of our funniest Losers: *WELL, THAT BITES: JAN VERREY, 1944-2016* She had just 16 blots of Style Invitational ink, but Jan Verrey left a large and indelible mark on the Loser Community — one we’ll always treasure — with the great sense of humor, sharp wit, salty language and generous heart that she shared at Loser events and with personal friends among us. A picture of Jan barking out “bite me!” should appear in Webster’s in the entry for “feisty.” A lifelong D.C. area resident, a member of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s staff, and for many years a freelance transcriptionist, Jan died Monday night of congestive heart failure at a hospital near her Alexandria, Va., home, just past her 72nd birthday; she’d had health problems for some time. A public funeral is not planned, but a memorial service may be held later this spring. Jan’s ink, which dates mostly from the Invite’s first decade, included this one for stupid questions — “What does the A in UVA stand for?” — and one for ideas for absurd art installations: “Five million yards of gold lamé are used to sew an evening gown for the J. Edgar Hoover Building.” I visited Jan’s apartment several times for New Year’s parties, and rode to a Loser party with her in Jan’s bright purple PT Cruiser that looked like an eggplant on wheels. (We got lost.) I heard about her passing on Facebook, where there were many posts on her page from friends who knew her from a community similar in many ways to the Losers: They’re AOL Triviots, veterans of chat rooms focusing on trivia games, some of which date back to the days of dial-up. Like the Losers, the Triviots also put on in-person social events, and Jan played host to several “Capital Bashes” — at which the making and wearing of tinfoil hats (like the one in the photo above) was a perennial activity. I asked the friends and relatives who’d posted on Jan’s page if they’d share some reminiscences for the Conversational, and several wrote to me with stories that made me laugh out loud. Here are just a few. *From longtime friend Amy Bobchek (her subject line read “best story ever”): * I’ve often repeated this story she once shared with me: For her 16th birthday, her dad gave Jan a cherry-red Pontiac GTO convertible. One summer evening, with her boyfriend and a half-smoked bag of pot in the car, she took the GTO joyriding on the George Washington Parkway. She said, “We were going so fast I could feel the G-force making my cheeks ripple.” When they were inevitably pulled over — and they quickly ate the remainder of the, er, evidence — the police officer asked how fast she thought she was going. Although she knew it was over 90 mph, she said, “I don’t know…maybe 60? 65?” The officer looked at her quizzically and said, “Miss, you were going*eleven* miles per hour.” I’ll miss Jan for the rest of my life. *From longtime Loser Sandra Hull:* So many of Jan’s stories were great because of the way she told them. Animated, punctuated by funny voices and gestures, always with an underlying tone of amusement over how absurd life is. She was a born storyteller. The one I remembered that made me laugh out loud yesterday morning as I brushed my teeth and nearly aspirated some Sensodyne toothpaste was about how she was in an emergency room for something or other that required a pelvic exam. During the procedure, it became clear to all the attending personnel just how tense she was when there was a loud cracking noise. She had broken the speculum. Not with her hands. Aside from the obvious comedy and feat of strength that story conveys, it also paints an accurate picture of Jan: vulnerable, yet stronger than she knew. And not afraid to laugh at herself. *From fellow Triviot Anna Priscilla: * Jan and I attended the Simon and Garfunkel concert at the MCI Center in 2003 after dinner at Tony Chang’s. We paid a lot for the tickets — I think $180 apiece — and Jan really got into the concert, standing and singing along with a lot of other people. The people behind us, however, grumbled for her to sit down and be quiet. When I told her what they said, she said (in a bit of a loud voice) that she paid a lot of money for her ticket and was going to do what she damn well pleased. *From Brooksanne Cline, who posted this on Facebook: * When I lost the sight in my eye, It was obviously a very hard time for me. Jan sent me a big can of Hershey chocolates, with a simple note that said BITE ME! *From longtime From longtime Loser Tom Witte, writing from California, where he’s on vacation: *Jan liked that I enjoyed eating and drinking a lot, like her. I think she had one Loser brunch at her apartment, but I was also there for some smaller gatherings, and I also went out to dinner with her once — one of those Argentinian all-the-meat-you-can-eat places. Many years ago, when she was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack, I looked at the wires and machinery on her and remarked that she looked like a carburetor. Despite her invitation, I didn’t bite her. ------ I’ll post something on the Style Invitational Devotees page as soon as I hear about arrangements for a service. Thanks to all who shared their memories of the unforgettable Jan. ====================================================================== WEEK 1170, published April 10, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1170: Rerun for the Roses The Style Invitational Empress on this year’s foal name contest — and what was that winner with rabbits and backpacks? Kentucky Derby contenders Mohaymen, left, and Nyquist (seen here near the end of the Florida Derby; Nyquist won) may be tough “breeding” challenges in this week’s Style Invitational. (Matthew Stockman*Getty Images) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** April 7, 2016 Yay, it’s horse name week! If Week 1170 is much like the 21 previous years of Style Invitational foal-“breeding” contests, I’ll be facing a lot of work but very little worry — because the results are always fabulously clever. In fact, even the work part has become far easier now that Loser Jonathan Hardis, for the second year, will be sorting the entries for me with a computer program he devised that spares me from having to look at each entry twice: I used to search through thousands of entries, over and over, to find those that bred Horse No. 1with Horse 2, Horse 1 with Horse 3, down to Horse 100 — and then ended checking up Horses 15 and 42 and 85 (and every one between) with Horses 1, 2, 3, etc. Now I can start looking at each new horse and instantly skip over the matches I’ve already seen. If you’ve entered this contest before — and thousands of Losers have over the years — you probably know the drill, and what we’re looking for. If you’re new ... well, I was going to write up a big description of the process, the strategy, etc. — but why reinvent the horseshoe? Just take a look at my Style Conversational for Week 1118 , which was last year’s horse contest. As I’ve been doing ever since I’ve limited the list of horses to 100 names rather than the some 400 in the full list, I’ve included the horses who top most prognosticators’ lists of Kentucky Derby favorites (though they inevitably will change over the next four weeks) — just because it’s more fun to watch the race and root for “our” horses among the 20 starters. And this year, some of those horses have what you could charitably call “challenging” names for this contest — chief among them the undefeated Nyquist and the previously undefeated Mohaymen, whom Nyquist just trounced in last weekend’s Florida Derby. I’m hopeful that some enterprising Loser will come up with some clever offspring for at least one of them. The idea for our horse contest came from Loser and serious horse player Mike Hammer back in 1994. He noted that often, racehorses’ names reflect those of their parents, or at least their sires: War Admiral was a son of Man o’ War; Seabiscuit was the son of Hard Tack, who was the son of Man o’ War. Sometimes a horse’s owner acknowledges that a foal also has a mother, and incorporates the dam’s name as well; this year’s nominee Awesome Speed is the product of the love match between Awesome Again and Speedy Escape. Okay, that wasn’t exactly clever — but that’s what*you’re* here for. You could see the 1,000-some names we’ve given ink to over the past 21 years — not to mention those from the spinoff “grandfoal” contests — by searching down Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List for “foal,” then clicking on the link for the results a few contests later. Or just take a little easy inspiration from these randomly chosen gems from the past decade. And they’re all honorable mentions rather than “above the fold”; the bar is high in this contest, every year. Achilles of Troy x Tug o’War = Heel and Tow (Mark Eckenwiler, 2006) Clued In x Reporting for Duty = Colonel Mustered (Pam Sweeney, 2007) Daddy Rabbit x Revenge Is Sweet = Lucky Human’s Foot (Andrew Hoenig, 2008) Rocket to the Moon x Gluteus Maximus = Tang N Cheek (Barry Koch, 2009) Beethoven x Lethal Combination = OD to Joy (Steve Price, 2010) Major Art x Humble and Hungry = Art Major (David Smith, Barbara Turner, 2011) Boat Trip x Holy Highway = Rowed to Damascus (Jonathan Paul, 2012) Now and Then x Python = Intermittent Viper (Jeff Contompasis, 2013) Scotland x Harpoon = Plaid the Impaler (Roy Ashley, 2014) Tough Customer x Punctuate = Tough, Customer! (Mark Richardson, 2015) *ASKMASTERS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1166* *(*Non-inking headline by Tom Witte)* As with the ponies, our perennial Questionable Journalism contest — in which you quote a sentence from The Post and write a question that (in a sillier or snarkier world) it could answer — always produces more great material than I’ll be able to share. This week’s results are as funny as always, with a healthy mix of the topical and the timeless. For this contest, which I’ve judged at least 10 times, I often like “answers” whose real context is clear — because it makes the twist to a new context clear as well; if it’s a big change in meanings, that’s going to enhance the humor. For example, Jeff Contompasis’s quote about the shower doors is obviously from some dry ol’ home care advice column — which makes you laugh out loud when Jeff turns it into a story of unrequited love (or at least “love”). And among the “above the fold” winners this week, Brendan Beary’s “community is anticipated to be sold out” was clearly froma real estate story, and Mark Raffman’s wordplay on “ground game in South Florida” was playing off either an unrelated campaign story or one about football (it was indeed about Marco Rubio ). But sometimes, even a sentence for which you have no idea of the original context can fuel a great joke — as in this week’s winner by John Hutchins, who used a sentence no one else did. And what is it really that “carries reports about such topics as rabbit farming and domestically made school backpacks”? Not the product-placement State of the Union address, but a North Korean government website that also mentioned that the DPRK could take out Manhattan with a hydrogen bomb. Here are some more sources of potentially puzzling sentences. *A. Sometimes their bottom halves were nearly the full width of the runway.* — Not obese pilots (Kimberly Baer) but a fashion show featuring the weird designs of Rei Kawakubo *A. “I just grayed out or blacked out a little bit.”*— Not a minstrel show but University of Virginia basketball coach collapsed during a game *A. When the angry words darted over my head as I worked on my coloring book, I barely heard them.* — Possibly not really Ben Carson at the debate (Frank Osen) but the writer remembers her parents fighting when she was a child *A. Virginia was a little bit quicker, a little bit sharper, and a little bit more athletic.* — Not a perky intern (First Offender Jim McCormack) but UVA beats Miami in basketball ***A. Plus, they have a food source with the Potomac River nearby.* — Not Mitch McConnell’s suggestions for where D.C.’s poor should eat without food stamps (Chris Doyle), but a pair of ravens seen nesting in D.C. *A. A reporter for the Midland Reporter-Telegram described the spectacle as “a spaghetti of writhing angry reptiles” that emanates “a strange dense smell with an evil vomit-like edge to it.”* — Not a description of the local bar association luncheon (Mark Raffman, with another self-deprecating lawyer joke) but of a rattlesnake roundup in Texas ***(This sentence, as well as others from the same article, was used for numerous entries, several of them about Trump rallies and GOP debates — like Frank Osen’s about “the dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum reverberating all around you”).* ***A. It is very messy to clean them out.* — Not the clients of divorce lawyers (another Raffman joke) but Heloise on bagless vacuum cleaners *A. Both are repugnant, both dangerous and both deserving of the most unreserved condemnation.*— Not the opinion of a stripper’s breasts by a hypocritical clergyman (Mae Scanlan) but Charles Krauthammer on both the hecklers at Trump rallies and the menacing behavior of the Trump camp *A. Do you have houseplants? You can sprinkle some in them.* — Not handy toilet substitutes (Jeff Shirley) but uses for coffee grounds *A. Other requests included chocolate mousse, berries and a three-foot piece of bacon. —*Not suggested words for poop (Ann Martin) but some second-graders’ favorite birthday foods *A. I wanted to give you the feeling of walking through a garden when all the flowers start to bloom. —*Not explaining why I released a bunch of bees at your wedding (Dave Prevar) but the White House florist about a state dinner *A. We don’t think of the organ as an intimate instrument.* — Not the views of polygamist wives (Kate Cross) but, duh,an article about an organist ***A. “The swivel feature on this model is a nice bonus.”* — Not billionaires choosing which candidate to buy (Jesse Frankovich) but a designer talking about a chair for a child’s room *A. Today, that hill is a mountain.*— Not the result of Kim Kardashian’s surgery (William Kennard) but theuphill battle to sell a certain very costly drug *A. Just think about how clapboard siding works.* — Not a trick “to delay, y’know, happy endings” (Brendan Beary) but, well, how clapboard siding works. While all three runners-up this week are frequent visitors to the Losers’ Circle, Inkin’ Memorial winner John Hutchins (of the State of the Union with the backpacks) got his first blot of Invite ink just four weeks ago, and his second last week. John’s based in the D.C. area, which makes me wonder where he’s been all these years. Ditto for newbie Kimberly Baer, who was a First Offender just last week with “bumpkin pie” and submitted several inkworthy entries for this contest as well. In announcing this contest, I had specifically stated that headlines were off limits as sentences — because we have another perennial contest for that, “Mess With Our Heads.” Which is the only reason this one gets no ink for Duncan Stevens: *A. Wizards fail to heed advice, still pull out win* Q. Can you summarize the plot of every Harry Potter book? *LOSERS ON THE RIVER: NEXT BRUNCH, ANNAPOLIS, APRIL 17* The brunch buffet at Buddy’s Crabs and Ribs, right near the Annapolis City Dock, is once again the site of a Loser Brunch. I don’t think I can make this one, but I’ve been there several times and it’s a friendly place in a historic district that’s great for a sightseeing walk afterward. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Loser website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). And do write in — in blood, please — Saturday afternoon, May 21, on your calendar for the Flushies, the Loser Community’s (but open to all) annual “banquet,” this year a potluck at the little farmy place of Loser Robin Diallo in Lothian, Md., about 15 miles south of Annapolis. And you can bring the family — there are not just horses to pet, but baby goats as well. And Elden Carnahan. As always, there will be awards for Loser milestones; song parodies written for the occasion; and plenty of time to meet the Losers whose work you’ve always admired. And Elden Carnahan. The Losers will also be assembling a team of participants for theannual Post Hunt extravaganza the next day — and for the first time ever, it’ll be held indoors, at the Washington Convention Center. We’ve come very close to winning! ====================================================================== WEEK 1171, published April 17, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1171: Our compliments to The Jeff Hall of Famer (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) tells us how he’s blotted up 500 inks Among Jeff Contompasis’s many talents: shaking his head so that a ball on a string lands into a cup. Nose Aerobics Basketball was a Loser prize. (Yes, Jeff suggested we use this photo.) (M.K. Phillips) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** April 14, 2016 (Click here to skip down <#report> to the Empress’s discussion of this week’s new contest and results) Except for a couple of minutes each Thursday, when I’m writing up the Conversational and check to see how many blots of ink that week’s top winners have, I don’t tend to follow the Loser Stats, the jaw-droppingly comprehensive set of Style Invitational ink standings that’s been maintained and enhanced by Loser Elden Carnahan since Year 1 in 1993, now atnrars.org. And so it slipped my mind that for weeks, Jeff Contompasis had been baby steps away from the Hall’s doorbell — and boom, he hit the magic 500-ink mark three contests ago. If Jeff tooted his own horn about it, he didn’t toot it to me. Anyway, we’re delighted that Jeff is now Haller No. 11, with eight wins and 34 runners-up among his 502 blots of ink. As he notes below, he’s not one of those people who decided to enter the Invite and immediately started inking up the joint; in each of his first four years, his ink total was in the single digits (his first was in a contest for right-leaning humor: “The difference between a conservative commentator and a liberal commentator? One is called a conservative commentator; the other is called a commentator”). But then, clearly, The Obsession struck, and the chemical engineer was entering a full “dance card” of 25 entries a week, and scoring in just about any kind of contest I threw out there. Meanwhile, JefCon — as he’s often called on theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook group — became a beloved Invite celebrity with his “Is it just me, or ...” nerdy musings, like: “Is it just me who finds the concept of do-gooders and evil-doers inconsistent? Wouldn’t it be better if there were do-evilers? Or maybe good-doers?” While he’d avoided it for some time, Jeff agreed this week to do a “Meet the Parentheses” bio. And after I saw his Devotees post about all the polishing he’d done on an entry that was a single crossword clue, I also asked him to write about the process of being A True Loser. MEET THE PARENTHESES: (JEFF CONTOMPASIS, ASHBURN, VA.) *Age:* A few months younger than Sandra Bullock, but she’s held up a lot better. Bob Staake, who’d met Jeff at a book reading, drew Jeff for the ScrabbleGrams contest Jeff suggested. Jeff goes all nerdy in telling about that contest in his “Meet the Parentheses” bio today. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) *Residing in *Ashburn (or Bun Rash for the anagram fans out there), in D.C.’s outer suburbs. Before that, Southern California after having survived growing up in the rough-and-tumble affluent suburbs of Boston. *What brought me to the Invite:* I moved from California to Virginia in 1996 and started subscribing to the fishwrap edition of The Post. There was this funny contest in it and upon reading the results, I said, “I can do better than this.” Note: My First Ink finally came in 2004. *Proof I’m a Loser:* I was once pulled over for going through a green light. Although colorblind (I prefer the term Daltonian-American*), I knew that wasn’t right. I went to court after obtaining photographic evidence that the light was staggered, and the clerk-magistrate dismissed the ticket and requested my license. Then he noticed that my stated residence did not match the one on the card. “Did you move?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered. “More than three weeks ago?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered. “That’s a $25 fine.” Snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. **John Dalton published one of the first papers on colorblindness and had the condition himself.* *Favorite entries:* Anything not involving bodily waste. I say this knowing that my Ink No. 500, the multiple-choice question à la “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me,”referenced camel urine . On a more serious note, I do have a most memorable entry from Week 893, which asked for a humorously witty story in 25 words or fewer. This contest happened to run during a family health crisis in late 2010. While sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, I tried to distract myself by writing something — and I figured that if I could laugh, even in that time and place, over my one-line, updated telling of “The Manchurian Candidate,” the joke had to be pretty good. It won the Inker: Hanoi, 1969: General Nguyen asked the colonel, “How can we use the prisoner to defeat America from within?” Ha replied, “I have an idea.” — “The Wasillan Candidate” *Favorite recurring contest:* Ask Backwards . There’s a reason why it’s been run over 30 times. *Least favorite recurrent contest:* Joint Legislation. If you need a pronunciation guide to get the joke... *What do you do outside of the Invite? *If people didn’t already know, I generate many of the anagrams of Loser names posted at Elden Carnahan’s nrars.org site. I’m a Disney trivia expert specializing in the history of the US-based theme parks. Also, I have two rabbits, Irene and Lily, who wear a cowboy hat and a kicky beret while we explore various urban legends as the MythBunsters. *Who do you want to be when you grow up? *The copy editor for Scrabble Grams. *Do you have any decent stories?* During Easter services, my daughter Emily was being fidgety. I gave her a pen so she could draw on some scrap paper. Suddenly I noticed that she’d started playing connect-the-dots with the musical notes in the hymnal. And just when as the priest intoned, “Do you reject Satan?” I shouted, “No!” to my child. It was around then I took up snake handing. *What would someone be surprised to learn about you?* I have never owned or even used a firearm. *Your official Loser anagram:* Enjoys Office Tramps. I rather like the fact that the letter “J” is hidden inside a word. Myopic Fan of Jesters is also a favorite along with about 80,000 other permutations. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as?* Rap Master SquigglyB rendered as the German character*Eszett,* or ß. It’s just one of the many ways I maintain my unlimited supply of street cred. *Anything else to say for yourself?: * I was Loser of the Year for Year 18, but because of a delay in scheduling the Flushies awards, I ended up holding the LoTY trophy for the shortest length of time of any recipient. I am the William Henry Harrison of the SI. *Jeff’s “So You Want to Be a Hall of Fame Loser” appears farther down this column.* Meanwhile, the Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results: . MUSICAL ’GATES: THE WEEK 1171 CONTEST Theresults of our Week 970 “tailgater” contest were classic. The winner: Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part; I read Dave Barry books, and you read Sartre. (Michael Drayton , 1563- 1631* Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) So in a tailgater, you quote a line from a poem, then add your own, rhyming line to make it a funny couplet. And this is what we’ll be doing as well in Week 1171 , in which you have to quote from a song rather than a spoken-word poem —*you’ll still be forming a rhyming couplet,* even if the second line of the*song *doesn’t do that: It’s not — or not necessarily — the second line of a song parody; it doesn’t have to follow the tune. **Can* it match the tune as long as it rhymes?* Sure. Will that make it a funnier entry? Possibly. Duncan Stevens’s examples for this contest are all at least somewhat singable with the original tunes, and I thought they were all very good. *Please check the lyrics you’re quoting;* don’t just guess — I can’t use your line if it’s not really from the song. I haven’t decided whether I’ll be attributing the original line to the writer, as we did in Week 970, or just the title of the song. In the online Invite, I’ll do my best to include links to the lyrics or a performance of the whole song, for context. I know I’ll love to have a wide variety of song genres in the results. *Is it a problem if the song isn’t well known?* Probably not that much; my guess is that many readers didn’t know all the poems in Week 970. It’s certainly not the same with a song parody, in which if you don’t know the tune, the joke just dies. But a recognizable line in a new context can indeed be a potent source of humor. *What counts as “a line” of a song? *I’m going to be flexible here. If two short lines can be read as one long line, that’s fine with me for the purposes of this contest. *Does it have to be the first line of the song?* No, you can use any line. *Should you add your name to the line you write, right within the entry *— like the examples at the top of the Invitational? NOOOOO, please don’t. I greatly prefer to judge the entries blindly, without seeing the entrants’ names. It would take a long, long time to delete the name from every entry — it’s long enough taking the name off every email. And if this contest inspires you to write a full-length song parody, be my guest; you can share it on the Style Invitational Devotees page after the results run. SOME LINKAGE MAY OCCUR*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1167 *(*Non-inking headline by Tom Witte)* My judging of this perennial contest was made far easier this year with the help of Loser Jonathan Hardis. Jonathan offered to use a program he’d devised to sort all the entries by each of the 18 phrases I listed in Week 1167 , for you to compare, contrast or otherwise connect. Given that the Losers phrased their entries in every conceivable format, I didn’t think he’d be able to do it without a ton of work, but Jonathan shot back the list I’d sent him (I’d deleted all the names and other non-entry material) within a few hours. And just as he’d helped me do (and will do again) in the horse-“breeding” contest, I was able to see all the “Hillary’s emails” combined with “the last Cheeto in the bag,” and then all the “Hillary’s emails” with “tiny hands,” and so on. So I could then select my favorite among several similar entries, or occasionally credit two people. I chose the 18 phrases almost at random from a long list that I crowdsourced from the Style Invitational Devotees a few weeks ago. I didn’t rigorously ensure than no single person had written two of the phrases, but I’d be gobsmacked to discover that anyone got ink this week by comparing two items that he’d suggested. It’s the third win and 75th blot of ink for Mike Ostapiej, who’s been following the Invite from both San Diego and his current base in South Carolina. Kathy El-Assal, whom we met at a Loser brunch last year when she was visiting Washington from Wisconsin, gets Ink 35 and her fourth ink “above the fold.” Kristen Rahman — whom I recently took out for a milkshake in return for a contest idea (I am soooo magnanimous) — gets her choice of mug or shirt with her dig at Apple’s production practices. And Danielle Nowlin saunters for the — yeeks — 27th time into the Losers’ Circle. *What Doug dug: * The faves of ace copy editor Doug Norwood this week: the Cheeto*tiny hands “orange mess” by First Offender Paul Totman — the first ink ever from Alberta? — whose analogy was my favorite of numerous similar entries; the “official server” for buffet*emails, for the second ink ever from Hildy Zampella, also the best of several “server” entries; and the mildly risque “big plow” with the mildly risque “tiny hands” by Gary Crockett. SO YOU WANT TO BE A HALL OF FAME LOSER? *Jeff Contompasis tells how it’s done — or at least how he did it.* *How to go about it. Step 1. Enter.* That seems obvious, but one should not summarily dismiss a contest by saying “That’s too hard.” Even one good entry is enough because so many others give up thinking it’s too hard. There are a number of different contest types and the Master Contest List at nrars.org already has many of them categorized. Several perennial contests offer exceptionally good examples to guide an ink-thirsty contestant. Horse names are run every year and the prior years’ results reveal common elements such as names with puns of common phrases and homophones. My favorite contest, Ask Backwards, is supposedly based on Jeopardy! and its “Answers and Questions” format. However, it’s more like Johnny Carson’s recurrent Carnac routine, so watching some videos of those segments provides a good background. *Some contests are “crank and grind” efforts.* The epitome of this is the three-letter abbreviation contest. There is an extensive list at Wikipedia where all permutations are covered. If a range of four starting letters is given, that yields 4 x 26 x 26, or 2704, abbreviations to look at. Brute force won’t get very far — believe me. I’ve tried. Go for abbreviations you recognize and see what surprising other things share those initials. *Some contests require finesse.* Poetry and song parodies come to mind here. There are online resources available with rhyming dictionaries and just about every song imaginable has its lyrics stored somewhere though many transcriptions are not quite accurate. Read potential poems aloud and attempt to sing potential songs to a karaoke version of the piece. For pretty much every contest, if you have time,*let your entries sit around for a few days.* Then go back to them; it’s surprising how a cold reading reveals flaws and inspires better wordings. You don’t get any advantage in the judging from sending in your entry early anyway. *If you’re stuck, try lateral thinking.* Don’t write an entry. Try to come up with a Revised Title or Honorable Mentions section name. You’re still thinking about what the contest concerns without being focused solely on writing a joke. Inspiration comes from the weirdest places. On the opposite extreme are*things that destroy entries.* *Screed kills.* Genuine anger seeps through and poisons humor. That’s another reason to let entries lie fallow: with distance, a knee-slapping joke that skewers some much maligned figure suddenly sounds more like a cheap shot. Another common humor reducer is *the circular reference.* Defining a new term by using the same word almost always ruins the entry. Try to substitute a synonym that doesn’t sound strained. Remember there are*other ways to get ink.* Some Losers supply the runner-up prize. Others try to come up with a new contest, or a new variation on a previous contest. I’ve only created one truly novel contest exclusively for The Style Invitational. That would be the Tile Invitational, which is based upon the ScrabbleGrams puzzles that appear in The Post. Here’s the origin story: I was looking at the printed solution to a ScrabbleGrams puzzle one day, and it had given CANOLA as the best yield for the seven letters NOCALAT. Well, I have two degrees in chemical engineering, and so I saw OCTANAL, which everyone knows is the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry’s name for octyl aldehyde or, more commonly, caprylic aldehyde. How dare they not accept it! From then on, I started noting six-letter solutions and tried to come up with better seven-letter neologisms complete with funny definitions. And it took a year before I finally persuaded the Empress to use it as a contest. As with so much of the Invite, obsessive persistence pays. --- And of course, it also pays to be naturally funny. And Jeff just might be funnier than you. ====================================================================== WEEK 1173, published May 1, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1173: The Steal Invitational A Loser gets a book as a present — and finds his own Invite entries inside Actually, they are genuine Style Invitational entries (from 1999), as are lists on five other pages of this ripoff book. Those first two are by Malcolm Fleschner — who’d been given this book as a gift. The others are by Chuck Smith, Russell Beland and Jennifer Hart. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** April 28, 2016 Happy May, folks. If you’re on the Empress’s email list (i.e., if you get a notice on Thursdays when The Style Invitational goes online), then within a few days you’ll be getting an invitation to the 22nd annual Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual awards* lunch* songfest. This year’s festivities — taking place Saturday afternoon, May 21 — will be a potluck in the neatest venue yet: RK Acres, the home*mini-farm of Loser Robin Diallo in Lothian, Md., in southern Anne Arundel County. And so in addition to the usual Loser-schmoozing, toilet paper roll-awarding, parody-singing, and of course hearty eating, you and your offspring are invited to pet the horses, miniature pony, baby goats, and even llamas. And not pet but gaze upon various birds including a peacock. I’ve just seen the lyrics to one of the song parodies penned by Loser Nan Reiner — who’s coming up from Florida for the festivities -- and they’re fabulous. (If you’d like to join an ad hoc OK Chorale during the afternoon, let me know.) Robin would like us to keep the number of guests to about 60 (plus a few stray kids), so be sure to RSVP quickly once you get the invitation; we’d love to see not just the Loser Event regulars, but also Losers from the Invite’s early years, as well as those who’ll be meeting their fellow Losers for the first time. You don’t even have to have earned ink. (If you’re not on the mailing list, contact me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll make sure you get an invitation.) THE STEAL INVITATIONAL Here’s a letter that I’m drafting up to send to the publishing house Zest Books. (Or perhaps The Post’s legal department would rather send something. We’ll see:) *Dear Zesters:* Hey, llosers! Robin Diallo’s llamas will welcome you personally at this year’s Flushies awards potluck May 21 — watch for the email invitation. (Courtesy of Robin Diallo) *I run a contest called The Style Invitational. It’s the humor*wordplay contest that has appeared weekly in The Washington Post since 1993; we’re currently on Week 1172.* *This week I heard from a longtime Style Invitational contestant in California named Malcolm Fleschner. Knowing his fondness for wordplay, Malcolm’s in-laws had given him The Weird World of Words by Mitchell Symons and published by Zest in 2015.* *Malcolm paged at random through the various tidbits about words and expressions – and then did a double take: On Page 131, he saw the headline “Genuine Metaphors Taken From English Essays” – followed by two pages of clever similes … but not from English essays: They were prize-winning entries (by adults) in two different Washington Post Style Invitational contests, from 1995 and 1999. And the first one – the devilishly funny, perfectly crafted joke about “my brother Phil” – was by Malcolm himself. And what do you know – so was the second one. With no credit, of course.* *Malcolm continued to page through the book – and how about that: On Pages 46 and 47 was a two-page list of “Wonderful New Words.” The introductory paragraph reads:* *“Every year, The Washington Post holds a neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words. The 2013 winners were:”* *What followed was a list of sometimes verbatim, sometimes tinkered-with entries lifted from Week 266 (1998), with no credit to their authors, and certainly no permission from The Post to run them. (Here are the original results; one of the words, “Frisbeetarianism,” is not from The Style Invitational; I believe it’s from a George Carlin routine.)* *But nooo, Mitchell Symons doesn’t stop there! Turn the page to Pages 48 and 49 and we have this:* *“The Washington Post also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here were 2013’s winners:”* *Here, what follows are two pages of entries – with some very bad additions – from Style Invitational Week 278 (1998), also without any credit to their authors or, of course, permission. The bad additions are words like “caterpallor” and “decafalon,” which, of course, are not one-letter changes from “caterpillar” and “decathlon.” “Bozone” was lifted from a 1987 Washington Post feature story, “Lost in the Bozone.”* *Actually, Mitchell Symons is not by far the first person to use these particular lists of entries; in fact, they’ve been circulated by e-mail and the Internet just about as long as there have been e-mail and the Internet (I’m sure that’s where he saw them, not bothering to ask if he could include them in a commercial book). And when I see someone post one of these lists on Facebook or on a little blog, I’ll often follow up to clarify where**these jokes came from, that they’re not really by high school students, or whatever. I even wrote a story in The Post about it, in conjunction with The Style Invitational’s 20th anniversary in 2013.* *But you know, it really takes it to a whole new level of shamelessness to steal this work and put it into a book that’s put up for sale. And that the “author” even says that two of the lists are from The Washington Post – and hadn’t asked The Post for permission to print them! If he had, he would have been quickly set straight about when they had run, what was and wasn’t from The Post, and what didn’t even match the contest description.* --- What’s not in the letter is what I think Zest Books should do to make things right; I’m leaving that to The Post’s lawyers. But this sort of thing just steams me: You can’t just lift someone else’s published work and publish it yourself without permission, even if you (kind of) say where it came from. And while there’s not really a difference legally, it’s one thing to share a list of Invite jokes on your Facebook page, and another to put it in a book that you’re selling. The thing is: If Mitchell Symons had called The Post and asked if he could include some of our neologisms , I would have let him! In fact, another author of a similar book a few years ago (I’m kicking myself because I forget all the details, including the author’s name and the title of the book) got hold of me and asked for permission to use one of these lists. After we talked, she ended up quoting entries from several Invitational neologism contests — all of them crediting the contestants who’d written them. She also explained to readers what the Invitational was and included our Web address. I’m all for sharing the Invite far and wide — but only with proper credit, and with recognition of the writers. So we’ll see what Legal says. PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD NAME: THE WEEK 1173 CONTEST In huge opposition to the Week 1169 acrostics whose results run today, here’s a super-easy contest that should be fun for readers as well. I know it will, in fact, because it was fun last time. I’d actually worked up this contest having forgotten we’d done it seven years ago; I’d actually narrowed it to food names after the Long-Deposed Czar of The Style Invitational suggested I do a contest in which you change the brand of*any* product. I went ahead with it anyway because in the long list of examples I’d already worked up, none of them duplicated any of the many inking entries of Week 841. Here are the results of that contest from 2009. They’re not otherwise online on washingtonpost.com, but they appear as a text file on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List . Here they are in a format that’s slightly easier to read. Note that both brand names and generic types of food were used — and we’ll do that again this year. *Report from Week 841,* in which we asked you to alter slightly the name of a food or dish and describe the result: Those who tend to find the Invite a bit too abstruse and highbrow get a break this week. A lot of the names submitted (often by many people) were funny in a juvenile way but gained nothing from their descriptions. That menu includes such specials as Yucky Charms, Drool Whip, Slime-Jims, Shredded What, Shrimp Skimpy, Bad Thai, Bananas Fester, flunk steak, meat loathe, buffalo wangs and fatzo ball soup. For this they went to graduate school, a lot of these people. *The winner of the Inker:* Jumbo lump carb cakes: Also known as doughnuts. (Dave Zarrow, Reston) *2,* the winner of “The Pop-Up Book of Celebrity Meltdowns”: Reader’s Digest Condensed Milk: When you’re yearning for something white and treacly. (Larry Yungk, Arlington) *3.* Cheaties: Breakfast of Champions With Asterisks. (Mark Richardson, Washington) *4.* Steak Tata: Raw ground udders. (Tom Murphy, Bowie) *Fare Too Middling: Honorable Mentions* Notdog: Gourmet North Korean sausage. (Kevin Dopart, Washington; Peter Jenkins, Bethesda) Seven-Lawyer Dip: Chips sold separately. Not intended for intravenous use. Void where prohibited by law. Provided “as is” without any warranty of any kind, expressed or implied . . . (Pam Sweeney, St. Paul, Minn.) Pol Pot Pie: A low-cal Cambodian dish. Serves hundreds. (Rick Haynes, Potomac) Chucky Charms: The cereal that’s magically malicious! (Judy Blanchard, Novi, Mich.) Offalafel: A paste of chickpeas and pancreases. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) Bunt cake: Made from a light, soft batter. (Kevin Dopart) Chick in de Van: KFC to go. (Judy Blanchard) Sole food: Cobbler. (Ron Nessen, Bethesda) Bean crud: Tofu under a more honest name. (John Shea, Lansdowne, Pa.) Pecking Duck: Poultry that’s perhaps a little undercooked . . . (Sneha Kannan, Cambridge, Mass.) Moo Goo Bed Pan: The orderlies switched the trays again! (Larry Meyer, Washington, Va., a First Offender) Egg Phew Young: A summer dish traditionally made from Easter eggs discovered months later. (Kerry Humphrey, Woodbridge) Wussabi: Really mild horseradish paste. (May Jampathom, Oakhurst, N.J.) Shiksabob: Pork, shrimp and cheese on a skewer. (Judy Blanchard) Margarrhea: Tequila mixed with Triple Sec and prune juice. (Dion Black, Washington) Prime Ribbon: The diet roast beef platter. (Carolyn Eskew, Leesburg, a First Offender) Spleenda: No-cal giblet substitute. (Judy Blanchard) Coquilles Saint Joan: Flambeed scallops. (Jane Pacelli, Annandale) Stir-fly: A popular meal in North Korea. (Rick Haynes) Dulce de Lecher: Hooters’ new dessert item. (Ed Gordon, Georgetown, Tex.) Belgian Awfuls: A phlegmish dish, similar to Crappes Suzettes. (Michael Fransella, Arlington) Half-Baked Alaska: A crusty, sweet, insubstantial traditional dish that removes itself prematurely from intense heat. (Mike Gips, Bethesda) Porn Flakes: With a surprise in every box. (Jeff Seigle, Vienna) Mike Like’n Ike: That famous fruity flavor is coming out in new rainbow colors (not available in all states). (Craig Dykstra, Centreville) Fellini Alfredo: Pasta with dream sauce. (Rick Haynes) Faux gras: Spam. (Patrick Mattimore, Gex, France) Hostess Hos: A guilty pleasure. (Craig Dykstra) Kid Knee Pie: One of Jeffrey Dahmer’s favorite desserts. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) Prize Nobel Peas: Grown in the White House garden. You can pick them even before they’re ripe. (Dan Ward, Springfield, a First Offender) Lemon harangue pie: “You didn’t beat the egg whites long enough, and the oven’s too hot, and you’re slopping the filling out the sides . . .” (Lois Douthitt, Arlington) Limbaugher cheese: So vile you just listen to a wedge of it and gag. (G. Smith, New York) Honeycrips: Apples the whole gang will enjoy. (Peter Metrinko, Gainesville) BACKRONUMBS: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1169 Well, that was a hard one. Making an acrostic, or “backronym,” from the full title of a book, movie, etc. — describing it in a phrase or sentence whose words began with each letter of the title — produced a lot of entries for which the best I could say was “Well, that does spell out the title.” (Some, such as at least two entries that spelled out “Ghandi,” didn’t reach even that standard.) But several dozen of you did manage to produce clever acrostics — and some of them were even funny. It just proved to be more of an “ooh, clever” contest than a “bwahahaha” one. This week’s Losers’ Circle includes some relatively unusual names, Invite-wise: It’s only the 10th ink for Kurt Stahl of Frederick, Md. — but his plea to author George R.R. Martin to get another “Game of Thrones” book done already is his second win: In 2012 Kurt won an Inker, the predecessor of the Inkin’ Memorial, with this entry for Week 959, a contest to move a TV show to a different channel: “ ‘The Amazing Race’ moves to Fox News and becomes a show that chronicles the many adversities white people have overcome throughout history.” Our Glasgow, Scotland, Loser Bureau, consisting of Stephen Gold, blots up Ink No. 56 (and 57) this week — not to mention a Number Two Pencil complete with a blob of plastic poo on its eraser end — with his acrostic on “Psycho,” the best of a veritable shower of “Psycho” entries. Stephen also got ink with his zippy description of “The Ten Commandments” that, like Kurt’s and like Hildy Zampella’s third-place entry, was one of the few long-title acrostics that weren’t a slog to read. Hildy’s vision for a “Hamilton”-style “Marriage of Figaro” is just her third blot of ink — and the first “above the fold,” but she also scored last week in the two-items-from-a-list contest. Hildy gets her choice of Loser mugs or a vintage Loser T-shirt. And rounding out the ATF agents is regular denizen Jon Gearhart, who scores his fifth runner-up prize and his 62nd blot of ink overall. (Huh, I hadn’t realized till just now that Jon is still on the Losers’ “Cantinkerous” list — the most frequently inking Losers who’ve never won a contest; he’s in fifth place, well behind 85 Inks and Barely Counting Kyle Hendrickson.) In addition to the people who based their entries on a misspelled title, some other people misunderstood what we were asking for: Instead of using each letter of the work’s title, these people came up with words matching only the first letters of the title, like “The History Boys”: “Teaching homosexual broadmindedness.” And then there was one that I almost let slip in: RAY: Rhythm and Use. (Tom Witte) That would have been a uge mistake. Welp, it’s time to get cracking on those 3,900 names — results next week. So watch for that Flushies invitation — hope to see you there on May 21. ====================================================================== WEEK 1174, published May 8, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1174: Suddenbreakingnews! Empress stampeded! Multiply this many entries by 44 and that was the field for the Week 1170 horse name "breeding" contest. (Pat Myers*The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** May 5, 2016 Happy Kentucky Derby weekend! I’ve watched the Derby on TV almost every year since I was a horse-crazy 6-year-old in 1965 (winner: Lucky Debonair), but for at least the past dozen years, I’ve especially enjoyed rooting for “our horses”: those whose names were used in that year’s Style Invitational foal-naming contest. This year, 15 of the 20 horses scheduled to start this Saturday (plus one alternate) are ours; i.e., their names made my list of 100 Triple Crown nominees (out of almost 400) offered for “breeding” in Week 1170. And 12 of those 15 are featured among thisweek’s inking entries . Among the five horses that didn’t make the list of 100, I remember not including Trojan Nation because ... because he can’t breed with that thing on? No, actually I left him off because there was a strong chance that the best entries would be unprintable. And once I chose Mo Tom, I didn’t want to also use Tom’s Ready. There were so, so many clever entries this year, sent by more than 300 people, including at least 20 Losers entering the Invite for the first time. If you enlarge the photo above of the printout of the first few pages of the 220 that comprised this year’s field, you’ll see how many inkworthy ones are right there — and I could honor only about one entry for every four pages. My first pass had 256 horse names, and I probably left some worthies off that list, too. Well, that’s racing luck. But if past years are an indication, the competition will narrow quite a bit for the grandfoals in Week 1174. Usually the entry pool decreases by a third or more — which still gives me lots of great entries. The 57 names you’ll be using is relatively few compared with past years’ (it’s the smallest grandfoal list since 2009), but I’m confident that you’ll mine plenty of unique gems. (If you don’t feel like writing up a list of names to work with, you can copy one from Neal Starkman’s post in the comment thread under the Invite on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page.) Suddenbreakingnews helped First Offender Mark LeVota get runner-up ink in Week 1170. The 18-character colt is the only one of our “above the fold” horses who’ll be running in the Derby. (Charlie Riedel*Associated Press) I noticed that the vast majority of this year’s winners featured funny puns rather than the other main approach to foal name humor, which is having the second horse modify the first to produce the result, as in Jesse Frankovich’s Mohaymen x Bar None = Mohaypeople. Two years ago, all four “above-the-fold” entries were of the second type: Toast of New York x General A Rod = Toast in New York (Jim Stiles) Best Plan Yet x Cut the Net = Best Pla_ Y__ (Pie Snelson) I Earned It Baby x Undertaker = I Urned It Baby (Pam Sweeney; Gary Crockett) Russian Humor x Constitution = What Constitution? (Roy Ashley) I realized after publishing this week’s results that one of this year’s funniest pun names, Mighty Moses x Big Squeeze = Let My Pimple Go (Ellen Raphaeli; Larry Gray), was also one of last year’s funniest pun names: Help From Heaven x Royal Squeeze = Let My Pimple Go (Jeff Shirley). Racing luck can go both ways. This was the second year that my judging of this contest was made so much easier — and I’m sure better — with the help of Loser Jonathan Hardis (who, yay, got some ink). I was able to send Jonathan a single e-mail containing the combined 334 e-mails sent in for Week 1170 — *that* process, something I use every week, was worked out for me by Loser Steven Papier — and a few hours later, he returned to me the alphabetically sorted list you see a small fraction of above. At the risk of coming off as lazy, I’m going to link to the Style Conversational column I wrote about last year’s foal contest: It explains (a) my judging method in general, including how the final cut often comes down to what makes me laugh rather than just what’s really clever; (b) how the grandfoal contest differs from the first round; and (c) how greatly Jonathan improved my process with his sorting program. (His offer to explain the technical details to interested nerds still stands. Guy is a prince.) Especially if you’re new to this contest, take a read here. This year’s rose-blanketed victor and lost-by-a-nose runner-up are both regular visitors to the Invite’s Losers’ Circle: It’s the eighth Inkin’ Memorial win for Danielle Nowlin, and the 25th finish “above the fold” for Pam Sweeney, who, although her 257 blots of ink encompass all kinds of contests, has amazing success with both the foal and grandfoal contests: she’s finished in first place*five* times in horse contests alone. But it was straight to the (almost) top for First Offender Mark LeVota; not only was Suddenbreakingnews x Twenty Four Seven = PlaneStillMissing! his first ink, but as far as I can tell, this was the first time he’s even entered the Invite. Along with hisFirStink for his first ink , Mark gets his choice of Loser mug or Loser T-shirt. As will Pete Morelewicz, who’s gotten ink 13 times but not since 2011. Nice to have him back. Among this year’s clever entries that didn’t make my short­list because they were sent by four or more people: Hawk x Benediction (or Ten Blessings) = Bird of Pray; Matt King Coal x Can’t Remember = Forgettable; Economic Model x Miles of Humor = Laugher Curve (do we have a seriously wonky Loser Community or what?); Mooose x Exaggerator = Mooooose; Hawk x Ten Blessings = Birds of Pray; John Q. Public x Rated R Superstar = John Q. Pubic; and, from like everybody: Rated R Superstar x Stradivari = Sex and Violins. Were there unprintably crude entries this week? Duh. See the bottom of this column for some horses that wouldn’t be permitted inside any decent starting gate. *DID YOU GET YOUR FLUSHIES INVITATION? * The guest list is filling up fast for this year’s Flushies, the Loser Community’s 22nd annual awards* lunch* songfest — this year it’s a potluck at the home*farmlet of Loser Robin Diallo on Saturday afternoon, May 21. Robin even invites you to bring the kids and pet the farm animals. Organizers Elden Carnahan & Co. are asking for a big $5 a person to cover costs. I’ve read the lyrics to one of the parodies written for the occasion by Nan Reiner, and it is boffo. (If you’d like to join an ad hoc OK Chorale to sing in harmony, email me.) If you’re on the Empress’s email list, you should have gotten the invitation this past Monday. In any case, you can see it here. All Losers and just plain Invite fans are welcome, up to the maximum of 60 or so, but If I haven’t met you already, I’ll probably get back to you to chat you up a bit before telling you all the logistical details. *HORSES OF AN OFF COLOR: THE UNPRINTABLES* Swagger Jagger x Big Squeeze = Queef Richards (Dan Harvey) Cupid x Emoji Man = Raging Heart-on (Randy Lee)* And all from Tom Witte:** *Mohaymen x Big Squeeze = Mo Hymen Perfect Saint x Big Red Rocket = Saint Peter (I would have run that, perhaps as “St. Peter” so as not to repeat “Saint”) Annals of Time x Big Squeeze = Anals of Time Giant Trick x Big Squeeze = Giant Dick Mohaymen x Cherry Wine = Flohymen ====================================================================== WEEK 1175, published May 15, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1175: Sorry, ‘arbitrary’ is a 14-point word The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest and the new entry thing In Style Invitational Week 1175, we want you to make up a 13-point word and define it. Cleverly, of course. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** May 12, 2016 What happened was that I forgot to run this contest on July 13, 2014. That would have been the first week — three months after Mark Raffman suggested, complete with great examples, what would become Week 1175 — that The Style Invitational would run on the 13th of the month. Mark had e-mailed me with the suggestion two years ago, but I was on vacation in England at the time, and I just let it fall too far down the page on my “Invite Ideas” Google Doc. Then, this week, I rediscovered Mark’s suggestion, and I didn’t feel like waiting till Thursday, Oct. 13. It’s a totally new excuse for a neologism contest, which is something I’m always in the market for. The sum of 13 points seems as good as any, and if this contest pans out (highly likely) we could do it again with a different total. So, two years later, Mark can finally get his contest suggestion prize — ice cream with the Empress. It might be kind of melty by now, though. I added these clarifications to the contest instructions after two questions came up on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page: Nah, you’re not limited to the number of tiles for each letter that are available in the actual game — you can’t use the words in Scrabble anyway. (That’s even part of this week’s rules — no words that are in a Scrabble dictionary are permitted.) And no, you don’t incur 50 extra points if your word has seven letters or more. SUBMIT! SUBMIT! OUR NEW ONLINE ENTRY SYSTEM Last week, a day or two after I posted the inking foal names from Week 1170, I got an email from a regular Loser. At first, he told me, he was going to complain that I’d failed to credit him for an entry that was identical to his own — but then he noticed that he’d written the wrong week number in the subject line of his email. Which meant that it wasn’t sorted into my Week 1170 folder. This accident can’t happen anymore now that you’ll be sending entries not by email, but by filling out a form on a Post website. There’s a different website for each contest, so you won’t even have to give the week number on the form. You will, however, have to give me your postal address, something that makes it a lot easier for me to send you a prize. The short-form URL should always be subpl.at*inviteXXXX (as in Sub Platform). This won’t count against the number of articles a week that non-subscribers can access online. The email submission system, which the Invite has been using, at least as an option, ever since Week 55 in 1994 (before that, the choices were snail mail and fax), presented a number of irritants over the years, in addition to the wrong-week-number risk: For many years there was no confirmation that an email was received; then there was one, but it might show up hours later, the next day, or not at all. Then we switched email systems and, for an embarrassing amount of time, the auto-reply wouldn’t go out for someone’s second submission — even if it was the next week. And all kinds of problems presented themselves when entrants included links in their entries, or attached a photo. On my end, sorting the emails and compiling the contents of all of one week’s emails (for the horses, I had 334 of them) into one searchable list, and then deleting all the entrants’ identifying material so I could judge the contest blindly, can take me hours. So I’m truly thrilled that the Sub Platform, The Post’s new system for online submissions, has been adapted to work for the Invitational. With a single click, I’ll be able to hide all the Losers’ ID data, then make it all reappear when it’s time to announce the winners. All the week’s entries — and no other ones — will be on a single page. I’ll be able to tag certain entries for the short­list. And you’ll be able to easily attach photos or other graphics, in case we have another photo contest. While I’m able to shut down the website at midnight on the deadline day, I won’t do that; I’ll continue to accept the occasional late entry if there’s a problem getting it to me on time. Still, some wrinkles are sure to present themselves; Invite contests are so varied and complex that it’s hard to anticipate everything. But the Web developer I’ve been working with, the delightful Sruti Cheedalla, is eager for feedback and has been amazingly responsive to all my concerns. So let me know if there are problems. (You can always reach me at pat.myers@washpost.com.) There’s one issue I did anticipate: *How should you submit alternative headlines and honorable-mention subheads?* In addition to regular entries for a week’s contest, I also take suggestions for the headline that will go atop that week’s results, as well as for the subhead that precedes the honorable mentions. Under the email system, I’ve asked for those submissions to be on separate emails, with something in the subject line to identify them. This way I could keep those entries in the folder with the rest of the week’s stuff, but I wouldn’t have to look through everything to find those dozen or so emails with the “revised titles,” as we used to call them. Now that there’s no email with a subject line, we need a new system. Until we come up with something more elegant, here’s the plan: *Simply include the phrase “revised titles” in the body of your entry,* for both headline and HM ideas. When it comes to choose them (always after the regular judging), I’ll just search for “revised titles” and read what’s under it. (Once again, this new system begins with this week’s contest, Week 1175. For the “grandfoals” contest of Week 1174, please continue to send them by email to losers@washpost.com.) *ZING, ZING A SONG: THE WEEK 1171 TAILGATERS* As was ourfirst tailgaters contest — to pair a line from a classic poem with a rhyming line of your own — the Week 1171 song-lyric variation was lots of fun to judge, with more funny, clever entries than I could reasonably use. (Contest suggester Duncan Stevens has already collected*his* ice cream.) Using pop songs doesn’t offer as much humor as poetry tailgaters do in terms of juxtaposing a lofty-sounding first line with an earthy second one — when the*first* line is “She got a big booty so I call her Big Booty,” it’s hard to get any farther earthward. But it offers a much wider pool of familiar lines to most readers, and in many cases the couplet can function as a singable mini-parody. (And there’s still the lofty*earthy tack especially when the music is lofty, like Brendan Beary’s “When you’re weary, feeling small* Don’t whine to me while I’m watching basketball.”) As usual in song-themed Invites, the entries were weighted heavily toward songs from the late 20th century, though there were also folk songs, children’s songs, patriotic songs, old-timey songs, show tunes, and at least some from the Non-Old-Fart Era — many of them from several dozen Eleanor Roosevelt High School students who did this as an English class assignment. (First Offender Charlie Dawson is from this group, which their teacher entered in a single package.) It’s always fun to find YouTube clips for the songs; check out the amazing performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” to induct George Harrison into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and thechorus girls singing “We’re in the Money” in the movie “Gold Diggers of 1933” is a riot. How exciting to learn that this week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner hadn’t been seen in the Invite since Week 8! (It was an honorable mention for creative tabloid headlines: “Napoleon’s Penis Found in Rectangular Pastry!”) Several Losers had played off the 1922 song “Carolina in the Morning” to refer to North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” but Jesse Etelson’s interior-rhyming couplet was the classiest of the bunch. Meanwhile — and this happens with blind judging — Mark Raffman ended up with both the No. 2 and No. 4 spots in the Losers’ Circle with his takes on the Beatles’ gross-out lyric and the Doors’ dumb one. And Beverley Sharp provides a handy Donald Trump theme song. (Hmm, might there be another campaign-themed parody contest in the works, like our2008 classic ?) *To Impress Kress: * Our regular Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood has been off for a few weeks, so I asked his fill-in Steve Kress, for his faves: Steve agreed with Jesse Etelson’s winner, and also singled out Barry Koch’s “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention;* On votes, I trail, it’s true, but I’ve got plans for the convention!” (“clever response”) as well as Chris Doyle’s “I am woman — hear me roar * The toilet seat is up once more” (“funny response”). *You Can’t Say That on the Radio: The Unprintables* Well, there was this: I love him , I love him, I love him. And where he goes I’ll follow, I’ll follow I’ll follow. (Peggy March) He’ll always be my true love, my true love, my true love. And when he comes I’ll swallow, I’ll swallow I’ll swallow. (Michael Rosen) And then there was the entry that Jon Gearhart wrote before April 21 — and included in his entry just to share his bad luck: And if the elevator tries to bring you down (Prince, “Let’s Go Crazy”) Just take the freaking stairs, you lazy little clown! Jon’s timing was blessedly lucky. Prince, of course, died in an elevator. IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO FLUSH! FLUSHIES-ON-THE-FARM, MAY 21 We can still squeeze in a few more people for this year’s Flushies, the Loser Community’s own awards lunch and songfest, this year on the little farm of Loser Robin Diallo in Lothian, Md., in Anne Arundel County. It’s a family-friendly potluck, with pettable ponies, goats, llamas, chickens, etc. (To see the invitation and to RSVP, go to NRARS.org and click on “Our Social Engorgements.”) And hopefully we can get a team together for the spectacularly spectacular Washington Post Hunt the next day. There’s a podcast about this year’s event, featuring as usual Gene Weingarten, Dave Barry and Tom Shroder. I will be singing in a choral concert that day, but I guarantee that those guys will pose with you for a selfie if you tell them you’re from the Invite. ====================================================================== WEEK 1176, published May 22, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1176: You can’t Flush without water ... The Farm Flushies are on despite the rain forecast—and you can still pet the animals Rain or shine, Loser Robin Diallo's horses are among the animals ready to greet the Losers at Saturday's Flushies. It's not too late to RSVP! (Robin Diallo) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** May 19, 2016 Bad news: Chance of rain: 90 percent. Good news: Robin and Khalil Diallo have both a barn and an actual human-house. So not only will the Loser Community enjoy its 22nd annual Flushies awards banquet (in potluck form) and songfest safe from the elements, Robin says we can go into her barn — or even drive to it — and pet the goats, chickens and various other fauna at RK acres, her little farm in Lothian, Md., in Anne Arundel County. She just suggests that you not wear your best shoes — and that when you take them off when you come into the house, you might not want to be wearing your most holey socks. If you care. The Diallos — Robin is a 15-time Loser and notable prize-donor — are welcoming some 60 of us for the entire afternoon, from noon to about 6, so that we can take time after the structured festivities and lunch to tour the grounds and commune with the horses, llama, sheep, peacocks and sundry other fauna. And of course there’s always a chance that sunshine could make an unscheduled appearance. (Well, that would be a 1-in-10 chance.) Meanwhile, I’ve just printed out 55 copies of each of three custom-written song parodies — actually two parodies and a poem — that were written by Loser Extraordinaire Nan Reiner with contributions from other LEs as well. They are fabulous. And emcee Kyle Hendrickson has prepared a second edition of his Loser Jeopardy game, which he debuted at last year’s Flushies, at Danielle Nowlin’s house in Virginia. I’m delighted to report that the Loser of the Year, the Rookie of the Year and possibly some Other Things of the Year will be in attendance to be showered with honors as well as with precipitation, as will our newest Hall of Fame member, Jeff Contompasis, and Double Haller Brendan Beary. Nan is coming up from Florida just for the Flushies and Sunday’s Washington Post Hunt, while Matt Monitto is coming down from Connecticut for same. And as usual there will be lots of veteran Losers as well as some who’ll be joining us for the first time. And Mae Scanlan will be our keyboardist. The presentations, songs, Jeopardy, Empress-heckling, etc., will start around 2 p.m. and run for an hour or so. Before that we’ll schmooze and eat, and afterward we’ll do more of the same. While we hit the 60-person mark in RSVPs earlier this week, there were some late cancellations, and so**it’s not too late to decide to come * *and to tell Flushies Pooh-Bah Elden Carnahan. (elden.carnahan (at) gmail (dot) com.) He’s asking each of us to pony (hahaha) up a big $5 to cover miscellaneous expenses; you can pay him at the event. I’ve also promised Door Prize Queen Pie Snelson that I will be bringing ten (10) pieces of miscellaneous crap to be wrapped up and “awarded.” And I just may, finally, regift to Robin the amazing carved-wood ashtray she sent me as a possible Invite prize (not EVER) from the Philippines, featuring a carved-wood life-size erect phallus. The Philippines was just one of the many places around the world from which Robin has sent us prizes: As a State Department diplomat, she’s reported to us from Malawi (the famous mcedo penis cap), Senegal, New Delhi and Kabul. And be sure, at the Flushies, to wish her well on her next posting, this fall: She’ll be the public affairs officer in Baghdad. For a year. For the second time. *EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR YOUR DEAD LINES* Once in a while I remember that there’s a holiday a couple of Mondays from now and I’ll give you an extra day to file entries. It’s more of a tradition, though, than a necessity: Back in the early days of the Invite — we started in 1993 — a lot of people needed to get back to the office fax machine to send us their entries. John Hutchins, who’s one of those people who show up and immediately start blotting up ink after ink — his first ink was for Week 1162, then Week 1165, and then at least once in six of the seven weeks since — displayed his acute Invite affliction when he suggested, in rapid succession, three different contest ideas, all of which show promise. This one, Week 1176, should allow for a variety of good joke-writing; I’m optimistic that the results will be perfectly lively. *THE NEW ENTRY SYSTEM — REALLY, IT’LL BE FINE * Last week the Invite shuffled into the 21st century with a Web-based entry submission system, rather than the old e-mails. And after tinkering with a few things, I can report that it seems to be going well. Some things we discovered after posting the debut contest for this, Week 1175 : -- The URL (Web address) we gave in the print edition was hard for some people to read; one person wrote to me that subpl.at*invite1175 looked exactly like subpl.at*Invite1175 (capitalization matters in these abbreviated URLs) and he couldn’t get it to work until his wife noticed the dot over the i. So from here on in, it’ll be subpl.at*INVITE1176 etc. — At least one person was irked to have to fill out his address in a form each week (not everyone has auto-fill), and someone else was concerned that some non-U.S. addresses might not work in the form. So I switched the address part to an open box where you can copy in your address. (This after I used two other inappropriate formats; I’m learning ...) But if people continue to send me addresses without the Zip code or even the name of the town, I’m going to have to go back to the form. — At least one person lost his entries because he closed out the page, or turned off his computer, before submitting his form. I do strongly suggest writing your entries on a Word document, email, etc., and then copying them over to the Web form; really, it’s good to do that for any site where you’re submitting comments. — I’ve gotten some nice bribe propositions in the comment field. Please feel free to let me know if you have any other problems or suggestions; some things I can fix myself, and Sruti the Web developer has been marvelously responsive and helpful for things I can’t. Email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. YOU WERE REALLY BRONCIN’! THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1172 Using the song “American Pie” for Week 1172, our latest word bank contest, worked just as I’d hoped: The Losers — especially a few of them — went to town combining words from the classic song’s multi-verse lyrics into jokes, funny dialogues, and even limericks and double dactyls. And while of course this is true to varying degrees to our readers, I think that many of us will quickly remember the original context of the words, and so catch the humor of how the Invite entry used it in a totally different way. This is why it’s best to use well-known writing for a word bank contest — in the past we’ve used the Gettysburg Address, “Hamlet,” “The Cat in the Hat” and the Book of Genesis — rather than, say, that week’s Invitational column (we did that, too). Some people didn’t seem to understand that we run a humor contest; they sent some lovely haiku and other musings; I have a feeling they’re gonna hatethis week’s results . One person cited various phrases in the song and “defined” them in his or her own words; I have no clue how the person got that idea that this was the contest. I wouldn’t have been able to have done this contest without the help of Gary Crockett, who was one of several Losers who offered to validate the entries with a custom-designed computer program. (See the bottom of this column for Gary’s description of the program, complete with some of the code.) This past weekend I sent him a list of 42 entries, and Gary promptly returned a list of nine that didn’t pass, with the invalid words marked in red. One of them was a long dialogue between God and Satan over who should get John Lennon, and whether a Rolling Stone was due imminently; that one had so many extra uses of “him,” “the” and other words that it was clear the author hadn’t read the direction that you couldn’t use a word more frequently than it appeared in the song. But most of the others were easily remedied by dropping the word or making another simple change, and some are among today’s inking entries. And the Losers would have had a much harder go of it had not Loser Todd DeLap not, immediately and of his own volition, assembled a word list specifying the number of times that each word appeared , Todd compiled his list the very morning that I posted the Week 1172 contest, fast enough for me to link to it in The Style Conversational a couple of hours later. At least Todd got ink today; although Gary got to see that one of his entries had made the short­list, it didn’t make the final cut. While runners-up Danielle Nowlin, Mark Raffman and Jeff Shirley are ubiquitous denizens of the Losers’ Circle, it’s the first win — indeed, the first appearance at all “above the fold” — for Mary Kappus, who gets her eighth blot of ink with her Inkin’ Memorial win, a tour-de-force description of the “quartet” of presidential candidates (before Ted Cruz had dropped out). Brilliantly funny stuff; I especially enjoyed “the Pink-oh” and, in reference to Cruz’s taxation philosophy, “no levee.” *Kress Has Fallen for ... * Steve Kress, who has the copy-editing duties for the Invite for the past few weeks, singled out three honorable mentions this week as his faves: Chris Doyle’s lament of a woman with 10 children in eight years, “He was into rhythm and I got the blues” (“This one made me laugh, and it was very well constructed … not a single awkward phrasing in the whole thing”; Jeff Shirley’s account of “the space people” coming down to mess with “my ‘can’ ”; and Kevin Dopart’s dig at opera: “Music of the Met: People die singing, and they take a long, long time to do so.” “This one is just plain snarky, so it was right up my alley,” Steve says. *Foul your mortal soul ... * An unprintable by Steve Honley: “The last gym I was inside was James,” said the good-looking man to the sweet teenage boy. Okay, people — see you Saturday! *OF NERDULAR INTEREST: HOW GARY CROCKETT VALIDATED THE WEEK 1172 ENTRIES * *I asked Gary if he’d like to share How He Did It:* What I did could be done with any number of programming languages, but there’s one called Python that’s very convenient to use for this kind of thing, and is becoming a common choice as the language used for introductory programming courses. I started by taking Todd DeLap’s word list and reformatting it so that it was a single list of comma-separated words, with each word appearing as many times in the list as in American Pie, rather than using the numbers from Todd’s list. I did that reformatting with a simple Python program, probably about a dozen lines of code (I didn’t keep it around). Then I wrote another Python program that repeatedly prompts for text to be tested and for each word in that text looks for it in the list, modifying the list as it goes along so the “used a word too many times” error will be caught. It spits out the same text in lower case except for words that are invalid, which it outputs in upper case. There’s a little more fiddling to deal with punctuation, upper*lower case, etc. Here is the whole program, except with a shortened version of the word list: AmPieWords = [ “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “about”, “above”, “adjourned”, “admire”, “again”, “ago”, “air”, “all”, “all”, “all”, (and so on for the rest of the words in American Pie...) “you”, “you”, “you”, “you”, “you”, “you”, “you”, “your”, “your”, “you’re” ] def standardize(word): ret = ‘’ for c in word: if not c.isalpha() and c != “’”: continue c = c.lower() ret += c return ret.rstrip(”’”) wordList = list(AmPieWords) for line in sys.stdin: outLine = ‘’ wordList = list(AmPieWords) line = line.replace(’-’, ‘ ‘) for word in line.split(): word = standardize(word) if word in wordList: outLine += word + ‘ ‘ wordList.remove(word) continue else: word = word.replace(”’”, ‘’) if word in wordList: outLine += word + ‘ ‘ wordList.remove(word) continue outLine += word.upper() + ‘ ‘ print(outLine) ====================================================================== WEEK 1178, published June 5, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1178: We’re collecting! The Style Invitational Empress talks about this week’s contest and results Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson, with the assistance of Latin teacher Ann Martin, announces Loserfestium Pittsburghium at last month’s Flushies. Details below. (Denise Sudell) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 2, 2016 I got an email last night from one of the best Losers losing today, with an idea for a new contest. I replied the way I often do: I immediately showed him the results — very good ones — of that very same contest, this one from 1994. The Loser countered: “Just because something has been successfully done in the past doesn’t mean that it can’t be completely screwed up when tried again.” I told him that we actually would be redoing an old contest this very week. And: “Tell you what: If my apprehensions about that one prove foolish, we’ll do this one too.” So for Style Invitational Week 1178 , lay on those funny ideas for collective nouns; see what else you can come up with besides the 40 or so that already got ink. And you know, if there aren’t enough to fill the page in four weeks — since they’re just one line long, that’s quite likely — I betcha anything I’ll have some political song parodies from Week 1177 (whose deadline, remember, isn’t till June 13). THE STEEL INVITATIONAL: LOSERFEST IN PITTSBURGH, AUG. 25-28 (NEW DATE!) In last week’s Conversational , I mentioned that Kyle Hendrickson had announced that he had once again donned the miter of Loserfest Pope, reviving the tradtion of arranging a weekend-or-so field trip for the Greater Loser Community. And this time he and his cardinals have settled on Pittsburgh. While it’s not exactly Paris, I went to Pittsburgh myself a few years back for a similar weekend with relatives, and found plenty to do — especially in the eating department. The schedule of activities is still in the early stages, so if you have suggestions, you get to weigh in. Kyle has set up a neato website,loserfest.org, (amazingly, that domain was available!); click on the various categories and see the ideas for activities and restaurants, and leave your name so you can stay in the loop. While he’s scheduling four days of Loserfest, you don’t have to stay the whole time (I probably wouldn’t). The Megabus that leaves from Union Station is a pleasant six-hour ride (it makes a stop at West Virginia University) that leaves you off right downtown, and is in­cred­ibly cheap; when I went, I paid something $10 one way and $20 the other. There’s also Wi-Fi on the bus. So as long as there are at least a couple of other people there with cars, you should be able to take the bus. In past years, Loserfests have taken place in places as far-flung as Las Vegas and as unflung as right in D.C. Obviously, the ones you can do in a day trip tend to have more people. If history is a guide, this would be a small group, fewer than a dozen people. But big fat fun. *THE SIRE NEXT TIME: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1174* Even with horse names like “Autocorrect: Nose,” “__itm_re” and “¯\_(ツ)_*¯,” the inking entries from the Week 1170 foal-“breeding” contest proved a fertile crop, producing — as our spinoff contest has for a decade — a crop of funny, very clever grandfoals. As usual, the entry pool was much more manageable this second time around — about half the number of entries and entrants — with not as many new Losers; we have just one First Offender this week. But there were still a whole lot of entries, and I was still helped immeasurably by the efforts of Jonathan Hardis, who once again used computo-magic (plus some plain old free labor) to convert a raw document containing hundreds of emails into an alphabetically sorted (by parent name), anonymous list that I could eyeball without laboriously searching through all the mixes of each name (twice) and culling a short­list. So after choosing this week’s winners, I was especially tickled to discover that Jonathan’s “Kar Krashian” was among this week’s four “above-the-fold” winners. It’s the 49th (and 50th!) ink for Jonathan, who is steadily gaining on the 73-ink total of his sister and fellow MIT grad, Kathy Hardis Fraeman. Meanwhile, it’s the sixth win, and 86th overall, for Larry Gray, for the perfectly crafted combination of Autocorrect: Nose with Señor Moment to produce No Sé. And what an imaginative take on Hanukkah Lewinsky x Gimme Another O from Ben Aronin; it’s Ink No. 78 for him, and his 14th above the fold. (Did Ben’s entry mystify you? Click on the link I added.) And oh, look at that — it’s Danielle Nowlin! Because when isn’t it? Among the entries that I checked off until discovering that they’d been submitted too frequently: Sandra Buttock x Significant Udder = Dairy Air Gimme Another O! x Let My Pimple Go = Let My Pimple Goo Desitin x Ham Somebody? = Oinkment Señor Moment x Sphinxter = Old Giza Desitin x Hanukkah Lewinsky = Rash Hashanah As always with the grandfoals, almost all the foal names*don’t* incorporate all aspects of both parents’ names; ooooOoooo, for example, references both Hanukkah and Gimme Another O!, but not Lewinsky; Jonathan’s Kiss Me Cait x Nascarf = Kar Krashian gets “Cait” (-lyn Jenner, stepparent to Kim Kardashian), and NASCAR, but not “kiss me” or “scarf.” But Larry’s winner comes mighty close: No Sé (Spanish for “I don’t know”) is both a play on “nose” and of the idea that autocorrect “doesn’t know” what you’re trying to say. Obviously “Senor” gets in there, and also the idea of “senior moment,” of not knowing some word or fact you’ve always known. But getting in every element of both parents’ names won’t necessarily earn it ink. There was one combination I noticed that covered everything but suffered from clumsy punning: Bing Cosby x Hanukkah Lewinsky = Cherries Jew Bully. *Horses of an off color: The unprintables* Just this minute, I got the word that Pam Sweeney’s “St. Arbucks x Yuge Pianist = Moby Dick” passed the Taste Police to be allowed in the print edition; I hadn’t been all that optimistic, although of course I think it’s perfectly fine and a great joke. For the parade of bodily functions and orifices in the horses below, however, I didn’t even bother to try: Yuge Pianist x TheTenSuggestions = The Dickalogue (Rob Huffman) Hanukkah Lewinsky x Ham Somebody? = Candlestick Pork (Dudley Thompson) Apocalypso x Hanukkah Lewinsky = Labia Menorah (Dave Zarrow) IM the Walrus x Hanukkah Lewinsky = WhiteMatter Custard? (Rob Huffman) Gimme Another O! x Dyquick = Death Becums Her (Bill Verkuilen) Hanukkah Lewinsky x Gimme Another O! = ChristmasIsCumming (Bill Verkuilen, who’s on a roll here) Significant Udder x Sphinxter = Cowabunghole! (Stephen Dudzik) Sphinxter x Thrust But Verify = Cornhole Knowledge (Roy Ashley) ====================================================================== WEEK 1180, published June 19, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1180: A DIY repaneling project The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results Last weekend's comics, like this one from Saturday, were full of promising lines to be taken out of context. This week's contest invites you to do the same over the next 12 days. (June 11, 2016; King Features Syndicate) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 16, 2016 Hey, how did Chris Doyle know about this contest ahead of time and could write the line on the Week 1180 example? He’s not credited as suggesting the contest; my husband is. Whuh-oh, is my husband Chris Doyle? Is that why he has 1,700 blots of Style Invitational ink? Nah — I did meet the peripatetic Chris a couple of times at Loser events many years ago when he was in the D.C. area, but I didn’t make him live with me. (The Royal Consort is surely the only person on Earth, as well as several nearby planets, who could endure that.) I merely posted my plan for the contest a few days ago in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, now nearing 1,100 members. I asked the Devs whether they thought it would be a good contest; they did. And I posted a few random lines from various comic strips over the weekend — including the one from “Zits” about the dead squirrel — and asked for cartoonable examples. I went with Chris’s. Since people couldn’t use any strips dated before today, the Devotees weren’t gaining any advantage by knowing about it in advance. (Still, if you enter Invite contests, or think you might want to, it’s still useful to join the group and check out any discussions about the contests — there are also lots of unrelated humor posts — because the Losers often share helpful hints, word lists, even computer programs for checking your work. Some of them also, after the week’s results run, share their favorite “noinks,” entries that should have gotten published at the top of the list if there were any justice to be found in this miserable world.) *Tips for entering Week 1180: * -- No, the line you think of doesn’t have to fit in the same space as the original line; I’ll just be running the entries as lines of text. *EXCEPT:* I do hope Bob Staake will illustrate one entry four weeks from now, either the winner or one of the runners-up. And that particular entry will probably have to be short. So if you’re craving to be Staaked, make sure that at least one of your entries would make a workable cartoon. And while your line doesn’t have to be comic-strip-terse, it also shouldn’t be a really long sentence or a paragraph, totally out of character with comic strips. — *Does it have to be one single line? Could it be two very short ones? *Sure, I don’t care.* * We are in the market for funny. ---*Should your entry include the line of dialogue that you’re replacing?*Sure, that would be great.* * But I don’t expect to run both the original and yours in the results, so if the humor comes from the*change* from one to the other — if the reader would have to see both versions to find the line funny or clever — it might not work. --- *Should I attach a photo, Snipping Tool clip, etc., of the original?*I wouldn’t mind!* * The Post’s online comics page, washingtonpost.com*comics, contains links for the previous two weeks of comics; so since your window is 12 days, you’ll be able to sit down on June 27 and have the material from whole contest window available to you. On the other hand, *I*won’t be judging for a good week after that, and so might have to track down the cartoons from the early days. (I will save the print Style section for the next 12 days, so I won’t need them for comics that run in the paper.) The online entry form, subpl.at*INVITE1180, now has a place where you can “upload a photo here!” It’s set to allow for as many as 25 uploads, but I’d bet that you’d be risking some problem if you put a whole lot of photos on a single entry. Just send another entry. — *Should I draw the comic myself with my hot graphix skillz?*Feel free, but I probably won’t be able to use it.* * And if you do, you MUST also include the text in the regular entry field. — *I’m not a subscriber and I’ll exceed my number of free page views! *Email me at pat.myers@washpost.com* *** and I’ll forward you an email through which you should be able to sign up for a digital subscription to the whole Post — which is putting out 1,000 pieces of “content” a *day —* for the absurdly low $19 a year. I’m paying something like that every*month.* *DRAWING A BLANK: IF YOU CAN’T GET THE ENTRY FORM* For several hours this past Tuesday, and for about 17 minutes on Wednesday, Losers clicking on or typing in the subpl.at* Web address to enter the Invite got nothing but a blank white screen. Because we like to add excitement to our lives — well, it certainly added it to mine when a reader wrote to me on Tuesday asking if she was insane. (Diagnosis: still inconclusive.) The good news is that Web whiz Sruti Cheedalla immediately went into action, got other people involved, and told me eight minutes later that all was fixed. Evidently there was a hacking problem — something involving the shortened URLs that we use to create easy-to-type addresses; someone was using the software to create his own malicious URLs. Then Wednesday around 1 p.m., it happened again. But this time, the Web people were immediately notified by an alarm they’d created the day before. And 17 minutes later, all was well. SO: IF you encounter a blank screen instead of the entry form you’re going to get, please go get some ice cream and try again in a half-hour. This, too, shall pass. I think. (FYI, sub.pl*at refers toThe Post’s newish Sub(mission) Platform. *A MATTER OF LAUGH AND DEATH*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1176 * **A great alternative headline that didn’t fit in print, submitted by both Jesse Frankovich and Tom Witte* I was hopeful but not totally optimistic about Week 1176 , a contest suggested by Newbie Phenom John Hutchins for funny things to include in various people’s obituaries. In fact, at last week’s West Chester Poetry Conference, Frank Osen — that would be the 254-time Loser Frank Osen — told me that the contest was one he couldn’t get his mind around. Uh-oh: if Frank’s mind won’t wrap, what will Joe Loser’s do? But all panned out fine, and I don’t think it was even all that morbid. (I hope readers agree.) And even Frank blotted up an honorable mention. It’s the fifth win — and Ink No. 132 in all — for Drew Bennett, a retired Marine colonel who now is now a college president in West Plains, Mo. (which is oddly an Ozark hotbed of Loserdom, now that 60-time Loser John Schott also has ended up there). Over the years, Drew would often precede his entries with some godawful little verse beginning “O Empress, My Empress”; now he has to put them in a separate field on the entry form — which means that I just now discovered the following: Oh Empress, My Empress... Is this read by a computer or are these words for your eyes only, Should I write this for you or for Hal so lonely. Drew is not also an English professor. Other Loser Phenom Duncan Stevens, last week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner, takes second this week — in one of several blots of ink — with his cute auctioneer joke that would make a great one-minute skit. Loser Since Year 1 Bruce Alter grabs No. 115, his 13th “above the fold”; but it’s just the 15th ink — though his second above the fold — for Stephen Litterst up in Delaware. (I wonder if they did dance at Bob Fosse’s funeral.) *What Doug Dug: * The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, my former longtime Style colleague who recently won an award for headline writing from the Society for Features Journalism (for a story on teaching children manners, “Don’t Let Your Little Dickens Become a Scrooge”): Doug singled out both Your Mama jokes, by Jon Gearhart and Beverley Sharp; the crossword enthusiast couple buried two across and six down (up-and-coming Hildy Zampella); and Frank Mann’s joke about convicted gift-taking pol Bob McDonnell. This morning, Doug added one: “Sitting on the train, I was reminded of the Metro announcer entry, another favorite.” That was Roy Ashley’s obit for “Mr. Jrzbzzg” who “grmmphled on Drccssday.” Just one unprintable to share, but it was sent by both Steve Honley and Jon Ketzner: “Linda Lovelace went down for the last time today.” *LOSERFEST 2016: PITTSBURGH* Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson reports that he drove up to P-Town with Uberloser Elden Carnahan to scope out fun things to do on the last weekend of August, and came back with lots of ideas, many of them involving food. Check out the various options and other stuff at loserfest.org, and sign up for updates. *NEXT LOSER BRUNCH, SUNDAY, JUNE 26* It’s at noon at the overflowing buffet at Paradiso Restaurant on Franconia Road, just off the Beltway between Alexandria and Springfield. I might have a conflict (I should know in the next day or two) but I’ve been to Paradiso brunches many times; bring a huge appetite! RSVP here . ====================================================================== WEEK 1181, published June 26, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1181: At least this election offers lots of parody material Parody whiz and theater buff Matt Monitto wore his costume from a local production of "1776" in the video he made of his "Alexander Hamilton" parody. See bit.ly*invite-hamilton. (Screen shot from his video) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 23, 2016 Hey, we have 2,400 words of Style Invitational today with Week 1181, with 16 fabulous song parodies about this election season — and that doesn’t count the rest of Matt Monitto’s “Hamilton” parody, which you should definitely catch on video . So honestly, I’d rather you spend time reading (and listening along with) them than using up your time on this page, and so I’ll try to control my yakking here. As always, judging the parody contest was time-consuming but a thorough blast — there were so many clever, witty, funny songs (I didn’t count the entries, but there were 181 separate submissions, some with many songs) from a variety of song genres. YouTube is always open on my computer during the whole judging period, and I listened along with clips to every song used that I didn’t know intimately; some were totally new to me. I happen to be very familiar with all the songs for today’s inking entries, but that certainly hasn’t been the case every year. The only bad part of judging this and other parody contests is that I can’t possibly run even half of the inkworthy songs. To enjoy these parodies as a reader, you can’t just eyeball them as if you’re reading paragraphs or lists of jokes; you really do have to listen to them in your head (or with your ears), line after line. Several people sent me huge, full-length parodies that matched the originals — often rock or rap songs — line by line (sometimes using many lines from the original song to show how well it could be applied to the current season). They were often well done and imaginative, but they should really be performed, not read; not only don’t I have the space (if I want readers to read anything else), but honestly, they become a bit tedious to just read. People who sent me these, you should record them! Share them on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page, where I’ve been sharing non-inking but fun parodies for the past several days. I’ve read that the Major-General’s Song from “The Pirates of Penzance” is the most often parodied song in English. I have no idea whether that’s true, but I can tell you that I’ve received multiple Major-General parodies in just about that every parody contest I’ve run. But I very rarely give them ink, because they rarely are funny and clever enough to justify their substantial length. And they need to at least match the cleverness of the 1879s original, which holds up as funny light verse even today. Nan Reiner dressed up all Yankee Doodle for the several Week 1177 parodies she recorded. See bit.ly*invite-myturn for her runner-up effort, and you’ll see the others as well. (Screen shot from her video) I got an MG parody this time from one non-inking Loser who appended this comment to his own effort: “The lyrics don’t really fit the melody and rhythm, but no one remembers Gilbert & Sullivan anyway.” Well, fortunately Matt Monitto does, and he gives a clinic here on how to Major-General, filling the 12 lines of eight beats each with zingy wordplay in almost perfectly natural syntax, with no contrived re-accenting of words, and with flawless and clever rhyming. When I got to the penultimate line, “My Donald-centered plans have left the voters in excited states,” I groaned a little, thinking that this wonderful song would end anticlimactically with the predictable “United States.” But nope — Matt gives us a punch line: “So soon I’ll be the president and run these Disunited States.” Meanwhile, Matt, who’s been doing a lot of community theater at home in Connecticut since graduating from college a couple of years ago, borrowed his costume from “1776” to record himself doing his “Alexander Hamilton” parody ; he sure does Miranda right. One good thing going for Major-General in the Invite is that people know the tune. Which made it suitable to run in the print Invite, which of course has no links to help readers with the melody. I used that criterion as well in selecting the three runners-up; while of course *some* people won’t know “Let It Go,” “Smile” and*or “My Way,” I can at least hope so. (Only two honorable mentions fit on the page along with them, First Offender Maria LeBerre’s “Donny Boy” and Stephen Gold’s take on “My Favorite Things.”) Like Matt, runners-up Nan Reiner and Barbara Sarshik are bulwarks of the Invite parody canon, each of them delivering several spot-on songs this week. But it’s the first parody ink for Jerry Birchmore, and also his first “above the fold” out of his 14-blot total. Jerry lives in the D.C. area, but I don’t think he’s ever come to a Loser event; I hope we’ll meet him soon. *FEELING SOLENOGLYPHOUS? SINK YOUR TEETH INTO WEEK 1181* It’s the third go at our contest for poems using words plucked from this year’s National Spelling Bee. In combing through the play-by-play of the 39 rounds that once again couldn’t bring either of the two final competitors down, I aimed for words that weren’t difficult to explain, and ones that a Loserly-minded poet might work into some verse form of another — and manage to make it funny. It’s worked in the past: We first did the bee-words in Week 716; the results are here (scroll down past the Week 720 contest). Here’s the winner, classic Brendan Beary: **Acariasis, a mite infestation:* * I’m sad to say my grandpa Zacharias is, Alas, no more. The doctor has suggested The cause of death was likely acariasis; With tiny parasites he was infested. The wee arachnids he indulged with bonhomie, For piety was one of his delights; Remembering the book of Deuteronomy, He loved the Lord his God with all his mites. Then we did it again a year ago, in Week 1129 : This is Chris Doyle’s winner, a double dactyl: **EPITHALAMIUM (EP-i-tha-LAME-ium), a song composed for a wedding:** Higgledy piggledy Iggy Azalea Rocks out her wedding to Nick in July, Rapping her vows in an Epithalamium: “Beg for it, baby, from I-G-G-Y.” Okay, it’s not a contest for Your Mama jokes, but there’s plenty of fun to be had. Note once again the rule that you have to use the word in its real meaning, as above. You’re free to use whatever form you like, as long as it doesn’t go over eight lines. As in almost all light verse, the use of “perfect rhyme” rather than “near rhyme” makes it much more clever. The Czar of The Style Invitational, who did me the favor of writing this week’s example, said that if he were running this contest, he’d insist that the spelling bee word be made to rhyme in the poem, as his “ptyalism* nihilism.” But he’s not; it’s nifty to do that, but not necessary; I’d certainly have hated to toss Chris’s double dactyl above, for example. *LOSERFEST CONTINUES TO FESTER! AUG. 25-28 IN PITTSBURGH * Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson has busy digging up avariety of offbeat activities (between the procession of restaurants) for the Loser Community’s field trip; he’s arranged for a special rate at the Omni hotel right downtown. The Royal Consort and I will be going up on Friday; you can see that there will be plenty to do if you make it a shorter trip. Megabus has a line that goes straight from Union Station to downtown Pittsburgh for a variable but usually dirt-cheap price (when I used it, it was $10). For more info, see the website Kyle set up atloserfest.org , and sign up here to be notified of updates as plans develop. *LOSERS IN PARADIS(O): BRUNCH THIS SUNDAY* I have to be elsewhere this Sunday, but the huge, delicious buffet set up at Paradiso awaits the Losers at noon as they’ll gather at this regular spot on the brunch rotation. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ website, nrars.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). ====================================================================== WEEK 1182, published July 3, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1182, brought to you from dart.edge.orbit The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over the What3Words contest and a big vat of collective-noun ink. And Loserfest! "stud.help.nest" is the code assigned to one of the myriad 3-meter squares that form the footprint of 1301 K St. NW, The Post's headquarters. The grid of squares appears when you zoom way in. (Screen shot from what3words.com ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 30, 2016 Hello, everyone. Aren’t you glad that, just in time for the three-day weekend, I’m giving you something you can waste massive amounts of holiday time on? Yay for Week 1182 of The Style Invitational . I’d heard about the What3Words project on the radio recently (the tFhree-word addressing system has been adopted by the Mongolian postal service) and then Longtime Loser Doug Frank wrote to me to suggest a contest. And while I’m not sure what will come of it — I confess that both our Artist for Life Bob Staake and the Erstwhile Czar of The Style Invitational were highly skeptical — I remain hopeful and even optimistic that we’ll have a bunch of interesting finds to share, and that Loserly wit and creativity will come into play. What3words.com has lots of explanatory matter, from the simple to the technical, on how the address system was developed, how it’s already being used, and how its creators hope it will be used. It’s a .com, not an .org, because it’s being marketed to businesses for delivery systems as well as a way to get a custom three-word address (e.g., “best.pizza.here”) that will duplicate the real one. But the map is free for all to explore, and was designed to be accessible to just about everyone in the inhabited world; it will work on a smartphone without an Internet connection, which is what a large fraction of the global population has these days. The system is based on latitude and longitude coordinates, but makes them easily used by humans: As the W3W website puts it: “People’s ability to immediately remember 3 words is near perfect, whilst [they use British English] your ability to remember the 16 numbers, decimal points and N*S*E*W prefixes that are required to define the same location using lat,long is zero.” Working from an oversimplified news feature, I’d originally written in the Invite that the 57 trillion 3-meter squares covering the planet were assigned three-word codes at random from a list of 25,000 common words. This was wrong on two counts. First, it turns out, the assignments weren’t quite random; the longest words are saved for the most remote areas; “cornbread.prolifically.shimmies” is off the coast of Antarctica. And the developers even took pains to ensure that similar combinations — for instance, the same three words but in different order — would land at great distances from each other, so that someone sending a package or fire truck could easily see which was the desired address. (Meanwhile, my own Zip code has a Holly Road and Holly Drive in different neighborhoods; I’m hoping that no one plays with matches on either street.) "stud.help.nest" as it appears on the Esri map on What3Words; you don't see the grid of individual squares, but you might get detailed more outlines of buildings. (Screen shot from what3words.com) Second — and this occurred to me past midnight last night — 25,000 words in every possible combination and order, even if the words are repeated within a combination, are not enough to make 57 trillion unique three-word codes. Having no faith in my math skills, I asked (without explaining why) on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page how many three-word combinations would come from a 25,000-word-list. Yes, it was 1:07 a.m. By 1:10 a.m. I had several respondents — Doug Frank (who, having suggested the contest, knew what was up), Tim Livengood, Alex Jeffrey, Alex Blackwood, Dave Letizia among them — providing answers, and after I clarified that the total should include repeated words, the told me the answer was simply 25,000 cubed, or a mere 15.625 trillion. So I did some more research and found out that the 25,000-word list was the smallest of lists in at least nine languages being used; the largest (I’m presuming English) is 40,000. So for 57 million combinations — the number of squares on the planet — how many words do you really need? At least 38,485, said Alex Jeffrey. And if you have a list of 40,000, how many possible combinations? “That’d give 64 trillion.” And that is why you could conceivably type in 7 trillion word combinations and not find a single valid one. But it’s okay, because the search box will provide helpful alternatives. Not all the areas that are assigned codes are actually mapped in detail, but a code typed into the search field on the map will tell you the location. This was true of “empress.banished.forever,” which is actually (and appropriately) in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and not so “near Ribeira Grande, Azores,” and it’s totally fine to use such a code for this contest. How precise do you need to be with your discoveries? Well, not very — as long as the wording of your entry doesn’t imply otherwise. For instance, The Washington Post is located in the huge office building One Franklin Square (1301 K St. NW), which takes up almost the whole block on K between 13th and 14th streets, and is quite deep as well. And while The Post doesn’t occupy the whole 13-story building, it does actually cover the whole footprint on the seventh and eighth floors, along with parts of several others. And so it’s totally precise to say that any square in that building belongs to The Post. But: Suppose you found a code in the building that was perfectly fitting for the sports section. Unless you know where in the building the sports department is, you can’t announce that the sports section is situated at wordA.wordB.wordC. But you can say, for example, that the sports section *ought to*move to that square. When Bob Staake found hidden.cave.dinner, the map noted the Central Park Zoo, but it didn’t say if that spot was actually a bear cave or just a parking lot. So “at the Central Park Zoo” is fine, while “the grizzly bear enclosure at the Central Park Zoo” isn’t. Also, you can be more general, maybe much more general: You could just say “In New York City,” for example. But my hunch is that that the cool-coincidence factor will be a lot more interesting in more specific places. It’s hard to anticipate all the questions that people will have with this contest. My main aim, of course, is to provide interesting discoveries to share — especially ones that are funny and*or reflect creativity. I expect that I’ll have to make a few rulings on unforeseen issues in the next few days; the best way to see updates is in the comment thread on the Invitational that posted at the top of the Devotees page. If you have a pressing question and absolutely don’t want tojoin the Devotees (we’re almost at 1,100 members) email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. *A SOVIET OF COLLECTIVE NOUNS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1178* *(a non-inking entry by Chaz Miller of Silver Spring, Md.)* I couldn’t do a count on the number of individual entries in our Week 1178 contest for collective nouns, or “terms of venery” (I could do the count very easily if I made you send in your entries one at a time, rather than all on one form, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t much want that). Suffice it to say that I received 331 submissions — close to twice what I get in a typical week — and that of those submissions, a whole lot of them contained 25 entries. So “thousands” is a conservative way of putting it. As you can see from this week’s results, most of the inking entries involve some sort of play on a existing collective noun (or unit of measure; I wasn’t going to be rigid here when I needed the funny). So, so many entries didn’t seem even humorously like a group or even a quantity (“a curiosity of scientists,” “a steep of Tea Party members”) that I’d often go through 100 or more entries before finding some good ones. But that’s why The Post pays me dozens of dollars every single week to show you the 52 best rather than just letting everyone share on the website. It’s the fifth win, and 119th ink in all for Dudley Thompson, whose wife, Susan, also got ink this week (for Ink No. 39). Dudley’s “two square meeters of Mormon missionaries” made me laugh out loud — a tall order for this judge this past week. The cuddly dust mite goes to David Kleinbard for his 15th ink “above the fold” — which is especially great because David happens to have a cuddly Junior Junior Loser named Eli. It’s just the ninth blot of ink for Jack McBroom, but his second runner-up entry; and then there’s Jeff Shirley, who might as well have carpeting laid on his continual turf in the Losers’ Circle. *YINZ WANT TO GO TO PITTSBURGH? LOSERFEST, AUG. 25-28* Speaking of collective nouns, I just learned that “yinz” is a regionalism for the second-person plural, the Western Pennsylvania equivalent of the Southern “y’all” and the Mid-Atlantic “youse.” or “yas.” Which makes a bit of sense of Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson’s name for the activity-filled (and belly-filling) Yinzburgh: Loserfest 2016. The Royal Consort and I will be heading up to join the Losers on Friday, Aug. 26 (someone has to put out an Invitational on Thursday), but will still be able to see an election-themed show by the Second City troupe at the O’Reilly Theater, visit Fallingwater, and hopefully even get to roll around in something called Knockerball if only for the photo-op. You can take part in whichever items on the “fungenda” (presumbably a portmanteau of agenda and fungus) appeal to you; you buy your own tickets. But all the information, including the Loserfest room rate at the Omni, is at loserfest.org Make sure you click on the Drivels page to fill out the form so that you’ll be on the emailing list and will be kept current on the plans. *YINZ RATHER JUST GO TO FALLS CHURCH? LOSER BRUNCH SUNDAY, JULY 17* It’s at noon at Grevey’s just outside the Beltway, in a shopping center at Arlington Boulevard (Route 50) and Gallows Road. Not a buffet, but you can get either breakfast or lunch food, both tasty. Sports are on the TVs. I’ll try to go, especially if some new people would like to meet the Losers. RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). Happy Fourth, all — maybe I’ll see you somewhere around congratulations.fingernails.desk . ====================================================================== WEEK 1183, published July 10, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1183: Ooh, wouldn’t that make a nice Invite trophy? There are exactly 29 Inkin’ Memorials left. Then we’ll need something new. The Style Invitational appears in the print Washington Post in black-and-white, so it didn't make sense to show the Illumibowl there. Here's this week's second prize. (Illumibowl.com) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 7, 2016 Actually, the photo above is of a full-size toilet (or several of them) beautified courtesy of the Illumibowl, a little box that might have also been called the Headlight; I’ll be giving it away to the second-funniest person in Week 1183 of The Style Invitational. So no, it wouldn’t be the best choice for a Loser’s bookshelf, and so I’m now thinking up other ideas for a first-place trophy to replacethe Inkin’ Memorial when I send the last of them away, probably in January. The Inkin’ Memorial — a.k.a. the Bobble-Linc — made its debut in Week 966, in 2012. It replaced the Inker, which I instituted when I ascended to the Empress-ship in Week 536 more than eight years earlier (before that, there was no trophy; the special gag prize went to the winner). I hadn’t planned on it — the supply of cheapo “Thinker” bookends had suddenly dried up when I did my annual surfing of wholesale-kitsch sites to find the best price for the next 50 boxes — which meant that it was a bit of a scramble to come up with something fitting, cheap, and available in quantities of at least 100. But after a night of Googling, I did find a bobblehead of the Lincoln Memorial statue, and bought up the entire supply from Bobbleheads.com — all 15 of them. And evidently there were no more to be had anywhere. But after some negotiation in the ensuing weeks, Bobbleheads Honcho Warren Royal agreed to commission a new Lincoln from a (but of course) Chinese manufacturer, if we would buy 200 and he’d keep the other 50. Anyway, even if Warren were interested in doing that all over again, I think it’s better to get a new first-place trophy. It’s not just that Abe has had an unfortunate tendency to arrive at the winner’s home, well, decapitated (the Royal Consort, who’s repaired a number of them, suggested I send a little tube of superglue with each trophy). It’s that some Losers have had the rotten luck to win a whole lot of them: Since Week 966, Kevin Dopart has won six, Chris Doyle eight, Brendan Beary and Mark Raffman 10 each, and Nan Reiner*thirteen.* Not surprisingly, they’ve all asked me to stop sending any more of them. Nan arranged hers in the field of a little baseball diamond along with a designated hitter before calling off the Lincs. So come January, I hope to be offering something as Invite-appropriate as the Inker and the Inkin’ Memorial. I found something that I think would work really well, but will welcome suggestions. The current guy cost us about $12 apiece. The Inkin’ Memorial has served us well as a first-place trophy for more than four years. Meanwhile, I do plan to commission very soon a new Grossery Bag for runners-up, since we’re out of the Whole Fools tote bag and its predecessor, (Al)most Valuable Player. I think I’ll use one of other the inking entries from the 2012 contest for bag ideas, Week 964, which supplied the first two versions. And I’m down to about a dozen Loser Mugs — between the “This Is Your Brain on Mugs” and LOVE*LOSER designs — and so hopefully I can get the money for a new mug order as well. They’re all, in my opinion, great little prizes — even the magnets are. But I’m also happy that none of these prizes is of significant *monetary* value. Because otherwise, disgruntled non-inkers might start complaining of being robbed financially, rather than just being unappreciated by an incompetent judge. And you can imagine what can follow from that. (My robotic answer to kvetchers: If the Invite is no longer fun for you to play, please don’t play.) *HONESTLY, WHAT’S TO SAY ABOUT WEEK 1183?* Well, let’s see: Week 1183 should be a wide-open contest, since “honest” has a lot of meanings, and I’m willing to consider any observational humor that’s funny and clever. I’d think there’d be some similarity in content (not format) with our contests that asked contestants to translate a quote in the newspaper into “Plain English,” such as this entry by Russell Beland in Week 729: Quote: “And — let’s be honest here —” PE: “And — let me sugarcoat this a little less than usual — ” Note that I said “roughly in the form of ...” If a slightly different format results in a better joke, go for it. *The BACcalaureates*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1179* *(non-inking headline by Jeff Contompasis)* The Week 1179 contest was to come up with any three-word A-B-C phrase (or ACB, BAC, or any other arrangement). In general, I found that I preferred the phrases that could conceivably be used as an ABC abbreviation, such as Gary Crockett’s “Business Class Alternative” (you could imagine an airplane ticket labeled BCA) or Duncan Stevens’s legalistic Collective Boinking Agreement Ed Gordon’s “BAC” as textspeak for ancient times, or “before advent of cellphones.” But I also got a kick out of just-three-words phrases like Amanda Yanovitch’s “ ‘A Bear!’ (Crunch.): The final line in Quentin Tarantino’s new Goldilocks film,” and this one by Kimberly Baer: “Affairs, Being, Confusion”: How fifth-grade wiseacre Ethan Splunk responded when asked by his geography teacher to name three states. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial, and just the 10th blot of ink overall, from newcomer Chris Damm, who proposed Cot And Bagel as a term for a cheapo bed-and-breakfast. I was delighted to meet Chris in January at the Losers’ Post-Holiday Party, to which he’d driven all the way from West Virginia, and am similarly pleased that Chris gets props after going inkless with a slew of song parodies in Week 1177, some of which were great but whose length and repetition didn’t work as songs-to-read. Melissa Balmain has two kids*and* teaches college students, so I’d be shocked if she turned down the fabulous grandpa-shaped electronic bubble fart machine that Chris Doyle didn’t want. Her “Aryan Battle Cry,” of course, has only gotten better in the past week in a wider context. Meanwhile, Jon Gearhart picks up his seventh ink “above the fold” as he barrels past the 75-ink mark, and the legsome Gary Crockett (“don’t send me any more stuff”) snags his 32nd ATF ink as he lopes toward 300 blots of ink. There wasn’t a lot of Scarlet Letter fare this week, but there was this unprintable from Alex Jeffrey: Bactrian Abortion Clinic: Because a camel’s gotta hump. We have used “abortion” in Style Invitational a few times in the past 23 years (“a PROLIFERATION of abortion protesters”). Alex’s entry wasn’t going to be one of them. *COME HAVE BRUNCH WITH ME AND THE LOSERS, JULY 17* This month’s Loser brunch is on Sunday, July 17, at noon, at Grevey’s pub just outside the Beltway in Northern Virginia. It’s typical brunchy-lunchy food (they’ve dispensed with the buffet). I’m always eager to meet new Losers and reconnect with the regulars. RSVP on the Losers’ website at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”) . *LOSERFEST CONTINUES TO FESTER* Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson continues to enhance the slate (or coal?) of activities for this year’s Loserfest field trip, to Pittsburgh Aug. 25-28 (or parts thereof). The Royal Consort and I plan to go up on Friday. Check out Loserfest.org to see what’s in store, and to sign up. ** ====================================================================== WEEK 1184, published July 17, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1184: Notes from the funny page The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over the Week 1180 comics contest Agnes was talking about rap songs, but as Loser Jesse Frankovich realized, her description was much more appropriate for something else. (From “Agnes,” June 20*By Tony Cochran; distributed by Creators Syndicate) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 14, 2016 I admit that I’m much less of a regular comic strip reader in recent years; as I read more and more of The Post online, I’ve fallen out of my old routine of rushing eagerly down the stairs in the morning and, after a momentary scan of all the section fronts, turning to the back pages of Style to scan my favorites. But I made up for it — as many of you must have — by perusing 12 days’ worth of the several dozen strips and panels not only from the print Post, but also from the many extra strips it offers online . All in the name of Style Invitational Week 1180, whose results run this week. Unlike the Week 392 contest in 2001, in which we were able to use a whole color page to print comic panels with Loser-written substitutions (unfortunately, that page isn’t online), this time we had to do something more text-centered. So I offered two options: to add dialogue into the strip, although I wouldn’t be able to run more than two pictures in the results; or, in the style of our recurring “Questionable Journalism” contests, to take a line out of context and supply a question that it might answer. Most of the inking entries. including half this week’s “above the fold” ink, were in this form. Which allowed this week’s results to be full of jokes playing off the news, especially — surprise — the election season. In general, an entry was more likely to get ink if the line it played off was*not* witty, because the Loser’s own line ended up being just the set-up line; the punch line was really the comic writer’s. For instance, several people sent this line from “Agnes”: “It sounded like Minnie Mouse reading the additives on a German can of Spam.” Great line! And so to say “What was Sarah Palin’s last speech like?” or “Tell me about Yoko Ono’s latest album” comes off as anticlimactic. Another example would be the cartoon at the top of this column. While I didn’t give it ink, I marveled at how well “Agnes” creator Tony Cochran seems to know the Invite. Booyah! (In fact, yet another “Agnes” line, “I can’t write an epic poem about colon noise,” was used by too many people who supplied a question like “What would no self-respecting Loser ever say?” ) *Not for the Mini Page: Unprintable comic lines* We’ll start with mild; had Jeff Contompasis not designated it “’Verse-Only,” I’d have thought it printable: I smell a trick. (Frazz, June 24) Not surprising, since Your Mama is home. I was thinking of running this one as a picture, with new words in Jeremy’s balloon, but worried that it might be seen as making light of sexual assault: Jeremy would say instead: “Mrs. Robinson, I didn’t agree to THIS.” (Rachel Bernhardt) Then was have this fabulous, Scarlet Letter-worthy one from Jeff Shirley: “I was going to be in your posse.” (“Agnes”) In your dreams!...oh wait, you said “posse.” And finally we get to whoaaaaah territory, from Roy Ashley: “Let me know when you’re ready to be licked clean.” (the in­cred­ibly wholesome “Red and Rover”) What signals the end of a truly Happy Ending? *WE’RE DINE OUT HERE: COME BRUNCH WITH US THIS SUNDAY* I just heard from new (and repeatedly inking) Loser Hildy Zampella that she’ll be coming to her first Loser event, this Sunday’s Loser brunch — don’t make her just sit around with me. It’s at noon, conveniently at Grevey’s sports pub just off the Beltway in Merrifield, Va., in a shopping center at Arlington Boulevard (U.S. 50) and Gallows Road (Va. 650). The menu is typical brunch*lunch fare. If you get off at the Route 50 Beltway exit, be sure to get over immediately to get off at Gallows Road or you’ll pass it. RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website,nrars.org ; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” And it’s not too late to sign up for Loserfest, an extended out-of-town weekend, this time in Pittsburgh. Check it out at nrars.org as well, or directly at loserfest.org . I’m going to that, too. *WRITE IT IN: THE WEEK 1184 ALTERNATIVE-CANDIDATE CONTEST * Not that I agree with the sentiment personally. But this year, soooo many people are lamenting the choice between two people they can’t stand, or at least think would be a terrible president, and so it seemed the perfect time to bring back our 2008 contest asking for more preferable candidates. Last time, at the suggestion of Loser Brendan Beary, I listed 16 possible candidates, and asked for explanations why any of them would make a good president, and*or to choose two for a ticket. The results, while fairly funny, were somewhat strained, which is why I’m letting you choose*anyone* or*anything* this year. Still, this is a contest that loves playing on multiple meanings of words and phrases. Here are the Week 782 results: Frequently noted: The rock doesn’t change its position every time the wind changes, and that Sweeney Todd and Britney Spears’s hairstylist would both be good at making drastic cuts. 4. Vinko Bogataj, the “agony of defeat” ski jumper from “Wide World of Sports”: People won’t mind watching him screw up the same way, over and over again. (Mary Ellen Webb, Fairfax, a First Offender) 3. Benedict Arnold: Hey, he’s really only flip-flopped on one issue. (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.) 2. the winner o f the McCain and Obama gargoyle statuettes: The Firefox browser: If the stock market ever crashed, we could simply restore the previous session. (Bryan Crain, Modesto, Calif.) And the Winner of the Inker Benedict Arnold: Now here’s a candidate who has really fought for change in American government! (Rick Wood, Falls Church) Dork Horses: Honorable Mentions *A moss-covered rock:* Though he presents a tough exterior, time has smoothed his rough edges. And he’s a firm supporter of the environment (or firmly supported by the environment). (Alli Peterson, Newark, Del., a First Offender; and thanks to all the students at the Charter School of Wilmington who’ve been entering the Invitational week after week) At least we’ll know which direction we’re headed. (Mary Ellen Webb, Fairfax; Meredith Brown, Wilmington, Del. -- a First Offender) Moss Rock is solid in times of crisis, he’s clearly the true environmental candidate, and his campaign anthem is one of the best songs ever written. -- B. Seger (Brad Alexander, Wanneroo, Australia) *A dish of tapioca pudding:* With the coming depression, who better to serve on America’s bread lines? (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) *Ex-president James Buchanan:* You’re not going to find any skeletons in Buchanan’s closet. Aside from Buchanan, that is. (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis) Not only does he not get involved in other countries’ imminent civil wars, he doesn’t get involved in our own. (Bryan Crain) He won’t be having any sordid affairs with nubile young women! (Christopher Lamora, Arlington) *Krusty the Clown: Who better to follow eight years of Bozo? (Mike Ostapiej, Tracy, Calif.)* *Bert from “Sesame Street”:* Orientation aside, his monogamy is impressive -- 39 years with the same partner. (Tristan Axelrod, Brescia, Italy) It’s time, after all these years, to have a man of letters in the White House. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney; Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) Although he is from outside the Beltway, he somewhat resembles the Washington Monument. (Dan Colilla, Washington, Pa.) *The Orange Line train from New Carrollton:*It’ll repeat the same messages to the same audience every day and they’ll still come back for more! (Rick Haynes, Potomac) V*inko Bogataj, the “agony of defeat” ski jumper from “Wide World of Sports”:* He’s arguably the world’s greatest roll model. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) He’s a down-to-earth kind of guy. (Ed Conti, Raleigh, N.C.) *Benedict Arnold:* He’s shown great flexibility in adjusting his views to reflect changing political realities -- and he’s provided useful assistance to our oldest and staunchest ally in the Global War on Terror. (M.C. Dornan, Scottsdale, Ariz.) *Emily Litella:* Because, deep down, most of us would be kind of curious to see flea erections. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Because she asks the questions we need to hear, like: “What’s all this we hear about parasailin’ being good for vice president? Sure, hanging from a kite and being dragged by a boat may be fun, but is it prudent?” (Bruce Alter, Fairfax Station) She’s opposed to the whore in Iraq and our young soldiers being maimed by exploding IUDs. Why are we sending our troops to an Iraqi whore anyway? What’s wrong with American whores? (Bird Waring, Larchmont, N.Y.) *Sweeney Todd:* No rubber chicken at HIS fund-raising banquets! (Peter Metrinko) *Britney Spears’s hairstylist:* Sure, he blows a lot of hot air, but I’ll bet he’s pretty knowledgeable about domestic affairs. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) Managing the budget of a country with a huge deficit will be no problem for this candidate: He’s used to doing a lot with nothing. (Beth Baniszewski, Somerville, Mass.) A true populist: He’ll give the top half and the bottom half the same treatment. (Jay Shuck) *Cartman:*When mortgages fail and countless families declare bankruptcy, we will want a leader capable of jumping at least three homeless people at once. (Sean Dolan, Wilmington, Del., a First Offender) *A 49-cent goldfish from Wal-Mart:* Because it’s time for a new bag of carp in the White House. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Vote Goldfish: You know he’s in the tank for you. (Bruce Alter) *Chuck Smith of Woodbridge:* Look at his success in foreign policy: He’s already had a Czar and an Empress wrapped around his finger. (Marc Boysworth, Burke) I can see Dale City from my house. As for foreign relations, I’ve traveled to Mexico, specifically Cancun, and experienced a bad hangover on the plane ride back. I’ve often been quoted in The Washington Post. I am an expert on natural gas, as I am lactose-intolerant. I have been drug-free for many years, more if you don’t count stool softeners. I am no stranger to torture, as I have attended a Celine Dion concert. Court records of my teenage years are sealed. And I once sold something on eBay. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) TICKETS *Tapioca pudding*goldfish:* One is old-fashioned, plain, lumpy, pasty and white, the other new and unknown, with limited experience swimming in a small pond, suddenly thrust out in the world in a goldfish bowl, unable to hide. Just right for the GOP. (John Bunyan, Cincinnati) *Moss-covered rock*Benedict Arnold:* Both the rock -- it’s no rolling stone -- and Benedict Arnold take a firm anti-revolution stance. (Pam Sweeney, St. Paul, Minn.) *Goldfish*Bert:* As Sarah Palin reminds us, “We must not blink.” Here are two candidates who never will! (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park; Steve Offutt, Arlington; Dan Ramish, Vienna) *Benedict Arnold*James Buchanan:* Our counterintelligence efforts will vastly improve under two people who know what it’s like to play for the other team. (N.G. Andrews, Portsmouth, Va.) *Goldfish*Chuck Smith:* The 49-cent goldfish, you have to wonder if there’s a lot a life left in it, and Smith constantly gets his name in the paper for saying silly things. Not the most endearing “qualities” per se, but that doesn’t seem to matter. (Christopher Lamora; Brian Cohen, Potomac) See you Sunday, I hope! ====================================================================== WEEK 1185, published July 24, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1185: Can you get blots of ink from some literal ones? The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over (ew) the new contest and results The uncannily clever winner of Week 77 in 1994 — the only Invite ink ever for Dennis Goris. In this week's contest, you could try a combo like this, but your odds of ink are long. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 21, 2016 I was inspired to do the Style Invitational ink blot contest of Week 1185 when I was combing the 649-ink oeuvre of Hall of Famer Jennifer Hart for a week’s worth of Style Invitational Ink of the Day graphics (the latest term for them is “social cards”). And among Jennifer’s 14 first-place entries wasthis one from Week 148, the third and most recent Invitational contest to interpret any in a series of ink blots. That contest was labeled “The Rorschach of the Crowd IV,” but there seems to have been no III. Those contests ran in the pre-Internet years of 1993, 1994 and 1996, and The Post doesn’t have them online. But I dug up some PDFs of what seem to be microfilm, and share them here (I’m also sending copies to Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan so he can post them on his indispensable Master Contest List.). The blots for Weeks 30 and 77 are at left; there’s a link to the ones for Week 148. Those contests were all put up by my predecessor, the Czar of The Style Invitational , who wasn’t deposed by the Empress until 2003; they ran during the flush newspaper years when it wasn’t a problem to put seven runner-up prizes and a giant horse costume on your expense form. *WEEK 30, SEPTEMBER 1993 * *Report from Week 30, *in which you were asked to interpret any of four Rorschach ink blots. AdChoices ADVERTISING Disturbing results. Thousands of entries, many of them too crude to publish — even for the Style Invitational, which traffics proudly in subliminal poopy jokes. The things you saw in these innocuous blots! And you were unnervingly synchronous: More than a dozen of you turned Blot C upside down and saw “Ross Perot in a pith helmet explaining his economic program, using Richard Nixon hand puppets.” Frankly, it weirded us out. +Seventh Runner-Up: (Ink Blot A) Brain surgery by corkscrew, a money-saving procedure under the Clinton health plan (Patricia Smith, Fairfax Station) Our first ink blot contest, in the pre-Staake Year 1. Results are in the column. (Blots and cartoon by Marc Rosenthal for The Washington Post ) +Sixth Runner-Up: (Ink Blot A, upside down) Bill Clinton’s Harley, with training wheels (Ken Wood, Columbia) +Fifth Runner-Up: (Ink Blot C) Minnie Mouse at the gynecologist (Wendy Borsari, Washington; also, Dave Zarrow, Herndon, and Heidi Moore, Alexandria) +Fourth Runner-Up: (Ink Blot D) J. Edgar Hoover, playing “I’m a Little Teapot” (Sue Davis, Beltsville) +Third Runner-Up: (Ink Blot D) The avenging angel of clubbed baby seals (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) +Second Runner-Up: (Ink Blot D, upside down) A rabbinical student flexes his muscles for the much-coveted Mr. Tel Aviv trophy (Matthew J. Peterkin, Washington) +First Runner-Up: (Ink Blot C) “I can’t keep going and going and going. My feet are killing me!” (James H. McDonough, Indian Head) And the winner of the two-person horse costume: Bob wasn’t credited for these blots from 1994, but that’s his first Loser T-shirt shown above them. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) (Ink Blot C) Disney horror! Mickey Mouse spotted carrying two severed heads! (Steven King, Alexandria) *Honorable Mentions:* *Ink Blot A:* Carmen Miranda on a bad fruit day (Dan and Lecia Harbacevich, Stephens City, Va.; also, Claire Timms, Fredericksburg) Dogs’ spit-in-the-cup contest (Ann Hall, Fort Belvoir) The Mayan god of panhandlers (Gregory Dunn and Karen Wright, Alexandria) Two Bavarian beer drinkers with big hangovers (Barbara Kallas, Washington) *Ink Blot B:* Socks found “sleeping” on Pennsylvania Avenue (Bob & Lisa Waters, Andrews Air Force Base) Socks, after 10 minutes in the dryer (Lynne DePaso, Herndon) (upside down) Olive Oyl on the cotton-candy weight gain plan (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Garfield the Sailor Man (Bill Myrons, Crofton; also, Adam Hirschfeld, Annandale) (upside down) Lani Guinier, cheerleader (Joyce Small, Herndon) The Tasmanian devil at ballet class (Beth Tucker, Manassas) *Ink Blot C:* (upside down) The Big Bad Wolf polishes off that first little piggy (Mike Thring, Leesburg) “Attack rabbit” as seen by Jimmy Carter (Stu Segal, Vienna) New, non-threatening Tailhook convention logo (Robin D. Grove, Washington) (upside down) Bob Dole (Elizabeth Rangan, Dayton, Md.) *Ink Blot D:* (upside down) The director of “Roseanne” backs the star into her chair through hand signals (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) A Lamb-Chop-skin rug (Dan and Lecia Harbacevich, Stephens City, Va.) Cabbage Patch roadkill (Katherine Struck, Columbia) --- The second go at the ink blots was in Week 77, in September 1994. By then we had a new cartoonist, some whippersnapper in St. Louis named Bob Staake. . *FOR WEEK 77, 1994:* *Report from Week 77,* in which you were asked to interpret Rorschach blots. Many of the better entries utilized more than one of the blots. One of our favorites was by Noah Schenendorf of Gaithersburg, who said all six blots, taken together, represented “works of modern art by Desmond Howard, for which Redskins GM Charlie Casserly paid millions.” Third Runner-Up: (Blot 3) This ultrasound view of the female abdomen shows that storks really are involved in human reproduction. (Steve Dunham, Fredericksburg) Second Runner-Up: (Blot 1) What [The Symbol Known as Prince] intends to name his first son. (Kevin Mellema, Falls Church) First Runner-Up: (Blot 6) It was not until deeper excavations on Easter Island that the colostomy bags were discovered. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) And the Winner of the Two Frogs Playing Pool: Halloween in Georgetown (See illustration at top of page) (Dennis Goris, Alexandria) *Blot No. 1* A chandelier made from the spines and vertebrae of politicians. (Richard E. Brock, Adelphi) Major league baseball owners have resorted to genetic engineering to produce replacement players. Initial attempts have been unsuccessful. (Kurt Larrick, Burke) The common wishbone, redesigned to meet federal safety standards. (John J. Kammer, Herndon) *Blot No. 2* Marilyn Quayle comes face to face with the Devil. (D.J. Dohahey, Reston) The controversial Shroud of Mary Tyler Moore. (Gloria Federico, Springfield) *Blot No. 3* The Cowardly Lion after cosmetic surgery. His doctor misunderstood when told the lion wanted little tucks around his eyes. (Ann M. Burton, N. Bethesda) Dan Quayle’s Zero Population Growth Plan involves Air Force fighters destroying stork habitats. (Earl Gilbert, La Plata) The June Taylor Dancers performing “Swan Lake.” (Larry Gordon, Potomac) *Blot No. 4* What Madonna wears to church. (Susan Davis, Beltsville) A reflected image of a decapitated buffalo, next year’s Bills logo if they lose the Super Bowl again. (T.L. McBride, Upper Marlboro) *Blot No. 5* (Upside down) Opus, bound and gagged. (Stu Segal, Vienna) (Upside down) A rear view of refrigerator repair men building a human pyramid. (Marta Graffy Sparrow, Springfield) Mickey Mouse checking Stan Laurel for head lice. (Doug Burns, Falls Church) The ill-conceived Mighty Morphin Power Penguin. (Mike Thring, Leesburg) *Blot No. 6* The jacket cover for the new book “Women of the Supreme Court.” (Joseph Romm, Washington) Manic-depressive thought balloons. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) There were constant arguments between the twins as to who would get to wear both earrings that night. (Paul A. Alter, Hyattsville) (Upside down) A new form of birth control: ankle weights for sperm. (Bill Epstein, Bethesda) And Last: Mr. Style Comes a-Courtin’ (Kathleen Pendracky, Avella, Pa.) --- And finally ... *WEEK 148, 1996* Report from Week 148, in which we asked you to interpret any of four ink blots [see them here] : Second Runner-Up: (Blot A, upside down) A pair of giant, cleavage-feeding hummingbirds attack two women involved in a tug of war for the last Wonderbra in the lingerie department. (James Hopenfeld, Arlington) First Runner-Up: (Blot A) In a stunning reversal, crabs get a man. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) And the winner of “The Scream” by Edvard Munch: (Blot B) The American Bar Association logo: two vultures on a field of billing receipts. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Honorable Mentions: *Blot A:* (Upside down) Bob Dole wearing his campaign “smile enhancer.” (Kirsten Schneider, Fairfax) A supine woman with exposed reproductive tract and several links of sausage draped across her belly. What pervert devised this contest, anyway? Jim Ketchum, Columbia) Mr. Toad and his hat at an X-rated movie. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) *Blot B:* Two flying monkeys, each of which first wonders if the woman who left her tennis shoes and bra at his feet will learn to love him, and then thinks, “Yeah, and maybe a flying monkey will fly out of my butt.” (Mike Connaghan, Gaithersburg) (Upside down) The Reliable Source, Annie Groer and Ann Gerhart. (Jim Day, Gaithersburg) *Blot C:* (With musical notes) Mighty Mouse to save the daaaay . . . (Audrey Scruggs, Alexandria) (Sideways) The Ear No One Reads. (Mike Connaghan, Gaithersburg) Leonardo Da Vinci even left sketches for the Wonderbra. (Jessica Steinhice, Washington) Autopsy X-ray shows Elvis’s real cause of death: a severely worn-out pelvis. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) *Blot D:* Overlooked footprint recently discovered at the murder site by O.J.’s investigators. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Bad: An octopus is thrown onto the ice during a hockey game. Worse: The Zamboni runs over it. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Georghe Muresan’s wisdom tooth. (David M. Magness, Arlington) An octopus with at least a million tentacles, probably more. — Louis Farrakhan (Greg Pickens, Alexandria) The Eggplant From the Black Lagoon. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park) What John Bobbitt’s appendage would have looked like if Lorena had had access to a shredder. (Priscilla Pellegrino, Great Falls) A squid on Prozac. (Tim Sweeney, Churchville) *All blots * The family tree. (Nancy Israel, Bethesda) [Don’t try something like this for Week 1185] And Last: *(All blots) *They are the first four letters of the alphabet. I don’t know what your problem was. This has GOT to be the easiest contest I’ve ever seen. (Mike Connaghan, Gaithersburg) *THE BARDS AND THE BEE*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1181* **An alternative headline suggested by several people* A vaultful of ten-dollar spelling bee words — some of of them tongue-tying mishmashes of letters (solenoglyphous?) — didn’t deter the Invite’s crack squad of Loserbards from incorporating them into rollicking poems, from limericks to “Raven” parodies. This week’s results are, not surprisingly, more ooh-clever funny than bwahaha funny, but we have room for both kinds in Loserland. And — huh! imagine! — many of the entries concerned a certain no-longer-presumptive nominee. Almost everyone among the 14 po’ets who got ink this week gets frequent ink in the Invite’s poetry contests, and the Losers’ Circle was full of Usual Suspects: Chris Doyle, Nan Reiner, Beverley Sharp, and the new-but-already-venerable Jesse Frankovich. I’m not going to count out how many of Chris’s 53 first-place entries have been for poetry, but it’s a big chunk of them. We do have a couple of sort-of newcomers; it’s just the fourth ink (but all in a short time) for Sarah Jay, of the Raven*campagnol parody. And Jayne Osborn, whom I met last month at the West Chester Poetry conference — where she’d brought me next week’s second prize, the weird egg timer, all the way from England — gets her second blot of ink. Jayne, by the way is sort of the Empress of the social side of the poets’ forumEratosphere, organizing dinners for members who live in or are visiting Middle England. *What Doug Dug: * Ace copy editor Doug Norwood weighed in on his faves this week — and they happen to be the first- and second-place finishers. It almost never happens that my colleagues (or anyone else) agree exactly with my picks, so I’m delighted that Doug’s taste continues to improve. *STILL TIME TO BE FESTERING* I just booked a room for Friday and Saturday night, Aug. 26-27, in Pittsburgh for this year’s Loserfest. Among the activities is ashow on Saturday by the Second City troupe on its national tour; shockingly, it’s going for a political theme. Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson has arranged an impressive variety of tours, workshops (make a glass sculpture), museum visits, weird stuff like Knockerball (I’m sorry to miss this one), and of course lots of caloric sustenance. Sign up or get more info at Loserfest.org. ====================================================================== WEEK 1187, published August 7, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1187: Say wha! The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results This week’s winner displayed as an Ink of the Day; get these “social cards” daily on Facebook by clicking “Like” at bit.ly*inkofday. I’ll be posting other Week 1183 entries over the next week. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 4, 2016 It’s our first neologism contest in 12 weeks — Week 1175 was for words whose letters added to 13 Scrabble points — and I can’t envision anything less than a deluge of entries and a mini-deluge of inkworthy ones. (Then again, I can’t envision a Trump presidency either, so for me “certainty” does include hope.) As I mention in the introduction of Style Invitational Week 1187, Loser Matt Monitto noticed that the Master Contest List includes a nine-year-old contest in which you drop the first letter of a word and define the result, but no contest in which you drop the last letter. His suggestion was accompanied by several persuasive examples, two of which appear this week. I don’t remember why we hadn’t run this contest before. Perhaps I just forgot about it, or maybe I thought that people would say their real word was a plural ending in -s, and then they’d just drop the S. *Okay, people: Do not simply drop an S from a plural ending in -s. That would be dumb.* *Can the final word be a real word for which you’ve written a funny definition? * I’m not going to forbid it, but look at the results below for the drop-the-first-letter contest:*Almost all of the inking definitions somehow relate the original word with the neologism.** Can you make that work with a final word that’s already a word? As always, I don’t*require* that the two words relate, just noting that’s what I’ve found cleverest in the past. If you happen to come up with a devilishly clever, utterly hilarious word and definition that doesn’t follow that model, go for it. (*The definition for “kin-diving” below doesn’t relate to skin diving; there might be a couple of other entries as well without that link.) I was reminded to add *“you may use hyphens” * notice from the examples for Week 733: “I-am-I Beach: The last resort spot for egotists” and “BS-ervation: A stupid platitude, like ‘It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.’ ” Those were great! I’d like to think they were mine, but they were probably by 316-time Loser Peter Metrinko, who suggested the contest. So see if you can match the quality of this contest from October 2007: *Report From Week 733,* in which we asked you to create a word by dropping the first letter of an existing word, and then supply a definition. Submitted frequently among the 4,000 entries [this was most likely a rough guess rather than a count] were “rankfurter” (hot dog from the back of the refrigerator), “pectacular” (unbelievably chesty), “Assachusetts” (where Ted Kennedy comes from, etc.) and Hardonnay (you can guess). *4.*Ouchdown: Joe Theismann’s last play . (Ira Allen, Bethesda) *3.* Mnesia: Forgetting a mnemonic device. (Jack Held, Fairfax) *2.* Riskies: Chinese-made cat food. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) [This entry alluded to the recent discovery of poisonous melamine in Chinese-made kibble sold by several U.S. companies; I received a complaint from an angry reader for my horrible callousness in running it.] *And the Winner of the Inker: * Riminal: A man who doesn’t clean up his toilet dribble. (Deanna Busick, Knoxville, Tenn.) *Lose, but No Cigar: Honorable mentions* Amburger: my realization about myself as I’m kidnapped by cannibals. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) Amished: Hungering for a simpler way of life. (Brad Alexander, Wanneroo, Australia) Ammogram: A loaded message. (Dianne Thomas, Fairfax) Aspberries: Snake doots. (Howard Walderman, Columbia) Assover: Any holiday dinner at which an unwanted in-law makes an appearance. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) Atheter: An even worth medical applianth. (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis) Bacus: A simple device to count the number of alcoholic beverages consumed by your designated driver (Jeffrey Scharf, Burke) Bracadabra: A really good boob job. (Howard Walderman, Columbia) Brupt: Really, really sudden. (Fil Feit, Annandale) Egotiation: An I for an I. (Chris Doyle, sent from Hong Kong) Eminar: Eminem’s fifth child. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) Ental breakdown: When Fangorn starts crazily shedding all his leaves and losing his bark. (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) Etard: A person who constantly replies to all in e-mails directed to only one person. (Jeffrey Scharf) Gonize: To kick someone in the groin. “I’d like to gonize the idiot who moved the Invitational to Saturday.” (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.) Hick-Fil-A: A squirrel that tried to cross the road. (Elwood Fitzner, Valley City, N.D.) Ho’s Who: National registry of prominent hookers. (Chris Doyle) Iarrhea: Running on about oneself. (Jack Held) Ickled: How you feel when your creepy uncle touches you with his fingertips. (Carson Miller, Newark, Del.) Ickpocket: A place to put your used Kleenex. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Idwife: Every guy’s dream. (Kevin Dopart) Irates: After 15 consecutive losing seasons, what’s left of Pittsburgh ‘s fans. (Jon Reiser, Hilton, N.Y.) Itchhiking: Chasing a tingle from toes to tushy. (Susan Collins, Charlottesville) Kin-diving: Incest. (Tom Witte) Ngland: Vietnam. (Michael Fransella, Arlington) Nowplow: An entirely fictitious device for D.C. residents. (Brendan Beary) Ococo: Chanel’s frilly style before she came out with the simple black dress. (Phyllis Reinhard, East Fallowfield, Pa.) Omenclature: The Homeland Security threat-level warning system. (Edmund Conti, Raleigh) Ompadre: A Buddhist monk. (Bill Strider, Gaithersburg) Onagenarian: An old hand at stress relief. (George Vary, Bethesda) Ooperstown: Home of the Bill Buckner Hall of Fame. (Ed Gordon, Deerfield Beach, Fla.) Oreplay: Laying the groundwork for entering the mineshaft. (Chris Doyle; Tom Witte) Orgy-and-Bess: The Secret Truman Memoirs. (Chris Doyle) Ouch-and-go: A dominatrix’s house call. (Kevin Dopart) Oxtrot: A particularly ungraceful “Dancing With the Stars” performance. (Pam Sweeney, Germantown) P-portunity: Rest stop. (Christopher Lamora, Arlington) Rackdown: the inevitable result of the battle between breast and gravity. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) Ubergine: An enormous eggplant. (Ken April, Arlington) Unich: German city voted World’s Safest Town for Women. (Jeff Brechlin) Urotrash: Cigarette butts used for target practice in the men’s room. (Brendan Beary) Urple: The color of vomit. “For feeding the baby, Mom always wore her urple sweatshirt.” (Chuck Koelbel, Houston) XY-moron: A man. (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) *Anti-Invitational *(*add* a letter to the front of a word): Shysterectomy: Disbarment. (Peter Metrinko) *And Last:* NV-itational: A contest that seeks to frustrate by accepting entries from thousands but rewarding only a small group of toadying favorites who obviously have nothing better to do with their time. I don’t want your stupid prize anyway. It looks stupid. (Peter Ostrander, Rockville) *IN LOL HONESTY*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1183* **Non-inking headline idea by Jesse Frankovich* “Not a single Trump joke in there!” marveled Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood after reading this week’s results yesterday. I hadn’t realized that, actually; I guess the Trump jokes canceled one another out. I did note that I got a lot of jokes that dis the honesty of either Trump or Clinton. But as for credited entries, this week breaks a very long streak. (Anyone with lots of time on his hands is welcome to tell us how long.) The 1,000-plus offerings of observational humor included many from new or infrequent Losers; this week’s results include jokes from three First Offenders and several others with just a few inks. Like our Inkin’ Memorial winner. It’s the first win — and the first ink “above the fold,” and only the third blot of ink ever — for Annette Green of way-out-there rural Northern Virginia. Annette’s an Invite rookie; she scored her Fir Stink for her first ink this past May in this year’s foal- “breeding” contest: Great Dane x Who’s Out = Not To Be And she got her first magnet in Week 1180, in which you added a line to a line in one of that week’s comic strips: “ Is the hour up? I’m about to explode!” (”Baby Blues”) “I’m sorry, Secretary Clinton, but your opponent insisted there be no ‘disgusting’ bathroom breaks allowed during the debate.” Second place, on the other hand, goes to the wildly Invite-successful Duncan Stevens — whom we’ll be calling Dunkin’ Stevens for the remainder of the week. Robyn Carlson was a runner-up for the first time just a few weeks ago in Week 1180, but wished she had received the “LOVE*LOSER” mug rather than the “Brain on Mugs” mug. (People, if you’re a runner-up and want a particular prize, e-mail me within a couple of days.) “I will just have to keep trying for the other one,” Robyn said. Ding! This is Robyn’s 15th ink since her Week 1026 debut. Loser mug it is. But it’s a venerable veteran filling out the Losers’ Circle: Howard Walderman has been getting Invite ink since Week 112 212 — most of them via handwritten, snail-mailed entries; Howard didn’t get himself a computer until just a few years ago. But he’s still scored 160 blots of ink. *What Doug dug: * Doug Norwood agreed with me on the winner and second place, and also “laughed ruefully at “If Hillary Clinton were more honest, it would prove she really is willing to try anything to get elected” (John Hutchins) and “If police were more honest, they would charge people with ‘asking for a badge number’ rather than ‘resisting arrest’ ” (Chris Doyle). *NEXT WEEK: WHAT’S THE BAG IDEA? * We ran out of our Whole Fools design of our Grossery Bag for runners-up, and I’ve been given the go-ahead to order 50 in a new design. My plan is to use yet another runner-up or honorable mention from our bag-idea contest, Week 964, but I’ll entertain other suggestions within the next couple of days via email. The design will be on one side of a white bag and can be in full color. It will include the Washington Post masthead logo and will also say “The Style Invitational.” As always, Bob Staake will design it. (Once I run out of mugs, by the way — I have about 15 left — it’ll be just bags for runners-up for the rest of 2016.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1189, published August 21, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1189: Getting a jump on the Limerixicon The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results If your limerick is just good enough for second place, you score an antique book by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who penned not only “it was a dark and stormy night” but also “the pen is mightier than the sword.” (Henry William Pickersgill (not for The Washington Post)) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 18, 2016 A couple of eagle-eyed Losers got a bit of a head start on this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1189. A couple of days ago, in preparation for our annual Limerixicon, I updated “Get Your ’Rick Rolling,” my don’t-say-I-didn’t-tell-you guide to what I’m looking for in a limerick. I also created the week’s contest entry form and tested it. And sure enough, on Tuesday a couple of Losers let me know they’d discovered the guide and form already online. Oops. But this is a very small oops, compared with some of my more impressive blunders (links not available). An oopslet. An oop. Because: ● Our Limerixicon has run every August, one week or another, since 2004. It was going to be either this week or next. ● The home page of OEDILF.com , the forever-in-progress limerick dictionary that we’re hopefully going to be enhancing in a few weeks, says: “We are currently accepting submissions based on words beginning with the letters Aa- through Ga-.” Given that the Limerixicon’s sliver of the alphabet is always the section after what’s invited at the time, you might have figured we wouldn’t be asking for gb-, gc- or gd- words. ● And most important, this contest isn’t in any way — and has never been — a race. And the entry window has expanded significantly: For many years, the Invite came out on Sunday, even when it finally went online, and entries were due two Mondays afterward. But the Monday deadline stayed in effect when the contest moved to Saturdays, and then when we started publishing it online on Saturday, then Friday, then late Thursday, and now on Thursday around noon. So now you have 11.5 days to send me stuff. And if someone else has 13.5 days? So what? But yes, in the future, I won’t get these tasks out of the way early. For this week’s example of a limerick featuring a “ge-” word, I combed through our dozen years of previous Limerixicons. Good news: Very few of them contained ge- words other than “get.” And if you’re going to enter a limerick featuring “get,” you’ll have to use it prominently, not as in, say, “get out.” At the very least, it should be accented when read out loud. Here are some (most, actually) of the other ge- limericks I found in previous contests , both Limerixicons and others. If these, along with the Get Your ’Rick Rolling guide, still leave you with questions about limericks — or if you just cannot get enough of them — go to Elden Carnahan’s basically-Loser-porn Master Contest List and search on “limerick”; then click on the*results* of that week number, usually four weeks down. A cheeky young *geek* named O’Malley Had a tendency sometimes to dally While fixing computers For clients from Hooters, Implanted in Silicone Valley.*(Beverley Sharp, da- words, 2008)* Mr. Waters? A call on the line, With a *gender* I just can’t define. Someone born long ago To an actor you know — It’s Chianti, the fruit of Divine.*(Mike Turniansky, di- words, 2009)* Computers are great, I’ll agree, I need technical help, though, you see; And through each passing year, As new options appear, I find that it’s all *geek* to me.*(Mae Scanlan, in a 2010 contest for a limerick including one of a half-dozen given lines, in this case Line 3)* A dozen? But why? What forecloses One less? Still, what everyone knows is You’re scarcely a *gent* If you only present Just eleven long-stemmed perfect roses.*(Robert Schechter, 2011, ea- through el-)* Caltech’s a big deal on TV, And its physicist-nerds are the key. “The Big Bang Theory” speaks In the language of geeks: PhD = BMOC.*(Chris Doyle, in a 2012 contest for limericks about movies, TV shows, etc. Actually, the emphases in Line 3 are pretty much of a stretch; had that not-really-an-anapest appeared in Line 1 or 2, this limerick wouldn’t have worked)* My friend’s a gastronomy *geek,* But my own needs are simple and meek: Pâté and champagne Are too fancy. Just plain Peas and hominy’s all that I seek.*(Jon Gearhart, last year’s ga- contest)* *FREUDIAN QUIPS*: THE INK BLOTS OF WEEK 1185* *(A non-inking headline by Chris Doyle)* At first glance (and a few thereafter) some of the five ink blots we asked you to describe in Week 1185 seemed rather similar and perhaps not too fruitful. But — especially once I decided not to be so particular and literal about every little detail (but why would a frog have wings?) — I ended up with a short­list of more than 80 entries from the pool of 1,500, 40 of which got ink this week. (The other 40, of course, included yours.) Not surprisingly, there were many similar entries for a particular blot; lots of pandas in Blot 2, Cheshire cats in 3, Melania in 4. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial for Hildy Zampella, and just the 15th blot of ink overall — but that’s only because she didn’t start Inviting until Week 1140; lately her name has been showing up in the results more often than not. With the combination of her humor and her great name, I predict that she’s soon going to have people meet her and say, “Oh! Style Invitational!” The second-place finisher, David Franks, first got Invite ink back in 2002, but chose to live an actual life (he’s recently moved from Wichita to deep-in-the-Ozarks Greenland, Ark.). It’s David’s 15th ink, third “above the fold.” If he’d prefer our new Grossery Bag (they’re being shipped as we speak) or one of our last Loser Mugs rather than the dragon*dino hat, I know someone who’d be happy to have the latter. Like Hildy, runner-up John Hutchins has been a Year 24 phenom; since first inking in Week 1152, he’s blotted up 28 inks. This is his second visit to the Losers’ Circle; the first time was a win. On the other hand, we have the indefatigable Dudley Thompson, staining himself 121 times since his debut in Week 171 — 1996 — with five wins and 11 runners-up in between. *Kinkblots*: The unprintables from Week 1185* *(By Jeff Contompasis, who even sends in headings for the Unprintables section)* I said*I* wouldn’t psychoanalyze people from their blot interpretations. I didn’t say the readers wouldn’t. Blot 3: Olive Oyl being pleasured by a bishop with pimples on his posterior. (Ed Edwards) Blot 3, upside down: Cartman with Devil horns going down on Connie Conehead, lightning bolts and smoke erupting from his ears. (Jon Gearhart) Blot 4: The IEUD had serious side effects. (Dudley Thompson) Ewww. *FUTURE LOSER FOOD CONSUMPTION* Next weekend the Royal Consort and I are headed up to Pittsburgh for this year’s Loserfest; I think there will be 14 assorted Losers and hangers-on tagging along after the intrepid Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson on four days of activities . interspersed with food-, food- and food-punctuated activities. I won’t be able to make it to next Loser brunch, Sept. 18 at Chadwicks in Old Town Alexandria, but will try to make the Oct. 16 one up in Columbia, Md. I recommend both venues. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” ====================================================================== WEEK 1190, published August 28, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1190: The Madden crowd Remembering Mary Ann Madden, the (unwitting) inspiration for The Style Invitational "William Shakespeare" anagrams to "Is A Sperm Like A Whale?" -- something explored in verse by Francis Heaney in his collection "Holy Tango of Literature," with marvelous illustrations by Richard Thompson. Richard died July 27 of Parkinson's disease; a public memorial service will be held Aug. 27. Details below. (Richard Thompson in "Holy Tango of Literature"*Emms Humor, 2004) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 25, 2016 In this week’s Style Invitational contest, I note that my predecessor, the Czar, was “a luckless entrant” to the New York Magazine Competition, the long-running contest that inspired him to rip it off many years later. What I hadn’t remembered until last night was that the single NYMag contest he entered was a Game of Dan Greenburg — the very one I chose for Week 1190 in memory of Mary Ann Madden, who founded the contest in 1969 and continued it, two out of each three weeks, until her retirement after No. 973 in 2000. As Mr. Czar recounted in his first go at this contest, in July 2000: “As a youth, the Czar assiduously read the New York Magazine Competition, and even entered once. It was a contest, often repeated, in which the reader was to create a list of 25 names [actually fewer], each linked in some way to the name before, ending with the first name on the list. The young Czar’s entry included the link ‘U.S. Grant*Ford Foundation,’ which he considered very clever and which in fact appeared in print, but attributed to someone else. On that day, at the age of 19, choking on bile, the Czar vowed that someday he would seize control of the feature pages of a major American newspaper and start a contest of his own in which he was free to misattribute entries, too.” That contest was in honor of Mary Ann’s retirement. And we honor her again, after her death July 25 at age 82. According to a fascinating New York Times obit and New York Magazine’s own appreciation , Madden got her job at the almost-new magazine on the recommendation of her good friend Stephen Sondheim; often she gave ink to other pals in the New York artsy scene, including Mike Nichols, David Mamet and David Halberstam, along with less famous but probably more clever wordsmiths -- notably including Chris Doyle, who was such a mainstay that he’s cited in the NYMag appreciation. Chris tells me that it was common practice to enter the contest under multiple names to get around the magazine’s one-entry-per-contest rule -- a practice that Madden chose not to notice -- so he’s actually even a bigger presence in the NYMag archives than we can see. But it was news to me that, as the appreciation notes, Madden not only edited the entries to improve them, but she’d actually write entries herself under assumed names, such as “Grace Katz” (she had a cat named Grace). The Czar and Empress readily acknowledge editing entries -- our rules note this -- but we don’t make up fake entries or use fake names. Maybe it’s the difference between magazines and newspapers. The Empress is scheduled to be meeting up this way on Friday afternoon with some other Losers in this year's Loserfest in Pittsburgh. It’s called Knockerball; hope they're not too greatly bent on revenge for ink-robbery. (Christine Hochkeppel*telegram.com ) (I should note that the New York Magazine Competition wasrecently revived , but in a half-assed fashion: it’s only online, it credits only user names and Twitter handles, and the rules say that the unnamed judges will give preference to get the most Likes and retweets. Which conveniently feature the magazine’s hashtag. ) You can find replicas of many of the Mary Ann contests online, mostly through Google Books. Including No. 774 (September 1993), which happened to use this example for one of its Game of Dan Greenburg contests: *Hillary Clinton, Wonder Woman, Dorothy Michaels, “Tootsie,” Jessica Lange, Dr. Sam Sheppard, F. Lee Bailey, George Bailey, Donna Reed, Hillary Clinton. * As usual, Madden didn’t explain the links, which would be: Dorothy Michaels is the character Dustin Hoffman creates in the movie “Tootsie,” who becomes a soap opera star; Hoffman’s costar, Jessica Lange, is married to actor-playwright Sam Shepard. Dr. Sam Sheppard was the subject of a celebrated 1950s murder case that inspired the TV series “The Fugitive”; Sheppard’s lawyer was F. Lee Bailey. George Bailey was James Stewart’s character in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which also starred Donna Reed. As for Donna Reed to Hillary Clinton? Well, except that both were blond Midwesterners who played the role of a feisty but loyal wife, I don’t know. If there’s a more specific link you can think of, let me know. Did Hillary once say she was no “Donna Reed” stereotypical ’50s homemaker? I can’t find a quote like that. But the real problem I have with the Hillary-Hillary chain above is that none of the links is all that funny. Now lLet’s contrast these with the top winners of the Invitational’s George W. Bush-George W. Bush chain from Week 732 (2007), which called for 25-name strings; sometimes I excerpted the best parts: Fourth place: . . . . Alvin & the Chipmunks, Dave Saville, “The Barber of Seville,” Beverly Sills, Beverly Hills, “The Beverly Hillbillies,” Jethro Bodine, George W. Bush. (Robert Elwood) Third place: George W. Bush, Bush’s Baked Beans, Washington Gas, Gazprom, Putin, Stalin, Larry Craig, Idaho, Sen. David Vitter, Sen. Mary Landrieu, Moon Landrieu, MoonPie, “Brownie,” “Turd Blossom,” “Scooter,” Libby’s canned fruit, Mark Foley . . . (Larry Yungk) Second place: George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Valerie Plame, Scooter Libby, Pinocchio, Cyrano de Bergerac, Roxanne, Sting, Bea Arthur, Betty White, Barry White, Isaac Hayes, Chef, Rachael Ray, Martha Stewart, Ken Lay, Barbie, Skipper, Ginger, Geri Halliwell, Victoria Beckham, David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane, Butthead, George W. Bush. (Laurie Brink) And the Winner of the Inker: George W. Bush, Jenna Bush, the Jena 6, James VI, Stuart Little, Mr. Big, God, Chuck Norris, Chuck Taylors, Keds, K-Fed, Britney Spears, William the Conqueror, Norman Mailer, Neil Postman, Will Wright, SimCity, Phil Simms, Disney World, Orlando Bloom, Legolas, Jenna Elfman, the Dharma Initiative, “Lost,” George W. Bush. (Danny Bravman) So this time: Not so long as the above, but with similarly clever and funny links. Like that amazing Britney Spears* William the Conqueror*Norman Mailer*Neil Postman*Will Wright run in Danny Bravman’s entry. I haven’t decided how much explanation we’ll end up giving to readers — somewhere between nothing and everything, I predict. But because I spent so much time last time contacting Losers and asking what the heck they were getting at, this time I’m asking for that up front. Just put them at least a line beneath the entry, so I can see if I can get it without being told. (Yes, there have been times when I didn’t get an entry, but acknowledged upon explanation that I should have, and dang, yeah, that’s pretty good.) This time there’s a new requirement — one I lifted straight from a Dan Greenburg contest: The string of names must contain one (and only one) title. A title*character,* however, is not a title. “Moby-Dick”: a title. Moby-Dick: a character. But the “no more than 15” limit does indeed mean that you may send me shorter chains. “Contrasting names”? I’ll leave that to you to interpret intelligently. Mary Ann Madden, by the way, was not a big fan of The Style Invitational, which began in 1993, seven years before she retired: Despite the Czar’s many credits to her contest, she told one of her contestants (who’s also a regular Loser) that she resented how the Czar had “arrogated” her shtick. *STOOL PEERS (LOSER POETS)*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1186* *(*Non-inking headline suggestion from Kevin Dopart)* Here was a contest that far succeeded my expectations: A contest to anagram a name and then write a poem about the result? It would be perfect for a literary magazine, sure, but what about a humor contest aimed at people who quite likely hadn’t studied poetry since high school? No prob. I modeled Week 1186 on the marvelous “Holy Tango of Literature” by Francis Heaney (who unfortunately didn’t enter this week’s contest). Heaney did in his book what many of this week’s entrants did: anagrammed the name of a poet or playwright, then used the resulting anagram as the subject of a parody of that writer’s work (Heaney includes scenes from plays). I had broadened the contest to allow for an anagram of anyone, since there aren’t all that many poets whom Most People Out There are familiar with. But as you can see from this week’s inking entries, the poet*parody model worked in many cases. (Not in all: Robert Frost, yes; Robert Service, no.) There were far too many excellent poems than I could use; I invite you to post your “noinks” on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. I bought myself a copy of “Holy Tango,” and you should get one, too. It’s out of print but available super-cheap on Amazon . The parodies are consistently brilliant, and there’s an enormous bonus: Throughout the book are gorgeously witty pen-and-ink caricatures of the poets, in the contexts of the parodies, by the great Richard Thompson, like the one atop this column. Richard died a month ago at age 58 from Parkinson’s complications; information about a memorial service this Saturday are below. This week’s results — as most every week’s do these days — focus on the presidential campaign circus, balanced by others in the Meanwhile, Life Goes On department. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial -- but likely not the last -- for Jesse Frankovich, who’s been inking up the joint practically every week for several months since he plunged into Loserdom after a few years of occasional toe-dips. Jesse is a renowned anagram whiz, but it’s clear that he’s a genuine Loserbard as well. Brendan Beary is a published real-life poet, as are fellow inkers Robert Schechter, Frank Osen, Melissa Balmain and possibly others this week. Danielle Nowlin continues to shine in everything the Invite throws at her. The novel member of the Losers’ Circle this week is Ray Gallucci, who gets just his seventh blot of ink -- and his first “above the fold” -- with his exasperated view of this year’s choices. There were a number of hilariously on-target (or ironic) anagrams that weren’t quite matched by the poems themselves. They include: Ruin Be Precise* Reince Priebus TD Arm Boy* Tom Brady Stomach Cleaner* Clarence Thomas Wonder Trash*Howard Stern Miserable Tit Junk*Justin Timberlake Try Eel Sperm*Meryl Streep Old West Action*Clint Eastwood (2 people) Random Advice*David Cameron Britney Spears* Presbyterians *NOW, YA!* NO WAY: THE UNPRINTABLES* Robert Schechter’s “Rectal Noun” for Ann Coulter, and Jesse Frankovich’s “Aw, I Like Her Ample Ass” get real Invite ink (though not in the print paper), but there were others that I think we should feature only here: Ashen Dong* Ogden Nash An ashen dong Is seldom long As the stud Aflood with blood. (oh, it’s by Jesse again!) And another Jesse! Cusser’s To-Do* Doctor Seuss Not on a train! I’d said I’ll pass! Not in a car! Sam! Kiss my a$$! I would not, could not, in a box. I’d rather suck a dozen c****! Not in a house, you stupid git! Not with a mouse. They taste like $#:+! I will not eat them here or there. I’d f***ing hate them anywhere! I do not like green eggs and ham! I do not like them, dammit, Sam. *REMEMBERING RICHARD THOMPSON* There’s a public service this Saturday afternoon downtown at the National Press Club. I’m so sorry I can’t be there. (I’ll be in Pittsburgh.) Please see details here. htttp:**richardspooralmanac.blogspot.com* --- Well, we’re off to Pittsburgh to join a dozen Losers at this year’s Loserfest trip. The Royal Consort drives, I judge entries in the car. I hope to post photos on Facebook of me in a giant clear plastic marshmallow, crashing into similar rolling dorks. ====================================================================== WEEK 1191, published September 4, 2016 The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results L-hands — created by Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson — mark the spot of Loserfest 2016 in Pittsburgh. That’s the Empress going natural-hand, behind Ann Martin in the front. Notes on Loserfest below. (Legends of Pittsburgh) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 1, 2016 Yay, my house has power today! (Last Thursday, while I was writing the Conversational, my electricity went out for no discernible reason, forcing me to decamp to McDonald’s with my laptop and race my battery until a tall person — watching 5-foot-1 me tiptoe futilely on a windowsill — reached a ceiling outlet for me.) Still, even with the little power-plug icon smiling at me from my taskbar, I’m still going to conserve energy (mental, my own) and offer guidance on Week 1191, our 14th iteration (including variations) of the Mess With Our Heads contest, by pointing you back to the Week 1141 Style Conversational , from last September. In that column I prattle on about offer wise counsel and fascinating reminiscences on: * What counts as a headline for this contest * What counts as a “significant part” of a headline * How to show me the headline you’re using * How to consider capitalization * The very first bank head contest and the top winners. Plus a confusing graphic! And here are the still-making-me-laugh results of that Week 1141 contest . Don’t use the same jokes. *IMPORTANT FICKLE-EMPRESS UPDATE FOR WEEK 1190! * Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson just needs a miter and scepter as he sits in the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning. (Mark Holt) Nanoseconds after I posted the Week 1190 name chain contest, Losers started asking me for a clarification: When I said the chain must be “including one title of a work,” did that mean*at least* one title or*only* one title? I immediately answered: Only one. It wasn’t until days later that it finally sank in that*the example for the contest*contained two names within quotes: “Anchors Aweigh” and “Naked Cowboy.” (It was my mistake in transcribing Loser Sandra Hull’s example; Naked Cowboy is a guy, not a work.) And so I am — with six days left of the contest, since the deadline is a Labor Day-extended Sept. 6 — changing my call, and will now take chains that have two or more titles. And while there can’t be*that* many of you for this time-consuming contest: *If you have already sent the maxi* *mum 25 entries for this contest, you may send as many as 25 more.; it is my penance. * *HOW LOSERY CAN YOU GET? YOU CAN STILL MANAGE TO ENTER THE WRONG CONTEST!* I’d thought that with our move to submitting entries through the Internet, I’d finally solved the problem of people putting the wrong week number on their entries, which then weren’t seen till too late: Now, each Invitational contest contains a link to a unique Web address; this week, for instance, contains this link , which goes to the form for Week 1191, and nowhere else. And the link to bit.ly*enter-invite-1187 goes to, yup, the form for Week 1187, a neologism contest. The form even has a giant headline on it with the week number AND the title of the contest. And where did 323-time Loser Craig Dykstra enter his funny and well-crafted full-length parody of “Jabberwocky” for Week 1186? Yup, right onto the form labeled “Style Invitational Week 1187: Just Drop It, Okay? A neologism contest.” I just saw it a few days ago, amid the stack of neologisms, the best of which appear today. The most Loserly Loserfest activity: Knockerball, in which you squeeze yourself into a plastic ball, then crash into other people. This proved not the gentle-bouncy experience we had expected. But we had the best costume since the "SNL" Bees. As Craig reflects ruefully: “As they say, nothing is idiot-proof; the best you can hope for is idiot-resistant.” Loser. Yes, I could prevent this by not creating the easy-to-predict URL that I do each week. But it’s very useful for me to do it this way, and we do need an easy-to-type URL for the print Invite. So you’re just going to have to submit your entries while you are at least partially awake. *Another little problem with the entry form: * By request of a number of Losers, the address field lets you copy your whole address in, rather than the street in one field, the town in another, etc. However: *This means that auto-fill will probably mess up your address*; I end up only with your street address, no town or Zip code. So if you’re using auto-fill, please check the address field to make sure it’s all there. For this reason, I’ve had to look up a lot of your addresses when I’m mailing out prizes. Which means I know what your house looks like! Keep me out of your yard — give me your full address. (Nice house you have, by the way, though that crabgrass is starting to get out of hand near the mailbox.) *OUR WITS’ ENDS*: THE DROP-THE-LAST-LETTER NEOLOGISMS OF WEEK 1187 * (*Non-inking headline suggestion by Chris Doyle) The neologism contest I call Our Greatest Hit, one we’ve done several times over, and one of the contests that have been flying around the Internet since 1998, is to change a word by one letter — and that includes dropping a letter. And so the Week 1187 challenge, to drop the final letter of a word or phrase, is actually a subset of that one. But unless I missed noticing that one of this week’s inking entries already got ink in another contest, that proved no obstacle: I had one of the larger sets of entries that I’ve gotten for a neologism contest; there were at least 2,000 entries among the 257 Losers who entered; a whopping 35 of you got ink. And while this week’s Losers’ Circle features three Usual Suspects — it’s Danielle Nowlin’s ninth Inkin’ Memorial, and Mark Raffman and Matt Monitto blot up ink with so much regularity that they’re getting the Serutan endorsement — this week’s third runner-up is a First Offender: that’s Daniel Galef with his sarcastic “World Wide We.” I was hoping to hear more soon from Daniel — and sure enough, just yesterday afternoon I got the link to the new Lighten Up Online magazine, a British light-verse quarterly in which Loserbards regularly get ink (well, sometimes it’s more that the Lighten Up folks get the occasional Invite ink). And there, along with the poems by Invite stars Mae Scanlan and Edmund Conti and Melissa Balmain and Brian Allgar, there was Daniel channeling classic Ogden Nash, with couplets of absurdly long lines rhyming (often creatively) with short ones. Here’s the opening to his “Don’t Act Now” : *“Those who claim that the opportunity to chase your dreams is a blessing have obviously been issued a defective edition of the dictionary in which, possibly among several other minor errors, the definition of the word ‘blessing ‘ has been substituted for that of the word ‘curse’;** After all, time changes things, for the worse:** But, thankfully, on a note you will if you haven’t already, or won’t if it’s too late, find discordant,** With time, you’ll see, dreams become less impordant.* Along with the nifty neologism*definition combos that got ink today, I also marked about 20 great terms whose descriptions didn’t quite measure up. Perhaps I’ll put them up to the minds of the crowd in a future contest, as we’ve done before. (I also had some great no-inking anagrams last week that deserve another go as sources for poems.) *What Doug Dug:* Ace copy editor Doug Norwood, who read the column yesterday, also loved Danielle’s deft “Obamacar” analogy. He also singled out Kevin Tingley’s “Billie Jean Kin” (maybe I should have linked to these lyrics ) Sylvia Betts’s “finge,” Mike Gips’s “blunderbus,” Josh Feldblyum’s “heavy meta” and Lawrence McGuire’s “beaten Pat.” *YINS MISSED SOME FUN IN PITTSBURGH: LOSERFEST 2016* Though putting out last week’s Invite*Convo caused me to miss the first day, I’m still winding down from the breakneck (well scrape-knee) weekend with a dozen Losers and auxiliaries in downtown Pittsburgh and several outlying areas. After several years AWOL, Kyle Hendrickson (aided by Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan) once again donned the self-awarded miter of Loserfest Pope, organizing four days of morning-to-night activities, many of them not on the typical guided tour. Craziest was the game of Knockerball (see the third photo down), in which we quickly came to terms with the fact that we were no longer teenagers. But we also got a private tour of an avant-garde art gallery featuringmind-blowing light effects; a chance to make blown-glass ornaments and other keepsakes with a professional glass artist in his studio ; a sketch*improv show by a touring Second City troupe; a visit to a fabulously bizarre bicycle collection ; a tour of the Nationality Rooms at the University of Pittsburgh; one of those amphibious tours, in which both Kyle and Cheryl Davis got to drive the boat; a visit to Fallingwater; more stuff I forgot; a night of board games; plus a LOT of eating. I am deeply indebted to the Royal Consort, who drove the car up and back, enabling me to work (partially) through a yuge stack of Invite entries. See the photo album on Facebook for lots more evidence. Where next year? People were talking about Iceland, but it will be somewhere more budget-friendly. Closer than Pittsburgh would be fine. Kyle is happy to hear suggestions. *BACK TO THE BRUNCHES: SEPT. 18, CHADWICKS, OLD TOWN ALEXANDRIA* I was planning for this one but I can’t make it after all; however, it’s always been a fun and conveniently located Loser Brunch spot. It’s at noon. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org, the Losers’ website; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” Meanwhile, let’s hope that Hermine mines her own business and books it out to sea. ====================================================================== WEEK 1192, published September 11, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1192: Ask Backwards, our Trebekin’ call The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest and results The Empress's first Ask Backwards, but the Invite's 21st. Back when we used to present them in a space-eating "Jeopardy!"-style grid. (By Bob Staake for The Washington Post, 2004) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 8, 2016 Talk about your Old Reliables. If you’re trying to make a new contest work, and failing, hey, you can always come up with 12 or 15 random silly phrases and, four weeks later, have plenty of good ink. It’s alchemy. And I’m sure Week 1192 of The Style Invitational will be no different. The Czar introduced the Ask Backwards contest in Week 24 (August 1993); he didn’t credit anyone’s suggestion, so I assume it was his own idea. He always likened it to “Jeopardy!,” since entries have to be in the form of a question; Bob Staake’s caricature of Alex Trebek was used repeatedly. But really it’s more like the recurring “Carnac the Magnificent” bits that Johnny Carson used to do on his show, with help from Ed McMahon, and Bob did a Carnac caricature for Week 995 . The Czar Asked Backward more than 20 times, sometimes only 10 or 12 weeks apart. I’ve kept it closer to once a year, 40 to 50 weeks apart, though once I had two in 28 weeks, and once skipped almost two years. Here’s a sampling of winners and runners-up from some of the Invites from the Invite’s first few years. Often, just as they are this year, the “answers” often play off current headlines, which tend to be ephemeral issues of the day (or, as we’d call them now, trending topics). So some of the winners that I’m not sharing were jokes about Marv Albert or Darva Conger or something Madeleine Albright said that week. *Week 38, 1993:* Fifth Runner-Up: Answer: A Great Big Sucking Sound Question: What preceded the Big Bang? (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) *Week 60, 1994:*And the Winner of the terra-cotta Lawn Pig and Lawn Bunny: A. Stinkle. Q. What is the primary drawback of the Dick Gregory “all-asparagus” diet? (Bruce Evans, Washington) *Week 91, 1994:*And the winner of the Buzz Saw Clock: A. Spelling, Punctuation and Gas. Q. What are three things related to the use of a colon? (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) [Spelling is related to a colon?] *Week 111, 1995:*And the winner of the bedroom mood meter: A. The Hero, Robert McNamara. Q. If a big sandwich and Robert McNamara fell overboard, in which order should they be saved? (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) *Week 125, 1995:* Fourth runner-up: A. Here’s a hint: It’s yellow. Q. What is part of the last question on the West Virginia urologists’ licensing exam? (Gene Van Pelt, Verona, Va.) *Week 141, 1995:* Third Runner-Up: A. An Aspirin Tablet and Diana, Princess of Wales. Q. What are two bitter white things? (Anthony Cooper, Alexandria; Ellen Lamb, Washington) *Week 193, 1996:* First Runner-Up: A. Bagels and Logs. Q. What are the signs on the rest room doors at Murray’s World o’ Bagels? (Michael Koch, Potomac; Jacqueline Moore, Washington) *Week 214, 1997:* First Runner-Up: A. Larry, Curly and Moses Q. In the Bible, who are the Three Wise Guys? (Jerry Pannullo, Kensington) *Week 237, 1997:* Fifth Runner-Up: A. Hitler, Pol Pot, Satan and Marv. Q. What are four names you’ll never see followed by the word “Boulevard”? (David Ronka, Charlottesville) *Week 284, 1998:*Second Runner-Up: A. It’s About the Size of a Watermelon. Q. According to DoD-STD-9283, Sub-paragraph 4b, how big is a watermelon? (Barney Kaufman, Manassas) *Week 305, 1999:* First Runner-Up: A. A Llama, a Thermometer but not Elizabeth Dole. . Q. What are some things that can climb with a man sitting on them? (Susan Reese, Arlington) *Week 340, 2000:* And the winner of the Libyan wall hangings: A. Lucy in the Sky With Diapers. Q. Q. What song actually does contain the lyric “The girl with colitis goes by”? (Sandra Hull, Arlington) Hey, we got a million of ’em. Well, maybe a thousand. For as much further inspiration as you like, go to Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org , and search on “backward.” See the week number on the left side of the table, then click on the same number on the right side, three or four weeks down, for a link to that week’s results. *THE PITH-ING MATCH* OF WEEK 1188* (*An excellent but unprintable headline by Danielle Nowlin; she also offered “Pith Poor” for the honorable mentions, and I was tempted) Week 1188 — the challenge to “explain some concept or philosophy” in 100 or fewer one-syllable words — was more fun to judge than I’d expected. The wording in the better entries wasn’t overly contrived, and I usually could get the point of those that weren’t accompanied with titles. I almost missed noticing that “orange” and “ugly” (in separate entries) had two syllables; I hope we’re good and monosyllabic now. While I was fairly expansive on what a concept or philosophy was, I didn’t think it encompassed rewriting a poem in one-syllable words, or telling an old joke. Not surprisingly, a lot of people wrote about Donald Trump (some explanations got ink); the thing is that Trump himself tends to be just as simplistic. Some people sacrificed accuracy for the sake of staying short and short-worded: One explanation of football included: “If the ball goes ten yards, that’s a down. They get four of those.” Because of length, just 13 entries made the print Invitational; I added a few more online (sorry, Kevin Dopart: your newsprint-only admirers miss both your inking entries the week). I think we have an amusing variety of topics and styles, though. Certainly different from all the entries was Hildy Zampella’s logic about being the parent of a teenager. Hildy didn’t get her first blot of ink until Week 1140, and she’s already had two wins and a runner-up (among 17 blots of ink). And it’s another newbie, Ed Sobansky, who gets his first ink “above the fold” with his snark against libertarianism; that entry plus his honorable mention about Miranda rights (Ed is a retired public defender). First runner-up Rob Cohen gets Ink 53 (and 54) with his explanation of baseball to one Jacques, plus his explication of The Style Invitational to a flummoxed Jeff Bezos (I know of no evidence that The Post’s Seattle-based owner has any idea we exist). And Melissa Balmain was thrilled that Bob Staake chose to illustrate her poem about the Olympics with a picture of fencers; the Invitational went up online a couple of hours ago, and Melissa wrote to me that her grandfather had actually been a member of the Olympic fencing team “many moons ago and had to drop out because of blood poisoning in his thumb.” *What Doug Dug: * Ace copy editor Doug Norwood, who read this week’s Invite, chose as his faves both Melissa’s poem and the birds-and-the-bees entry I credited to both Ward Kay and Duncan Stevens (mostly the first half was Ward’s, the second half Duncan’s). *A BRUNCH A WEEK FROM THIS SUN DAY! * (Sorry, I’m still single-syllabilizing things.) It’s Loser Brunch No. 190, on Sept. 18 at noon at Chadwicks in Old Town Alexandria near the river. I have to be downtown at 1, so I won’t be able to be there, but it’s a fun spot and there’s usually free parking to be found within a few blocks. RSVP to Elden at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). ====================================================================== WEEK 1193, published September 18, 2016 The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s results, the new contest and more The first time we did this contest (dredged up from microfilm). The results of that contest appear below. (Cartoon by Bob Staake for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 15, 2016 After judging Style Invitational Week 1189 over the past week or so, I now know a few more things than I used to: — There’s something calledgeloscopy , which is predicting the future with the tone of a person’s laughter. — There a great term called a gedankenexperiment, which is an experiment you work out only in your mind (saves on all those pesky lab costs). Einstein had the mind for this sort of thing; your own results may vary. — There is a hybrid goat-sheep calleda geep (either a natural breeding or through futzing with embryos). An inside page of “Bad Little Children’s Books,” a ollection of “offensively tweaked” covers of old children’s books. This book has a special connection to the Invite that I may not reveal. (Abrams Image, 2016 ) — The giant, phallic-looking clam called a geoduck is pronounced “gooey-duck.” — In Britain, when people use the Hebrew word “Shabbat” to refer to the Jewish Sabbath, they don’t use the Hebrew pronunciation “sha-BOTT” as Americans do; instead, they say “sha-BAT” to rhyme it with “cat,” or sometimes “Shabbit” to rhyme with “rabbit.” (British dictionaries seem to disagree on this. What I don’t get is why Britons, if they want to use their own pronunciation, don’t just use the English word “Sabbath.” Another option is the Yiddish “Shabbos,” pronounced SHAH-bus.) — Oh yeah, one more: Many, many people do not know* cannot figure out the basic rules for limerick rhyme and meter, even with my handy-dandy “Get Your ’Rick Rolling” guide. First, rhyme. I guess it’s not intuitive that a “perfect rhyme” has vowels and consonants that match exactly, differing only in the syllable’s first consonant, and that it’s the last*accented* syllable of the line that does the rhyming (the explanation makes this so much harder!). Witness: A convict who swears he is Irish, When asked to select his final dish ... And: cat* nap; gelatinous*unanimous; dispassion* assassin; meddled*pedals*reveled; Eyes met* sneeze at; Florence* insurance; safe* chaise; viable* fable; lady* navy; genuine* nine; the best* no contest ; rhetoric* heretic; silhouettes* dress; trouble*befuddled; delish* Yiddish; and gelato* big toe. . And then there’s rhythm. I thought I had a foolproof explanation with my “hickory-dickory-dock” trick. But try hickorying to: My love of wine is genuine Since I first crossed the river Rhine. I’ll think of something clearer by next year. Meanwhile, of course I received plenty of lims that were not just structurally flawless, but were also creative and clever and funny and readable and that even had something to say, or a joke to tell. I published 18 limericks in the paper and eight more online, but there were plenty of other inkworthies (though perhaps not as many as in some years). Three of the four Losers’ Circle winners this week have been inking up the joint all the time recently, especially with poems: It’s the eighth win for Melissa Balmain, and Matt Monitto and Jesse Frankovich have been cleaning up with disturbing regularity as well. But Joe Neff’s clever “gecko” verse , which links the lizard’s ability to leave its tail (and not its body) in an attacker’s mouth to “saving 15 percent ,” marks the first appearance “above the fold” for Joe Neff. Joe’s second place brings him to 23 blots of Invite ink over the years; he’s dropped in on Loserland now and again since all the way back in Week 357. *What Doug Dug: * Ace copy editor Doug Norwood agreed with my first- and second-place picks, and he also gave a shout-out to Nan Reiner’s zing at Anthony Weiner, who found himself back in the news just in time for a “genital” limerick. Nan’s verse does make the print edition; I wanted to run it just above Mae Scanlan’s limerick about the not-quite-genteel Style Invitational. (For the unprintables, see the end of this column.) *THE COVER STORY: HIS WEEK’S SECOND PRIZE* I went through some discussion with this week’s prize donor on how best to describe the donor’s relationship with Arthur C. Gackley, the long-dead — but surprisingly active on Facebook — author and artist of this week’s second prize, the brand-new book “Bad Little Children’s Books.” Let’s just say that this book bears a special kinship with The Style Invitational; for the real story, I’ll send you tothis link here . *IT JUST KEEPS GETTING VERSE: NOW WE’VE GOT POEDS — WEEK 1193 * I’m always on the lookout for verse forms that might work as an Invite contest. And sometimes it pays not to look far at all. Proto-Loser Elden Carnahan, Keeper of the Master Contest List, also has compiled a number of “theme” pages listing links to all the horse name contests, all the caption contests, contests about movies, and many more. And so I called up thePoetry page and scrolled down. And seven items down the list, sitting quietly with perhaps a slight forlorn tremble, ignored for two decades, was the Poed. A look at the results (see below) didn’t blow me away, but the Loser Community now has a lot more Verse Aces (not to be confused with Versaces, which is not what these people tend to wear, in my experience). In addition to the examples in the picture above that’s the introduction to Week 172 — the Czar tells me he can’t remember whether it was he or Mr. Ed who wrote them, although the Unitas one “sounds like me” — here are the results to the first Poedtry contest: Note that many of the six-syllable words are made up; that’s fine with me this time as well. (I do note, though, a couple of violations I wouldn’t bend the rules for.) *Okay, here’s the Czar talking, introducing the results:* Very hard contest. Much unseemly grousing and whining from regular entrants. Apparently, these individuals feel licensed to complain just because they have become virtually full-time employees of The Washington Post, albeit ones paid entirely in T-shirts, bumper stickers and the occasional Remote Controlled Fart Machine. Our favorite whine came from William Foster of Rockville, who finds us dreadfully lowbrow. William writes in iambic pentameter: ’Tis clear, Style Invitational decides its winners from submissions worst in taste. And queer: Style Invitational derides the brain, and lives with things below the waist. Hey, pal. Live with this.And now to the Poeds: *Fourth Runner-Up:* The world needs a new word Meaning: chatting, smiling. Handsomely advising -- Stephanopoulizing! (David Smith, Greenbelt) *Third Runner-Up:* If wed now, she’d choose a hyphened, lengthy, awkward cognomen: Juliet Montague-Capulet. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) *Second Runner-Up:* How is it that, with Bill, Scandal eludes nation? Gennifer, Whitewater . . . Press-tidigitation? (Marcy Dilworth, Fairfax) *First Runner-Up:* If it’s 2 long 2 st8 Abridge, abbrev., trunc8. Acronym R&D, Washingtonology. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) And the winner of the vintage Jimmy Carter toilet paper: Mom, a Jew. Pop, a WASP. Easter, Pesach, Christmas. Communions, Tallises, Psychoanalysis. (Roger L. Browdy, Kensington) *Honorable Mentions:* Buy the toys and see the Disney summer movie. Marketing strategies? Quasimodalities. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Catch. Run. Bunt. Slide. Hit. Throw. Iron fellow’s agile. Orioles’ security? Supercalifragile. (Helen E. Gallant, Silver Spring) [No way does “security” have three syllables. Oops.] Can’t get your sleep at night? Torrid flashes awful? Estrogen prescription! Peri-menopausal. (Beryl Benderly, Washington) Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! Damnation! Damnation! Excommunication. (David M. Johnston, Chapel Hill, N.C.) Dreck Tex Mex -- good as sex Taco? Thanky mucho. Burrito? Whizbanga! Gimmeechimichanga. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) like e.e., i too shun elite upper cases. egotist inflation! capitalization. (Susan Reese, Arlington) Our lives are too laid back. Human strivings sated. Casual, lethargic. Californicated. (Sandra George, Washington) Pink or blue? He or she? Also factor rhesus. Resolving mystery -- Amniocentesis. (Lillian B. Broadwick, Monkton, Md.) Been there, seen it, done that. Jaded, jaundiced prism. Yadadda regatta. Existentialism. (Sandra George, Washington) Bring the child out o’ me. Tissue’s almost tearing. Physician! Incision! Episiotomy. (Sandra Hull, Arlington) [Yeow. No rhyme, in my book.] I must get rid of them: Endless Loser’s T-Shirts. Sellable? Tradable? Biodegradable? (David Smith, Greenbelt) *-- And Last:* Theear that no one reads , Filling unknown terrain. Close-guarded mystery Andsoitshallremain. (Carl Yaffe, Rockville) *BRUNCH THIS SUNDAY! * At Chadwicks in Old Town Alexandria at noon. I can’t be there but numerous people have RSVP’d. See “Our Social Engorgements” at NRARS.org to let Elden Carnahan know you’ll be coming. Next month: We’re up at the Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia, Md., on Oct. 16. I’m planning to go. *LIMERISQUE*: Unprintables from Week 1189* **Supplied just for this use by Jeff Contompasis* In keeping with limericks’ long tradition of bawdiness, quite a few I received would never pass muster with The Post’s Taste Police. Several of them were for “gerbil,” specifically the old and roundly unsubstantiated rumor that actor Richard Gere used to play with them in a not-very-nice way. I sneaked Frank Osen’s oblique no-names reference into the online Invitational, but I couldn’t use, say, this excellent one by Jesse Frankovich: Richard’s doctor, quite shocked, said, “Oh, dear! There’s a burrowing rodent in here! And to make matters worse, It won’t move in reverse — Seems the gerbil is stuck in this Gere.” Then we have the problem of taboo words in The Post; otherwise I’d at least have considered this one about geophagy, the compulsion to eat dirt: Geophagy: When as a child I’d eat clay and would drive my folks wild, Dad called me a sod And gave me a hod And he made me s--- bricks, neatly piled. (Dave East of Burton Latimer, Northamptonshire, England) ”And one more, this from — huh! (just looked it up) — Howard Walderman, the most gentlemanly of Losers: A fencer with large genitalia Told his wife “Oh, they never will fail ya.” He said, “ You can see — “It’s plain as can be — “I’ve two things with which to impale ya.” ====================================================================== WEEK 1194, published September 25, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1194: We’re chain-smoked! The Style Invitational Empress talks about this week’s new contest and results If we had had the room, and the time, and the skill, we could have run the results of the Week 1190 name chain contest as a graphic, like this one for Chris Doyle's Inkin' Memorial winner. (Inept collage by Pat Myers*The Washington Post) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 22, 2016 *(“We’re chain-smoked” was a non-inking suggestion by Danielle Nowlin for the Week 1190 honorable-mentions subhead)* I distinctly remember swearing after our last Style Invitational name-chain contest that I’d never do another one. But except for grudges and the like, I tend not to remember much stuff that happened nine years ago, and I have to put up 52 contests or so a year ... Actually, judging Week 1190 was fun, for the most part, because (and really, this is why I ran it) I knew I’d find plenty of ingenious and clever chains inthis week’s results. It helped a lot this time around that the chains had to have 15 names or fewer, rather than the exactly 25 of the previous Invite contests (this is better for readers as well, I think), and that I encouraged entrants to include explanations of connections they thought might be a bit subtle. Not everyone obliged, but I was grateful to those who did, because I was sometimes utterly flummoxed as I systematically read from name to name, checking off each one on a printout as a valid link, starring it if it was a clever one. Somehow, for example, I think Todd DeLap’s expectations of our knowledge and mental flexibility might have been a wee bit high for this one (though he did get ink with two other, less head-scratching chains): *Marilyn Monroe, Mahé Drysdale, Seychelles, Mary Anning, Peyton Manning, “Up”, Kate Upton, “Uptown Girl”, “Back in the U.S.S.R”, Mikhail Gorbachev, Darryl Strawberry, W.C. Fields, Elton John, Marilyn Monroe,* *Explanation: Monroe=Man Row=Olympic Rower Mahé Drysdale, Mahé is an island in the Seychelles, Mary Anning is the source of the “She sells sea shells by the sea shore” tongue twister (and was an impressive scientist! Her Wikipedia page is worth a read.), “Man Up” (or “Pay Up!”), Billy Joel recorded both “Uptown Girl” and a cover of “Back in the U.S.S.R”, Gorbachev had a strawberry birthmark, “Strawberry Fields”, WC*John, Elton John sang “Candle in the Wind” about Marilyn Monroe.* OHHHHH. ****As I mention in the introduction to this week’s results, this contest is the epitome of the fine line we have to draw with a lot of Invite humor: Jokes are often funnier when you don’t spell out the punchline, but let the reader spend a second or two to discover it in his own head,*but* if the reader can’t do that, for whatever reason, there’s no joke. I don’t expect that every reader will get every link in every entry; this is why I referred people to the top thread on theStyle Invitational Devotees page on Facebook, where, as I’m writing right now (a few minutes after posting a link to the Invite there), I’m certain that people are asking the crowd for explanations. Part of the challenge is that the links are on different levels. First, there’s one that connects the items merely because of a similarity of their names. Once you start thinking beyond that, it’s sometimes easy to miss that level entirely; I went to the Devotees page to ask for help on Nikola Tesla* Coca-Cola , and got all sorts or ruminations on pouring Coke on battery terminals and such, until someone pointed out niKOLA *coca-COLA. Then there are ones that connect the people’s actual qualities or accomplishments, which require actual knowledge of who they are. Where I added links in the results, they’re mostly to show readers that an actor played a certain character, or someone was married to someone else. (I know I didn’t add the links consistently; don’t take the presence or absence of a link to mean I thought it was either obscure or obvious.) In my book, the best name-chain clues are those in which you have to use the word in a different meaning to understand the link. I laughed out loud, for example, to Larry Yungk’s connection of the movie western “Red River” with Megyn Kelly. (His entry didn’t get ink because of a similarly clever but unfairly misleading link between ex-pitcher*current offensive person Curt Schilling and KKK.) A number of this week’s inking entries have such wordplay; Duncan Stevens’s “Tiny Bubbles”-Donald Trump made me giggle. I did not generally link to explanations for these; those will be your moments of discovery, and your biggest payoff in a contest that’s no doubt more fun to*do* than to read. (Another one: Beverley Sharp’s: “Camelot”* “Lawrence of Arabia.”) As always, I don’t penalize people for misspelling names — but wow, there were a*ton* of misspellings this week; I only hope I caught them all in this week’s inking entries. And once again — it’s been*eight years,* folks — people misspelled “Barack Obama.” There were also some links with inaccurate premises; For example, Mozart can’t link to “Die Fledermaus” (and then on to Deflategate), because “Fledermaus” was written not by Mozart, but about a century later by Johann Strauss Jr. (Adding a link of Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” since both are light operas with spoken dialogue, would have been valid but bleh.) A lot of people disregarded the instruction that all the elements in the chain be proper nouns, i.e., given names of someone or something. Hershey’s Kisses, proper noun; cotton candy, not. Victoria’s Secret, proper noun, Lacy Underthings, not, even if you capi­tal­ize it (although it*would* be a great name for a stripper). Once in a while I could simply turn a common noun into a proper noun as a movie title or something, but usually entries with common-noun links were doomed. I’m glad I changed my mind belatedly and let people use more than one title in their chains. I had put up that restriction to mirror the New York Magazine Competition rule I’d seen, to honor the memory of Mary Ann Madden, but that would have ruled out lots of great chains with no benefit. Keeping it to all names is different; a reader would sense that rule as an essential quality of the contest. Well, if anyone was wondering why this Chris Doyle guy is the highest-inking Loser in The Style Invitational’s history ... As usual, I assembled my list of winners and honorable mentions on Tuesday, still with no names attached, then searched through the submissions to see who’d written each one. And the winner is ... oh, it’s Chris. . How novel. And how about this one? And this one? And this one? Repeat up to 7, plus a couple that got trimmed from the final cut. This mark’s Chris’s*fifty-fourth* Invite win. And that’s since he migrated here in 2000 upon the retirement of ... the New York Magazine Competition. Understandably and thankfully, Chris is taking a pass on receiving any more Inkin’ Memorials, so our remaining Bobble-Lincs will last a little farther into January before we start with a different first-place trophy. It’s another Invitational Hall of Famer (or newest) in second place: Jeff Contompasis gets his 44th “above the fold” ink; that and an honorable mention put him at 526 blots. Hildy Zampella continues her rookie-phenomenality with her fourth trip to the Losers’ Circle and Inks 19 and 20, most of them in the past few months. And our fourth-place finisher is a welcome Blast From the Past: Sue Lin Chong last got Invite ink in 2012, but most of her 182 blots are from our first decade or so. We hope this isn’t just a quick drop-by from Sue Lin. Last, I did want to thank whoever it was who began the chain with Christian Grey and ended it with Pat Myers. Yes, I make you suffer, over and over — but you keep coming back for more, don’t you? Thwack. You love it. (I just looked it up — oh, it’s newbie Nathanael Dewhurst, up in Massachusetts. He doesn’t even know me!) *DISTRACTED DERIVING: THIS WEEK’S CONTEST* When Loser John O’Byrne sent me a scanned copy of New York Magazine’s results of its Competition 927 (he’s also been assiduously sending me links when he finds other NYMag results online) I went to Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List to see when the Invite had last asked for bogus derivations of words — and was a bit shocked to find that we never had. We did ask at least twice for explanations of where various phrases and expressions came from, but, it seems, never for individual words. (The Week 1046 winner, from Frank Osen: “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?” was actually an expression of surprise among ancient Greeks that Helen of Troy was so beautiful, since it was customary for the Greek queen to use her forehead to butt new vessels into the water.) I’ve uploaded thephoto of the NYM page on Flickr , which lets you click on the photo to enlarge it to a readable size. Most of those entries include dictionary-style abbreviations, for faux authenticity; I doubt that I’d run all the entries in that style; I’d rather the explanations be funny and easy to read rather than sounds-just-like-the-OED. If you can do both, though, more power to you. By the way, who won that New York Magazine contest? Why, it was Chris Doyle of Burke, Va.! Also getting ink in the contest, which had a one-entry-per-person rule: Karen Bracey, Chris’s wife. And Chris’s good friend (and one-ink Loser) Inger Pettygrove. We’re so happy to have Chris with us. And we have no problem crediting him over and over. ====================================================================== WEEK 1195, published October 2, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1195: More bank heads? It’s a no-brainer. The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results We’ve done Dan Quayle. We’ve done Sarah Palin. And now we have Gary “Duh” Johnson, inspiration for a trifecta of bank headlines this week. (Luke Sharrett*Bloomberg) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 29, 2016 Wow, a contest we’d never done before — and not just for movie titles. Early on in my Empress-ship, I was going to do a contest in which you altered a headline only with punctuation or capitalization, and I remember that the Czar, my predecessor, deemed it “impossibly nerdy and unfunny.” So, hmm, maybe that one sounds good, too. Doug Frank’s suggestion inhis Facebook post (which for some reason he shared on his own page, rather than that of the Style Invitational Devotees group, of which he’s a frequent and popular participant) yielded so many funny ideas for Week 1195 that I even scratched my first plan, to allow the change-no-letters alteration for any kind of writing, not just movie titles. But this way, we can use the same idea in a future contest, with some other category. Though we’ve never done this particular contest, we’ve done a slew of them on movie themes — including at least nine that invited plays on movie titles. This week I’ll share some memorable ink — all winners or runners-up -- from those contests as I peruse Loser Elden Carnahan’s immeasurably nerd-fabulous Master Contest List . *Week 363, 2000: Make a movie title the answer to a riddle, much as in our recurring Ask Backwards contest:* --Answer: The Thirty-Nine Steps. Question: What would a recovery program look like if it were designed by Congress? (Cindi Rae Caron, Lenoir, N.C.) [Cindi Rae was a big name in the Invite’s early years, and suddenly reappeared just a few weeks ago; she gets ink today!] — A. Nosferatu. Q. What was the sequel to “Nosfera”? (Chris Doyle, Burke, Va.) *We repeated that contest in Week 928, 2011: * — A. I’m Still Here. Q, What is considered a lame answer to the question “Do you still love me?” (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) — A. Toy Story. Q. Whom did Sarah Palin name as her favorite Russian author? (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.) ***Week, 442, 2002: Take any real book or movie, change one word slightly, and describe the result:* — Oedipus Ref: A blind man applies for work in the NBA, is hired because of EEOC guidelines. Story chronicles his bravery in the face of fan abuse, including: “Yo, ref, I slept with your mama and I didn’t poke MY eyes out.” (Roy Ashley, Washington) — Bambo: A young buck seeks revenge against his mother’s killer. (Jeffrey Martin, Gaithersburg) *Week 524, 2003: Rearrange the words in a movie or book title:* — “You Are 54: Where Car?”: A senior moment strikes in a parking garage. (Julie Thomas and Will Cramer, Herndon; Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) — “Who the Man Shot Liberty Valance?”: In this sequel, Superfly Valance arrives from Chicago to avenge his brother’s death. (Tom Kreitzberg, Silver Spring) — “What? Did Daddy Do You in the War?” A young girl learns of her father’s overseas affair when a Korean woman comes looking for him. (Russell Beland, Springfield) *Week 610, 2005: “Mash” two movies, TV shows, etc., into a single work of art:* — Please Don’t Eat Miss Daisy: Hannibal Lecter lands a job driving for a prim Southern spinster. (Peter Metrinko and Laura Miller, Chantilly) — Terminators of Endearment: At last, the perfect “compromise” date movie. (Paul Whittemore, Gaithersburg) *Week 625, 2005: Make up a new plot for an existing movie title.* — White Men Can’t Jump: Three-year-old Bobby Fischer learns the rules of chess. (Kyle Hendrickson, Frederick) — The Asphalt Jungle: In this series finale, Tarzan suffers his untimely death. (Kevin Jamison, Montgomery Village) *Week 851, 2010: “Downsize” the title of a book, movie or play to make it smaller or less momentous:* — Slaughterhouse $4.99: A family gets to choose among beef, chicken and pork with all the trimmings — only at Denny’s! (Greg Arnold, Herndon) — Three Days of the Condom: Love on a shoestring. (Edmund Conti, Raleigh) *Week 871, 2010: Change a movie title by one letter or number:* — Four Weldings and a Funeral: A man attaches a set of rocket engines to his Chevy and momentarily achieves his dream of driving a flying car. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, a First Offender [Gary, a runner-up this week, now has 289 blots of ink]) — The Blair Itch Project: Amateur filmmakers realize that before shooting in the woods, they should have learned what poison ivy looks like. (Deborah Gilbert, Rixeyville, Va., a First Offender) *Week 1008, 2013: Rearrange the words in a movie title:* — The Kwai on the River Bridge: Barbara Walters narrates a moving story of two lovers saying goodbye above the Seine. (Roy Ashley, Washington) — Wonderful? It’s a Life: Grandpa Irving pooh-poohs being in the Greatest Generation. (Ellen Ryan, Rockville, Md.) At least one or two of the above cry out for a sequel, no? *BANK-WIT FACILITY*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1191* *(*Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich. Jesse — and, of course, only Jesse — is welcome to submit it again in a future bank head contest)* Man, I never get tired of this contest. It*always* delivers, and it’s just fun to read. It took control for me to keep the ink to 41 entries, of which 36 will be in the print paper. And though Elden Carnahan snarfed up four honorable mentions, the ink is scattered widely: I’ll be sending swag (such as it is) to 30 Losers, though I’m bummed that there weren’t any First Offenders this week. Great timing for running that Gary Johnson trifecta! It was the presidential candidate’s total-duh “What is Aleppo?” interview that inspired Danielle Nowlin, Mae Scanlan and Jesse Frankovich (and others) three weeks ago to compose some of this week’s funniest jokes. But just yesterday, the isolationist Libertarian redoubled his literal cluelessness on foreign affairs when he could not give interviewer Chris Matthews a name of a single foreign leader he respected: From the AP story : “*You’ve got to do this,” Matthews said. “Anywhere, any continent: Canada, Mexico, Europe, over there, Asia, South America, Africa. Name a foreign leader that you respect.”* *Johnson hung his head slightly — “I’m having a brain freeze” — before [his running mate, William Weld] came to his rescue, offering the names of three former Mexican presidents. Johnson settled quickly on Vicente Fox, calling him “terrific” before Weld named his own favorite foreign leader: German Chancellor Angela Merkel.”* We’ll have a whole new category of johnson jokes! A number of headlines, especially those from the print paper, were played on similarly by several Losers; they included “Fewer taking Metro trains” as in thefts, and “Some states don’t want midwives to deliver babies outside hospitals,” as in right in front of the door. In those cases, Andrew Hatzyannis’s and Elden Carnahan’s entries made me laugh a wee bit more than the others. In other cases, such as “After a turn in harsh spotlight, Melania Trump has been a model of restraint,” the entries were pretty much the same. Also for a headline about a “ban on straight-ticket voting” that required voters to choose at least one LGBT candidate. The Losers’ Circle this week is filled with Invite veterans: Inkin’ Memorial winner Roy Ashley (with his fifth win) and runners-up Mark Raffman and Gary Crockett are all in the 300-ink ballpark, with 110 “above the fold” losses among them; next to those obsessives, John McCooey’s impressive 40 inks (including a win and three RUs) make him seem like a dabbler. But it’s the beachside retiree who appropriately snags the whale hat. There were several kinds of entries that didn’t qualify for ink: In one, a lowercase word was used to refer to someone’s name; “Obama stands solo” couldn’t mean that the president had learned to tolerate the controversial soccer player; “Kaepernick challenges the sporting norm” couldn’t refer to Norm from “Cheers.” Also, total misspellings of the intended word didn’t work either, as in “Prosecutors won’t retry McDonnells* DA hated Big Mac and will never go back.” Then there were bank heads whose point was pretty much the same as the actual story’s: The headline “How Hillary can get that ‘presidential look’” drew a couple of cynical jabs like “Try gender reassignment surgery.” But that head came from Alexandra Petri’s highly satirical humor piece that suggested Clinton model her look on a series of (male, duh) presidents, as in the George Washington look: “Lose all but one of your teeth. Replace them with an elaborate contraption containing hippopotamus ivory, brass screws and human teeth so that you look slightly uncomfortable at all times. To complete the outfit, steal Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s neckwear.” Then there was the occasional headline that, on its face, was simply too serious to make light of. (This week’s winning headline, “They call it bunny hunting,” actually goes with agrim (and well-done) article about children being targeted by online predators, but the headline itself doesn’t tell you that.) And a sad headline is even more taboo if the subject of the story is an everyday person, and local. So while the following entry is a great example of National Lampoon-style sick humor, it’s too painful for the Invite: Woman pregnant with twins shot getting sandwich; all expected to survive Except the sandwich --- Happy New Year, everyone — those of you who get your repentance in at this season can start with repenting that you laughed at Duncan Stevens’s entry above. ====================================================================== WEEK 1196, published October 9, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1196: I break for Hyphen the Terrible The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s new contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 6, 2016 One of our most durable excuses for a neologism contest. Hyphen the Terrible — this year, Week 1196 — has delivered lots of zingy additions to the lexicon in its 17 previous iterations. It was suggested by Fred Dawson, a Loser most famous for the contests based on his paintings, most famously the Red and White Woman . Over the years, the requirements for H the T have varied: The original contest was in 1996, back when the Post printed 1.2 million Sunday papers each week and just about every household in Washington got one at the front door. That time (and for several later contests), readers had to comb through that day’s paper to find two words with hyphens. In 2002, after the Invitational went online and began to be seen by a lot of out-of-town readers, the Czar allowed that “persons outside The Washington Post circulation area can use Monday’s USA Today.” But it wasn’t until 2004 that we acknowledged that this contest “didn’t adapt well to the 21st century, because readers of the Invitational on The Post’s Web site never see a hyphen.” So instead of looking for hyphens, Losers could combine the first part of any word with the last part of any other word — but both words had to be in that day’s Invitational. That’s how it was the next year as well. (The Empress, in her first H the T, was inaccurate in her explanation; she meant that online, words hardly ever break at the ends of lines, as they often do in print. But of course there are still plenty of hyphenated phrases.) But then there must have been too much duplication, because then the field of words opened up for a couple of years to the Style and Arts sections (at that time, there were two separate sections). Then there was a year when the words had to come from ads (that must have been a bust, because the E noted a significant drop in entries, probably because the recession had hit and we didn’t have many ads either). In 2009 we dropped the insistence on a single day’s paper so that people could easily play on any given day in the 10-day entry period. In 2012 the Empress restricted the pool again, but allowed words from The Style Conversational as well as the Invitational, in a brazen ploy to get a few people to look at the thing. Finally, for Week 1078 in 2014, I went back to requiring actual hyphenated words or phrases — which is what we’re doing today as well. This time, though, your choices are: 1. The print Washington Post.from now to Oct. 17. 2. Any other print paper from the same dates. 3. Anything on washingtonpost.com that’s dated between now and Oct. 17. So not just any old websites. There’s an advantage in using the print paper because most articles have word breaks at the ends of lines, so you’ll get some extra hyphens to work with within a given article. But even online, you’ll find plenty of hyphenated modifying phrases, compound words, etc. Just search on a hyphen and you’ll be surprised how many pop up on a single Web page. Remember to include the two words you’re combining. I see that for theWeek 1078 results last time in the results, I showed the original words for the winners and runners-up, then dropped them from the long list of honorable mentions. Including the words might make a joke funnier if the definition related in some way to the original. Even better is when it’s clear without explanation where at least one of the halves of the neologism must have come from. For inspiration for Week 1196, here are some winners and runners-up of the previous Hyphen the Terrible contests (aka Join Now). *Mer-derloin,* n. Chipped beef on toast. (Joseph Romm, runner-up in the first Hyphen the Terrible contest, 1996) *Popu-mouth,* n. The act of punching a New Yorker in the face. (David Genser, runner-up, Week 206, 1997) *Sex-nipulativeness,* n., the ability of women to control men simply by not wearing bras. (Robin D. Grove, winner of Week 244, 1997)*[Hmmm! Yes, that contest was judged by a man. And yes, the entrant was also a man. People ask how the judging has changed since I took over at the end of 2003; not that much, in general, but I wouldn’t have gone with this one.]* *Whenev-ship *- n., the extremely casual bond between twenty-somethings. (Ann Zeleny, runner-up, Week 291, 1998) *Uni-moron, *n. Instead of bombs,this terrorist mails flaming bags of poo. (Chuck Smith, winner of Week 318, 1999) *Diplo-ney:* Insincere exchanges of friendship between foreign officials. (Fred Dawson, runner-up, Week 368, 2000) *Mo- ronto: *1. The Lone Ranger’s mentally challenged companion; 2. Home of Prime Minister Crétin. (Chris Doyle, winner, Week 425, 2001) *Knife-throw-fixed:* How circus animals get neutered. (Steve Fahey, runner-up, Week 465, 2002) *Short-zenegger:* A man of small stature who compensates through weightlifting. (Brendan Beary, runner-up, Week 521, 2003) *Fester-day:* The day after the day that you were too busy to take a shower. (Jeff Brechlin, winner, Week 589, 2004) *Oui-ny:* Un nerde. (Chris Doyle, runner-up, Week 630, 2005) *Prob-solutely:* A definite maybe. (Kyle Hendrickson, runner-up, Week 671, 2006) *Mon-ovation:* The sound of one hand clapping especially enthusiastically. (Dennis Lindsay, winner, Week 711, 2007) *Exclu-less:* Oblivious to how much the people in coach hate you and your roomy leather seat and your pretty little cookies on the pretty little tray instead of the three pretzel sticks. (Beth Morgan, winner, Week 775, 2008; that year we restricted the available text to ads, something that resulted in way fewer entries) *Up-Jones: *Outdo the neighbors. (Sylvia Betts, winner, Week 834, 2009) *Ignorial: *A monument that nobody visits. (Robert Schechter, winner, Week 946, 2012) [I’m back to including the hyphen in the results; make sure you do, too. After all, it’s the essence of the contest.] *Beau-pol:* A charming, intelligent and thoughtful politician who, after leaks of toxic material about his life, turns out to be a disaster. (Mike Gips, winner, Week 1072, 2014) *THE INKQUISITION*: THE ASK BACKWARDS RESULTS FROM WEEK 1192* *(*Revised title from Week 848, I think from Tom Witte; I usually use non-inking entries here, but you might as well save them for next time)* The Ask Backwards contest always works, even when we feed you bad “answers” to ask about, because we always feed you more of them than we have room for. So this time, “The Punisher” (inspired by the nickname of the Filipino crazy-man killing-machine nascent dictator) and Stinky Boots on the Ground, a play on the musical “Kinky Boots,” then unfortunately piled onto, brought a few game efforts, but didn’t make the final cut of a still-whopping 42 entries that got ink, both in print and online, for more than 30 Losers. (I’d better check my magnet supply . . .) It’s the ninth win for Hall of Famer Jeff Contompasis, who bumps up his ink total to 528 with his Inkin’ Memorial win and honorable mention this week. Jeff also gets the Good Scout award: His first submission for the week included a number of entries that he’d meant to trim to stay to the 25-entry limit. He let me know immediately and sent a new set of 25; it turns out that one of this week’s HMs would have gotten Jeff ink as well. Jeff’s winning entry, about waist-slimming compression wrap being a lousy Mother’s Day gift, edged out a very similar entry by Pam Sweeney; I hope Pam is mollified by her*four*ink blots this week for other entries. The rest of the Losers’ Circle is populated by Usual Suspects Nowlin, Sharp and Doyle; Beverley Sharp fit hers in around a cruise in celebration of her 50th wedding anniversary with Dick Amberg, a guy so great that at the Flushies, the annual Losers’ award banquet, he wore a nickname with the Loserly moniker of Dick Sharp. *NEXT LOSER BRUNCH: OCT. 16 IN COLUMBIA* I’m planning to head north to between D.C. and Baltimore for the next Loser brunch, Sunday, Oct. 16, at noon at Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia, Md., which is a few minutes off I-95. I’m not much of a beer drinker, but I still found plenty to enjoy from the brunch menu at our last gathering there. People who live north of the Beltway — including our Baltimore and even Pennsylvania-based Losers, how about it? RSVP at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on Our Social Engorgements or just click here ). (If anyone is coming from the Southern Maryland or Alexandria area, is there a chance I can hitch a ride? ) --- Meanwhile, to our Losers in the path of Matthew: Stay safe and dry, and may your Internet service hold out. ====================================================================== WEEK 1197, published October 16, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1197: Gallant in Goofusland The Highlights for Children poet who won our ‘Bad Little Children’s Books’ prize One of the more than 120 “offensively tweaked covers” in “Bad Little Children’s Books,” our second prize this week. (Abrams Image, 2016) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 13, 2016 Almost always when I judge Style Invitational contests, it’s not until I’ve chosen the winning entries, and even copied them into the column, that I then search the entry pool and find out which Losers wrote them. And so it was especially fun to find out thatthis week’s second prize — a signed copy of the new “Bad Little Children’s Books” — would be going to Robert Schechter. Because besides being a 181-time Loser (and Loser of the Year in his rookie season), Robert has had several of his poems published in the venerable Highlights for Children, the favorite magazine of my childhood, at least till I discovered Mad. Such as“My Nose”: It rumbles loudly when I doze. It sometimes strikes a snooty pose. And when I catch a cold, it flows. Yet when I stop to smell a rose, life’s frantic hustle-bustle slows and such a joy inside me grows that from my head down to my toes my favorite thing on earth’s my nose. Bob’s prize will*not* be featured in Highlights. “Bad Little Children’s Books” is subtitled “Kid-Lit Parodies, Shameless Spoofs, Offensively Tweaked Covers.” Presented by the art book publisher Abrams as a fancy faux-replica of the Little Golden Books (such as this one or this one ), the book consists of more than 120 devilishly altered old-time children’s-book covers — though none of them of an actual Golden Book — like the three featured here in the Conversational. And those are among the tamer ones; there are also: — “If Tommy Was Jewish He Wouldn’t Suck as Much at the Violin” — “The Little Aryan Youth Academy” — “The First Time Asian Driver” — “Fido Finds a Dildo” — “Gloryhole Initiation” — “Tiny T-Rex Arms on a Woman Are Always a Buzzkill” Ad almost infinitum. Who is this devilish alterer? The author is one “Arthur C. Gackley.” As the book’s introduction and acknowledgments explain, Mr. Gackley (born 1923, disappeared mysteriously 1978) spent his life assiduously cutting up and reworking children’s-book covers with an X-acto knife and duct tape; and his disciple and executor, Schlomo J. Flaffstein, Esq., has finally brought them to the 21st-century literary world. And how did someone who vanished 48 years ago come to write “The Little Engine That Couldn’t Get It Up Without Viagra”? Well, that is the work of Gackley’s sole intern, Thad Fenwick, who also presumably contributed “Soap Derby Bass on Wheels: The Stephen Hawking Story.” Yet another book cover parody in “Bad Little Children’s Books. (Abrams Image, 2016) So congratulations to Robert Schechter — whose book is even signed and delivered by Arthur C. Gackley himself, perhaps via through-the-coffin mail. *MEANWHILE, HERE ARE FOUR PICTURES BY BOB STAAKE * Who once again turns away from his miles-long list of children’s-book projects to bring us Week 1197, the latest in his dozens of cartoon caption contests for The Style Invitational. There’s not much to explain here; I did ask Bob this time to include a couple of multi-character drawings so that we might have some dialogue (or at least someone talking) in some of the captions. Inevitably in caption contests — like all contests in which everyone is working from a short list of prompts, rather than, say, everything in the newspaper or everything in the dictionary between A and D — warped minds think alike; people will have the same general joke or wordplay. If too many people send essentially the same thing, no one will get individual credit for it. But I’ll give the ink to an entry that makes the joke most concisely, or has a certain element that makes me laugh more. (I don’t take off for bad spelling, etc., but jeez, people, you’re entering a contest judged by a human (and a former copy editor); don’t just send me something that looks as if you butt-texted it in your sleep. I’ve implored you both in the contest and on the entry form to preface each individual entry “Picture 1,” “Picture 2,” etc. If you don’t, I’ll do my best to look for each of your captions as I read through the big fat list of what will probably be at least 1,000 entries. But doing this will guarantee that I see every entry that you sent. Thanks, guys! *POEDunks: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1193 * It was an interesting format that I found in the depths of the Invite archives: the “Poeds” of Week 169, from 1996. And in this encore contest, I actually got a pretty big pile of entries, from a Loser pool that included some 20 new entrants. And I did find acouple dozen four-line verses that cleverly worked with the difficult form. But almost all the Poeds fell prey to the biggest challenge of the form: to make a punch line out of a single six-syllable word to end a very short joke. Many of this week’s inking entries used a humorous made-up word to do it; it also helped a lot if the third and fourth lines rhymed. Some entrants added a note that they enjoyed the contest, but I have a feeling that a lot of people felt more like Double Hall of Famer Tom Witte, who sent: Why waste my time on this Pointless, prizeless, senseless, Trivial, meaningless Dillydallying? Arthur C. Gackley didn’t have to do as much with his X-acto knife in this book cover parody. (Abrams Image, 2016* ) (In his other entries, Tom did display an ability to count to 6 in the last line.) *Arriving late, but on a happy note — Laugh Out of Courtney:* Copy chief Courtney Rukan, whom we hadn’t heard from in a few months, just e-mailed me with her faves, and she’s very enthusiastic: -- “Fire. Flood. Bad switch. Failed rails.* Metro’s SafeTrack routing. *Everyday commuting*Reliability. (Kevin Dopart). I’M A SUCKER FOR ANYTHING THAT SLAMS METRO. THIS IS PERFECT. — “A bell rings, a dog drools.* Ivan Pavlov’s simple* Notation: “Fabulous!*RinTinTinabulous!” (Chris Doyle) THIS HIT MY PUNNY BONE IN TWO PLACES. — “What if they taxed “hand” size? Surely, bragging ceases . . . Adjusted decimal . . . Infinitesimal! (Mark Raffman) BWAHAHAHAHA!!! — Really liked the second-place entry and the winner, too.” *And what Doug Dug: * Ace copy editor Doug Norwood favored Chris Doyle’s “EpiPenurious” and Jesse Frankovich’s “Pumpkinspicifying.” *COME TO BRUNCH ON SUNDAY, GET YOUR PICTURE IN THE PAPER* I will be bringing to this Sunday’s Loser brunch — it’s at noon at the Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia, Md. — a hat much like this one, sent to me from England by Loser Ed Edwards. Of course it’s a future Invite prize and I’d like to photograph someone wearing it. And even if you don’t want to look like Crocheted Chthulhu, come join us; RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). ====================================================================== WEEK 1198, published October 23, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1198: Win valuable Style Invitational prizes! Mugs: value $4.23; bags: value $3.57; magnets: value 21 cents By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 20, 2016 L et’s be frank. For Week 1198 of The Style Invitational. I hadn’t realized, until prompted by a suggestion from Ultra-Loser Chris Doyle on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook, that we hadn’t done the “plain English” contest in a long time. The contest was originally inspired by then-Vice President Gore’s call in 1998 for government forms and directives to be written simply and straightforwardly. But it’s not just bureaucrats and politicians who can’t, or don’t want to, explain themselves clearly: There’s the advertising world, of course, but also all of us who have the occasional reason to be less than forthright, not to mention all the people who think that sounding like legal boilerplate makes them seem important. The Czar of The Style Invitational headlined the first of these contests (Week 342, March 2000) “Plainly Ridiculous,” asking readers to “take any direct quotation from any article in today’s Washington Post and translate it into ‘plain English’ ” and required that the sentences be “direct quotations.” The Czar’s examples: “This country will be in the damnedest crisis it ever faced.” — Jim Johnson, president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, predicting what will happen if the nation does not help truckers cope with rising fuel costs. Plain English version: “We are huge. Our muscles have bulging blue veins. We drink beer and drive vehicles that can penetrate brick walls. Do you want us angry?” “Property owners are like Regis Philbin: We just want a final answer.” — Jerry Howard, lobbyist for a national home builders’ association, in support of a House bill that would streamline zoning decisions. Plain English version: “Property owners are like Regis Philbin. We just want to make obscene amounts of money for very little work.” Like the examples, the inking entries four weeks later included explanations of the sentences’ context. (I’m not sure whether I’ll do that this time; it’d be best if it’s clear enough what the sentence is about.) Here are some of the winners; see them all here (or, if you’re blocked by The Post’s paywall, here in a slightly less readable form). REPORT FROM WEEK IX [don’t ask]  . . . Many people did not seem to understand what we meant by a “direct quotation.” Quoting directly from a newspaper story is not necessarily a direct quotation. “A direct quotation is something uttered aloud by a person and contained between quotation marks,” explained the Czar of the Style Invitational. This error disqualified several otherwise worthy entries*[this is why I’ve done away with this restriction],*the best of which was by Sue Lin Chong of Washington, who lifted the following line of prose from Miss Manners: Surely we have the right to assume whatever appearance we wish without suffering for it. Sue Lin’s plain English translation: Stop laughing at me because I wear a bustle. Also, Greg Arnold of Herndon lifted this line from an advertisement: It’s The Biggest Furniture Giveaway Ever! His plain English version: We’re open. *Fourth Runner-Up:* “We hope this will be the first of many such ventures. The internationalization of baseball has begun.” --Commissioner Bud Selig, on Major League Baseball opening its regular season in Japan. Plain English version: “We’ll put a team in Ulan Bator before the D.C. area sees one again.” (Bruce W. Alter, Fairfax Station; Elliott Jaffa, Arlington)*[Almost exactly five years later, the Washington Nationals played their first game]* *Third Runner-Up:* “I’m not proposing tax relief because it’s the popular thing to do, I’m proposing it because it’s the right thing to do.” --George W. Bush. Plain English version: “I’m proposing it because it’s a right popular thing to do.” (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) *Second Runner-Up: * “I am okay. I am capable. There is no one exactly like me.” -- Students reciting a motivational pledge in a high school self-esteem class in Charlotte. Plain English version: “I am okay. I am capable. There is no one exactly like me aside from the 20 other people saying the same thing.” (James Pierce, Charlottesville) *First Runner-Up:* “We need a change. A cold brain means sober calculations.” --Oleg Makeyev, a Russian voter, on the icy personality of Boris Yeltsin’s successor. Plain English version: “We need a change. A sober brain means sober calculations.” (David Genser, Arlington) *And the winner of the U.S.S.R. tour books:* “It feels like nothing, actually.” --Cybermagnate Michael Saylor, on what it’s like to lose more than a billion dollars in one day of stock reversals. Plain English version: “I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my legs!” (Martin Bredeck, Community, Va.) *Honorable Mentions:* “The Japanese take their baseball very seriously.” --Mark Grace, Cubs first baseman. Plain English version: “After he dropped a fly ball, I was not expecting their right fielder to disembowel himself.” (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) *[I’m thinking that current racial sensitivities would preclude such an entry now, though the Czar disagreed when I asked him today]* “Attractive engineer, DHM, 39, honest, successful, ISO S*DPF, 29- 40 for companionship.” Plain English version: “I am a pathetic geek. ISO someone who can calculate {pi} to the 15th decimal place and wants to cuddle in the warm flicker of my Unix mainframe while we contemplate the integration of the natural logarithm to the x-power, (e, get it? Ha ha!) (Cheryl Davis, Arlington) “This era does not reward people who struggle in vain to redraw borders with blood.” --President Clinton, on Pakistani TV. Plain English version: “This era only rewards people who successfully redraw borders with blood.” (Beth Baniszewski, Columbia) “Bush must reposition the issue environment.” --A Gore spokesman on the weakness of a tax cut as an issue for Bush. Plain English version: “Yes, I know my guy has called for a return to plain English, but old habits die hard.” (Mike Genz, La Plata; Russell Beland, Springfield) — Oddly, I didn’t bring back the contest till September 2007 , when I used the confusing headline “Otherwordly Visions,” (a play on “in other words” that doesn’t work well). For the example, I used Jennifer Hart’s brilliant “right popular thing to do” runner-up from the first contest. I dropped the “direct quotation” requirement and allowed anything from The Post or washingtonpost.com during the whole entry window. *Among the winners from Week 729 (see the rest * here or here ): 4. (Job posting) The mission of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) is to enhance the financial stability, accountability and integrity of the Government of the District of Columbia. Plain English Version: Good morning, Mr. Phelps . . . (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) 3. “It was the one of the most different halves of football I’ve ever been around.” PE: “It’s too soon after the game for me to talk good again yet.” (Russell Beland, Springfield) 2. the winner of the stationery made of Panda Poo paper: “Our overall evaluation is that real progress has been achieved,” Jones told the senators, and then he qualified that judgment with words such as “uneven,” “unsatisfactory,” “overly sectarian” and “failed.” PE: “After uneven, unsatisfactory and overly sectarian progress, our overall evaluation is that failure has been achieved.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) And the Winner of the Inker: “If the kind of success we are now seeing continues, it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces,” Bush said. PE: “Sure, maintaining the level of ‘insanely dangerous’ takes almost no troops at all.” (Russ Taylor, Vienna) Iraq Study Group report: “Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.” PE: “Bush cooks the books.” (Kevin Dopart; Ned Stone, Atlanta) FREE RAZR PHONES! PE: EXPENSIVE SERVICE AGREEMENTS! (Ira Allen, Bethesda) “And -- let’s be honest here -- “ PE: “And — let me sugarcoat this a little less than usual--” (Russell Beland) “Seeks intelligent, civilized man, 60+ for lasting friendship.” PE: “Is hopelessly delusional.” (Kevin Dopart) Complete auto care starts with our $17.99 oil change. PE: For only $17.99, we’ll tell you that you need new shocks, struts, brakes, exhaust system, valve cover gaskets, water pump, CV joints, wiper blades and, of course, tires. (Russ Taylor) --- Finally, I did the contest inDecember 2010, with the headline “Catch Their Drift. “ For the example, I used Russ Taylor’s oil-change ad, and once again the sentences had to be in The Post. *Some of the Week 897 winners *(see the rest here or here ): The winner of the Inker: Sentence in The Post: “The positions the Obama administration is taking today are not the traditional positions of most Democrats.” Plain English: They’re trying out alternatives to “fetal.” (Danny Bravman, Chicago) Fourth place: Obama: “Our success depends on our willingness to engage in the kind of honest conversation and cooperation that hasn’t always happened in Washington.” PE: “We’re doomed.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) “We clearly have to continue to provide the message to the Afghan people about why we’re here and what it is that we want to do,” Petraeus said. PE: “Can somebody tell me why we’re here and what it is that we want to do?” (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase) This is a show about being a disaffected, emotionally scarred New Yorker. PE: This is a show about being a New Yorker. (Kevin Dopart) Richard Nixon, discussing various ethnic groups on a recently released tape: “I’ve just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits. . . .” PE: Mine is that I’m a sleazy bigot. (Russell Beland, Fairfax; Nan Reiner, Alexandria) The tax deal “offers the best prospect that was available for achieving the kind of escape velocity that we’ve been seeking for the past two years.” PE: “We hope to escape being murdered in the next election.” (Judy Blanchard, Novi, Mich.) Redskins Coach Mike Shanahan: “I’m not exactly sure at this time exactly what we’re going to do or what direction we’re going to go.” PE: “I’m exactly sure that we don’t know how to win.” (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn) -- So that should give you plenty of inspiration for Week 1198 — and since The Post has instituted a paywall since 2010, I’m not even making you use Post stories. *HOWEVER, YOU SHOULD AVAIL YOURSELVES OF THIS GREAT DEAL:* The Post keeps sending me email promotions that, as an existing paying-a-lot subscriber, I cannot use,*but as a current freeloader, you can:* $19 FOR A WHOLE YEAR for the whole washingtonpost.com website. While of course The Style Invitational is by far the most important piece of “content” of the week, The Post publishes something on the order of 700 other pieces of content*every day,* and I’m told that many of them are interesting. Here’s the link; I don’t know how long it’s good for, so I wouldn’t dawdle. (By the way: If you subscribe to the print Post, you also subscribe to the online Post. Also, a number of other newspapers offer free Post subscriptions to their own subscribers; see the FAQ page here .) *ORIGIN OF THE SPECIOUS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1194* **A great non-inking entry sent by both Mark Raffman and Chris Doyle; because of a change in headline type size in the print paper, the alternative heads have to be shorter these days* In the fictoid tradition, this week’s inking entries are mostly takeoffs on traditional dictionary entries or fun facts in trivia books — and for at least a few, containing at least a second or two’s worth of plausibility. And they make some kind of joke. A lot of entries this week didn’t do these things. First, some people thought this was the same contest as our recurring one to redefine an existing word, rather than to explain where it came from (e.g., “Gallery: Where Donald Trump will choose his next wife”). A few people sent whole stories of how the word came about; 200-word jokes are fine in many settings, but the Invite can’t handle them. Some words were too obscure: If you have no idea what a binnacle is, will you laugh about an untrue story of the word’s origin? (It’s the built-in housing for a ship’s compass; now you know.) And some had clever fake derivations but nothing funny: “November: A portmanteau of “*nova* and*ember.* As the winter approached, keeping warm became a priority, so it was time to stoke fires with new hot coals.” That one was by Jeff Contompasis — who won the whole contest this week. With a very funny entry. Jeff, in fact, got two inks this week, raising his lifetime inkage from 528 to 530. But the real story is runner-up Warren Tanabe’s*five* inks: Warren jumps from 53 to 58 blots — catapulting him 10 places to No. 129 in the all-time standings . We heard from both of my favorite copy desk Invite-readers this week: *What Doug Dug: * In addition to the Losers’ Circle entries, Doug Norwood liked the derivations of “offhand” (Mark Raffman), “grammar” (also Mark), “committee” (Warren Tanabe) and “diagnose” (JefCon). *Laugh out of Courtney: * Courtney Rukan says, “I’m a fan of ‘politics’ (Kevin Dopart), ‘dowager’ (Chris Doyle), ‘committee,’ ‘technology’ (Warren Tanabe) and ‘furniture’ (Lynne Larkin).” *IT’S CAPTION CRUNCH* The deadline is Monday, Oct. 24, for the Week 1197 contest to provided captions for any of four Bob Staake cartoons. And when we run the results online on Nov. 10, I’ll finally be able to put the winning captions under each of the cartoons, rather than have all the drawings at the top of the page. ====================================================================== WEEK 1200, published November 6, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1200. That would be twelve. hundred. The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results Infiltrating our schools: Veteran Loserbard Melissa Balmain uses the compare-and-contrast word list from Style Invitational Week 1167 as prompts for the poetry class she teaches at the University of Rochester. (Courtesy of Melissa Balmain) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 3, 2016 In today’s media world it’s not exactly a big selling point to remind people, “We’re really old!” But seeing “Week 1200” in this week’s Style Invitational headline literally thrilled me; I actually felt a tremor of delighted amazement. And I’m heartened as well to see lots of life in the old nag yet: Each week brings at least some, and sometimes dozens, of brand-new entrants, and the list of subscribers to the Thursday afternoon email newsletters now pushes toward 9,000. Admittedly, these numbers still put us on the edge of the cult-following category, but then again, the Invite is basically a one-person operation, so if the entries, say, suddenly doubled, I’d have a pretty hard time running this contest. Okay, I also admit that the “12” angle in this week’s contest is pretty lame, but that shouldn’t hurt the quality of results. A 12-word “Devil’s Dictionary” entry might well fit on Twitter; maybe we could start a #DozenDictionary hashtag. (An entry’s tweetability won’t factor into my judging, however.) Our Week 860 contest, from 2010, was pegged to a new British website called Ten Word Wiki (which seems to have defuncticized itself not long afterward). And the requirement was that the definition, regardless of the term being defined, be exactly 10 words. So I just had to find some two-word terms and ding! — examples for this week’s contest. (I did change the rule about hyphens; last time hyphenated compounds counted as one word instead of two.) *Here are some of the inking entries from six years ago;* see the whole list here (scroll down past that week’s new contest). Note that it’s a stretch to call some of these entries “definitions.” I plan to be similarly Mrs. Incredible this time around as well. When I say that two words joined by a hyphen count as two words, I’m not talking about prefixes or suffixes attached with hyphens, as in “co-worker.” That’s one word. “Seven-layer dip” would count as three words. The winner of the Inker: Historical revisionism: Now the past has been torched by a new generation. (Phil Frankenfeld, Washington) 2. La Leche League: Front organization dedicated to promoting the kindness of human milk. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) 3. Elin Nordegren: Had Tiger by the tail. Now has a different grip. (Cy Gardner, Arlington) 4.Thesaurus: Language reference to help people find exactly the wrong word. (Ron Averyt, Severn) Worth 1% of a picture: Honorable mentions Advice: Opinions sought to confirm the correctness of our bad ideas. (Russell Beland, Fairfax) Amnesia: A mental condition that, for all you know, you’ve experienced. (Russell Beland) Jack Bauer: Complete verbal repertoire: “Chloe!,” “Dammit!” and “We have no choice!” (Craig Dykstra, Centreville) Glenn Beck: He’s a walking aneurysm looking for a brain to attack. (Cy Gardner) China: Mean country that won’t let America keep adorable Chinese pandas. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) Credit card: Loans for people who find subprime mortgages much too conservative. (Sam Bruce, New York) Charles Darwin: Victorian scientific genius whose radical theory inspired Republican health-care policy. (Stephen Gold, Glasgow, Scotland) Facebook: For stalking people who had previously managed to elude you. (Craig Dykstra) Rudy Giuliani: “Everybody’s Mayor” — that is, until he became nobody’s presidential candidate. (Edmund Conti, Raleigh, N.C.) Karaoke: The spectacle of people standing up and defacing the music. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) Secret: Something you must share, but you don’t expect others to. (Russell Beland) Tequila: Leading cause of “Hey, y’all — watch this!” in 11 states. (Craig Dykstra) We’ve also had several other cynical-definition contests, notably two contests headlined “Another Round of Bierce” that sought to update “The Devil’s Dictionary,” the 1911 Ambrose Bierce classic (the whole thing is online here ). *The “above the fold” entries fromWeek 445 , or Week CXII (don’t ask), in 2002: * Lottery: A tax on poor math skills. (Id Rooney, Arlington) Leader: One who follows loudly. (Tom Rogers, Oakton) Potential: The measure of a person’s lack of achievement. (Eva Moore, Ithaca, N.Y.) Role Model: A professional athlete whose conduct rises to the level expected of everyone else. (Chris Doyle, Burke) Aging: Paced dying. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia) And the winner of the genuine Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey clown mask and nose: Peacetime: When there are no wars anywhere you care about. (Mike Genz, La Plata) *And those from Week 946 in 2009: * 1. Hero: Someone who, in a crisis, exceeds our lowest expectations. (Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.) 2. Music: Songs you listened to in college. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) 3. Grammar: The rules of language as spoken by the generation immediately preceding one’s own. (Robert Schechter, Dix Hills, N.Y.) 4. Supercommittee: A committee designed by a committee. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) Try not to use these same jokes, please. *THE GREAT DIVIDES*: THE ‘HYPHEN THE TERRIBLE’ RESULTS FROM WEEK 1196* *(*A non-inking headline idea by Dave Prevar)* Presumably because it took a lot of time and patience to search through the day’s paper (or the Post website) for hyphens, I received remarkably fewer submissions forWeek 1196 than for other recent contests (especially the very popular Week 1195 for altered movie titles). And not surprisingly, most of the entrants were frequent Inviters who sent long lists of entries. And so also not surprisingly, the ink in the results wasn’t spread around as much as usual: The 37 inking portmanteau words were penned by only 18 people: Jeff Contompasis blotted up five splashes of ink, including the winner and a runner-up; Duncan Stevens, John Hutchins and Jesse Frankovich scored four each; Gary Crockett got three; Cindi Rae Caron, Kevin Dopart and Mark Raffman, two each. JefCon is on a roll lately! After having won the Invite seven times in his 14 years of Losing, Jeff has won the Inkin’ Memorial three more times in the past five weeks. For No. 8, he asked me to wait until we ran out of Lincoln statue bobbleheads (early 2017) and to send him whatever the new trophy will be — since, he said, he didn’t know whether he’d ever win one of those otherwise. Two weeks later, he did. Two more weeks later, “assessin” does it again. “Wow, three of those new thingies (whatever they may be),” Jeff marveled this afternoon. “I’ll have to expand the underground shrine.” (We await photos.) Duncan Stevens gets the Donald Talking Pen, which erupts in eight different recordings of RealDonaldTrump. Quite honestly, I hope it’s the only way Duncan ever hears that voice again. It’s the 84th (and 85th and 86th and 87th) blot of ink for Duncan, and Ink 214 (and 215) for Lawrence McGuire, who remains the highest-scoring Loser I have never met personally (he’s 34th on the all-time ink list ). There were a lot of neat-sounding portmanteaux this week that cried out for better definitions or funny examples. Among them: Twit-lit; damnasium; melanities; kinja; confudination; slantistics. Instead of “Esca-lying: Compounding a fib with increasing levels of prevarications,” think how much more interesting that definition would be with a real or imagined example of more and more ridiculous untruths. (Perhaps for that future crowdsourcing contest I’m always talking about ...) *POST-ELECTION LOSERMERICANA: BRUNCH*TOUR IN GETTYSBURG, NOV. 13* I’m not going to be able to make it up to this year’s Loser brunch in Gettysburg, Pa., with Loser hosts*tour guides Roger Dalrymple and Marty McCullen. But especially now that it’s been moved from the hottest summer to seasonable weather, I heartily recommend the day trip. To RSVP and possible carpool arrangements, contact Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). ---- Cross your fingers hard for Election Day, and I’ll see you next week, assuming that The Post hasn’t been shut down. I hope that if you’ve been as stressed out as I’ve been this season, the Invite has provided at least something to smile about. ====================================================================== WEEK 1201, published November 13, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1201: So can we laugh at him anymore? Now that he’s elected, do the rules change? And is anything funny? (Yeah, here’s some funny.) (Tweet by Ricky Montgomery) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 10, 2016 Okay, the sun did come up, the markets didn’t collapse, tanks didn’t roll down the street, a climate change denier is only being*talked about* as the next head of the EPA. But let’s say that Style Invitational entrants were lucky that I didn’t have to judge their jokes on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. I couldn’t bring myself to even crack a grim smile. (Yeah, I know I shouldn’t be revealing my political preferences, but for this election I gave up on objectivity long ago.) But Lord knows we’re going to need to tap into our senses of humor, and within 24 hours or so, I was finding at least a few jokes to smile about. Here’s a sampling, in addition to the tweet pictured above: A tweet that I saw shared on Facebook last night was the first to make me laugh: *“A brief moment of levity from my wife: ‘At this point if a clown invited me into the woods, I’d just go.’ ”* — fromNels Anderson, @Nelsormensch This one byBrian Pedaci was being shared everywhere: *BRITAIN: Brexit is the stupidest, most self-destructive act a country could undertake. USA: Hold my beer.* And I liked this one from a Canadian who goes by just Neil (@_enanem ): *Ok, don’t panic… If we hold the North and South Pole down simultaneously for eight seconds, it’ll automatically restore to factory settings.* And live on TV by a clearly stunned Stephen Colbert during his election night broadcast: *“We all feel the way Rudy Giuliani looks.” * Of course, the Onion couldn’t take off from work.This one was from Thursday morning: ITHACA, NY— In the hours since the Republican nominee’s stunning election to the nation’s highest office Tuesday night, reports have confirmed that, regardless of circumstance, it is not even remotely close to okay to act like Donald Trump. .. In fact, acting like Mr. Trump does for even a moment will result in a wide range of negative social—and in some cases, criminal—consequences for you personally. ... At press time, the reports’ findings were being summarily dismissed out of hand by roughly 45 percent of the nation’s population in a manner identical to that of Donald Trump.” The Onion also posted a list of tips on explaining the election results to your children: Such as “Put their mind at ease by confirming that the results of this election aren’t the end of the world in any strictly literal sense”; “Don’t be afraid to openly share your wine with them”; and “Reassure them that no matter what, the adults in their life will always feel obligated to tell them everything’s going to be all right.” And the Tumblr blog Asses of Parnassus republished this tersest of verses by Style Invitational Loser Robert Schechter: *Nostalgia* What’s best today is yesterday. And of course, here*we* are. The deadline was Oct. 24 for the Week 1197 cartoon captions that ran in today’s Style Invitational, and I had chosen the winners before the nation chose a new president. But I’d let in one entry whose premise was that Donald Trump would lose the election — and so I cut Elden Carnahan’s caption on the cartoon of the downward-pointing rocket on the launchpad: “The RNC arranged for Reince Priebus to take a nice long vacation after the election.” On the other hand, I didn’t think it made sense to have a contest this week like “What do we do now?” Jokes about highly exaggerated things the new president might say and do in the White House would be a lot funnier as a fantasy, not as something that either will or won’t happen. I do welcome ideas, however; email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. What kind of humor toward a President Trump is no longer within the bounds of humor toward Candidate Trump? Is he due more politeness by virtue of the office? (Certainly not because Trump has threatened The Post and its owner with everything from banning its reporters to perhaps going after Amazon on antitrust grounds.) I don’t think so. For all its crudeness, the Invite has always had some taste considerations on its jokes about specific people: We don’t run jokes about killing or torturing them, or saying that they’re going to Hell (confirmed mass-murdering villains, say Osama bin Laden, get the exceptions). We don’t make jokes whose premises are false or seriously unfair — that Hillary Clinton is a man, for example. (Okay, we did refer to Trump as having small hands, but man, did he bring that on himself.) But while I recently offered a second prize of an electronic toilet paper roller than plays recordings of Trump’s, voice, I would never offer — and never would have offered — the pair of white briefs with a blurry, brownish photo of Trump positioned as a disgusting stain (I’m not even giving you a link to that one. Google it if you want.) --- So instead, we pivot away from the election, at least somewhat, to return to our annual Tour de Fours neologism contest. While of course the four-letter block is different every year. the inking entries consistently play on existing words or phrases. Here’s the “above the fold” ink from last year’s D-I-C-E results (the whole set is here ): Fourth place: Ride and preju*dice*: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a cabbie in need of a fare still won’t pick up a black man after dark. (Lawrence McGuire, Waldorf, Md.) 3rd place:: Patton m*edic*ine: A bracing slap in the face. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) 2nd place: *Deci*rculation: The one number that’s way up in the newspaper industry. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Tea *iced*: What Rep. Kevin McCarthy was last month. (Todd DeLap, Fairfax, Va.) [for those with short memories: he lost his bid to be House speaker] To see the results of the previous dozen Tour de Fours contests: Check out Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, then search on “fours.” You’ll land on the week when the contest was announced, say Week 571, but just look on the right edge of the chart a few lines down, then click to the link of the results of Week 571. (The winner of that first Tour de Fours, for THES: Transv*esth*eight: The distance between the jockstrap and the bra. By Frank Mullen III.) *OUTRAGEOUS FOUR TOONS: THE CARTOON CAPTIONS OF WEEK 1197* As always, there were lots of entries for captions for one or more Bob Staake cartoons, and because there were only four cartoons, we had more room on this week’s page for entries — 43 of them — letting me show the wide variety of approaches to a single drawing. Still, in many cases, I chose a single entry from as many as 20 with the similar joke or wordplay. That wasn’t the case with our Inkin’ Memorial winner this week, which was by far my favorite entry of the contest — and while it of course wasn’t expected to be, it’s a heck of an introduction to The Style Invitational should the president-elect pick up a copy of this week’s Style & Arts section. It’s just the sixth blot of ink for Steven Steele Cawman of New York’s Hudson Valley, and his first Inkin’ Memorial, though he’s also been a runner-up. “Grab them by the uvula” was just a brilliant way to allude to an, uh, unpresidential term that we can’t even use in the Invite. The rest of the Losers’ Circle also comprises relatively new blood: Larry Gray, who started about five years ago in Week 923 (a baby among the big-deal Losers), gets his 92nd blot of Invite ink, but Hildy Zampella got her 27 blots only since Week 1140, and it’s the 17th for Jerry Birchmore. And finally — each cartoon appears online above its captions! No more of that tedious scrolling back and forth or toggling between windows. Thanks to the always super-helpful Kurt Gardner of The Post’s newsroom IT squad. -- So let’s continue to find the humor in the situation. It’s there — it’s just up to us to make it funny and not just nasty. ====================================================================== WEEK 1202, published November 20, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1202: Bet your bottom dollar, or at least write a song The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results He's not always making zany Style Invitational cartoons: Bob Staake's iconic New Yorker covers commemorating the beginning of Obama's term, and Trump's. (Covers by Bob Staake for The New Yorker) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 17, 2016 I can’t lie — I’m still a mess. This past week did nothing to allay my fears; see this wrap-up in the New Yorker, and that’s before the Trump adviser told Megyn Kelly that hey, we did the Japanese-American internment camps, you do what you have to do. Well, we’ll do what we have to do, and that’s write some zingy songs for Style Invitational Week 1202 . When this contest occurred to me a few days back, I was, if not optimistic, at least a little bit hopeful that somehow the American Way would prevail. Okay, I still am. What’s the alternative? This contest follows only by a few months our Week 1177 contest for songs about the campaign season. As I said in the results, “most of the lyrics had one of two themes: 1. He’s horrible. 2. They’re both horrible.” So we*are*covering at least somewhat different territory this time around. Still, if you think your parody is still applicable and was robbed of ink last time (I can’t possibly run all the good parodies a given week), you’re welcome to submit it again, perhaps updated or otherwise reworked. Note that I’m giving you two weeks to enter; I’ll try to read entries as they filter in, so I’m not expecting a logistical problem — feel free to submit them one at a time. Once again, I’m suspending my usual distaste for co-written entries; keep it to two names, though. Video clips are a lot of fun, and I like linking to them, but they’re not a factor in what gets ink. Make sure that your settings will let readers see the clip by clicking on the link I give. (The clip doesn’t have to be searchable.) YouTube has made loading videos vastly easier than it used to be — you can sing straight into your computer or phone, even, and ta-da. If you’re not a regular contributor to Invite parody contests, take a few minutes to read these guidelines that I wrote up in the Conversational for Week 1113. In a nutshell, a song contest whose results are meant to be read, rather than performed, demands two particular qualities that the Weird Al opus need not have: — As opposed to sung songs, in which they’re extremely useful to make the song catchy, repeated lines and choruses become tedious on the page. If you repeat a verse, you’d need to change something so that it continues to enhance the wit of the song. And a strong, clever ending, not an anticlimax, works much better as humor. — “Sound rhymes” that rely on the same vowel sound, rather than true rhymes, are much less forgivable as witty lyrics to be read. Even if the original song’s rhyme scheme “rhymes” “heart” and “dark,” your parody can’t. And of course you can’t shoehorn words into your song that end up accented on the wrong sylLAbles. *My big rule: Hand a copy of your song to someone else, sit back, and see if that person can sing it without becoming confused. * If that person can’t, I probably can’t either. I noted that, as always, I try to fill the limited space of the print version of the Invitational — and that will include the winner and three runners-up — with eight or 10 parodies that readers are more likely to be able to sing along with. So that means they’re set to songs that (I’m optimistic) are widely known: Given that the results of this contest will be running the week before Christmas, holiday tunes could fill the bill, right? But also: children’s songs, patriotic songs, well-known tunes from musicals and movies, classic rock and pop from the past 40 years, and songs that are inescapable on today’s pop radio. I do like to provide a mix on the print page as well as a much broader mix online, where I can provide links to songs that might be new to many readers, so don’t throw out the idea of parodying a lesser-known song; it’s just not going to get into the print edition — whose circulation of somewhere under 1 million inevitably reaches a smaller and smaller fraction of theHUGE Washington Post readership. I always enjoy discovering new songs — from all eras — when I judge parody contests. One more thing: In recent years, I’ve especially enjoyed parodies that you can really sing as a full song, not just a few lines — say, verse-bridge-ending, or even verse-verse-bridge-ending. Don’t worry that I’ll toss it simply because of its length. BUT BUT BUT those verses all have to be interesting and mechanically sound, preferably finishing in a clever way. And I like to intersperse short songs with the long ones. Shortly after the results of Week 1177 ran this past summer, Loser parodists and former co-workers Barbara Sarshik and Duncan Stevens joined me one afternoon for a milkshake at a downtown Potbelly. Duncan brought some printouts, and the three of us sat at an outside table and gleefully sang some of Barbara’s parodies (and maybe some of Duncan’s) — even the one to “Springtime for Hitler” from “The Producers,” “Should I Choose Hitler or Hillary?” (No, that one didn’t get into the print paper.) For guidance and inspiration, here are some links to recent parody results: Week 1154, songs about animals Week 1113, songs for special occasions Week 1074, songs about a play, set to a tune from another show Week 929, songs about a TV show, à la the “Beverly Hillbillies” theme *LITTER-ALL TRANSLATIONS*: THE ‘PLAIN ENGLISH’ OF WEEK 1198* *(*Non-inking headline idea from Howard Walderman)* Well, we did run into a little problem with some of the entries in Week 1198 , our contest to choose a line from The Post or another paper and (loosely) “translate” the bureaucratic, euphemistic or insincere sentence into what it really means. It’s best demonstrated by this otherwise inkworthy entry by Mark Raffman: *Paul Ryan:* “To me, it’s all about the moral authority to put [our program] in place after the election.” *Translation:* “To me, it’s all about avoiding the taint of Donald Trump after the election.” It doesn’t seem that Paul Ryan has been grabbed by any taint in the past week. But there was more ink to be had for Mark (who filed from Vietnam!), as for plenty of other Losers skilled in seeing through governmental and corporate fluff and fog. Dave Prevar noted the age-old administration practice of announcing news in the form of an anonymous quote; Francis Canavan saw how the denial that a company was for sale was combined with a list of rosy business figures, concluding probably safely that the quote amounted to a big For Sale sign. And of course there are the postgame comments and the big-sale ads and the happiest thing you could say about a crashed spacecraft. Kevin Dopart, the Invite’s top finisher for seven straight years until finally being eclipsed in Year 21, finds himself back “above the fold” after an uncharacteristic couple of months’ drought (though he’s gotten plenty of magnets). This week, in fact, Kevin gets two of the four spots in the Losers’ Circle: his 24th win and his 78th runner-up (he’s opting for the Grossery Bag rather than yet another Inkin’ Memorial bobblehead). Danielle Nowlin’s Camusian angst turned to autumn shopping lists snags her her 34th ink above the fold, and 246 blots in all, and Neal Starkman of the SeaTac Loser Bureau gets his 10th, making for an impressive ratio to his 61 total inks. *What Doug Dug: * Ace copy editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choices on the winners this week (that’s a good editor, Doug) and also especially liked Marni Penning Coleman’s entry about the eagerness to touch untouched Antarctica, Warren Tanabe’s deft wordplay about the NFL’s violence policies, Hildy Zampella’s dig at the forever-diggable Metrorail system. *Speaking TOO plainly — the unprintable:* Given that the Taste Police let Hildy Zampella call Bob Dylan a “douche,” I seem to have flagged just one entry as Convo Only for taste. It’s from Jeff Contompasis: “But even as smoking rates have fallen, oral cancer rates have remained about the same and researchers in recent studies have linked the increase to HPV.” *Plain English:*“Mouth infections are going up as more guys are going down.” Jeff also sent in an entry that wasn’t a taste problem but was a bit too Loser-insidey for the Invite itself, referring to one of our most memorable prizes: “In the world of prestigious prizes, the honor is yours whether you like it or not.” Plain English: “Smile and accept this Smorked Beef Rectum.” *SEE YOU SOONER THAN YOU’D THINK* Next week, I’ll be dropping by a day early: The Invitational and Conversational will publish Wednesday, Nov. 23, since that’s when the Arts & Style print section will be going to press. Wednesday is usually my magnet-mailing day, so people who got ink this week will probably have to wait another day or two. So I won’t wish you a happy Thanksgiving just yet. *WANT TO FREELOAD OFF THE POST? * If you have an email address with the suffix .edu, .gov or .mil, you can get a free digital subscription to The Post. Many college alumni associations offer a .edu email address with the price of membership, so you might have one you don’t know about. Here’s how to register . ====================================================================== WEEK 1203, published November 27, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1203: It’s absurd! It’s a pain! The Style Invitational Empress discusses the week’s new contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 23, 2016 Happy pre-Thanksgiving, everyone, and I hope you’re enjoying the bounty of two-count-’em-two Style Invitational contests running simultaneously: the new Week 1203 contest about what you’d do with various magical powers, as well as Week 1202, for song parodies that express some sort of hope. The deadline for each is Monday night, Dec. 5 — which means that eight days from now, on Dec. 1, a third simultaneous contest will spin into play as well! If that’s not a corn in the copia, I don’t know what is. As I mentioned in the introduction to this week’s contest, I ran it in response to the request of longtime, very devoted Loser Christina Courtney, whom I finally met at last year’s Loser brunch Gettysburg, Pa., where she recently relocated. Christina has 10 blots of ink: seven honorable mentions, two prize donations . . . and, on the very first week she got ink — Week 258, March 1998 — first prize, which earned her some reindeer antler aphrodisiac powder. So it’s not surprising that Christina asked we do this contest again, with different magical powers this time around: After all, one bottle of reindeer antler aphrodisiac powder lasts only so long. Here are most of the results from Week 258 (during the reign of the Empress’s predecessor, The Czar, the contest winner got the weird prize rather than a trophy, and the budget allowed for more runners-up than the three we usually have now). Note the mix of short- and longer-form entries, and also how the powers can be used in combination: *Fifth runner-up:**The ability to communicate with animals:* I’d tease the big male macho animals by telling them our females are always in heat. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia, Md.) *Fourth runner-up: **The ability to fly, become invisible, read minds and belch fire:* Maybe then I could play Michael Jordan, one on one, even-up. Probably not. (Mike Genz, La Plata, Md.) *Third runner-up: **The ability to fly:* I would float weightless, becoming one with the beauty of nature, freed from earthly bondage, part of the cosmos, touching the very face of God. Then I would drop stuff on people and laugh at them. (Jessica Henig, Northampton, Mass.) *Second runner-up: **The ability to fly and become invisible:* At the golf course, I’d pick some pathetic 30 handicapper and catch his ball in the air and put it in the hole, and keep doing it until the 18th green, where I would kick his shots off course until he “26-putted” and finished with a 112. (Ned Bent, Herndon, Va.) *First runner-up: **The ability to communicate with animals:* While cooking chicken on the grill, I would strike up a conversation with the salmonella; when they stop answering me, the meat is done. (Greg Arnold, Herndon, Va.) *And the winner of the reindeer-antler aphrodisiac powder:* The ability to belch fire -- I’d give this ability to Monica, so she could have closure to her relationship. (Christina Courtney, Ocean City, Md.) *Honorable Mentions:* *The ability to belch fire:* I’d get a great job lighting the torch at the Redneck Olympics. (Stephen Dudzik, Silver Spring, Md.) Riverdance would be nothing but wisps of steam. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville, Va.) I’d really, really look forward to the part where the doctor tells you to turn your head and cough. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park, Md.) *The ability to become invisible:* I’d stand behind people getting on scales, sneak a foot on and add 10 pounds or so.(Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.) I am not sure what I would do, but it certainly would not involve the dressing room of a Victoria’s Secret store, ogling the forbidden flesh as it passes inches from my face, tantalizing me, begging to be seen but never touched. (T.J. Murphy, Arlington, Va.; Niels Hoven, Silver Spring, Md.) I would put a collar on my dog and walk him. We would meet my buddy, who has one of those collars for walking an “invisible dog.” Then he and I would walk together. It would be a kind of yin and yang thing. (Roy Ashley, Washington) I would send nasty e-mails to my boss, and no one would know it was me! Oh, wait, that wouldn’t work. (David Genser, Arlington, Va.) I would follow Martha Stewart around and mess things up. (Susan Reese, Arlington, Va.) I actually have this power. It happens whenever I walk into a singles bar. (Ned Bent, Herndon, Va.) *The ability to communicate with animals:* I’d give my e-mail address to my cat. I’d give it to my dog, too, but he would always be bugging me. (David Genser, Arlington, Va.) I would tell the house cats of the world that we don’t really care about them either, and we just tolerate their being around. That will show them. (Russ Beland, Springfield, Va.) I’d stand by the lobster tank in a fancy restaurant and train the lobsters to act dead when they were pointed to. (Niels Hoven, Silver Spring, Md.) *The ability to fly:* I’d become a stand-up comic and say, “I just flew in from Paris, and boy are my arms tired,” and it would actually be funny. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.; Jerry Pannullo, Kensington, Md.) I’d get on an airplane and complain loudly about the food and service. Then, at 30,000 feet, I’d storm up the aisle, open the door and leave. (John Kammer, Herndon, Va.) *The ability to read minds:* I would bring peace to the world by searching for common ideas, and I would help doctors treat children who are too young to describe their symptoms. But only when I am not busy at the Vegas poker tables. (Michael J. Hammer, Washington; Tom Witte, Gaithersburg, Md.) I’d know exactly how much to spend on a dinner date. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) *And Last: ****If I were invisible:* Late at night just before the press run, I would sneak into the offices of the Style Invitational and insert my stupid, humorless, illogical entry into the “And Last” slot. (Niels Hoven, Silver Spring, Md.) *LEAPING AHEAD SEVEN WEEKS IN A SINGLE BOUND: WHO WANTS TO HOST OUR PARTY? * Once again, the Greater Loser Community is looking for a place in the greater D.C. area to gather and make parody-noise at our annual Loser Post-Holiday Party sometime in January; it usually takes place on a Saturday evening but that’s not set in stone. The party, open to all, usually draws about 50 Losers, their handlers and the occasional Merely Curious Fan; it’s a potluck, so the host doesn’t have to cook anything. We don’t even usually coordinate who’s bringing what; it just tends to work out pretty well on its own. We’ve already had a generous offer for Jan. 7 from Robin Diallo, whose home*farm in rural Anne Arundel County, Md., served as a fabulous site this past summer for the Flushies, our annual award “banquet.” But I wanted to see if anyone who lives a bit closer in might also be willing to host, given the chances of iffy weather. It’s nice if you have a piano or other keyboard, but we’ve brought one to the house in the past. A single spacious room is ideal, so that everyone can gather when we sing the parodies — Loserbard Nan Reiner says she’s willing to come up from Florida just for this — but we’ve had very nice Loser parties over the years in quite cozy quarters. Inauguration weekend might be particularly apropos, but any weekend should be fine with me. If you’re willing to offer up your abode and haven’t already mentioned it on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page, let me know. We promise not to put your lampshades on our heads. Well, not most of them. *ICK AND CHOOSE*: THE WEEK 1199 ‘QUESTIONS FOR TERRIBLE PEOPLE’ * ****Non-inking headline suggestion by Chris Doyle* **Aack, another contest whose entries were submitted before the election. Like this one that Duncan Stevens sent on Monday, Nov. 7: “Would you rather vote for someone who’s very classy, everybody loves him, and by the way, he’s opening a new hotel, it’s going to be amazing, or a disaster, she’ll be terrible, she should just drop out? — D. Trump, New York” Maybe it’s me, but the humor fell out of that one 48 hours later. On the other hand, I think this entry by Jesse Frankovich ended up with the opposite meaning of the one intended, except for the parenthetical: “Would you run for president (just for the increased exposure) if you knew that your candidacy would actually destroy one political party from within and give the deeply distrusted opponent a far better chance to win? Fortunately, Duncan and Jesse got multiple Invite ink with more enduring entries for Week 1199, a contest playing off “Questions for Terrible People,” a new question-per-page book by comedian Wes Hazard. Hazard’s book is intended to be something of a party game, a way for people to admit, perhaps after multiple beverages, that, okay, they really wouldn’t try too hard to save that annoying neighbor from a fire if they might damage their new phone. But the Invite’s angle, of course, was for jokes, and I wasn’t surprised to end up laughing most at some entries that used the A-or-B format for a different type of humor — like Tom Witte’s winning entry: “Would you rather be on the wrong side of a wall, or on the wrong side of history?” It’s the 28th win for Tom, the Style Invitational’s third most decorated Loser (he prefers earth tones), with more than 1,400 blots of ink in all. Tom is also one of a very few Losers to have gotten ink — and in his case, lots of ink — in each of the 24 years of the Invite’s existence, since his debut in Week 7, May 1993. The other members of this week’s Losers’ Circle are also Invite veterans, though much newer ones: Duncan Stevens and Robert Schechter have 90 and 183 inks to their “credit,” just from the past few years; the less obsessive John McCooey blots up Ink No. 44, and his fifth “above the fold.” *What Doug Dug: *The faves of ace copy editor Doug Norwood this week were Robert’s runner-up joke on “The Martian”; Hildy Zampella’s about the surly teen, and Jesse Frankovich’s “And Last.” *Food for thought: * I wouldn’t call them funny, exactly, but these questions might interest you: — Would you rather live 50 years in perfect health and then die instantly of a heart attack, or spend 100 years of gradually declining health before dying in your sleep? (Steve Honley) — For the next 24 hours, would you rather: (a) have water continuously drip on your head at the rate of one drop per second; or (b) have a five-gallon bucket of water randomly dumped on your head 24 different times during that time period? (Dave Letizia) — Which would you miss more: your two middle fingers or the thumb on your non-dominant hand? (Also Dave) — When you feel resentful of high-performing co-workers, do you fantasize about them dying or getting arrested? (Marcie Finkelstein) *Unquestionably unprintable: * This week’s Scarlet Letter for funny-but-no-way entry goes to Cindi Rae Caron: “The guy you hooked up with has already coughed up for the abortion tomorrow …oops, turns out you were just late! However, there is this cute Coach bag you had your eye on, so…?” And on that note, happy Thanksgiving, everyone — if your relatives start the political rants, why-aren’t-you-xxx-yet, etc. just excuse yourself and go write some Invitational entries. ====================================================================== WEEK 1204, published December 4, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1204: Keep your chins up! The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s contest — ‘silver linings’ — and results (Jessica Kourkounis*Getty Images) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 1, 2016 Evidently one’s occupation as a poop joke judge conveys the aura of Great Wisdom. How else to explain the email I received yesterday from a woman I don’t know but must be on The Style Invitational’sweekly notification list , since affter her name she gave the title “hanger-on” (the newsletter begins “Dear Loser, Aspiring Loser or General Hanger-On). The subject line was simply “Dark thoughts.” And the body of the email: “It’s been almost a month and I’m still stunned. I don’t know what to do about this. People have explained to me how it happened, but it still doesn’t make sense. I work for the federal government. He’s going to be my Commander in Chief. How did such a despicable waste of space win the Presidency? How? How?” So let’s help out this beleaguered non-Loser with our “silver linings” contest for Week 1204 . (Gallows humor is humor.) My deepest thanks to Gene Weingarten, who was going to do a column with the same theme, for letting me use it as a contest instead. This isn’t one of those highly structured Invite contests like Ye Olde change-a-letter-and-define-the-result; instead, I’ll see what the Loser Community sends me and we’ll see how the humor develops. Here’s a little tip: I’m a little uncomfortable about how partisan this contest will seem, so I hope to include funny entries that reflect the views of what is, after all, the majority a sizable minority of American voters. Meanwhile, don’t forget that there are*three* Invitational contests running right now. In addition to the new Week 1204 (deadline Dec. 12), we have Week 1203 — what would you do with any of several given magical powers — and the Week 1202 song parody contest, in which the lyrics have to express hope in some way. Both of those are due Dec. 5. (Techie note: Because the usual short URL was already taken, the short address for this week’s contest is bit.ly*invite-1204, rather than ... invite1204.) *AND IF ALL ELSE FAILS . . . PAR-TAY! LOSER POST-HOLIDAY PARTY, JAN. 14* Save the date for the biggest event in the D.C. area in January 2017: Loser (Steve Langer, Chevy Chase, Md.) has really dumb ideas graciously offered to host this winter’s Loser Post-Holiday Party, a potluck and parody-fest open to all Losers, their handlers, and even Just-a-Readers. Super, possibly unprecedented bonus: Steve’s house is within walking distance of the Metro (Friendship Heights station). Loser Steve Honley has already agreed to play piano. While we’ve never had a problem resulting from sending the party invitation to the entire Style Invitational email list — we’ve always ended up with a manageably sized and well-behaved crowd of 50 or so — I’m a bit hesitant to open our arms (er, the Langers’ arms) — to 8,000 people. So: If you’re reading this column, we’re happy to have you join us — that in itself confirms your Loserliness; but if you don’t see theStyle Invitational Devotees page on Facebook and you’re not a regular Invite entrant, I probably won’t be sending you the invitation. SO all you have to do is email me at pat.myers@washpost.com and let me know you’re interested, and I’ll send you more info and put you on the list. (If I don’t recognize you, we’ll first have a little email chat.) People who get multiple ink in the coming weeks, I’ll probably invite you repeatedly on your prize letters; just chill, okay? You’re getting a magnet! *12-PACKS OF BIERCE*: THE ‘DEVIL’S DICTIONARY’ ENTRIES OF WEEK 1200* **A non-inking headline suggestion by Jeff Contompasis* That would be Ambrose Bierce, author of the famed 1906 “Devil’s Dictionary,” a marvelous compendium thatcontinues to zing 110 years later (“Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage”; “Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another”). And in Week 1200 we made the totally arbitrary rule that the term plus the definition must add to exactly 12 words. For 1200. Whatever. We*always* get lots of Bierceworthy definitions in these contests — with many of them referring to new terms or situations — plus a whole lot of 12-word entries can fit on the page for the Invitational’s print version. So we have 45 inking entries this week, though only for 23 people; for some reason there were buckets of duplicate ink this week: Kevin Dopart, in addition to his runner-up, blotted up five honorable mentions. Inkin’ Memorial winner Hildy Zampella got four blots total, as did Chris Doyle. And Jesse Frankovich and Duncan Stevens each got three. — as did newcomer Daniel Galef, whose ink total boings from two to five. But this is his second runner-up prize; Daniel’s first, in Week 1187, was for a similarly cynical neologism: “World Wide We: Oneness and harmony with all humankind. Mutually exclusive with Internet use.” Another occasional Loser, Dave Airozo, slipped into the Losers’ Circle for the first time, for his sixth blot of ink. *What Doug Dug *and *Laughed out of Courtney: * Lots of faves this week from editors Doug Norwood and Courtney Rukan, who read over the Invite on what’s now called the multiplatform desk. Doug’s favorites were Kevin Dopart’s runner-up for “promises,” Daniel Galef’s “telephone,” Chris Doyle’s “ego trip,” Hildy Zampella’s “Tim Kaine” and Tom Witte’s “loser.” Courtney was even more effusive (though for different entries), singling out, in addition to “promises” and “loser,” Dave Airozo’s runner-up “nail-biter” (Courtney comes from the sports section), “hands” (Jesse Frankovich), “believe me” (Gary Crockett), “make America great again” (William Kennard), “buyer’s remorse” (Nan Reiner), “drain the swamp” (Mae Scanlan), “exercise bike” (Duncan Stevens), “subway” (Kevin Dopart) and “veterinarian.” Don’t forget to write me to get on the party list! ====================================================================== WEEK 1205, published December 11, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1205: The year in redo The Style Invitational Empress discusses the week’s new contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 8, 2016 I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that I will receive more inkworthy entries than I can use in Week 1205 of The Style Invitational — and in Week 1206 as well. It’s a sequoia limb: How could there not be an inkucopia, given the more than 50 widely varied contests you have a chance to enter — if you missed them the first time around, if you’ve thought of something new, or even if you’re convinced that the Empress will finally recognize the greatness of the entry she overlooked before. Over the past year, I think, we’ve covered all the annual (or more frequent) favorites: Obit poems. Foal names. Limericks. Song parodies. Bank heads. Word banks. Cartoon captions. Two items from a list. ScrabbleGrams. Tour de Fours. Fictoids. Questionable Journalism. Plus a number of contests we’ve done only a few times in the past 24 years, like collective nouns, ink blots, Poeds. And some novel one-off contests, like What3Words locations, Questions for Terrible People, and “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me” questions. I didn’t need to put in links to all those contests in the previous paragraphs because you can more easily see them all on one page — thanks to Loser 4 Ever Elden Carnahan and hisMaster Contest List on the Loser Community’s own website, *NRARS.org. * I didn’t mention this explicitly in the Invite itself, but if you don’t subscribe to The Post, and you can’t sign up for a free subscription through an .edu, mil or.gov email , you can see all the year’s contests on the Master Contest List and they won’t count against the limit of Post articles you can read free. That’s because they’re PDFs of the print and Web pages, as well as plain-text versions. Also, the tabular form of the list lets you quickly scan the descriptions of all the year’s contests. To see the contests on Elden’s list, scroll way down to the past year of contests, then click on one of the icons at the right of each listing: The notepad is plain text, the WP is a PDF of the print column, and the E is a PDF of the online version, which often contains more entries than the print paper. And don’t forget to check the results of the contest you’re entering; just scroll down four more week and click on that link. Both this week and next, you’ll be able to choose from the whole year’s contests; I’m essentially running the contest twice, with two sets of winners (next week’s will be called Week 1206). So you get to write as many as 50 entries, as long as you don’t submit more than 25 in each week. Your entries could be from all different contests, or all from a single week. Note: If you don’t give me the week number of the contest you’re entering, you’re counting on my willingness to figure out which one it is; my nice-Empressness can vary during the judging process. As always, you may resubmit entries that didn’t get ink the first time around, as long as someone else didn’t get ink with a different version of your joke. I often don’t have enough room on a given week to honor all the inkworthy song parodies, limericks and other long-form entries, or entries from hugely popular contests, and so it’s quite possible — it’s happened numerous times — that a song or poem or horse name that was robbed of ink last time can even end up “above the fold” as one of the top winners. *YOU — YES, EVEN YOU — ARE INVITED TO THE LOSER POST HOLIDAY PARTY, JAN. 14* In last week’s Style Conversational I announced the happy news that for the first time, our Loser Post-Holiday Party would be within walking distance from the Metro: at Steve Langer’s house in Chevy Chase, Md. And we’ve already heard from a couple of dozen people that they’ll be coming to the annual potluck*parody-fest. Within the next few days, I’ll send out an email invitation to a list I’ll compile of Losers who’ve gotten ink lately and live in the D.C.-Baltimore area, along with others who I think might like to come. The method carries a significant risk that I’ll neglect to mention *you,* even though you’d like to bring your favorite eaty*drinky thing and join us, so I’d be delighted if you’d write me at pat.myers@washpost.com with an RSVP, even if you’re not quite sure you can make it. After we compile a guest list, I’ll send you the precise house number, etc. If you’re entirely new to the Loser Community, I’ll chat a bit with you by email. We’re not trying to be exclusive, but the invitation list we’ve used in past years — everyone who gets The Post’s weekly email newsletter when the new Invitational goes up — has grown to more than 9,000 people. I’m sure the Langer-Fultz Abode is all very nice, but I don’t think it offers stadium seating. *This week’s nON-EVent*: The results of Week 1201* **Non-inking headline idea by Kevin Dopart* The letter block NOVE, in honor of November, proved as successful as its predecessors in our annual Tour de Fours neologism contest. Of 24 possible arrangements of the four letters — you could separate them with a space, hyphen, etc., but not with another letter — this week’s inking entries feature 14 of them, and at least 20 of them were used in all (it’s possible that someone breaking the block might even have used EOVN, HVOE, OEVN or VNEO, though it didn’t show up on my search). This contest was posted just days after the Nov. 8 election (it had been prepared beforehand), and a lot of the entries — a smaller number than usual in total — reflected shock, confusion, bitterness and fear. Of course, a lot of other entries reflected toilets and boogers. It’s how we roll. All four spots in the Losers’ Circle this week are filled with Usual Suspects; it’s nice to see Jeff Shirley back Losing again after some nasty medical stuff. With his third Inkin’ Memorial, Duncan Stevens inches ever closer to the 100-ink mark, almost all in the last couple of years. Jeff has 139 blots of ink, including a whopping 20 “above the fold,” but less whopping than the 247 inks* 25 ATF of Danielle Nowlin and the whoptastic 1,416*128 of Tom Witte, who has entered the Invitational virtually (or maybe without qualification) every week since Week 7 in 1993. *Laugh out of Courtney* and *What Doug dug: * The favorites this week from the copy-editing tag team: Courtney Rukan singled out as “all really clever” Chris Doyle’s Intravenous de Milo, L’oven Spoonful (Cindi Rae Caron), Un-evolve (Mae Scanlan), Neo-vent (Tom Witte), Beano Evil (Doyle again) and Pornoverse (Jesse Frankovich). Doug Norwood also favored Nov-ember (Andy Promisel), Supine ova (Jon Gearhart) and Beano Evil (yet more from the Doylester). This clever entry was too inside-baseball for the Invitational: Neovite: Someone eager to experience the Royal Pine of Losing. (Kevin Dopart). See, the FirStink , the Little Trees brand car air freshener with a sticker on it that’s the prize for Style Invitational First Offenders, is always in the variety called Royal Pine. *cONVErsational only*: This week’s unprintables* **another Jeff Contompasis idea* As usual with our neologism contests, some entries were too crude even for the Invitational. Such as (I’m looking up their offers as I include them here): Bone voyage: “Hope you get laid on your vacation.” (Mark Raffman) Womenov: I’ve been pursuing this goal unsuccessfully for decades, but I still vow that someday I will get Womenov! (Tom Witte) No-no vent: “I said that’s an exit, not an entrance!” (Tom Witte, who is renowned for unprintable wordplay) Lovenog: Semen. (Well, guess who.) *LOSER BRUNCH THIS SUNDAY: TED’S BULLETIN, GAITHERSBURG, MD. * I’ll be singing in a choral concert Sunday afternoon on the other side of town, so I have to miss this month’s Loser brunch. But especially if you live in the I-270 corridor, you ought to RSVP to Elden and join the contingent at Ted’s Bulletin , the Montgomery County branch of the popular Capitol Hill diner. ====================================================================== WEEK 1206, published December 18, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1206: We got longed with our song parodies The Style Invitational Empress on the week’s new contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 15, 2016 Methode, The Washington Post’s publishing (aka “content management”) system, tells me that this week’s online Style Invitational — the new contest, Week 1206, plus the song parody results — runs some 85 column inches. Because I’d rather you take the time to read them rather than hang around here (not to mention that when I post songs online, I have to manually add a code at the end of every line in each song, and I’m tired), I’m not going to add many inches here. As always, the Week 1202 contest brought forth far more inkworthy parodies than I could include — and as always, I included too many for a sane person to read, anyway. The theme for this contest, which ran barely a week after the election, was something incorporating “hope,” though I knew from the start that the songs didn’t need to be really rosy, and that “hope” could be interpreted pretty broadly; the optimistic lyrics for Mark Raffman’s runner-up, for example, were from the perspective of ISIS. I even looked the other way when Kel Nagel’s “Rockin’ Robin” parody ended with a line about hope that seemed tacked on just to qualify. Some of the entries, however, were ... well, “hopeless” might give the wrong idea. Especially when they were as good as these two: The only ray of hope in this one by veteran Loserbard Frank Osen was its title: *Maybe He’ll Cave on Some Things* *To “My Favorite Things”* Slapping his name on some bright shiny building In 10-foot tall letters with solid-gold gilding, Rallies and sallies and 3 a.m. tweets, Raking in money and counting receipts, Hissing and dissing at someone who heckles, And buying self-portraits with other folks’ shekels, Thinking he’d still be content with such things— Is, sadly, now one of my favorite things. Then there was this one by a newcomer, college student Annie Sawamura — which I think would have been our first-ever parody of the “SpongeBob SquarePants” theme : Ohhhhhhhh, Who lives in a tower and sold fake degrees? Our new POTUS! Intolerant, orange, of course GOP! Demagogue and Pence! Misogynist comments they somehow dismiss! Gun laws! Queer rants! If your state voted red, something wicked’s amiss! Evil lair plans? Jude Law’s great aunts, Corn cobs, sweatpants -- All as competent as our elect! --- It’s no surprise to any regular Invite reader that a parody by Nan Reiner once again walks off with the Inkin’ Memorial — it’s Nan’s 14th win in all — or that Mark Raffman scored with yet another of his parodies of “Be Our Guest,” or that Barry Koch finds himself in the Losers’ Circle for the 20th time. But it’s just the fifth blot of ink, and the very first appearance “above the fold,” for runner-up Jane Pacelli and her helpful suggestion for holiday charity. In fact, we have a lot of new and infrequent names among this week’s inking entrants — I certainly hope to see more from all of them. Brad Kelly of Bethesda, Md. (and I’m assuming it’s the same Brad Kelly of Bethesda, Md.) , who wrote the clever “2-0-2-0” parody on “YMCA” (and another song that almost made the cut as well), got four blots of ink from Week 248 to Week 299 — that’d be 1997 and 1998. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another 18 years! And how about the impressive parodies from First Offenders Rhoda Feigenbaum (her “Tonight” was copy chief Courtney Rukan’s favorite of the week), Elizabeth McQueen and Elliott Shevin? Notice, by the way, that this week’s retrospective contest, Week 1206, is exactly like the retrospective contest of Week 1205 — except that you may also enter send in a Week 1202 song parody. I’m certainly not averse in printing some more hope or (n)ope four weeks from now. Late note: While I’ve been writing up the Conversational this afternoon, I’ve also been in negotiations with Big Management over the inclusion of the word “schlonged” in Brad Kelly’s parody; The Post’s managing editor wasn’t sure that readers would realize that it was a quote from Trump himself, about Hillary Clinton. He was satisfied that I added a link on the word that led to a 2015 Post story about the comment — with “schlonged” in the headline. *SPEAKING OF PARODY TIME ... * If you haven’t gotten your Evite for the*annual Loser Post-Holiday Party potluck*, Saturday evening, Jan. 14, email me from the address you want me to use, and I’ll send it to you. While we’re all saddened to hear that Nan Reiner will be recovering from surgery and won’t be able to come up from Florida to lead the parodies (especially the ones she writes for the occasion), we hope she’ll feel well enough to make us a video. We will, however, have Loser Steve Honley at the piano, and several people either eager or at least willing to sing some new parodies and at least a couple from Week 1202. Currently the person planning to travel farthest to reach the home of the in­cred­ibly gracious Loser Steve Langer and Alison Fultz is Matt Monitto, who’s coming all the way from Connecticut. Perhaps Matt will do an encore of his “Hamilton” parody that he sent for in our last song contest — complete with costumed video. We’re back one more week before Christmas — see you then. ====================================================================== WEEK 1207, published December 25, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1207: Grid expectations The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over (eww!) this week’s contest and results Week 172 winner: “Mom, a Jew. Pop, a WASP* Easter, Pesach, Christmas* Communions, tallises* Psychoanalysis.” The Empress’s family, however, celebrates this way without issues. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post; “poed” by Roger Browdy) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 22, 2016 Happy Impending Holidays, everyone, and welcome to The Style Invitational’s 11th running (not counting variations) of Clue Us In (a.k.a. Haven’t Got a Clue), our almost annual reverse-crossword contest. While this contest always attracts lots of crossword buffs, it’s not a puzzle at all: in fact, the grid we show is just a catchy graphic for might as well be a list of words for which we’re seeking creative definitions. And many of the “clues” that get ink would be too long and just wouldn’t work in a real crossword. The Empress doesn’t care. As much as she adores the Loser Community and tries to run a fair and fun contest, the Invite’s overriding goal is to entertain*readers* with all your great stuff that you give us in return for the chance that I might send you a 0.113-inch-thick magnet the size of a business card. I note in the instructions for Week 1207 that, along with not requiring ultra-brevity, we also don’t use the convention of including a question mark to signal that the clue includes wordplay; for one thing, most of the inking clues would have them. On the other hand, to help the reader a bit but not be heavy-handed, I might occasionally add “(hyphenated)” or “(2 words)”: I’m not out to stump the reader — remember, the Invite is*not a puzzle* — but still, the joke that requires you to take a moment to figure it out is often the one you’ll enjoy the most, and I want to make sure that not too many readers will just do the brow-furrow and turn the page to the wedding announcements. As in past years, I’ll probably run several, very different clues for some of the 72 words while I skip others entirely. At least one year, I ran a whole second list that contained one clue for every word, just for people who wanted to try to solve the puzzle. But so few people bothered to work it that I decided that it wasn’t worth the time and effort. I didn’t spell it out this week, but you’re welcome to write multiple entries for the same word, as long as you don’t send me more than 25 entries in all. This contest is*guaranteed* to generate a lot of duplicate entries, certainly many with the same idea. Normally when I get too many of the same entry, I toss it or just mention it, without specific credit, in the introduction to the results. But occasionally with Clue Us In, I’ll run a particularly funny entry attributed to “many people.” I’ll at least select an entry that I found to have the very best wording, rather than give multiple credit for similar ones. The takeaway: If you want to see your name in the paper, you’ll want to be creative. (Another tip: I almost always get more entries from words near the top of the grid.) I spelled this out in the directions, both in the column and on theonline entry form, but I’ll beg here one more time: The best way for me to judge this contest is to search through the whole combined list of entries — which will number several thousand — for Word 1, ITSATRAP, and mark my favorite entries; then proceed to BARGES, etc., 72 times. If you note that your entry is for “I DO TOO” rather than IDOTOO, I could well miss it; I can search on “trap” and find various forms for Word 1, but I can’t search on “I,” “do” or “too” without running into a lot of entries for other words. To see all the results of our crossword contests (including those from our variant of letting you make up words from a partially filled grid), go to the super-fab Master Contest List compiled by Grandpa Of All Losers Elden Carnahan. Then search for “crossword,” which will lead you to most of the contests. Note the week number, then look four rows farther down the list to see the contest that has that week’s results. If instead you might have a thing or two to do this weekend, just look at the “above the fold” winners of three recent Clues Me In. *Last year’s winners, Week 1157: *4. BAR: Both lawyers and drunkards need to pass this (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.) 3. BEAT: Follows “A: Get up” on a forgetful person’s to-do list (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) 2. FARMS: Rejected terser, saltier title of Hemingway’s novel (hyphenated) (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) 1. LIE: Dead politicians continue to do this in their graves (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) *From 2013-14, Week 1048: *4. IRAN: Paul Ryan’s revised marathon claim (Mark Richardson, Takoma Park, Md.) 3. ICE: H 2 O^3 (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.) 2. GRAFT: How politicians get money to grow on trees (Barry Koch, Catlett, Va.) 1. BAGPIPES: Scotland’s drone program (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) *From early 2012, Week 953: *4. GAY: Baby name not in the top 1,000 since 1969 (Robert Gallagher, Charleston, S.C.) 3. WHATAMESS: GOP mantra — drop second “A” for Democrats’ version (Barry Koch, Catlett, Va.) 2. ADA: Dyslexics Association of America (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) 1. ACADEMY: Last word in the song “My Aca Lies Over the Ocean” (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.) *ARE WE ALL FAKED OUT? LOOKING FOR MORE FICTOID CATEGORIES* Loser Marleen May recently gave me a prize donation of a party game called Fact or Crap: You choose a card bearing some bit of trivia that’s a real fact or . . . anyway, it would be a perfect prize for yet another of our bogus-trivia contests. But what would be a fresh category? We’ve already had a general contest as well as specific ones for medicine*physiology; derivations of words and expressions; current or past political figures; movies; general history; musicians; sports; cars, driving, etc; Washington, D.C.; the military. . . Taking suggestions! Email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. Funny examples are always persuasive. *POWER PLAY*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1203* **A non-inking entry submitted by both Tom Witte and Jesse Frankovich* Like most Invite contests that are more about comic writing than about wordplay, Week 1203 — asking what you would do with one or more of the magical powers we listed — generated relatively few entries (though they did include several heartfelt vows to help orphans and otherwise make the world a little bit sweeter; I think they were from a class assignment by a teacher not quite familiar with what we do in Loserland). It’s, wow, the seventh Inkin’ Memorial, and the 149th blot of ink in all for Rob Huffman, who had the best phrased of several entries about supersonic speed and Usain Bolt. Bob actually has more wins than runners-up, 7 to 6. Phenom Jesse Frankovich strikes again with, oh look at that, we did a Trump joke. (Jesse’s zingiest joke of the week was, I decided an unprintable cheap shot; see the bottom of this column if you want to look.) And two more Invite fixtures, Old Fixture Bird Waring and New Fixture John Hutchins, flew away with the other two spots “above the fold.” *What Doug Dug: * The faves of ace copy editor Doug Norwood were the two runners-up about X-ray vision — Jesse’s and John’s — as well as Kevin Dopart’s honorable mention about the ghosts of Trump’s past, present and future ... wives. *Power Derangers*: The Unprintables* *Non-inking headline submitted by both Chris Doyle and Jeff Contompasis* These three, among others, were how-you-say Funny But No: *The power to become many times as small as you are:*Wow, now I can fit inside Megyn Kelly and stop the blood from coming out of her wherever. —John Barron, New York (Stephen Dudzik) *Shape-shifting:* I would put on an exhibition featuring my most artistic bowel moveme... oh wait, you said “-shifting.” (Jeff Contompasis) And for the Scarlet Letter:*Shape-shifting:* I’d become Jared Kushner — that Ivanka has got one heck of a body. — Proud Papa in N.Y. (Jesse Frankovich) --- Have the merriest of Christmases, the happiest of Hanukkot, the divinest of Diwalis, the kwaziest of Kwanzaas, the abstainiest of non-holidays — just find some time to write crossword clues. Next week, some of my fave winners from the past year. ====================================================================== WEEK 1208, published January 1, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1208: We’re really, most sincerely done with 2016 But it did provide a great source of humor for the year’s Style Invitational winners In Manhattan’s Times Square on Dec. 28, people had a chance to “smash their bad memories” of 2016. They got a lot of exercise. (Alba Vigaray*EPA) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 29, 2016 On Dec. 8, just after the death of John Glenn was announced, Loser Eric Murphy joked grimly to me on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page: “Hey Pat, I assume you are being given a full-page spread for the obit poem contest this year, right?” And that was before the deaths of Alan Thicke and Craig Sager and Henry Heimlich and Zsa Zsa Gabor andd Richard Adams and George Michael and Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, and hey, as I write this, we still have 2 1*2 days left in 2016 — a year that people on social media have cutesily been addressing like a person: “2016, will you get over with?” (Presumably people will stop dying once the ball drops in Times Square.) To answer Eric, I doubt that our Week 1208 contest will get any more real estate than the usual half page within the Arts & Style section — but I do feel certain we’ll get more entries than usual in this annual contest. How do you write something funny*clever but not cruel about someone who’s died? First off, you don’t rejoice at the death unless that person is, by general acclamation in this society, an out-and-out villain (e.g., Osama bin Laden, or that guy who kept three women hostage in his house). Funny wordplay about the person’s afterlife in Heaven is welcome, but generally not the same about the person’s new headquarters Down There. The poem doesn’t have to be about the person’s death; it can be more general or concern just one episode of a life, as in Gene Weingarten’s verse about Florence Henderson and the on-screen son who had a crush on her. The name of the person can be in a title rather than in the body of the poem. And despite the long list of entertainment celebrities who’ve unwittingly gained eligibility for this year’s contest, some of our best obit poems have been of little-known people. In fact, our winner in last year’s contest, by Kathy Hardis Fraeman, didn’t even mention the poor woman’s name (one more way not to be unnecessarily cruel): *Woman who accidentally killed herself while adjusting her bra holster”:* She got herself a push-up bra That had a single fatal flaw. It didn’t just support her charms; This bra was meant for bearing arms. But holster bras should not be trusted, Since bras are always readjusted. Sad to say, dear gun-nut crazies, “Push up” now refers to daisies. (Kathy Hardis Fraeman, Olney, Md.) For you Loserbards who are new to the Invitational, it’ll behoove you to draw some guidance and inspiration from any of our dozen or so previous obit poem contests. The easiest way to do that is to head over to Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List and search on “died.” Most of those hits (starting in 2004, after the Empress deposed the Czar) will be for a contest headlined “Dead Letters” or “Post Mortems.” Check the week number, then scroll down four rows, for the contest in which the results to that contest ran. Well, it was a good year for US: A sampling of 2016 Inkin’ Memorial winners In preparing to judge the next two contests — two weeks in which you could enter almost any of the previous year’s challenges — I’ve been looking over the past year’s winners, and wanted to share some of these greatest hits in a single list (sorry, I can’t list*all,* but do check that Master Contest List). Each of the entries below was the week’s top winner; they’re listed chronologically. *From the Week 1152 retrospective contest: * *Week 1110, Someone’s Mama jokes: * Yoda’s Mama is so dumb, she talks like this. (Gregory Koch, Falls Church, Va.) *Week 1154, song parodies about animals; *this one is about the dentist who shot a lion that turned out to be the renowned Cecil: *Dr. Palmer’s Blues **To “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” from “The Sound of Music” ***Orthodontists hadn’t confronted you Till I took deadly aim. First I took pride in your homicide, But now I just take the blame. What a bungle out in the jungle to Shoot myself in the foot. All explanation’s flossed in translation, Seems my repute’s kaput.  How I’m abused and vilified for going on that hunt;  Mobs yell it’s I who should have died, and that I’m just a very bad person. New adventures now involve dentures, No more the lion’s roar. Tooth extraction’s quite enough action. Big shot I’m not — just small bore. (Stephen Gold, Glasgow, Scotland) *Week 1157, crossword clues: * LIE: Dead politicians continue to do this in their graves (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) *Week 1160, redefine existing words: * PERMUTATION: How Chernobyl Fried Chicken offers refunds. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) *Week 1163, spell a word backward and define the result:* QARI: A deep hole the government throws billions into. (Ellen Ryan, Rockville, Md.) *Week 1164, which-is-true questions a la “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me”:* *A London resident showed his love for Burger King how?* A. He officially changed his name from Simon Smith to Bacon Double Cheeseburger. B. He held his wedding in the Burger King on Tottenham Court Road, complete with the presiding official dressed as the King, and the couple exchanging onion rings with their vows. C. He stole the Burger King statue from a local restaurant, and demanded free Chicken Fries for life as the “king’s ransom.” *Answer: A, per Time.com* (Larry Gray, Union Bridge, Md.) *Week 1165, neologisms beginning with B* (judged by Invite Double Hall of Famer Brendan Beary): Bieberschnitzel: German for “mediocre cut of meat.” (Ivars Kuskevics, Takoma Park, Md.) *Week 1167, link any two terms from a list we gave: * *Hillary’s emails* are just like* three inches of snow*: not enough to keep you from running for the office, but danged if they don’t make the route hell. (Mike Ostapiej, Mount Pleasant, S.C.) *Week 1168, jokes requiring specialized knowledge to understand: * Q. Why were the French tourists in D.C. embarrassed when they took their toddlers to the National Zoo? A. The kids started yelling, “Seal! Seal!”* *The French word for seal is*phoque.* (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) *Week 1170, “breed” any two horse names from a list of Kentucky Derby nominees and name the “foal”:* Perfect Saint x Caribbean = Francis Of A C Sea (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.) *Week 1172, write something using only the words from the song “American Pie”: * The Quartet Looking for the American Crown On the left: The Queen — bride of a man we recall; did write a book; knew sergeants died. The Pink-oh — off the Marx; children admire him. On the rite: The Jester: in tune with American rage; can fire every one; fat hands; foul. And last, the Bible Lover’s Man: not American-born; singin’ “no levee”; no friend, no chance. The verdict: not good. (Mary Kappus, Washington) *Week 1174, “breed” two inking entries from Week 1170 to name a “grandfoal”:* Autocorrect: Nose x Señor Moment = No Sé (Larry Gray, Union Bridge, Md.) *Week 1177, song parodies about the presidential campaign: * *(To the Major-General’s Song by Gilbert and Sullivan)* I am the very model of a presidential candidate Whose every word has made The Don the most revolting man, to date. I ended Lyin’ Ted, he’s just a microscopic speck to me; On Clinton, I’m performing a political mastectomy. Since Barry said that gays can wed, a champion to them is he; I’ll overturn the court, we’ll see who really has supremacy! When dirty thugs fight whites, they lead this country to the coroner; I’ll end this racial dissonance by banning every foreigner. We’ll build a wall that’s greater than that Lego fort of China’s is; Our country will be pure at last — there won’t be any minuses! My Donald-centered plans have left the voters in excited states, So soon I’ll be the president and run these Disunited States. (Matt Monitto, Bristol, Conn.) *Week 1178, collective nouns: * TWO SQUARE MEETERS of Mormon missionaries (Dudley Thompson, Cary, N.C.) *Week 1183, if x were more honest: * If salespeople were more honest, they wouldn’t keep asking, “Can I be honest with you?” (Annette Green, Lexington, Va.) *Week 1186, poems based on the anagram of someone’s name: * EDGAR A. POE to EGO PARADE Once upon a dark convention, full of fear and apprehension, After many strange and hateful speakers from the GOP— Came the climax, pessimistic, altogether chauvinistic, With an empty, egotistic pledge to fix things by decree: “Only one knows how to do it, and of course that one is ME!” Quoth the ravin’ Donald T. (Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.) *Week 1187, drop the last letter of a word to make a new word: * Obamacar: The glitchy second-rate vehicle your partner made you get because it was cheaper, and now constantly complains about. (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.) *Week 1189, limericks featuring “ge-” words:* Shirley lied, “I’m just fat. I got stressed, ate More dining hall food than the rest ate.” Her mom jerked a thumb At the freshman’s huge tum Before bellowing, “Shirley, you gestate!” (Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.) *Week 1194, bogus word derivations: * *America:* Concatenation of the Spanish*amé* and*rica;* rough translation: “I love the wealthy.” (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) *Week 1195, alter a movie title without changing any letters: * Rebel Without ACA Use: After losing one too many knife fights, a teenage loner signs up for Obamacare. (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) *CHEERING AIDS: THE ‘SILVER LININGS’ OF WEEK 1204* Really, it hasn’t gotten a whole lot easier for me to read the news or chat with someone about the incoming regime: My most frequent strategy is to say, “Well, it’ll be interesting to see what happens.” And then switch the car radio to music or change the subject to the exceeding adorability of my cat, Joey. But reading a thousand or so bright-side thoughts — nearly all of them bitterly disingeunous — was something of a diversion. It would have been futile to aim for anything close to a pro-Trump*anti-Trump balance; the few non-anti were mostly jabs about the White House interns being safe from the First Spouse. The four “above-the-fold” winners this week are all Invite regulars — Kevin Dopart has won the Invite 25 times now, and runners-up Art Grinath, Ward Kay and Beverley Sharp have blotted up 377, 83 and 650 splotches of ink over the years, respectively. But there was a lot of ink from newbies — three First Offenders this week — and rarities as well; for instance, it’s the 10th blot of ink for Allan Breon, but his first since Week 551 in 2004, the Empress’s first year. *What Doug dug: * The faves this week of ace copy editor Doug Norwood were Art Grinath’s runner-up about how global warming can help us invade the North Pole in the War on Christmas; Neal Starkman’s “anyone can be president,” the best of numerous entries on that theme; Duncan Stevens’s on the threat of Gold Star parents, etc. (just on the edge of bitter screediness, I thought); and Dave Airozo’s eagerness at watching the release of pent-up congressional racism, “like loosening a belt after Thanksgiving dinner.” *And why copy chief Courtney Rukan doesn’t judge The Style Invitational: * “Is it all right if I say every single last one made me laugh – or cry just a little? Inspired entries this week. Thanks, Obama!” *This one would need a lead lining: The Unprintable: * “Things are looking up for the wire coat hanger industry!” (Nan Reiner) Nope. Happy New Year to you all — and it’s not too late to sign up for the Jan. 14 potluck. Email me if you’d like an Evite or lost the first one. We’re currently at 72 people — both the Usual Suspects and some who’ll be at their first Loser event — so don’t expect a lot of sprawling space. ====================================================================== WEEK 1209, published January 8, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1209: We stick it to you once again On the way: 1,000 brand-new Loser Magnets. How many will be yours? A Post parade of also-rans: The Style Invitational Loser Magnets Since 2004, The Style Invitational has awarded business-card-size magnets to honorable-mention winners. Each year, we have 500 copies made of each Bob Staake design, so it really is getting a limited-edition Staake print when you get ink. Caption All 24 of Bob Staake’s designs for our honorable-mention prizes Josh Borken’s slogan on one of the first pair of Loser magnets, when the Empress took over at the end of 2003. This design was reused in both 2005-06 and 2009. Design by Bob Staake for The Washington Post Buy Photo <#> Wait 1 second to continue. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** January 5, 2017 I’m always excited to introduce our new pair of Style Invitational Loser magnets each year, as we do in this week’s contest. Actually, our supply of 500 of each magnet stretched this past year into January — but JUST into January: I mailed out the last of the “Falling Jest Short” design yesterday — in fact, I forgot to save one for the archive! — and have only two or three of the “Magna Dum Laude” model left. For several years now I haven’t run a new contest for magnet slogans; instead, I’ve used runner-up and honorable-mention entries from our numerous contests over the years for not just magnets, but also T-shirts, Loser mugs and Grossery Bags. (I don’t think I’ve used any bumper sticker ideas from back in the Czarist era.) One slogan I considered this time around was one by Drew Bennett, “Me Write Pretty One Day.” But I was concerned that the allusion to the 2000 David Sedaris bestseller wouldn’t be as obvious in 2017; sure enough, when I polled the Style Invitational Devotees group — a generally overeducated bunch — on Facebook this week, a number of people had no clue. I don’t want the Loser magnet to puzzle anyone who might win it. The two new designs are now in production by the promo-stuff company run by Julianne Weiner, who happens to be an Invite fan, and she expects to deliver them by the end of next week. So, magnet winners of Week 1205, you’ll have to wait a few days more than usual — unless you’d like one of the classic designs shown above in the photo gallery: I have a few extra copies of many (but not all) of the old models. If you got ink in Week 1205 and want an vintage magnet, e-mail me with your preference (and perhaps second and third choices). And ahem, I think I have to trade with someone to get one or two “Falling Jest Short” magnets back. *A NEW LEASE ON LAUGH*: PART 1 OF THE 2016 RETROSPECTIVE CONTEST * **A non-inking (too long for print) headline idea by Jesse Frankovich* It’s like judging 50 contests at once! Actually, I think it’s probably more fun to see entries for dozens of different contests rather than thousand upon thousand for a single type of joke. And I’m even eager to do it all over again this weekend for Week 1206; for the first time ever, I ran the same contest for two successive weeks, with two sets of winners. (I haven’t started judging it, but I did notice when compiling the entries that some Losers sent the same entries in both weeks.) I wasn’t surprised at all that not many people, and almost no brand-new people, entered Week 1205; having to look up 50 previous contests is a challenge that will appeal disproportionately to Loser Obsessives. On the other hand, a lot of the submissions contained the maximum 25 entries. Some people did 25 entries to a single contest; others spread them out.thinly I believe that only one contest didn’t get any entries: the week where we showed drawings of everyday objects (e.g., an electric plug) and say what they “really” were; good call, since it would have been difficult to run a picture. As in past years, entries that referred to more recent events got a lot of ink, including Mark Raffman’s runner-up “Rahputin.” But I think I’m presenting a wide variety of humor this week, including the Invite-signature poop-joke-with-a-current-reference that won the Inkin’ Memorial. Holy moly, what did William Kennard put in his Alpha-Bits four weeks ago? While William enters the Invite regularly and had blotted up 37 inks as of last week, he’d never won, or even placed “above the fold.” This week he scores three honorable mentions in addition to the Bobble-Linc, and had even more entries on my short­list. Maybe he’d like me to present his trophy to him at the Loser Post-Holiday Party on Jan. 14? (Evite here ; yes, even you are invited.) And while runners-up Jeff Contompasis and Mark Raffman can’t stay out of the Losers’ Circle, it’s the second trip, and just eighth ink overall, for Michael Rolfe of the Cape Town, South Africa, Loser Bureau. Fortunately, a tote bag isn’t likely to shatter in transit as it’s paddled across the Atlantic in a canoe. *What Doug Dug: * The faves this week of ace copy editor Doug Norwood: “I really liked Fantastic Boasts [Matt Monitto]. Also Forrest Gum [Chris Doyle], FiddlerOnTheRoofie [also Chris], What Ever Happened to Baby. Jane? [Roy Ashley] Umami [Doyle yet again] made me laugh but I worried that it might offend Asian Americans. [Nah; it has nothing to do with Asians at all. What I loved about it was that in addition to the giggle-prompting turning of “umami” into a Your Mama joke, Chris also worked in a play on “taste,” which is what*umami* is all about.] Oh no, you sent an entry for Week 1206 that’s almost identical to one that got ink in Week 1205? Aww, dang. Well, I’ll tell you what: How about if ... nah, tough luck. Welcome to Loserdom. *JUST FAKE IT: A NEW FICTOID CONTEST* A couple of weeks ago I asked the Loser Community for ideas for some more false-fact contest ideas — don’t say we don’t do our part to fit in with the New Washington — and Melissa Balmain’s suggestion had the funniest examples. I only feel bad that Bob Staake didn’t get to depict the cotton candy seller inspired to invent the toilet paper roll. As always, most of the entries will likely sound for a moment a wee bit plausible, like a page from a trivia book, until the mind clicks into gear. (But something totally ridiculous and funny from the get-go may well prove me wrong.) Okay, on to Week 1206 — and this time, I won’t have to look up all the contests to figure out the entries. ====================================================================== WEEK 1210, published January 15, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1210: What to do when you don’t have enough class With just 50-some congressional freshmen this year, we had to pad the ‘joint legislation’ list For the next 1,000 "honorable" mentions: The 2017 Bob Staake magnets arrived yesterday at the Empress's palace, Mount Vermin. (Pat Myers*The Washington Post) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** January 12, 2017 The “joint legislation” contest — today in Week 1210 we bring you the 15th running — was my first real contribution to The Style Invitational: Many years before, the Royal Consort (in his pre-Consort days) had shared a game he was playing with co-workers: to come up with co-sponsored “bills” based on the combination of congressional names — e.g., “the Pepper-Laxalt Sodium Control Act.” And so I suggested it to the newly (self-) appointed Czar of The Style Invitational, and ta-da, Week 5, “There Ought to Be a Law,” April 1993. That first contest invited readers to combine any two names in the whole Congress, and it was so successful that the Czar ran the results over two weeks, with two full sets of winners. The two first prizes: The Watt-Eshoo-Dunn-Furse-Leahy Pork Barrel Protection Act (by Carol Vance) and The Cantwell-English-Read Dyslexia Research Funding Bill (Jacki Drucker). But the entry the Czar remembers after all these years is the first week’s second-place winner: The Traficant-DeLay-Akaka Roadside Port-A-Pot Act (Carole and Stephanie Dix). Naturally, the Czar wanted to do the contest over again, but didn’t want to get the same entries. So in Week 90, just after the 1994 elections, he put up a list of the 102 freshmen of the 104th Congress — the famous (or infamous) Republican “Contract With America” invasion in the middle of Bill Clinton’s first term, headed by the new House Speaker Newt Gingrich. You could argue that this year’s 115th Congress might have just as significant an effect on American society, but it won’t be because there are so many new faces: This year’s freshman class is barely half the size of the 1995 group. And so, as I did in 2015 to a smaller extent, I’ve padded out the list of lawmakers with a sizable number of incumbents: the rest of the Maryland and Virginia delegations; D.C. Del Eleanor Holmes Norton; and around a dozen I chose arbitrarily, one per state, until I felt the list was long enough. Some of those names have never appeared in our previous contests; others have, but then again, almost every freshman class includes*someone* named Johnson. But of course you’re combining them with different names, so there should be plenty of fresh joke material. (And last time we neglected to include the brand-new Rep. Brat.) If you’re new to the joint legislation contest, it’ll be useful to look at my comments in The Style Conversational in February 2015 about the results of Week 1107, our most recent Send Us the Bill. I share one particularly impenetrable entry, along with the guesses from theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook group about what it might mean. The takeaway: Ask someone else to read your entry to see if it’s understandable outside the confines of your own skull (without prompting). The visiting-from-Michigan Loser Jesse Frankovich managed to graft himself onto Mark Raffman's head at a hastily arranged Dorkness at Noon lunch at a downtown Potbelly. Across the table, from left, are John Hutchins, Kevin Dopart and the Empress. Sometimes I’ll be scratching my tiara at an entry, unable to get it, but it’ll be clear to everyone else — and, once it’s explained, I’ll sometimes say, “Ohhhh. Well, huh, that’s pretty good.” And give it ink. This is why, for the Week 1107 results, I ran two separate pages: one with explanations at the ends of the entries, one (the primary one) without . I’ll probably do that this year as well. In any case, I do appreciate your sending me explanations beneath your entries; when I’m looking at literally thousands of these, there’s only so much time that I’m going to puzzle over one before going to the next one. But do give me a chance to try — so please put the explanation at least on a lower line, or in a block under all the entries. (Please *don’t*put the explanations in a whole separate submission; that would be really inconvenient and would lead to some less-than-regal words coming out of the royal kisser.) For more inspiration, you can see the results of all the Joint Legislation contests in the Master Contest List at the Losers’ own website, NRARS.org : The easiest way is to search that list for “Congress”; when you see the description of one of the contests, say Week 903, then look at the right column of the chart for the Week 903 results a few weeks down. *THE DO-OVER DO-OVER: THE 2016 RETROSPECTIVE, PART 2 — WEEK 1206* (If I didn’t call Week 1206 “Week 2016” at least once, I’ll give myself a magnet.) This second of two consecutive weeks of retrospective contests proved even more Usual Suspecty than Week 1205, which did yield a First Offender; the entry pool consisted largely of Invite regulars sending their 26th through 50th favorite non-inking entries of the past year, with the substitution of some new tries. I did have plenty of inkworthy submissions both weeks, but if I do a two-week retrospective a year from now, I think I’d run one contest for the first half of the year, the other for the second half. And once again, a quartet of moderate-to-severe Invite Obsessives took up the four spots in the Losers’ Circle, topped by the 15th win by Nan Reiner. For the second straight week, Ridiculously Successful Phenom Jesse Frankovich got four blots of ink, this time including a runner-up; last week’s winner, William Kennard — up to then a sporadic ink-getter — netted three honorable mentions to add to his four inks from last week. (In last week’s Conversational I wondered what William had started putting in his Alpha-Bits; he wrote in to say that it was “Fiber Two, of course.”) *What Doug Dug:* Ace copy editor Doug Norwood agreed with me on the four winners (as our future president would conclude, he is very smart); he also singled out Kathy Al-Assal’s horse name Loo Tenant; Chris Doyle’s “When you’re a Jet” dig at Tom Brady; and Jesse Frankovich’s parody of “The Joker,” featuring the great line “Some people call me a base clownboy.” *Speaking of Jesse: *The 124-time Loser from Lansing was in Washington this week to attend a transportation convention. He had warned the Style Invitational Devotees a few days earlier, and several of us (Kevin Dopart was at the same convention) were able to get together on Tuesday for a quick lunch downtown. And even after meeting us in person, Jesse swears he still wants to keep entering the Invite. *WINTRY MIX? SO? * As I type this on Thursday afternoon, Jan. 12, it is, I swear, 70 degrees in Washington. The forecast for two days from now, the day of the annual Losers’ Post-Holiday Party? 33 degrees, with light precipitation. Angela Fritts of The Post’s Capital Weather Gang says that “most precipitation is expected to be light, and temperatures before and after the storm are unlikely to be cold enough to solidify any iciness.” It’s not ideal, but we’re going to have the party Saturday night at the House of Langer-Fultz in Chevy Chase, Md. . The gathering starts around 6; we’ll probably start the “entertainment” of song parodies around 8. Remember that the house is within walking distance of the Friendship Heights Metro. I hope you’re still counting on being there; feel free to email me for the Evite if you didn’t get one, or for any other information. Now I have to polish my tiara and cook my appley thing. See you soon — and Think Nonsnow. ====================================================================== WEEK 1211, published January 22, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1211: Don’t be SAD The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results Part of his MLK weekend tweetstorm at Rep. John Lewis, whose action at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., no doubt helped result in landmark civil rights legislation. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** January 19, 2017 As in: Your trash-tweets against historical and literary heroes in Week 1211 of The Style Invitational can’t all end with “SAD.” I hope that this contest, suggested by longtime Loser (and non-tweeter) Howard Walderman, produces lots of variety; we don’t want to end up with essentially the same joke being told 35 times with different names. And they don’t have to be from Time-Warped Donald; you could attribute it to someone else, or to use a different trash-talking style. To those of you who have a Twitter account: I’ve found the easiest way to see if a tweet fits is simply to start to write one; click “Tweet” at the top and start filling it out. Just don’t post it when you’re done — let’s wait till the results go up, and then you can also tweet about how you won* were robbed by Overrated Nasty Stupid Lady. If you don’t have a Twitter account and don’t want to sign up (it’s an easy, free process that doesn’t require your real name), you can easily count the characters in your entry atlettercount.com — just type or copy your entry into the box and click on the blue “Count characters” button below it. Your absolute limit is 140 characters (including spaces). You’d be surprised, though, how much that lets you write; my tweet that’s this week’s contest example (which Bob Staake decided to write straight into his illustration) comes in comfortably at 121 characters. It’s probably going to be more impressive if your tweet is complete and self-explanatory, but I’ll also look at entries that explain the person’s name, title, etc., outside the body of the tweet. Except for the absolute 140-character tweet limit, I plan to be flexible to allow for the maximum funny. G*RID EXPECTORATIONS: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1207* As always, there were thousands of entries for our annual-or-so Clue Us In contest to provide clues for a filled-in crossword grid, this one from Washington Post Sunday crossword constructor Evan Birnholz, but from his pre-Post days on his own website, devilcross.com. And yes, using a crossword at all for this contest is unnecessary; I could have just put up a list of words. But it’s an eye-catching format that tends to attract crossword enthusiasts. And — although this week’s results may have strayed father than ever from the form of actual crossword clues — at least a few entries are much in the mold of modern wordplay-laden crossword clues. For example, Chris Doyle’s “TEE: Devo follower” would be a great clue in a late-in-the-week NYT puzzle; First Offender Loyd Dillon’s “APE: What some people go when mimicked” would work if it’s not too long; and maybe even “HEARSES: Box cars,” sent by both Jeff Hazle and Rob Huffman. Most of the entries, though, are basically jokes of various kinds. Lots of them break the letters of the word or words in a novel way: THETA as “the TA” (Ward Kay) and “the ta” (Mark Raffman); IDOTOO as “I dot OO,” by actual crossword whiz Steve Langer, in a joke that I fear will cause some mild browfurrow among readers who make it down to the 19th clue on today’s 59 (!)-entry list. (Note to self: Buy more postage stamps. Also more time.) Some were sound jokes, like Jesse Frankovich’s EWOK and of course this week’s winner, Hildy Zampella’s PLETHORA. And, sort of, Mark Raffman’s TORSOS as a Greek island. Others were Devil’s Dictionary-type definitions, like Peter Boice’s of CITE and Hildy’s NECKLINE (the best among several similar entries). And some were longer-form observations, like Michael Rosen’s SPITS as perhaps a future baseball stat. I didn’t get a huge number of individual*entrants* to this contest — there were fewer than 200 — but a large proportion of them sent the maximum 25 entries. I got at least some entries for each of the 72 words in the grid, and as many as 50 entries for a single word. So inevitably, there was a lot of duplication; at least a dozen people saw IDOTOO as what’s said in a polygamous wedding ceremony, but there were also several I DOT OO entries. As always, I chose the single entry or two that I found superior, or, if none really distinguished itself above the others, I just chose something else for ink. It’s already the fourth Inkin’ Memorial for Hildy Zampella, who didn’t start Inviting till Week 1140. As Kevin Dopart did back in 2005, Hildy read the Invitational regularly but took a long time to decide to enter — and immediately started inking up the joint. Burning even more wildly — just please don’t flame out — is Jesse Frankovich, who got ink with a limerick in 2004, then pretty much went away for years and years, and then, in the past year or two, started scarfing up the ink almost every week; Jesse’s runner-up and four honorable mentions*and* headline this week bring him up to 130 blots. Suppose he’d just kept entering since Week 552! Our other two “above the fold” spots this week go to saner Losers David Matuskey and Jeff Hazle? Dave’s a rookie who gets his 12th ink this week, and his second spot in the Losers’ Circle; Jeff, newly relocated to San Antonio from the D.C. area, gets three blots this week for 68 in all. And after giving ink to just one First Offender in the past two weeks, I’m happy to be sending Fir Stinks to Bruce Ryan, Loyd Dillon, Seth Christenfeld and Liz Thelander. Don’t go away now, people — you want one of our brand-new Bob Staake Magnum Dopus and No Childishness Left Behind magnets, right? Or, heck, the Fishin’ for Floaters game that will go to this week’s second best tweet. *WE CAME, WE PARTIED, WE LEFT A TURTLE MADE OUT OF MANURE* Prospects for last Saturday’s annual Loser Post-Holiday Party looked sketchy as late as Friday night: some forecasts were calling for the absolutely worst weather in D.C.: freezing rain. Even when temperatures stayed in the mid-30s and we had nothing but wet, I still worried that half the 73 people who responded Yes to the Evite wouldn’t risk driving or even taking Metro. But I counted 70 revelers who descended on the home of Steve Langer and Not-Even-a-Loser Allison Fultz with several metric tons of food and drink and singing voices. And even a homemade Van der Graaf generator, courtesy of Kyle Hendrickson. I was tickled to finally meet lots of Losers and members of the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group in person for the first time; I only regret never getting a chance to chat with, among others, Dave Airozo, Perry Beider and Tim Kloth; fortunately, they’re all local and so I hope to see them at a monthly Loser brunch or other activity (the tentative 2017 schedule is on the Losers’ website at NRARS.org ; click on “Our Social Engorgements”) . The centerpiece of the four-hour schmoozefest, as always, was the Singing of the Parodies, accompanied by pianist and Loser Steve Honley, who was appropriately clad in his Loser-prize noodle-beanie. While some of the best Loser entries of the year consist of musical jabs at You-Know-Who, I didn’t think it was right, the week before the inauguration, to lead a singalong of anti-T screeds, no matter how witty. So except for Matt Monitto’s pass-the-mockery-around “Presidential Candidates” rap to “Alexander Hamilton,” the the parodies instead stuck to the subject of Loserdom itself. And the unquestioned highlight wasn’t even in the room: Nan Reiner, who couldn’t make her usual corporeal appearance, being stuck in Florida after extensive oral surgery, still wrote a terrific song for the occasion and recorded it — singing harmony with herself. So we turned on YouTube and sang along with Nan. Tim Kloth did make video of the scene, but he hasn’t had a chance to upload the various files; when he does, I’ll link to him here. But you *can* click here to hear Nan singing this parody about someone who is emphatically not Nan, who has more than 200 blots of ink, including 15 outright wins: It’s about a Loser who never gets ink. *YET ANOTHER UNREQUITED LOSER’S LAMENT -- a*k*a “LOYAL”* *To the tune of “Royals” by Lorde* By Nan Reiner I’ve never seen a FirStink in the flesh. I gnash my teeth when I bomb out every Sunday. And I cry out in my distress, “When is it my turn?” I’ve gotta make it one day. ‘Cause every thought’s like wisecracks, word games, pictures that are Staake-y, Bank heds, horse names – better if they’re tacky. I don’t care; I’m seeing magnets in my dreams. And everybody’s like, “Woo-hoo! Kudos! Look at me – I’m inkin’! Tote bag! Gag prize! Got another Lincoln!” They don’t care; this is a one-way love affair. But I’ll always be loyal! (Loyal!) Ink runs in my blood. Not like a normal person does, I crave an Invite kind of buzz. I wanna be a Loser! (Loser!) My name in parentheses. Oh, Empress, please choose (Please choose – please choose – please choose!) One of my next entries. So far, I haven’t cracked the code; I don’t know what goes through her head when she’s judging. But a suggestion I’ve been told: If I try a bribe, could be she’ll do some fudging. ’Cause every day’s like spoof song lyrics, mangled legislation, Dactyls, limericks, ScrabbleGram creation. I don’t care; I’m seeing inkblots everywhere. And every week I’m scanning, breathless; still I’m dis-Invited. How long can this lust go unrequited? They don’t care; it’s still a one-way love affair. I wanna be like Doyle! (Doyle!) Though I don’t really need An eighteen-hundred-blot debut; I’d be content with one or two. Just wanna be a Loser! (Loser!) Dreaming of my levity In print to peruse (Peruse – peruse – peruse!): Let me join your lunacy. Oh-oh- oh… Oh-oh- oh, Oh-oh… Just tell me what I have to do – to get a lousy ink or two. Oh-oh- oh… Oh-oh- oh, Oh-oh… To make the things that cross your desk Look more Bearyish or Dopartesque. Oh, it cuts like a mohel! (Mohel!) I would give a pound of flesh To score a teensy column-inch, Yet every week I get the Grinch. I wanna be a Loser! (Loser!) Somewhere back in Section E. Oh, let me amuse! (With poos! Taboos! Thumbscrews!) Let me live that fantasy. -- Among the various items left behind by revelers — a scarf, a towel (?) — was a large brown figurine of a turtle. It’s brown because it is made of dried manure. A prize donation from Loser Mike Creveling, it managed not to go home with me. But it’s currently waiting patiently inside the no doubt posh K Street law office of party host Allison Fultz, until I walk over there and pick it up. ====================================================================== WEEK 1212, published January 29, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1212: The Post still has the ’Gram family The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results To print out this list for use in Style Invitational Week 1212, right-click on the list, then "Open image in new tab"; then on that tab, you can print the list. (Letter sets from "The Big Book of ScrabbleGrams," Sterling, 2005) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** Style Invitational editor January 26, 2017 I’ll sometimes do the ScrabbleGrams puzzle when I’m looking at The Post’s weekday comics pages, but I find it the*perfect* thing for my weekly 10-minute subway ride to the Post newsroom, when I see it (in large print) in The Express, The Post’s free tabloid: Since you really don’t need to write anything down, I can work to unscramble the day’s four words even while I’m standing up in the train and holding on to a pole. It’s surprisingly challenging, though; while sometimes all four words will jump out at me within seconds, other times it takes me the whole ride — or I can’t figure out one or more of them at all. Except for the seven-letter sets it uses, the game (see a sample below left) has nothing to do with our yearly Tile Invitational contest — this year, Week 1212. But it originated in 2013 as the idea of Ultra-Loser Jeff Contompasis, who does the Grams every day and regularly posts in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group his discovery of some word that was “forgotten” by the game’s designers: Just last week, for example, Jeff noted: “Scrabble Grams went into the naughty file on January 19 ... AAENMMT -> MANMEAT: Do I even need to define it?” And in what’s become the drill, other Devotees chimed in with their own discoveries: Barbara Turner offered MAMANET, all the blogs about being a mom. AND TAMEMAN, one who uses the hamper and puts the toilet seat back down. Brendan Beary: MEANTAM: Waal awl t’other stuff’s goan awn. Doug Frank: MANEMAT -- Caused by skipping the creme rinse. (You mean you’re still not one of the Style Invitational Devotees? Sign up at on.fb.me*invdev and the other Devs will anagram your name every which way. The group, by the way, is classified as “secret” on Facebook, which means that nobody outside the group can see anything you post there.) As the example above shows, part of the fun of this contest is to show lots of permutations of the same set (something I’ll be sure to do four weeks from now; it’s one reason we’re using just 40 racks rather than the 100 we had the first time). I’d even toyed with*requiring* a set of three different rearrangements per entry; I nixed that, though, remembering a similar demand in an earlier contest in which I’d get one fabulous neologism and two blah ones, thus making the great one unusable. (That would be Week 530, “Tri Harder.”Results here .) Sitcom star Alan Young with Mr. Ed in 1962. Ed (né Bamboo Harvester) died in 1970, but Willllburrrr stuck around until 2016. (ASSOCIATED PRESS) The set lists for all four contests were compiled by Jeff himself from his “Big Book of ScrabbleGrams”; he sent me a spreadsheet years ago with hundreds of these things, and I just select a few dozen each time. I believe that all the racks this week contain a seven-letter solution of a real word; a ScrabbleGrams puzzle almost always has one rack that yields only a six-letter word. So after you “fill your dance card” with the maximum 25 entries, you can go through all the letter sets and figure out the actual solutions. Another Scrabble-connected neologism contest we’ve done: last year’s challenge to create new terms whose letters added to exactly 13 Scrabble points. We could do that one again, with a different letter total — maybe a very small one? For further inspiration, here are the results of the three previous ScrabbleGrams contests: Week 1021, ’Gram Theft (scroll down past the week’s new contest): Winner: AUFWRGF: Gruffaw: A mocking, dismissive laugh. “Listen, kid, if you can’t take the constant gruffaws, you’ll never make it big in the mime biz.” (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif) Week 1068, The Tile Invitational: Winner: AAURGJN → Uganja: Country ruled by the surprisingly mellow dictator Weedy Amin. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) Week 1123, The Tile Invitational III : Winner: EFFILRY→ Filefry: Somehow, Hillary’s phone got infected by this bug. (Ricardo Rodriguez, Springfield, Va., a First Offender) ... who just got his second ink with last week’s crossword clues *ZING OUT YOUR DEAD*: THE OBIT POEMS OF WEEK 1208* **A non-inking headline by Tom Witte* 2016 might be remembered as a particularly busy year for the Grim Reaper’s Deputy for Entertainment Casualties, but as often in our annual obit-poem contest, many of the wittiest and most interesting entries concerned people who showed up farther down the list of Notable Deaths of the Year. Perhaps, as this week’s winner, Melissa Balmain, put it: “I think it’s harder to write something funny about people whose work you genuinely knew and loved.” The ScrabbleGrams puzzle in the Jan. 21 Post. We're not playing the game; we're just using its "racks." (Not this one!) That leads me to think, then, that Melissa doesn’t have any Ikea Billy bookcases, since her wit certainly wasn’t squelched when she figured that the coffin of designer Gillis Lundgren “was still missing half its screws.” Melissa, a major light-verse poet who’s the co-editor of the journal Light and a perennial Loserbard, also got ink this week with her celebrations of the woman who invented the beehive hairdo as well as a triple-obit in the form of a joke in the form of two limericks about the designers of powerboats, the 747 and the Volvo station wagon, along with her (oy!) ninth Inkin’ Memorial trophy. (Melissa is opting for just magnets now, which means that our supply of the final Inkin’ Memorial will last a little longer.) On the other hand, I received about 30 different odes to Carrie Fisher, two of which get ink today. Nan Reiner — who can use this week’s Invite as a mini-anthology, with five inking poems, gets the second-prize piece of Berlin Wall gravel, while Beverley Sharp will have to settle for the “Magnum Dopus” magnet (the magnet slogan was her own idea, at least). The rules said that the Empress was asking for a poem “someone who died in 2016”, Cleveland’s 52-year drought of pro sports championships — finally broken by the NBA’s Cavaliers — isn’t exactly “someone,” but how could I toss Matt Monitto’s clever idea and smart execution? And utility man Jesse Frankovich once again shows he can play any position in the Invite game, finishing “above the fold” for the third straight week, in disparate contests. *What Doug dug: * Ace copy editor Doug Norwood, who reads the Invite and finds my screwups in the print edition before it goes to press (almost all the errors you see online are from my own late adds for the post.com version), liked all four winners this week, and also singled out Mark Raffman’s ode to Alan Young (my favorite among several with the same “of course, of course” idea); Duncan Stevens’s poem about the irascible Antonin Scalia; and Beverley Sharp’s for the inventor of the Big Mac (to say that fast food killed him, at age 98, would be, admitted Beverley, “a whopper”). *NEXT LOSER SIGHTING: BRUNCH IN ARLINGTON, FEB. 19 * If you missed the Loser Post-Holiday Party — or if you went but would like to chat in a less crowded atmosphere — join me and whoever else in the Loser Community is up for it at the Heavy Seas Alehouse, a brewpub in the Rosslyn section of Arlington, Va. Sunday, Feb. 19, at noon; RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website at nrars.org (Click on “Our Social Engorgements”). ====================================================================== WEEK 1214, published February 12, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1214: Bills of confusion The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** Style Invitational editor February 9, 2017 Well, when your congressional class for the biennial Style Invitational “joint legislation” contest includes Rep. Mike Johnson (freshman) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (Maryland delegation), you know why we’re here with The Style Conversational. (See the bottom of this column for just a sampling of the unprintable entries the Empress received for this contest. That is, unless you have any maturity.) But as always, we easily filled up the Alternative Congressional Record with imaginative pairings, triplings, quadruplings and more in the results of Week 1210 . This week’s 39 inking entries represent the top 2 percent of a list of more than 1,800 entries that I puzzled through So You Didn’t Have To. The judging took perhaps twice as long as my usual slog, not so much because of so many entries as because it was like solving 1,800 puzzles — or, often, failing to solve them. Thanks to those who included (as I’d asked) translations of their entries on a different line from the entry; that let me read the entry without seeing the translation, but also check the explanation if I didn’t get it. About half the entries I looked up didn’t have explanations; none of those got ink, since I didn’t understand them. I don’t remember if any of the entries I had to check went on to get ink, but I do know that for some of these entries, I*never* could have guessed what the entrant was trying to say. This one, for example: “The Espaillat-Gates-Dunn-King Act to reinstate waterboarding for espionage” — it’s supposed to be “A spy ought to get a dunking.” (The entrant did admit, “Okay its a stretch.” I’m wondering if Mrs. Incredible sent that one.) Often the name had the accent or a different syllable from the word it was supposed to “be” — or just had a bunch of extra letters. Obviously, I figured out, and found funny, all this week’s inking entries. But it’s not just because I’m so brilliant; it’s because I simply read more entries than you do: I most likely saw the same joke several times before I read the one that got ink, so I already could grasp that “Harris” sounds like “hair is” or “Taylor” can be read as “tell her,” or “Tenney” as “to any.” I bounced a few entries by several people; some got an entry right away, while others were utterly flummoxed on the same one. So I hope that at least the parallel column I published, with the results, will help your brow return to its pre-furrowed state — and of course that you got a kick out of at least most of the entries. It does seem that, perennially, people find it a fun contest to*do*. It’s the second Inkin’ Memorial win for Amy Harris, who received the Rookie of the Year plaque last summer at the Losers’ awards fest, the Flushies. I had no trouble figuring out “Dunn-Taylor-Yoder-King” — “Don’t tell her yo’ da king” — but I’ve now heard from two people who didn’t get it. Oh, well. “Yoder” was used another way by Ann Martin, who made it work for “odor” because the Y in Yoder combined with the previous name, Esty — which in turn combined with the end of Biggs to become “zesty.” I especially love entries like that — where the sound is very clear and accurate, but not unless the reader says it out loud. This is Ann’s 12th trip to the Losers’ Circle, and her 85th blot of ink in all. John Glenn’s “Byrne-Norton-Correa” bested a few other “Norton-Correa” entries; John typically submits only a handful of entries to a contest, and then often will substitute a revision later in the week. But his care has paid off to the tune of 47 blots of ink, 10 of them above the fold — a remarkable ratio. And how about that: First Offender Paul Jackson gets his choice of the “This Is Your Brain on Mugs” mug or the “I Got a B in Punmanship” Grossery Bag, along with the Fir Stink for his First Ink . Not only that, but it was for the only entry he sent. Keep playing, Paul! *What Doug Dug:* Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood gravitated to two more political entries — Jesse Frankovich’s “Lawson-Dunn” (laws undone), and Danielle Nowlin’s “Hassan-Tenney-Johnson” on the theme of transgender access — plus Michael Rolfe’s Yoda-syntax joke and another one by Jesse, the Lewis-Barragan toilet joke. Meanwhile: People who won magnets in last week’s results, the invention fictoids: I hope to get them out with the letters today before the post office closes. I was just backed up this week with those goshdarn bills. *ALL THE BEST WORDS: THIS WEEK’S WORD-BANK CONTEST * In what’s likely to be a marked contrast with the joint-legislation results, in which 34 people got ink, Week 1214 probably won’t generate tons of entries — but some Invite Obsessives will go to town with some tour-de-force work. Since I posted this week’s contest this morning, Jesse Frankovich pointed out on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page that his word count on Trump’s inaugural address came to 1,455 words, rather than the figure of 1,443 that I quoted from the American Presidency Project from UC Santa Barbara. Perhaps the lower figure doesn’t count “the,” or perhaps it’s that the transcript The Post used was the official prepared address rather than the actual utterance from the newly sworn in product of the American electoral system. In any case, I’m perfectly happy if you use the “longer” version that I link to. In judging our last word bank contest, “American Pie” in 2016, I was helped immeasurably by both Loser Todd DeLap, who compiled a list of all the words (and their frequency) in the song, and shared it with the rest of the Loser Community; and Loser Gary Crockett, who worked up a computer program to verify that an entry contained only words that were in the song, and no more frequently. If they — or other both technically inclined and highly generous Losers — would like to help out this year, please let me know. (While Gary vetted all the “American Pie” entries on my short­list — and found a few problems — I still didn’t give him ink that week. Sad bad lamestream media person, I am.) *NOT FIT TO PRINT? * Today, New York Times pundit Nicholas Kristof published the winners of his “Trump Poetry Contest,” which he says received 2,000 entries. Among his favorites was this limerick: If God made man in his image Please explain our new President’s visage That pucker and scowl Look like murder most foul What in heaven, Lord, earned us this priv’lege? Hmm. Well, Lines 2 through 5 are in good limerick meter. I’ll give it that. But the Loser Community seems to retain a firm lock on the Major News Organization Limerick Division. Meanwhile, poet Susan McLean, who has her very own blot of Invite ink, got Kristof ink today as well, with this quatrain: Trump seethes at what the writers say. He’ll pull the plug on the N.E.A. The joke’s on him. Art doesn’t pay. We write our satires anyway. *The Unprintabills*: * Unnatural acts* from Week 1210 **Headline wordplay by Jesse Frankovich and Kevin Dopart, respect(?)ively* There were sooo many Lee-King-Johnson, Cummings-Johnson, Bacon-Cummings etc. etc. etc. Here’s a sampling. NOTE: What’s wrong with you? Why are you looking at this filth? The Lee-King-Cummings Act authorizing funds for the preservation of Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress (Dave Airozo) The Byrne-Cummings Act to Reduce Venereal Disease (Rob Huffman) The Yoder-Cummings Act to Off Get (Jesse Frankovich) Young-Johnson-Banks bill to establish a national foreskin repository for men who change their minds (newbie Andrew Lewis — this one is actually pretty imaginative, and just a shade too yucky) The Comstock-King Declaration, announcing a new slang term for condoms. Don’t hang these by the chimney for Santa. (William Verkuilen) The Dunn-Cummings Resolution Mandating at Least Five Minutes of Cuddling Before Turning on “SportsCenter” (Todd DeLap) The Harris-Scott-Cummings Proclamation, to explain “bukkake” to prudes (William Verkuilen) Boys, boys, boys. *SAVE THE DATE (we think): THE FLUSHIES, JUNE 17* It seems as if we’ll once again have the annual Losers’ awards-fest and potluck at the 10-acre farm (complete with pettable barnyard animals) of Loser Robin Diallo. (This year we will will it not to rain.) Actually, Robin herself will be stationed in Baghdad with the State Department, but she will join us via Skype while husband Khalil will be his usual friendly in-person self. Details as they come together. *AND DON’T FORGET THE LOSER BRUNCH — FEB. 19* Heavy Seas Alehouse, a week from Sunday, at noon, in Arlington. I’ll be there — RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”) ====================================================================== WEEK 1215, published February 19, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1215: Quipped from the headlines How many of the topical jokes from Week 21 do you get now? Remember the juicy family feud involving Herbert Haft of Dart Drug, Trak Auto, etc.? Then you’d get one of the inking entries from Week 21. (The Washington Post) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** February 16, 2017 A few weeks ago, Longtime Loser Ken Gallant (who’s now hiding in Oslo for six months until we can figure out what’s going on) suggested a contest based on the “How ____ WAS it?” jokes on “The Tonight Show,” with Johnny Carson starting, “It was so (hot, cold, whatever) ...”; straight man Ed McMahon leading the audience in “HOW HOT WAS IT?”; and Carson supplying the punchline. I knew that we’d done this contest before (without the space-eating middle line). But I was surprised to find it only all the way back in Week 21, August 1993, when The Style Invitational was settling into the edgy groove that it’s continued to ride for almost 24 years — while managing not to turn that groove into a rut. How to you keep an old joke young? At the Invite, we’ve always played on the latest news, even though the news might be so short-lived that it won’t go on to merit a footnote, or even a pinky-toe-note, in history. In fact, the just-for-the-moment quality of some humor may well be what makes it so funny — at that moment. (Twitter, in which some wags have become adept quipping on news events — complete with graphics — literally within seconds, is the perfect platform for the genre.) So here are the results of Week 21, the contest we reprise this week in Week 1215 . For the benefit of those who don’t have a sharp recollection of what people were talking about in the summer of 1993, I’ll number them, and then follow them with explanatory or just musey footnotes. This contest was done by the Empress’s predecessor, the Czar . 1. Fifth Runner-Up: Donald Trump is so annoying that Amnesty International wants him beaten and locked up. (Tom Gearty, Washington) 2. Fourth Runner-Up: D.C. streets are so badly maintained they have more potholes than Jerry Garcia’s sofa. (Robin D. Grove, Washington) 3. Third Runner-Up: The Mississippi River has been so aggressive, it is now being called the Msissippi. (Pai Rosenthal, Sterling) 4. Second Runner-Up: Joe McGinniss is so original he deserves to win the Style Invitational, Ted Kennedy thought to himself. (Tom Jedele, Laurel) 5. First Runner-Up: Bill Clinton has gained so much weight that I-495 has been renamed the Sansabeltway. (Paul Sabourin, Greenbelt) 6. And the winner of the Mortimer Snerd Ventriloquist’s Dummy: Jack Kent Cooke is so litigious that I’m not going to finish this thought. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Honorable Mentions: 7. The White House staff is so young that the most common question on Air Force One is, “Are we there yet?” (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) 8. The White House staff is so young they have to write home when they go to Camp David. (Paul B. Jacoby, Washington) 9. The White House staff is so inexperienced that it has never “been” with another staff. (Meg Sullivan, Potomac) 10. Spike Lee is so desperate for a crossover hit that he is filming “Dennis the Menace II Society.” (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Saddam Hussein is so evil he will have to pass an ethics test to get into Hell. (Leonard Osterman, Potomac) 11. Mayor Kelly is so sensitive to sexual harassment that she refuses to accept mail addressed to “The Hon. Sharon Pratt Kelly” because she is no one’s “hon.” (Carol V. Strachan, Silver Spring) Washington streets have so many potholes, it’s like driving over a giant, deserted Whack-a-Mole game. (Paul Kondis, Alexandria) 12. Don King has so much static in his hair, he electrocutes anyone who give him a noogie. (Audrey Kovalak, Springfield) The White House is so full of Arkansans they are cutting crescent moons in the restroom doors. (Forrest L. Miller, Rockville) 13. Ross Perot is so paranoid his theories are laughed at by Oliver Stone. (Paul Sabourin, Greenbelt) 14. Gov. Schaefer is so petty that he had “43” painted on his limo. (Greg Griswold, Falls Church) 15. The Haft family is so dysfunctional that Herbert sold the family tree to Crown Books for pulp. (Christopher P. Nicholson, Arlington) 16. Dan Quayle is so dumb. (Chris Rooney, Reston) 17. And Last: The Style Invitational is so popular that the next Supreme Court justice will be chosen on the basis of “humor and originality.” (Al Toner, Arlington) And Least: The Style Invitational is so funny I forgot to laugh. (Tony Buckley, Washington) FOOTNOTES: 1. By 1993, Trump had long cemented his reputation for being annoying just by being a loudmouth tycoon who bragged about himself and played the ladies. (Line I found in a 1992 Charles Krauthammer column about Ross Perot and the allure of celebrity businessmen: “Yet as late as the 1988, presidential campaign people were talking up Donald Trump!”) 2. The potholes, alas, persist — a constant in the Washington area’s winter climate of frequent freeze*thaw cycles. But now that recreational marijuana use has been legal in D.C. since 2015, this joke could take a different angle. 3. Whoa,*here’s* an instance of humor that’s painfully dated. In fact, I’m kind of shocked that a joke equating “Ms.” with “aggressive” was considered runner-up material by 1993. Maybe 1973. 4. In 1993, Joe McGinniss wrote a book called “The Last Brother: The Rise and Fall of Teddy Kennedy.” Wikipedia sums up the response: “The volume was widely panned for its skimpy sourcing, lack of attribution, wild suppositions, lack of footnotes, possible plagiarism and prurient outlook. In The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called it ‘half-baked’ and added, ‘The book isn’t bad; it’s awful.’ ‘It is, by a wide margin, the worst book I have reviewed in nearly three decades; quite simply, there is not an honest page in it,’ wrote Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post. Yardley called it ‘a genuinely, unrelievedly rotten book, one without a single redeeming virtue, an embarrassment that should bring nothing except shame to everyone associated with it.’” 5. The last Sansabelt pants, a brand of dress trousers that had an elastic strap sewn inside the waistband, were made in the early ’90s. Also: Paul Sabourin, who got several inks in that first Invite year, is better known as half of the comic duo Paul and Storm , and part of the fabulous clever a cappella group Da Vinci’s Notebook . 6. First the prize: The Czar probably*bought* that ventriloquist’s dummy it as a prize. Gone are the days of an Invite prize budget. Then the reference to Jack Kent Cooke, the extremely litigious owner of the Washington Redskins, who preceded Dan Snyder, the extremely litigious owner of the Washington Redskins. (The winning entry was once again by Chuck Smith, who’d already become a local celebrity because of his dominance in the early Invite. Chuck went on to become the first Loser to reach 500 inks and tiptoe inside the Style Invitational Hall of Fame.) 7, 8, 9. Bill Clinton had come into office earlier that year, and his staff — young, Arkansan or both — was a huge contrast to the Reagan-Bush years. George Stephanopoulos, one of his senior advisers, was 31 and looked 21. 10. Director Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” was nominated for a screenplay Oscar in 1989, but many critics argued that it would have been in Best Picture contention had it not been for Hollywood’s white-centered views. (“Driving Miss Daisy” won that year.) 11. Sharon Pratt Kelly (formerly Dixon) was D.C. mayor from 1991 to 1995. 12. Flamboyant boxing promoter Don King . You could buy a Don King novelty wig. 13. Billionaire Ross Perot, who’d done remarkably well in his presidential campaign the previous year, went on “60 Minutes” to allege a nefarious plot among rival Republicans to ruin his daughter’s wedding. Director Oliver Stone is associated with dubious conspiracy theories, notably in his 1991 movie “JFK.” 14. This one took me about 10 minutes to figure out. Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer, formerly mayor of Baltimore, was always a colorful figure, but in his later years started to become obsessed with personal slights, going so far as to personally call and yell at some private citizen who’d criticized him in the press. (Hmm.) But the 43 on the limo? I finally realized that it refers to stock car legend Richard Petty, who had No. 43 on his car. I just asked the Czar if he got that. He had no idea. I have no idea how he would have in 1993, either. Mystery! 15. The Haft family feud is one of Washington’s great gossip stories, featuring weird-white-pompadoured drugstore mogul Herbert Haft , his bookstore mogul son Robert, and his angry wife Gloria, among other relatives. The Style section got lots of mileage from the Hafts. 16.Dan Quayle. 17. Early-years fine print in the Invite instructions. Since 2003, winning entries have been chosen entirely on the basis of cash payments. *Warning about Week 1215:* In his introduction to the Week 21 results, the Czar complained of the slew of old jokes he’d received: “ ‘Ross Perot is so unusual, it’s said that when he was born they threw away the baby and raised the placenta.’ A splendid joke, when it was first applied to Tiny Tim in 1968. And: ‘George Burns is so old that when he was born the Dead Sea was just sick.’ This was originally said about George Bernard Shaw, who died in 1950. Fair warning: In the future, if you serve us chestnuts, we will roast you.” That was before we had Google. There’s really no excuse for sending in a well-worn joke now. *SOCIAL NUTWORK*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1211* **Non-inking headline by Beverley Sharp* It might have been the tweet about “overrated” Meryl Streep that inspired me to come up with the Week 1211 contest for disparaging tweets of laudable people. And maybe the ones about the “failing NYT.” Whatever. I didn’t have to spell it out; the 200-some Losers who sent in about 1,000 tweets clearly got the point. I knew that I’d get lots of good material from the Loser Community, even from entrants who weren’t all that familiar with Twitter. My only concern was whether the results would read like the same joke told 30 times over. To that end, I did a little more tweaking than usual to the inking entries so that “SAD!” or “overrated” didn’t appear again and again. (While @realDonaldTrump is indeed the president’s personal Twitter handle , I didn’t necessarily use the real ones, like @KellyannePolls.) By the way, there’s a @StyleInvite account on Twitter, where I share the Invite and the Ink of the Day; on@patmyersTWP, I’ll retweet the Invite material, and will share the occasional political irony. But I greatly prefer Facebook, on which I post incessantly, both on my own page and in the Style Invitational Devotees group. I don’t think anyone in this week’s Losers’ Circle is a Twitter habitue, but they’re all certainly household names in Invitedom. It’s Gary Crockett’s 11th first-prize win; Jesse Frankovich picks up his 11th ink “above the fold,” and as the father of at least one youngun’, he might even share his Fishin’ for Floaters prize. And Kevin Dopart and Duncan Stevens, well, there they go again. On the other hand, we have a healthy four First Offenders this week: Welcome to Loserland, Sean Doherty Jamie Johnson, Alison Candela and Eric LeVasseur — send more! *What Doug dug:* The faves this week from ace copy editor Doug Norwood were Hugh Thirlway’s loaves-and-fishes dis and Jeff Hazle’s thumb-bite at Shakespeare. *Not going there: *I was surprised that I didn’t get any resistance about running Lynne Larkin’s “p*” tweet about Edward VIII. But I wasn’t about to use this one by Tom Witte dissing the Man From Galilee: “Won’t fight back, weak, stumbling – did you see him try to carry that cross? I could carry it with one hand. Pathetic.” *LAST CALL AT THE ALEHOUSE: LOSER BRUNCH FEB. 19* It’s this Sunday at noon at the Heavy Seas Alehouse in the Rosslyn section of Arlington. Pub-type food and of course beer. We’re not expecting a big crowd, so this might be an easier time to sit and chat than at last month’s Loser Post-Holiday Party. I’ll be there. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” ====================================================================== WEEK 1216, published February 26, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1216: Griddy language The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s neologism contest and results The 20 randomly generated words used to create this grid (some are backward and*or upside down. But many other words just showed up in there. (Grid constructed at puzzle-maker.com) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** February 23, 2017 Today’s Style Invitational word-find neologism contest, Week 1216 , is brought to you once again with the help of two super-helpful tools: the Random Word Generator at wordgenerator.net and the Instant Online Word Search Puzzle Maker at puzzle-maker.com. As I did in our two previous contests featuring a word-find grid, I first went to the word generator and clicked repeatedly on “Generate Random Words,” writing them down until I had a long enough list — this year, 20 words — to get a word search grid that would fit nicely on the print page of this week’s Invite. Then I fed those into the puzzle maker, and voila — a couple of seconds later, the handy-dandy grid for use in this contest. Of course, those words appear in straight lines (though forward and backward), as real word search puzzles have them; I let you snake through the grid so that you’ll have many more choices — and there are*many.* Fortunately, the anonymous creator of Random Word Generator provides a definition for each word as it pops up.*Un*fortunately, I forgot to copy them out as they appeared. But here are the words I used, with definitions from various online sources: Parsiism, the faith of a Zoroastrian sect in India Hachure, or cross-hatching, the drawing technique of shading with crossed lines Diathermous, freely permeable by radiant heat Incapacitation, in a prison context, is the goal of absolutely preventing a criminal from committing more crimes, focusing on imprisonment rather than rehabilitation, etc. Balletic, very nimble and graceful Darr, a European tern Tetramorph, something incorporating four different forms; in Christianity it often refers to an artwork featuring the Four Evangelists depicted as various animals . Acidulate, to make slightly acid; if you dip apple slices in water acidulated with lemon juice, they won’t brown as fast. Aidless, an old word for “helpless” Felicify, to make happy (this word seems to be entirely obsolete) Instructorship, just the state of being an instructor, it seems Quindecemvirate, a group of 15 people Suffusion, the spreading of something (light, a color, etc.) across an area. Usually it’s used as a passive verb: “The room was suffused with sunlight.” Rampantly, forcefully and without restraint Ermin, an obsolete term for an Armenian Fading Immaculate The Random Word Generator site also offers Fake Word Generator, Noun Generator, Adjective Generator, Verb Generator, Word Generators for Games, Pictionary Word Generator, Charades Generator, Sentence & Letter Generators, Random Sentence Generator and Random Letter Generator ... along with a slew of name generators , from Boat Name Generator to Elf Name Generator. Seems to me that there’s a contest or two hiding in there somewhere. I’m happy to entertain suggestions, especially ones with a couple of persuasive examples. So then I took my little list to puzzle-maker.com, an unshowy but very useful site that welcomes teachers and anyone else to instantly construct both simple crosswords and word search puzzles with a given list of words. It even lets you make the accompanying list consist of clues rather than the actual words. And it’s free, though for a whopping $3 you can get a PDF and also be able to edit the puzzle — a price that fits even the Invite budget. (I added the numbers and letters for the grid coordinates.) Note that this week’s rules say you may come up with a creative definition of an existing word, rather than to “discover” your own new one, and that might as well include any of the words in the list above. But still, I can predict that most of the ink will end up going to actual neologisms, as it did in this week’s results. PLEASE help me out and follow the directions on how to submit entries this week. I can judge this contest sooo much faster and more fairly if I can group all the definitions of a single word (and believe me, there will be many with the same word, even neologisms). And the way I do that is to first get all the entries onto one big Word file (which is a little process in itself), and then sort them alphabetically. And of course I need to check each potentially inking entry to make sure it really can be traced on the grid. This process will*not* work for me: — if your entry doesn’t begin with the letter-number coordinates of the first letter of your word. That includes numbering your entries to show me that you haven’t exceeded the maximum 25 entries (I trust you). — if you type your definition on a separate line from the word itself: When I click on Sort , your definition is going to break into two parts, far away from each other.*(It’s okay if your entry runs onto a second line; what you can’t do is push Enter in the middle of the entry.)* I ran into those problems when judging the Week 1212 ScrabbleGrams entries, and it took me hours to get everything in order. (I*begged* people not to list a single scrambled rack followed by several entries for that rack on separate lines, but did you listen to your nice little Empy? Well, most of you did. Thanks for that.) I’m confident that I managed to look at all the entries anyway, but I’d really like to use this sorting method — and definitely want to get it working smoothly by the time we have the annual foal name contest in April. (This sorting method won’t work for poems, and isn’t necessary for it anyway; it’s just when many people will be using the same word or category. But lots of Invite contests are suitable: all the neologisms; Ask Backwards; compare items on a list: Picture A, Picture B, etc., in caption contests.) *IT’S A JUMBLE OUT THERE: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1212* Once again, just great results from our Week 1212 contest, in which I posted 40 “racks” from a giant list that Loser Jeff Contompasis sent me from “The Big Book of ScrabbleGrams” and you got to unscramble them into the words of your choice, of at least five of the seven letters. Anytime I print a list of names for a contest (today’s grid will be similar), I get lots of entries — especially using the first items in the list — because it’s pretty easy to come up with*something.* Of course, that doesn’t guarantee that those somethings will be*good,* but they almost are in neologism contests, and this week I couldn’t restrain myself, publishing 47 entries. Even my predecessor, The Czar, who often won’t be wowed by more than 18 or 20 entries in a given week, pronounced these “excellent zults” (we talk via IM and use little cutesy spellings a lot). What kind of entry*didn’t* make the cut? There was lots of good material that I just didn’t think were quite as good (or were too similar to) the 47 inking entries, but as always, I also got a few of several types of entries that I euphemistically say “don’t quite work”: — Even a made-up word will have characteristics of a certain part of speech, and the definition should reflect that. For instance, the “-ed” ending of SCUMLED indicates that it’s a verb or an adjective. So “SCUMLED: A rabble” doesn’t work because it defines the word as a noun. Compare it with this one by Neal Starkman: SCUM-LED: doing the bidding of a horrible person. “The members of Congress seemed SCUM-LED as they briefly considered the constitutionality of women being chained to their ironing boards.” (That didn’t end up with ink either, but it made my short­list.) — Then there’s the no-joke entry: “GYROBIT: Drill bit that maintains an upright position to drill a straight vertical hole.” That sounds like a useful gadget, but remember that we are a humor contest. — And then there’s the entry that’s so complicated and confusing that the humor doesn’t have a chance: CDELMSU → “MS EL CUD: Trump’s replacement beauty pageant (title) for the pageant he divested after his post-deep-thought statement about a South American beauty queen’s weight gain. (Cud is produced during the process of rumination.)” No such problems with our inking entries, topped by a quintet of veteran Losers “above the fold”: in the top four spots: Mark Richardson’s elegant definition of “TV pail netted him his 49th blot of ink, including nine above the fold. Jim Lubell and Frank Mann — we’re still waiting for his sister Aimee to sing his song parodies — both get credit for their very similar and, well, elegant by one definition “arspoop” entries, and I won’t even insist on cutting the Loser Mug or Grossery Bag in half; Hall of Famer Beverley Sharp gets the civet-pooped “weasel coffee” delicacy for the best of numerous “smartyr” entries; and William Kennard, who wins his second Inkin’ Memorial with his double unscrambling of CHILSTU into two ways to describe the president’s inner circle: both HIS CULT and LIC TUSH. (William’s first winner was for a food pun: “Steamed dumpings: Taking the farm-to-table movement way too far.”) Yes, there were innumerable entries about the president, Congress and their recent actions; I don’t recall any that were very fond. It’s not as if I’m refusing to give ink to another perspective. (Well, yeah, I won’t give ink to a bigoted perspective.) *What Doug dug: * Ace copy editor Doug Norwood seconded my choice for winner (“inspired”) and especially enjoyed Jesse Frankovich’s headline “Rack-Tile Dysfunction”; he also singled out R.I.P.shaw (Chris Doyle, Jon Gearhart), Warren Tanabe’s “Annuit,” Bird Waring’s funny sentence using “mannows” and Beverley’s”smartyr.” *The Scarlet Tiles: * There were a few unpintable entries: the best was from Frank Osen: FCKELOT: An adult-oriented musical featuring the knight with the readiest lance: “That was no Lady in the Lake.” And if you couldn’t figure out what actual words all the letter sets were scrambling: AHINRSV —> VARNISH AHIPRSW—>WARSHIP AIIMNNV —>MINIVAN AILLNNO —>LANOLIN AILOPTV —>PIVOTAL AIMMOSS —> MIMOSAS AINNTUY —> ANNUITY ALLOPRY —> PAYROLL ALLOTYY —> LOYALTY ALOQRSU —> SQUALOR AMNNOSW —> SNOWMAN AMRRSTY —> MARTYRS AOOPPRS —> APROPOS AOORRTY —> ORATORY BBEHINS —> NEBBISH BBEORRY —> ROBBERY BCEJSTU —> SUBJECT BDELOTU —> DOUBLET BEEHRWY —> WHEREBY BEIOSTY —> OBESITY BGIORTY —> BIGOTRY BIKLNOT —> INKBLOT BNNRSUU —> SUNBURN CCIIRTU —> CIRCUIT CDELMSU —> MUSCLED CEEGLNT —> NEGLECT CEEIJOR —> REJOICE CEEISTU —> CUTESIE CEELRTU —> LECTURE CEENNOV —> CONVENE CEFKLOT —> FETLOCK CEIORTW —> COWRITE (that’s co-write, not cow-rite) CEIORVY —> VICEROY CEIOSTY —> SOCIETY CEIRRTU —> RECRUIT CHILSTU —> CULTISH CHIMSSS —> SCHISMS CHINTYZ —> CHINTZY CHKNOOS —> SCHNOOK CIILNUV —> UNCIVIL CIIOSUV —> VICIOUS *IN SO MANY WORDS ... * Loser and Style Invitational Devotees member Dan Helming had a thought that he shared on the Devotees page about Week 1214, the contest in which you chose words from last month’s inaugural address and wrote something else with it: “It would be funny if one of our AV gifted colleagues would actually digitize each word” from video of the speech, “and then piece together one of those puzzle piece speeches” from a winning entry. I haven’t judged this contest yet, but on the off chance that someone out there has interest in undertaking such a project for the price of Me Taking You Out For Ice Cream, let me know! ====================================================================== WEEK 1217, published March 5, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1217: Nothing new under the pun? It’s almost impossible to find wordplay that nobody’s done, but you can give it a twist At the Invite, we don't want you to send us the cleverest thing you ever heard; we want you to send the funniest thing that YOU can think of. Half a dozen people sent haiku with this pun. (Image from a Google search) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** March 2, 2017 Stop — yourself — if you’ve heard it before. In virtually every Style Invitational contest, it’s inevitable that two or more entrants will come up with the same general idea — not to mention an idea that someone else, somewhere else, has thought of before. It’s no big deal, as long as (a) you didn’t knowingly take it from another source and (b) it’s not already out there everywhere — on a ton of websites, or part of a famous song, movie, etc. I received more than the usual quantity of old jokes and punny phrases in the Week 1213 “punku” contest, whose results run today. I didn’t go back and check who’d sent all the “no pun in ten did” haiku, or “whirled peas,” etc. I’m going to assume that those entrants were new to the Loser Community, and didn’t realize that we want original material. I see now that the Week 1213 instructions did not explicitly ask entrants not to send old jokes, or to check how widespread their puns were (though there’s a paragraph headed “Your joke has to be original” in the Rules & Guidelines linked to in the instructions). I think it’s very, very rare that people try to sneak in someone else’s work under their own names (though I know of at least two cases in which this has happened with winning Invite entries). There*are* occasions where you can recycle an old joke or saying; for example, Gene Weingarten regularly publishes what he calls “pokes” — jokes written as rhyming poems — in his weekly humor column for The Post (here’s his latest ). But the wit is in the adaptation from the old joke into a form of multiple verses with strict rhyme and meter; figuring out how to break a clever epigram into 17 syllables isn’t quite the same accomplishment. Regardless of form, here are some wordplays that I encountered this week that you can stop sending in; they’ve been done either by us or by everyone else: Putin in*on the Ritz Crimea River Playing the Trump card (though First Offender Mark Pomponi did niftily play on Trump plus “suit,” referencing Sean Spicer’s sartorial difficulties) Purrfect for something with a cat (or purr- anything, or probably paws- anything) Cunning linguist (sheesh) Any joke about “hot air” for politicians As a start. But whether it’s from originality or just that topical humor seems to be prompting more creativity lately, both I and my predecessor, theCzar of The Style Invitational (who read my short­list of about 50 punku), found ourselves preferring the Trumpiverse. In this week’s results I mixed the political and non-, but on reflection, maybe I should have divided the results into two sections. I have no fears about the freshness of this week’s “above-the-fold” winners, all of them featuring especially clever wordplay. And while none is a First Offender, only Jesse Frankovich — who hits Ink Blot No. 100 today in just the past year! — has been a regular fixture in the Losers’ Circle. Seth Tucker’s “grabbed by the passe” plus two honorable mentions this week boings his ink total from 22 to 25; Dave Silberstein’s “fel-i-ne,” about the recent escape of a bobcat from D.C.’s National Zoo, is his 16th ink — but already his fourth above the fold, an amazing ratio; and Bruce Niedt’s “in-Coretta-ble” is Ink No. 12, and equally impressive third ATF. I think all four of these punku will be perfect for the Style Invitational Ink of the Day cards I post on Facebook. Jesse benefited this week from the order of the entries: His “-acre” pun was so offbeat that it would have confused the reader if it had been the first punku I printed. Now that we’re back to counting down to the winner via the third, second and first runners-up, the reader has already read three haiku and will be much more receptive to something as novel as Jesse’s. *What Doug Dug: * The fave this week of ace copy editor Doug Norwood was Seth Tuckers “grabbed by the passe”; he also gave props to Chris Doyle’s NRA prayer “Blessed are the piecemakers” and Kevin Mettinger’s “mispronounced ‘prez.’ ” *Punny for Nothing*: What didn’t work * (*a non-inking honorable-mention subhead suggested by both Jesse Frankovich and Jon Gearhart) Aside from too well known puns and jokes, a few more ink-obstacles: A. When you make a pun on a phrase, that phrase has to be common in English, or a well-known expression; otherwise readers won’t get the pun, especially if the pronunciation is a stretch. For example: Stooges in Texas Nyuk! Nyuk! Hey! Santa Anna Eye poke: Alamo Fortunately the entrant explained that “Alamo” was to be read “a la Moe.” I would never have thought of that because “a la Moe” isn’t a phrase that’s ever used. If, on the other hand, there were something about apple pie with ice cream in Texas, it might work to have “Alamo” to play on “a la mode.” B. This one was a laffer but didn’t work because of the pronunciation: Trump loves “Clair de Lune”; But the maestro warned Donald: Do not grab Debussy. The name is, roughly, DEB-u-SEE, not de-BOO-see. C. I wasn’t terribly strict on my definition of pun — I let it encompass words used in different ways as well as plays on pronunciation — but this funny one still couldn’t qualify: New AP style rule: Third and fourth letters are now Silent in POTUS. D. A pun doesn’t really do the trick if the pun word — the one you’re using to replace the word in the common phrase — doesn’t work literally in the resulting sentence. That problem was most notable this week in this punku: Betsy Pay-to-Play Married to education? We want a Devos! Even with the lowercase V, you’re still saying you want DeVos, when the point of the haiku was that you want no such thing. *DRECK OF ALL TRADES*: THIS WEEK’S BUSINESS ‘MERGER’ CONTEST * *(The original headline from Week 641)* Longtime Loser Doug Frank messaged me recently to note a discussion on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page about various businesses and suggested that it would work for a contest. I thought that particular formulation wouldn’t work as well as our Week 641 contest, and shared the results of that December 2005 challenge with him. Oh, right, Doug said; that was one of his first contests — and whoa, he got three blots of ink in it. Shouldn’t we do*that* one again? I clearly remember judging this contest — and despairing at the utter lameness of page after page of entries. It may be Exhibit A of my perennial reminder to myself: It’s Just the Wheat That Matters, Not the Chaff. I might have thrown away 98 percent of that week’s many, many entries (we had no limits then) in disgust, but the few dozen that remained were terrific. Here they are — the results ran in January 2006 — and I think they’ll give you all the guidance you need for Week 1217 . And I am beyond delighted that the majority of those Losers from 11 years ago are still regularly blotting up the ink today. *Report From Week 641, * In which the Empress asked for the names of fictional establishments that offered two or more diverse products or services. Warning: This is one of those Look Out, Groaner Puns Below weeks. If you don’t like groaner puns, please turn to the obituary page, where there shouldn’t be more than two or three of them. Several people sent in examples of actual multi-tasking establishments: Bill Moulden of Frederick told of a paint store in West Virginia that also sold religious books called, he swears on a stack of religious books, Spray & Pray. And Chuck Sims of Chevy Chase sent in a photo of a store in Bethesda whose sign declares: “Welcome to US Center: Hair — Nails — Gifts — Mortgages.” (Special bonus contest: Tell us the best name or slogan for that store. Winner gets a Loser Pen and some wax lips.) [They went to then-newbie Loser Kevin Dopart, who offered two good ideas: the perfectly fitting but arcane Maslow’s Hierarchy Center and the, uh, higher-concept Mistresses R Us.] *4. * Petting zoo and bellsmith: A Ram, a Lamb, a Ding-Dong (Elliott Schiff, Allentown, Pa.) *3.* Secondhand clothes and S&M paraphernalia: Schmattes*A Whip (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) *2.* Donuts and Jacuzzis: Beignet and the Jets (Andrew Hoenig, Rockville, Md.) *1.* And the winner of the Inker: Cooking institute and journalism school: Baste On! A True Story (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) *Honorable Mentions: * A frozen-treat and mascara booth: Custards*Lash Stand (Russell Beland, Springfield, Va.) Anger management counselors and fertility clinic: Ovary Action: for holding your patience when your in-laws keep asking for grandchildren. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) Optician*cleaners*shoe store: See, Spot, Run (Jennifer Lynch, Waco, Tex.) Fireplace accessories*VD clinic: The Burning Sensation (Elwood Fitzner, Valley City, N.D.) Doors at a delousing center*oyster farm: Nit: 1; Pearl: 2 (Chris Doyle) Optometry and psychiatry clinic: Out of Sight, Out of Mind (Phyllis Reinhard, East Fallowfield, Pa.) Yoga and Bible study classes: Stretch*The Truth (Michelle Stupak, Ellicott City, Md.) Lawyer and jeweler: The Pre-Trial Earring (Brendan Beary) A Firestone dealer that also sells birthday candles: Just Blowouts (Russell Beland) Army recruitment office*hair salon: Cut the Mustered (Jane Auerbach) Laundromat that also sells exercise equipment, marital aids and acne cream: Washing*Tone*Wed*Skins (John O’Byrne, Dublin) Bathroom fixtures, upper level; shoe outlet downstairs: Heads Over Heels (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Art supply store and police station: Brushes With the Law: Sure, buddy, everybody complains how they were framed. (Brendan Beary) Singles bar and doughnut shop: A Toroid Affair (Douglas Frank, Crosby, Tex.) Bar*hair salon: Quaff and Coif. (Andrea Balinson, New York) French ad agency*lingerie shop: L’Ads and l’Asses (Greg Arnold, Herndon, Va.) A bordello that sells philosophy books and natural medicines: Kant*Herbery*Tails (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) Boating equipment and bath wear: Where the Rudder Meets the Robe (Chris Doyle) Concert hall and latte bar: Bach and Froth (Michelle Stupak) Southern Baptist church and Longaberger store: Hell & a Handbasket (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.) Florist and wireless phone service: Stem Cells (Brenda Ware Jones, Jackson, Miss.) A store that sells Harry Potter and Simpsons stuff: Rowling & D’oh (Russell Beland) Trash hauler and collection agency: Bin There, Dun That (Brendan Beary) Karate classes and footwear sales: Chop Shoey (Tim Tweddell, Berkeley Springs, W.Va.) An international emporium consisting of an Indian dress shop, Japanese theater and French hairstylist: Sari, Noh, Cannes Do. (Chris Doyle) Fishing tackle and S&M equipment: Ye Olde Bait & Switch Co. (Gail Mackiernan, Silver Spring; Lynn White, McLean, Va.) Rental agency*Chinese restaurant: Condo Lease or Rice (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis) Chiropractor*aviation instruction: Straighten Up & Fly Right (Douglas Frank) Internet cafe*gentlemen’s club: Laptops Inc. (Herb Greene, Catonsville, Md.) A turkey farm and auto-detailing service: Gobble*Degook (Chris Doyle) BBQ stand and clock store: The Pit and the Pendulum (Kyle Hendrickson, Frederick, Md.) Laundry*Jamaican restaurant: Clean and Jerk (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) CDs, diarrhea remedies and sex toys: Hits, Runs and Eros (Jack Held, Fairfax, Va.) Religious articles and costumes: Blessings and Disguise (Kevin Dopart) Obstetrician*bakery: Buns in the Oven (Marcy Alvo, Annandale, Va.) Bread, Bass and Beyond: Serving loaves, fishes and a prayer with every food order. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) Massage therapist and urologist: Touch and Go (Michelle Stupak) Bookkeeper and roofer: Add ‘Em and Eave (Chris Doyle) Chiropractor and corner bar: The Spinal Tap: One way or another, you’ll be feeling no pain. (Brendan Beary) Pet groomer and barbershop: Cat*Man Do (Katherine Hooper, Jacksonville, Fla.) Gym and menstrual supply store: Ab and Flow (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) Flophouse with a CD writer: Crash and Burn (Russell Beland) An art gallery that offers classes in smoking control and yoga: Stop, Look and Lissome (Douglas Frank) Anesthesiology supplies and canoe rentals: Ether*Oar (Chris Doyle) Farmers’ retirement home with a dental clinic: Ex-Tractors (Roy Ashley) ====================================================================== WEEK 1218, published March 12, 2017 Style Conversational: We started at the bottom, now we’re here 24 years, 1,218 contests later, there’s no wits’ end to The Style Invitational From Page F2 of The Post's Sunday Style section, March 7, 1993. Bob Staake took over as cartoonist the next year. Happy 24th birthday, Invite! (Illustrations by Marc Rosenthal for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** March 9, 2017 This weekend’s Washington Post Magazine contains an editor’s note that’s produced a wave of disappointment from thousands of readers: The Mag has dropped both its annual Peeps diorama contest after 10 years, and its 10th running of the Post Hunt as well. Deputy Editor David Rowell said the volume of Peeps entries and readership had both declined, and that The Post couldn’t arrange for enough sponsorship for this year’s Hunt, an enormous, complex, costly event. Washington City Paper, in reaction, says it’ll do a Peeps contest. Hopefully the Hunt will be back next year. Meanwhile, today we bring you Week 1218 of The Style Invitational. On Tuesday the Invite celebrated its 24th birthday. Nobody’s told me, yet, to stop putting it out. So let’s go. *HOW TO ‘MESS WITH OUR HEADS’* Our “bank head” contest is one of the most frequent over the history of the Invitational, at least in the Empress Era (2004-?), and it’s been pretty much the same drill despite a few small variations. For Week 1218 we’ll use the same rules as we did six months ago, in Week 1191, with an exception noted below: *The headline you cite: * In the print paper, you may use an article’s main headline; the story’s actual bank head; or the jump head (the headline on the story’s second page). Online, you may use not only a headline above an article, but also headlines that serve just as links to the article. And for both, you may use headlines in ads. *Do I have to use every word in the headline?* No (though it might be a clever feat sometimes if you do). But it has to be a significant part of the headline, for example the words before or after a colon. You can’t use such a short snippet that the meaning is changed even before you add the bank head: If the hed (journo jargon) is “D.C. Teacher Passes Out Porn Instead of Math Worksheet,” you can’t say the headline is “D.C. Teacher Passes Out.” Also, you can’t drop words in the middle of the headline; it has to be the actual block of words. *Can I change the capitalization or punctuation in the headline? * I’ve gone back and forth on this, since reading a common noun as a name, and vice versa, can be really useful for wordplay. For many years The Post had “upstyle” headlines, with all the main words capitalized, as in a book title; the New York Times still does. So does The Onion , which of course is spoofing old-fashioned newspaper cliches. But most newspapers now use the “downstyle” format, which is essential for The Post now that so many of its headlines read as full conversational sentences. *Okay, this is new this time:* I just decided that you may interpret a lowercase word as a proper noun — say “accord” as Accord, the Honda car. Or vice versa. But go ahead and make the whole headline upstyle, in both cases. Don’t change the punctuation. *Can I use headings on other online stuff besides newspapers? * You can if it has a date on it and it falls within the required window, March 9-20. Very helpful to me: Copy the URL (website address) and put it underneath your entry. DO NOT EMBED IT into the headline itself; I’ll see a bunch of garble. *Is there even*more* blather I can read to guide and inspire me?* Excellent question! Yes, there is. There’s even a comically bad graphic.You can read my Week 1141 Style Conversational column . *ELOCUTION FRAUD*: THE RESULTS OF THE ALTERNAUGURAL-ADDRESS CONTEST * **Non-inking headline by Tom Witte* I just hope we don’t become the subject of a presidential tweetstorm. I was totally confident that the Week 1214 contest, to rearrange some words from the new president’s inaugural address to write something else, would produce enough good material — amazing material; our past “word bank” contests had never failed us. But I figured that it’d be the Invite Obsessives who’d bring home all the ink; who else besides the crazies who fret about their rank in the year’s Loser Standings would spend all day compiling long sentences from all over the 1,400-some-word speech, and ensuring that a certain word didn’t appear more often than in the original. But a number of brand-new and infrequent Losers gave it a go, often with impressive results. I can’t begin to share all the inkworthy material this week (for one thing, many of them were somewhat similar); if you didn’t get ink, well, we don’t call it the Loser Community for nothing. I didn’t specifically request it — I asked for “a humorous passage — a ‘quote,’ an observation, a joke, a dialogue, a poem, anything” — but the majority of entries were “quotes” from some alt-inaugural address. Three of the four “above-the-fold” winners this week were of this genre. Someone suggested in theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook group that it’d be cool if we took some entries and juxtaposed video snippets of Trump actually saying each of those words, so we could have him “saying” the entries. I said sure, if someone wanted to volunteer for such an arduous task. And wouldn’t you know it, onetime Invite Rookie of the Year Todd DeLap wrote me and said, “I’m an amateur, but I’ll give it a try.” So I sent him one of the shortest entries, and ta-da,here’s nine seconds of the brand-new president “saying” this line by Kevin Mettinger: “I do not want this job. Bring back President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama right now.” Ye Usual Suspects — Frank Osen, Mark Raffman, John Hutchins — occupy three of the four spots in this week’s Losers’ Circle, but second place goes to First Offender Elaine Lederman, who exaggerated the sparseness of the Inauguration Day crowd by only several hundred thousand people, having the new president worry if he’d shown up on the wrong day. Elaine will be getting a Fir Stink for her first ink along with the fabulous second-prize turtle figurine made of manure, so I hope she’ll be entering a lot more and will pick up some real Bob Staake creations (magnets, the Grossery Bag, and the Loser Mug). [*Thursday evening update:* Elaine messaged me to note that she’s not a First Offender after all: She had gotten ink one other time — in 1994, when she was fifth runner-up in Week 81. For some reason, she’d never made it into the Loser Stats.] *The Tender Kress:* Filling in for the vacationing Doug Norwood, copy editor Steve Kress says he “loved the misdirection and dry wit of [John Hutchins’s] 4th-place entry. I’ll be ‘just and reasonable’ for folks on all different kinds of right, and folks who want to transition to the right. Hah!” Steve also liked Mae Scanlan’s honorable mention, “with the very Trumpian idea of transferring all other countries to space.” *A YUGE SUCCESS: THE 700-WORD ENTRY* I hope you not just marveled at, but actually read the amazing entry by Mike Burch that I published at the bottom of this week’s Invitational — because it’s not just a jaw-dropping feat to take half the words from Trump’s speech and write something else, but it’s also some excellent, mordant writing. And this is only Mike’s second blot of Invite ink — the first was in 2012! I asked Mike how he managed to compose something of that length — and yes, it was totally valid, with no ineligible words, or words used too frequently. Here’s his method: “I cut-and-pasted the original speech into my word processor” and then “moved each word as I used it from the ‘unused’ word list into my ‘more accurate’ speech. So if I wanted to expand on my version, I could do so, because I still know all the words that have not been used. ... “Another trick I used to save time was copying entire sentences and changing them slightly to reveal the ‘real’ meaning. For instance, the long list of terrible things Trump purported to save us from became the list of things he*intends*to do. This speeds up the rate of ‘shrinkage.’ [Actually, a lot of people took that tack, just negating what Trump said; this approach didn’t tend to get ink.] “I own a computer software company and have been developing software for more than forty years, so I am something of an expert on using technology to save time.” Well, then, Mike — let’s start using that saved time to enter the Invitational every week, okay? *(Unprintable entries are at the bottom of this column. They’re exceedingly juvenile and crude, so if you’re not, just skip the last section, okay?)* *SAVE THE DATE: FLUSHIES AT THE FARM, JUNE 17* Given that we no longer have to try for the same weekend as the Post Hunt, the organizers of the Flushies have settled on Saturday, June 17, as the best date for the Losers’ own annual awards banquet (a.k.a. potluck lunch). For the second year straight, we’ll be gathering at the 10-acre farmlet of Loser Robyn Diallo and her husband, Khalil, south of Annapolis in Lothian, Md., about 30 miles east of Washington. This year it won’t rain, either! There are lots of farm animals, some of them pettable: horses, goats, chickens, even peacocks strutting their stuff around the barnyard. The only problem is that Robyn herself can’t join us: She’ll be stationed in Iraq with the State Department. But Khalil wants us anyway! We hope to set up some Skype arrangement. Details to follow closer to the date, but everyone is welcome to join us — you don’t have to be a frequent Loser. Bring the kids! * * *RESPECT FOR THE OFFICE... * Given that the current occupant doesn’t show much respect for it himself, I don’t feel guilty about all the blissful and unabated mockery of the president of the United States in this week’s results. But even I couldn’t bring myself to print in the Invitational any of the clever and coffee-spittingly funny entries based on the combination of “movement” and “flush.” Fortunately, we have the Conversational, which could charitably be called “a niche column” and less charitably called “read by nobody.” I received several entries along this line; representing the entire genre today is this one by — wow, I just checked: our almost-newbie, Elaine Lederman! *This movement is great! Not just great – magnificent! A beautiful, wonderful brown. And so big! Even bigger than Obama did! Get a ruler! You have never seen anything longer!* *Now it is time for a glorious flush!* *Great. It is not going down because of the solidarity of it. The system is starting to fill up! The infrastructure is struggling with the large mountain of decay!* *Thank you, Obama!* It wasn’t just poop jokes that were unprintable. Kevin Mettinger, whose inking entry got the video, sent in: “I let foreign women we we on my face.”(NO VIDEO.) We are just so, so nasty. But I don’t feel very sad, at least while I’m reading this week’s Invite. ====================================================================== WEEK 1219, published March 19, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1219: Tumbl-dry humor with ‘lik’ poems They started with a cow, but the poetry meme works for divers personages (Courtesy of the Morgan Library & Museum*Folger Shakespeare Library) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** March 16, 2017 *I am a pome, my lynes are four Iambic verse to scan and score AA BB, wryt thattè doun And then at last, I verb the noun* Those directions for the poems we’re seeking in Style Invitational Week 1219 are brought to you by Imperial Scion and Thing Two Valerie Holt, who has a blog on Tumblr called English History Is a Trip, Man. I hardly Tumbl, myself (Facebook is already taking up pathetic amounts of my day), but Valerie recently shared with me the current, perhaps ephemeral mini-craze of the “lik the bred” verse, imported from another platform I never look at, Reddit. Inspired, like many other bloggers, by that poem about a tongue-happy cow that we use as this week’s example, Valerie has been likking the bred about various historical Brits: Henry VIII and his fifth wife, the ill-fated Catherine Howard: I am a kyng Now I arryv At royall weding Number fyv But summewones shaggd My newlywed I blaym the girl I chop the hed Musing on a photo of Winston Churchill scowling at the beach in his bathing suit: My naym is Church We ar at warr The Germans come To tayk ar shorr To stir the troops I mayk a speche I saye it wrong I fyte the beche --- The “lik the bred” genre derives some of its winsomeness from the fake Middle English spellings, but I’ve found that a little of it goes a long way. And we have half a page of The Washington Post to fill here. So I think the set of Invitational results will be most enjoyable if I run some poems in real spelling along with some in the cutesy. Feel free to submit them both ways; I might also choose to “translate” one to the other. Do make sure that your fake writing is at least phonetic: “fyte” reads like “fight,” but “fyt” could be read as “fit.” — Note that I’ll probably run these poems as four lines rather than eight (Redditors, please unbunch thy breeches) to conserve space on the page; hence Valerie’s directions. But either way, we want 32 syllables. There’s a shade of difference between the eight-liner’s iambic dimeter (ba-DUMP ba-DUMP; ba-DUMP ba-DUMP) and the quatrain’s tetrameter (ba-DUMP ba-DUMP ba-DUMP ba-DUMP) but I think each format will work well enough in the other. Either way, this form cries out for strong accents — big DUMPS, as it were. — Also, even with the “old” spelling, feel free to add capitalization, punctuation, etc. I’ll honor the poetical affectations more than usual, but remember, people won’t enjoy your humor if they don’t want to bother decoding it. — You may precede the poem with a title. — “In the news lately” is intentionally vague. I’ll be pretty flexible. But not Churchill or Henry VIII or My Friend Joe. — The identification in the first line doesn’t have to be “My name is ...”; you could do “I’m ...,” “As XXX,” etc. And as a four-line poem, you could do not just “My name is Trump” but also, say, “My name is Donald and I think ...” We’ll see how it goes. Here are some current-events versions ; I have faith in our Loserbards to best them. *GOOD TO THE LAST DORK*: OUR LATEST LOSER MUG* **Kevin Dopart’s runner-up mug slogan from Week 715, 2007* I just heard from Week 1213 punku runner-up Seth Tucker that the “This Is Your Brain on Mugs” mug he won arrived with the handle broken off. So I’ll be sending Seth the very last Loser Mug I have, just in time (or almost) for the arrival of Loser Mug 4.0 for our third- and fourth-place finishers: “You Gotta Play to Lose.” The picture in this week’s Invite is Bob Staake’s Photoshop mockup — the mugs will arrive here at the Empress’s palace, Mount Vermin, in as little as a week — but it should look pretty much like the real thing: We’re back to a tall 15-ounce mug, after switching to an 11-ouncer for our last model, the LOVE-turned-LOSER . I ordered 100 mugs, so I’m counting on the Invite’s continued existence for the next year or two, or else I’ll have to host one big coffee klatch. In any case, think of the mug as a limited-edition Bob Staake reproduction (maybe I should artsily mark them 1*100, 2*100, etc., on the bottom). The slogan is by Roy Ashley, from back in Week 715 , a contest that sought slogans for both the next Loser T-shirt and the first mug. Many of those slogans went on to appear on Loser magnets over the years, including Tom Witte’s “No Childishness Left Behind,” one of the two I’m sending out right now. And I’ve often employed Roy’s slogan as a retort to seldom-entering contestants who grouse about their lack of ink: “Hey, you gotta play to lose.” (Mug 3.0, “My Cup Punneth Over,” was from a later mug-slogan contest and credited to three separate Losers: Mike Gips, Edmund Conti and Howard Walderman.) No. 1 of the new mug series will go to Bob, No. 2 (but of course) to the Empress, No. 3 to Roy. And assuming they’d like the new swag, Nos. 4 and 5 will go to this week’s third- and fourth-place Losers, Chris Doyle and Duncan Stevens. Remember, though, that runners-up also have the option of the spacious Grossery Bag, “I Got a B in Punmanship” — also an Edition-of-100 Staake print. And whenever it’s feasible, I’d like to deliver the mug by hand. (See “Seth Tucker.”) *OUR SO-CALLED LAUGH*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1215* **Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich* HOW GOOD WERE THEY? They were so good ... that one of the wittiest Style Invitational Devotees , Alex Blackwood, wrote me this morning to say she thought “nothing snuck in” — that every entry in this week’s results deserved to be there. When I responded that “they were the wheat plucked from lots of chaff,” she said: “Just enough wheat to make it look like you had nothing but.” And Alex doesn’t even enter the contest — no motive to suck up to the Empress! The hoary “X is so Y” format is the basis for numerous subgenres, including Chuck Norris toughness jokes (Chris Doyle gets ink this week with “his shower stall is strewn with Legos”) and of course Your Mama jokes, which Kevin Dopart used as a meta-entry: She’s been used so much that even this contest doesn’t want to touch her. But once again, in a phenomenon that’s continued for many months, a huge fraction of the entries concerned the federal government, especially the guy at the top; the 15 of this week’s 34 inking entries that*aren’t* about national politics are probably disproportionate. Just as with last week’s top winners, the top four “above the fold” entries comprised three political, one non-: The latter was Chris Doyle’s great pun about competitive dieting: “she always halves what I’m halving.” The other three: Duncan Stevens’s “Putin bedroom” in the White House; Brian Allgar’s jab about the president’s grabbing effectiveness (yes, I edited out “pussies” from Brian’s entry, but you knew exactly what he was getting at, right?); and Jeff Shirley’s winning dig at the (choose your own adjective) House Speaker Paul Ryan. *What Doug Dug:* Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choice of winner, and also singled out Chris’s “halves”; Frank Osen’s take on the “missing” Richard Simmons ; Duncan’s scornful joke about John McCain the maverick; Dan Helming’s absurdist joke Democrat House members having to write their congressmen; and Kevin’s Your Mama. And of course — he’s a copy editor — Jeff Contompasis’s expertly crafted joke about stylebooks’ prohibition of the phrase “comprised of” — “I was already typing the note” to point out the error ... “before I read the rest of the sentence.” *So, So ... No: The Unprintables: * Two that couldn’t make the Invite even with tweaking: President Trump loves Russian garbanzo beans so much that he had a chickpea in a Moscow hotel. (Peter Jenkins) And ... Trump’s hands are so small that the official state dinner toast is “Boner petite!” (Chris Doyle) *Next Loser Sighting: This Sunday, College Park(ish)* Loser Brunch No. 195 (!!!) is at noon on Sunday, March 19, at the Moose Creek Lodge; it’s inside the Holiday Inn right at the College Park (U.S. 1) Beltway exit, next door to Ikea. I don’t think I can make it this weekend, but I’ve been to Loser brunches there several times, spending many trips to the buffet line. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org . As always, everyone is invited. ====================================================================== WEEK 1220, published March 26, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1220: Can hairsplitting be sidesplitting? Try. The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results This is the sky that the passengers of the Titanic would have seen, noted Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who noticed immediately that the night sky in the movie was not just the wrong part of the sky, but also the same section doubled. (© Neil deGrasse Tyson*Hayden Planetarium) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** March 23, 2017 “Great catch!” Instead of eye-rolling, the Empress usually cheers when someone notes an inaccuracy that everyone else missed — as when Neil DeGrasse Tyson watched poor Rose drift in the sea in “Titanic” and, instead of getting all goopy, focused on something else: “There she is looking up,” as he noted in a2009 panel discussion . “There is only one sky she should have been looking at . . . and it was the wrong sky! Worse than that, it was not only the wrong sky; the left-half of the sky was a mirror reflection of the right-half of the sky! It was not only wrong, it was lazy!” Ultimately, in response to Tyson’s beef, director James Cameron fixed the sky for the 10th-anniversary rerelease. Score one for the acunerd — the term that Loser Jeff Contompasis coined to get ink this week in the results of Week 1216, using this very example. The Loser Community is surely well salted with acunerds, and so I’m expecting to learn some fascinating clarifications in Week 1220 of The Style Invitational, which asks for humorous quibbles. What’s the difference between a standard quibble and a humorous quibble? It’s possible that just the coolness of the observation might get it some ink. But more likely the humor will lie in the way it’s presented: Two paragraphs listing inaccuracies: not humorous. A man lamenting that his anatomical lectures in response to sweet-nothings have hurt his dating life: humorous. In fact, it was that second-place entry about the heart, from Week 330 in 1999 (results here ; scroll past that week’s new contest), by Major Loser Joseph Romm (nowslightly better known as a climate change activist) that prompted the Empress to rerun the “nerdspeak” contest, as the Czar called it: She saw Joe’s “autonomic blood pump” entry reprinted on Twitter by Loser Mark Eckenwiler, just after she’d seen the “acunerd” entry for Week 1216. What this contest*isn’t:* Rants based on a misunderstanding of an expression, à la Miss Emily Litella’s “What’s all this I hear about our natural racehorses ”? The quibbling should be at least literally accurate. We’ve had other contests that invited pedantry, though they focused more on idiocy than acunerdity. In Week 297, in 1998, the Czar offered a contest for misguided letters to the editor, “Free for Oil” (?), that described itself “a cross between Emily Litella and the Post’s Free for All [quibbly] letters page on any given Saturday.” The winner that week, by David Genser, isn’t pertinent to this week’s contest but is classic: “ HAND-DELIVERED. URGENT! To the editor: Do not let them bury those people whose pictures you showed in Sunday’s obituaries! Most of them look like they are still alive! But this one by John Kammer from that week could fit the bill: It quotes the headline “Momentum Is Building in Downtown Revival.” “I continue to be appalled by your poor understanding and incorrect usage of even the simplest physics terms. Momentum is the property of mass multiplied by velocity. As buildings remain at rest, they have no momentum. The term you are looking for is ‘inertia.’ ” (Full results of Week 297 here .) And in Week 779 (2008), there were these in a contest for stupid rants (full results here ): “No matter how many times I tell my local grocers that a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable, they keep putting them between the potatoes and the onions. What’s next, putting the asparagus beside the blueberries?” (Marjorie Streeter, Reston) “ ‘Objects in Mirror ...’-- How can an object be in a mirror? Is it inside the plastic housing that sticks out of the car door? Why is our government mandating this absurd perversion of our language? (Russ Taylor, Vienna, Va.) I’m likely missing some more examples from the Invite’s previous 1,219 contests. Feel free to waste untold hours perusing Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List at NRARS.org to find a couple more. *DESPERATELY SEEKIN LOSIN’*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1216* *Excellent but too-long-for-print headline by Tom Witte* The word search grid I created in Week 1216 , once again using a bunch ofrandomly generated words, proved a fruitful field for many made-up ones as well, as were our two previous contests like this. Judging from the entries I checked (just the inkworthy ones), almost everyone followed the rules to string the word together using adjacent letters (once each). However, one person gets ink today out of the goodness of the Imperial Heart, having neglected to include the coordinates of the word’s first letter even thoughI’d demanded this in boldface, italics, capitals, quotated, you name it. (I think it’s that I’m so naturally mean that I keep trying to hide it by doing the occasional nice thing.) While this week’s winner is, once again, a gem of zingy political humor, we’re finally starting to diversify the jokes again after weeks and weeks of almost Nothing But Him; this week’s other “above the fold” entries are merely about embarrassing cluelessness (fourth place) and insensitive, uncaring caddishness (third and second) by no one in particular, rather than ahem. It’s the second win in a month, and the fourth in all, for Jesse Frankovich, but those stats don’t reflect the crazy success Jesse’s had since he started Inviting in earnest after a brief dip into Loserdom many years ago: In the past year or so, he’s accumulated close to 140 blots of ink — usually more than one a week — and finding himself in the Losers’ circle repeatedly, in whatever kind of contest I throw out there. (Remember that I judge the entries without knowing who wrote them; for Week 1216, in fact, I sorted the entire pool of the entries by coordinates — better to choose the best of several definitions for LIAGRA, for example — so Jesse’s 25 individual entries were spread out all over the master list. I had no idea whose entries were whose until I looked up the winners a couple of days ago.) Frank Osen had a similar dazzling streak a few years back; it’s subsided a bit but he’s certainly still blotting up gobs of ink. I hope he enjoys his Toilet Tunes electronic musical mat, and would love to hear a recording of his performance on it (sans background noise) but would decline a video. Todd DeLap has his choice of either the brand-new “You Gotta Play to Lose” Loser mug, which might arrive this week, or the last of the “This Is Your Brain on Mugs” (I discovered four more specimens). Todd got to see in advance last night which word of his I was considering for ink, when I sent my short­list (no names attached) to him so he could run it through the nifty validator he’d devised for his own entries and offered to use on them all. He didn’t know it was going to be a runner-up, though, his 80th blot of ink. And it’s just Ink No. 6 for Bruce Johnson, but his second trip to the Losers’ Circle; Bruce once shared first-runner-up honors — in Week 152, 1996, for a contest to write lurid headlines for a non-lurid story: “Baboon-Man Escapes”: The story reported that the recipient of an ape’s immune cells was feeling so good he had resumed an active lifestyle, even going boating. One clever entry, by Ray Gallucci, deliberately broke the rules, tracing the letters back on themselves: HARASSSARAH, a true Palin-drome. *What Doug Dug: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood deemed this week an especially strong one. His favorites were all honorable mentions: Frank Osen’s ARFTIME (midpoint of the Puppy Bowl), Jeff Contompasis’s aforementioned ACUNERD and also DORKKNOT (a man-bun); William Kennard’s exclusive school, SNOTHURST; and Mark Raffman’s WETI, the Abominable Rain Man. *Too griddy for the Invite: The unprintables * They include: FAPTAIN: The master of his domain (Chris Doyle) CARPE A MUFF: Seize ’em by the pussy (Jeff Shirley) And . . . FKS U AGAIN PLNTY: 2020 Trump*Bannon campaign hat slogan (Kevin Mettinger) ====================================================================== WEEK 1222, published April 9, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1222: It’s our annual paddock attack The Style Invitational Empress on the annual horse thing and the winning bank heads A few of the many, many pages of entries from the 2016 contest, extremely helpfully sorted by Loser Jonathan Hardis. (Pat Myers*The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** April 6, 2017 And ... it’s Post time. There are well over 400 3-year-old racehorses nominated for this year’s Triple Crown races, up by about 50 from last year, and so it was especially easy to find 100 useful names for Style Invitational Week 1222, our 23rd annual horse name “breeding” contest (not counting the spinoffs). For those new to this contest — almost always the most heavily entered of the year — or to those who are merely weirdly nostalgic, you might want to read my Style Conversational columns from the past two years (2016 and 2015) to see a sampling of inking entries from past years, some guidelines on strategy, and some nerdy stuff about how the entries are sorted. But in a nutshell — not a Brazil nut shell but a teensy acorn, the one with the cap covering the whole thing: First of all, this contest has *nothing* to do with the horses themselves; it’s all about wordplay. That usually comes in one of two types: making a creative pun, or modifying Horse A with Horse B to end up with Horse C. Among my three examples this week, the first one, Horse Fly x Always Dreaming = Pigs Fly, is the modifying type; that’s just about the only instance when it works to repeat part of the original name in a joke. The other two, “Gummy x Takeoff = Goo Bye!” and “Irap x Talk Logistics = Jay Zzzzzzz,” incorporate both names, then pun on a name or expression. The punning part is essential when your competition is thousands of other entries; a name like, say, Scrape It Clean, while it incorporates Gummy and Takeoff, won’t be clever enough to get ink; it’s not funny. And, as always, a topical reference or allusion is a plus, even if people won’t get it five years from now — and humor that actually makes a point is even better. Here are last year’s “above the fold” winners, the top four: 4: *Awesome Speed x Gulf Of Mexico = Don’tMethWithTexas *(Pete Morelewicz) Funny, original pun. By the way, the slogan “Don’t Mess With Texas” gained fame as a pun in itself: It was used on state road signs as part of an anti-littering campaign. 3:*Suddenbreakingnews x Twenty Four Seven = PlaneStillMissing!* (Mark LeVota) From this Loser’s first and perhaps only Invite entry ever. This “modification” joke juxtaposes two opposite ideas to take a dig at CNN et al., then gives a specific topical allusion, to Malaysia Air Flight 370. The joke is even better because the reader knows just from “plane” what we’re talking about. 2: *Big Red Rocket x Cold Blood = Wile E. Capote *(Pam Sweeney, a frequent recidivist in the horse contests, among many others) Very cute pun that avoids being too obvious because the first part takes a moment to process. And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:*Perfect Saint x Caribbean = Francis of a C Sea* (Danielle Nowlin) Virtuoso pun! -- Speaking of horse names, Loser (and foal contest specialist, and actual horseman) Steve Price shared a story that seemed like the Onion but does check out: In South Africa, someone named a racehorse President Trump — two years ago, before that two-word phrase became reality — and the colt turned out to be so “vocal, extremely stubborn, unmanageable and arrogant,” according to his wag of a trainer, that he needed to be gelded: “All he wanted to do was jump all the fillies.” An article about this in South Africa’s Racing Post went viral. And the trainer’s digs at the now-real president embarrassed the country’s racing authority, which then decreed that the horse needed a new name. It knew enough about American politics to reject the first suggestion, “Potus.” The chestnut gelding is now named Fake News. *DON’T FORGET TO FLUSH — SAVE THE DATE: THE FLUSHIES, JUNE 17 * Actual too-insidey entry for Week 1218: Real headline: Mixture of antiques and contemporary pieces decorate Md. home Bank head by Roy Ashley: Veterans, First Offenders offenders gather in Lothian, Md., for Style Invitational Flushies Yes, for the second straight year, the Greater Loser Community will hold the Flushies, its annual awards banquet (i.e., a potluck lunch), at RK Acres, the home and 10-acre farm of Loser Robin Diallo and hub Khalil in Lothian, south of Annapolis. Even though it rained last year, by the end of the afternoon we could leave the Diallos’ very coolly furnished house (chairs made out of animal horns) and wander back to the barn and visit the horses, llama, goats, chickens, even peacocks — so it’s the rare Loser event that might not bore your tykes to death. Even without the fauna, there’s always a lot of fun to be had for both the veteran Losers and newbies, and even just non-entering fans; anyone who’s not actively oozing sores can attend. Some people come in from out of town and make a D.C*Baltimore sightseeing weekend of it. Plaques are awarded to the Loser of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Most Imporved [sic] etc., and rolls of personalized toilet paper will be tossed out to those who reached their 50th blots of ink, their 100th, etc. (And I might just give away some prizes that were too tasteless for the Invite itself.) And there’s always The Doing Of The Song Parodies, at least one of them written for the occasion. (Here’s hoping that Nan Reiner will be able to make it up from Florida to lead the singing.) The Flushies are a production of the Losers themselves, not The Post, though I’m there every year and help get the word out. Now that the Invitational email list has grown to 10,000 people, I no longer send the invitation that way; I’ll probably do it through Evite, which worked pretty well for the Loser Post-Holiday Party in January. If you want to make sure you’re invited, email me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll make sure you’re on the list. One disappointment: Robin herself won’t be there — a State Department diplomat, she’ll be stationed in Baghdad during that time, leaving Khalil (hey, it was*his* idea!) to play host to the Losers. But with luck, we can Skype. *BANKY-PANKY*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1218* **Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich* Dang, this contest always cracks me up. I pulled the 37 bank headlines in this week’s results of Week 1218 from a “shortlist” of some 120 entries, so if yours didn’t get ink, it was surely one of those 83 others, right? I heard from a number of non-subscribing Losers who found themselves blocked by The Post’s paywall, since they’d read their monthly quota of 10 free articles, and so I’m glad I allowed headlines from any publication from the dates of the contest. (Most of the entries still came from The Post, not that I cared.) I’ve found that the best headlines to use for this contest are ones whose real meanings you understand without explanation: When you see “Cuba Advances, Will Face Israel Next,” I assume you’ll know right away that’s a headline about a sports tournament, and that “Purple Line” refers to some transit route. On the other hand, I got several entries like “Planning Commission Defers Action on Sunrise”* Innovative “Rise in West” Idea Tabled For Now”; I didn’t want to add (“chain of assisted-living communities”) to explain. Ditto with several headlines about “Wall”; it wasn’t clear that the heads were really about Wizards player John Wall, and that probably wouldn’t occur to readers outside the D.C. area. This year I let people use either “upstyle” headlines (with capitals) even if the original was in downstyle, to allow for entries like the two inking heads about Turkey, with different angles: Flynn Was Paid to Represent Turkey During Campaign *President signs executive order banning Thanksgiving*(Steve Price) As a New Relationship Is Tested, Turkey Keeps High Hopes for Trump *Spicer still defending boss’s erratic behavior*(Jon Gearhart) In this week’s results, I usually used downstyle just for readability, if it didn’t matter to the joke. Still, there was the occasional headline that wouldn’t work in either format: “Witness quizzed on shooter’s ID* “Psych expert said ego not a factor.” Unless the headline were in*all* caps (no way, sorry), you can’t read “ID” to mean “id.” It’s the second win and sixth visit to the Losers’ Circle for Ellen Ryan, out of 37 blots of ink — a highly impressive Other Junk-to-Magnet ratio. (If someone writes in to complain of the use of “libtard,” I give up.) Meanwhile, He Who Cannot Be Stopped Jesse Frankovich wins the fake smashing-golf-ball with what I suppose is the shortest Style Invitational (or anyone else’s) entry ever. Hildy Zampella scores with nifty “seeds” wordplay, and Jeff Hazle highlights the humor potential of the phrase “bag of dirt.” *What Doug Dug:* The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood were Steve Price’s “Thanksgiving,” Dave Matuskey’s wry “Wasting away again in Mar-a-Lago-ville,” William Kennard on “Fox’s rabies test” (my favorite of several similar entries) and Chris Doyle’s play on “Eight OTs.” *Off with their heads: The unprintables* Several of these were wisely designated “Convo only.” A Modest Blow for Fiscal Responsibility* Brothel’s ‘economy plan’ offers 1-minute ‘kiss’ to cash-strapped johns (Duncan Stevens) U.S. likely to send as many as 1,000 more ground troops to Syria* Cannibals had requested new shipment (Nan Reiner) Wall finally starts to feel the love* Toilet stall in local bar acquires glory hole (Jeff Contompasis) Champs Go Down* Women reveal, in detail, what it takes to win their hearts (Tom Witte) Okay, get breeding, folks. ====================================================================== WEEK 1223, published April 16, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1223: Iamb tal-KING like THIS from ‘lik the bred’! Add to list On my list The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s contest and results Elliott Shevin’s runner-up, illuminated by Valerie Holt, who suggested this contest (and is the offspring of the Empress and the Royal Consort). (Design by Valerie Holt*For Ye Washingtonne Poste) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** April 13, 2017 welle, welle, welle, we might just have a new recurring Style Invitational genre here for our Loserbards: our slight variation in Week 1219 of the faux-Chaucerian “i lik the bred” and other poems by Poem for Your Sprog, aka Sam Garland, on Reddit. Four weeks ago, upon announcing this contest (typically focusing it on people in the news), I expanded the parameters of the Sproggian form: I allowed four lines of four iambs (ba-DAH) as well as his eight lines of two, and — fearing that the affected spelling 20 times over might become tedious to read — allowed modern English along with the fake-olde. That certainly helped me read the some 1,000 entries, and I didn’t mind at all that some entrants sent their poems in both spelling forms. And I found that some entries did work better in one form or the other: This week’s winner, for instance, might have been impenetrable in ye-olde-speak; but on the other hand, bitter lines like “I sell their lie” are leavened out of screediness by the cute spelling. And “I grab the poose” is both funnier and more printable than the contemptibly vulgar actual quote. Isn’t that a nice graphic up there by Imperial Scion No. 2 Valerie Holt, who suggested this contest? I’ll post it along with the plain ol’ daily “social cards” on the Style Invitational Ink of the Day page on Facebook. It’s just the second blot of ink for David Lewis, of Indianapolis, who sent in his poem about Neil Gorsuch (as well as another good entry) several times over, improving it in small ways each time. I’d rather see just the final perfection, but obviously I didn’t hold it against him. David got his one other Invite ink with a limerick in 2010, about Rush Limbaugh hiring Elton John to play at his wedding: As Rush Limbaugh’s fourth wedding drew near, In a liberal show of good cheer, He shelled out a million To rock crocodilian — A choice that his listeners thought queer. The Week 537 Style Invitational, from Dec. 19, 2003 -- the Empress's second contest. We reprise this contest this week, Week 1223. (Cartoon by Bob Staake for The Washington Post) I hadn’t talked to David until today, but the Loser Community did meet our First-Offending second-place winner, Graham King of Scotland, when he recently joined the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group (which is just about to admit Member 1,300). Graham heard about the Invite from Eratosphere, a British-based online forum for poets (whence came many of our other Loserbards as well). Graham is a veteran of various British literary humor contests (aka “comps”) and thought he’d try our lower-brow stateside version. Good plan there, Graham. (Graham also, just for the fun of it, wrote a delightful four-verse Lik the Bred about the genre itself; see the bottom of this column.) But it’s the 22nd blot for Brian Allgar, who’s ubiquitous in light-verse journals both here and abroad. For a British expat who lives in France, Brian is clearly up on the day-to-day of American political face-slappers, like the Trump budget’s plan to cut Meals on Wheels funding. And it’s the sixth ink for rookie Elliott Shevin since his debut in Week 1202. Brian and Elliott get their choice of the new “Gotta Play to Lose” Loser mug, one of the last “This is your brain on mugs” mugs, or the “I Got a B in Punmanship” Grossery Bag. *What Doug Dug: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me on the first- and second-place choices, and also Jesse Frankovich’s “I spice the facts,” Maria Zimmerman’s Putin who doffs his shirt but “I wear the pants,” and Duncan Stevens’s and Scott Ableman’s entries about the Invite itself. *LOSER HISTORY TOUR: Gettysburg, April 23* Once again — and at a much more seasonable time of year than the past midsummers — Losers and Gettysburg residents Roger Dalrymple and Marty McCullen will host a Loser brunch followed by a tour of the Gettysburg battlefield and other historic sites. It starts at noon on Sunday, April 23, with lunch at the Appalachian Brewing Company pub, and then Roger, who’s an experienced and delightful tour guide, will take the Loser delegation around and point out the fascinating fictoids. I can’t make it this year, but I’ve gone several times and really recommend it, especially if you enjoy walking. Our usual brunch coordinator, Elden Carnahan, is in Europe right now, so it’s best to contact Roger directly at rogerandpam (at) comcast (dot) net if you’d like to come. *BOGUS ROYAL OFFERS TO SEND ICONIC AMERICAN STATUE ABROAD: This week’s contest* The examples should explain it all for Week 1223. We last did a contest for comically sensational headlines in December 2003, right after I started Empressing. Indeed, it was just my second contest when I started ripping off my predecessor’s oeuvre; Week 537 was a reprise of the Czar’s Week 152, in 1996. As I mention in this week’s introduction, it’s going to be important to sum up the actual story concisely, either by paraphrasing it or by quoting the headline. (Including a link to the story would help me out as well, but remember that print-paper readers won’t be able to see it.) As I look at the results of the two contests below, I think the explanatory lines work better in Week 537, probably because the Week 152 explainers went, unnecessarily, for consistency. From January 2004: *Report from Week 537,* in which we asked you to write irresponsibly sensationalistic headlines for actual Washington Post stories: *Third runner-up:* KNIFE-WIELDING MAN ON WEST BANK GOES AFTER TOURISTS! Real headline: “Struggle of Family Nativity Carving Business Reflects Bethlehem’s Woes” (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) *Second runner-up:* ANOTHER D.C. MAYOR SEEN LIGHTING UP! “At a ceremony last night, D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams switched on the newly restored, historic street lights” (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.) First runner-up, the winner of the remote-control fart machine: MALVO WON’T DIE LIKE A MAN! Lee Boyd Malvo gets a life sentence; his youth is cited as a factor. (Kevin Mellema, Falls Church, Va.) *And the winner of the Inker:* WASHINGTON INFERNO TERROR LINKED TO FRANCE! “French Fry Fire Damages Kitchen” (Milo Sauer, Fairfax, Va.) *Honorable Mentions:* J. LOPEZ’S IMPRESSIVE BOOTY FLASHED IN BALTO! “The Baltimore Orioles agreed to terms Sunday night with catcher Javy Lopez on a three-year contract believed to be worth $23 million” (Heather Abelson, New York; Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) MICHAEL JACKSON UNABLE EVEN TO DRESS SELF, EXPERT ATTESTS! Fashion columnist Robin Givhan laments Jackson’s courtroom attire. (Russell Beland, Springfield, Va.) DEATH TOLL HITS 152 AT AREA PARKS! Howard County sponsored a deer hunt. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg, Md.) LADY JUDGE IN THREE-WAY WITH D.A., LAWYER! “Judge Faces Three-Way Contest in St. Mary’s [County]” (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) FAVRE RETURNS FROM DEAD, THROWS 4 TD PASSES! Packers quarterback Brett Favre played the Monday after his father died. (Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls, Va.) WOMANIZING EX-PREZ FOUND GUILTY IN LAND DEAL! “Jefferson Convicted in Mock Trial on La. Purchase” (Danny Bravman, Potomac, Md.) SENATE LEADER ADMITS INVOLVEMENT IN MONKEY BUSINESS! Sen. Bill Frist, a physician, tells of performing surgery on an orangutan at the National Zoo. (Robin D. Grove, Chevy Chase, Md.) TIPSY VIRGIN EMPLOYEE PINCHED IN BUST! “Pilot Pulled From Dulles Flight Faces Charges Over Drinking” (Milo Sauer) PROMISING ‘A PARTY,’ ADULTS LURE YOUNG CHILDREN FROM HOMES! Kids were given free-admission buttons to the First Night Annapolis festival. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.) BUSH TO ALIENS: COME ON DOWN! “Immigration Reform on Bush Agenda” (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.) JETS INTERCEPTED NEAR NYC FIVE TIMES THIS WEEK! New England 21, New York 17 (Russell Beland, Springfield, Va.) COUPLE CHARGED $76 FOR FOOD AT McDONALD’S RESTAURANT! Story on Wall Street bonuses quoted Lever House restaurant owner John McDonald. (Russell Beland) GOVERNOR LINKED TO DRUG TRADE! Illinois’ Rod Blagojevich is seeking federal permission to import pharmaceuticals from Canada. (Bill Spencer, Exeter, N.H.) VOYEURS FLOCK TO RED-LIGHT DISTRICT PEEP SHOW! Three landers are scheduled to visit Mars. (Bob Dalton, Arlington, Va.) ED BRADLEY TO GET IN BED WITH JACKO FOR “SPECIAL” EVENING! “CBS Gets Interview, Jackson Gets Special” (Jeff Brechlin; Beth Benson, Lanham, Md.) PENTAGON: U.S. TROOPS SHOULD BE SHOT! “General Defends Anthrax Shots for Troops” (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) WEALTHY MAN TREATED LIKE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT! The Orioles’ $22.5 million contract with Javy Lopez is contingent on his passing a physical. (Bill Spencer, Exeter, N.H.) ZOMBIES FOUND IN BALTIMORE HOSPITAL! Johns Hopkins has cut back on medical residents’ 90-hour workweeks. (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) CAPTIVES UNDER TORTURE BEG FOR LIFE! “Tormented Jurors Argued, Cried and Wavered” before agreeing on a life sentence for Malvo. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel, Md.) 60 KILOTONS OVER PYONGYANG! “U.S. Sending 60,000 Tons of Food to N. Korea” (Elden Carnahan) EAGER TO SCORE, VA. TECH MEN DRIVE MILES TO GET SOME TROJANS! “Hokies to Face USC in ’04 Season Opener” (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) IV BRINGS DEAD ROYAL BACK TO LIFE! Several exciting new productions of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” have been staged. (Bill Spencer) FAMILIES KILL CATS DURING XMAS FEAST! “Holiday Treats and Trimmings Can Be Deadly to Curious Pets” (Tom Madison, Alexandria, Va.) And Last: MD. MAN RUINS WIFE’S XMAS BY REVEALING ALL IN POST! “Earlier this month, Jay Ireland of Bethesda bought his wife a digital camera,” Dec. 21 (Jane Auerbach) And from 1996: *Report from Week 151, in *which we asked you to play tabloid journalist, submitting new, lurid headlines for real stories in that Sunday’s Post. *Fourth Runner-Up:* CLINTON LEAVES WIFE (Rodney and Joyce Small, Herndon) Story reported president’s departure from Washington with aides for a quick campaign appearance. *Third Runner-Up:* Texans Watch Killing, Do Nothing (Fred Dawson, Beltsville) Story described an execution. *Second Runner-Up:* Californian Shoots 201 During 3-Day Spree in Buick, Continues to Elude Pursuers (Michael J. Hammer, Washington) Sports story reported that golfer Lennie Clements held on to the lead after three days at the Buick Open. *First Runner-Up:* Baboon-Man Escapes! (John Kammer, Herndon; Bruce Johnson, Annapolis) Story reported that the recipient of an ape’s immune cells was feeling so good he had resumed an active lifestyle, even going boating. *And the Winner of the Tabloid Teasers board game:* College Men, Coeds Streak to 7-Eleven (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) Story reported on consecutive victories by George Washington University’s men’s (seven games) and women’s (11 games) basketball teams. *Honorable Mentions:* Aliens Captured Alive Near Nation’s Capital! (Russell Beland, Springfield; Tommy Litz, Bowie) Story reported an Immigration and Naturalization Service raid at a Bethesda restaurant. 30,000 Wet T-Shirts! (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) Story reported flooding in the Northwest. Populace to Submit to Sailors’ Base Desires (Jim Proctor, Bethesda; Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Story reported the community’s uneasy acceptance of expanded Navy bases in Maryland. $400,000 Poured Into C&O Canal (Michael J. Hammer, Washington) Story reported on the status of a donation drive to repair the canal. Machine Crushes Man Before Mate! (Phil John, Arlington) Story reported that Garry Kasparov conceded defeat in his first game against a computer. MA TAKES AX TO COMPOSER! (Fred Dawson, Beltsville, R. Gregory Capaldini, Arlington) Story reported that cellist Yo-Yo Ma had persuaded pianist Emanuel Ax to accompany him in a Schubert concert. Buchanan Strains for a Number 2 (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) Story reported on the race for the second-place finish in Iowa. And last: Replace The Washington Post with The New York Post (Russell Beland, Springfield). *LAST LIKS: A Cow-rumination by Graham King* To wryte in verse, I ape the form That lik-bred Cow defyned as norm. Som pieces mayd, I doe affyrm; Yet som evayd. Insyde I squhyrm. Itte seemeth sympel form: not so! Som lynes fyt wel; som awrye goe. Itt gybes insyde: am I stille sayne? I’ve tryed and tryed. I racke myne brayne. ’Tis fun to sette one’s wyttes at play - But vexes mynde, at end of day: Ys ther ane more sich verse to wryte? Am I donne yet? I thynk: notte quhyte. And so and on I goe arownd, Myne tonge pokd forth and myne browe frownd. If I a verie goosecap seeme, ’Tis all Pat’s fault! I lyke this meme. ====================================================================== WEEK 1224, published April 23, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1224: Giving a hand to the ultra-pedantic The Empress still can’t get over that no one complained about this cartoon Bob Staake made Nixon literally sinister for the Week 1221 cartoon. And not a single Free for All complaint — or even a Week 1220 entry about it. (Bob Staake*for The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** April 20, 2017 I didn’t just predict that someone would immediately complain that Bob Staake had taken artistic license to draw President Nixon as left-handed in the Week 1221 cartoon (full picturehere ). I wanted him to change it. The moment Bob emailed me his sketch of Nixon and Miss Manners (their child would keep a “whom not to invite” list), I replied that it was great, but “make Nixon right-handed, though — he wasn’t on MY team” (I am of the southpawian persuasion). Bob assumed I was joking — how could I possibly be so pedantic? — and sure enough, in the final cartoon Nixon remains stubbornly sinistral as well as sinister. (Miss Manners is also depicted as left-handed, but she’s not a major historical figure.) I still wasn’t happy, but it just so happened that theprevious week’s Style Invitational contest — which would still be running for another five days — was to make comically pedantic complaints. Okay, Bob, I told him, let’s keep it — but I’ll bet you anything that someone, most likely someone from the Greater Loser Community, will notice it as soon as I post the cartoon. Or that someone would rant about this gross historical inaccuracy as an entry for Week 1220. Not. One. Peep. Meanwhile, it didn’t even occur to me that, up from the offending hand, Bob had depicted Tricky Dick with a remarkably phallic set of nose and jowls. The terms of the bet? Nothing material, but I told him“You can tease me on your Facebook page for being anal.” This cartoon, just published in the New Yorker, is right in tune with the Week 1220 contest, and also reminded me of a winning entry in our six-word-stories contest. (Cartoon (c) 2017 Robert Leighton**The New Yorker. Used by permission.) --- Maybe it’s that I’m obviously a card-carrying pedant myself (hey, I was a copy editor for 30 years; it’s a job requirement) that I didn’t find too many entries to love in Week 1220. Ones that simply contradicted a figurative expression or quote tended to fall flat unless a good joke was attached (as in Gregory Koch’s “Mary, Mary, quite contrary” observation). As I’d predicted, I ended up favoring jokes that made fun of the complainer’s nitpicking. *Speaking of “nitpicking”:* I happened to see Robert Leighton’s new New Yorker cartoon shared on Facebook just as I was finishing the judging of this contest; it got the joke across so cleverly that I wrote to Leighton to ask if I could show it here (it’s just above this paragraph). He graciously went to the editors at the New Yorker over the weekend and got permission for me. Actually, a darker, even more elegant version of Leighton’s joke was told by Hall of Fame Loser Tom Witte in 2006 as a winning entry in our contest for six-word stories: “My wife’s suicide note: ungrammatical, naturally.” (Full results arehere ; scroll down past the new contest.) It’s the 26th win — and the 1,281st blot of Invite ink (along with Nos. 1,282 and 1,283) — for the gloriously nerdy Kevin Dopart. That second-place Seth Tucker and third-place Mark Raffman are both Harvard-educated corporate lawyers (as is the honorably mentioned John Hutchins) has, I’m sure, nothing to do with their accomplished nitpickery. I don’t think fourth-place Ivars Kuskevics has the same affliction in his background; he deals with foreign-aid budgets for the State Department (hope he doesn’t run out of work to do). One entry that was going to get big ink until I found out that it wasn’t at all true — I had specified that “the quibbling should be at least literally accurate” — was this from Bill Dorner: “They say, ‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.’ Well ‘they’ must not be ornithologists. According to a 2014 study sponsored by the Canadian Foie Gras Producers’ Association, alfalfa is the optimal feed for female geese, whereas it gives male geese loose stools. Good for the gander indeed!” *What Doug Dug:* The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood are Seth’s “it goes without saying” runner-up, and Kevin’s winning “diamonds are not forever” plus his complaint about the redundancy “foreign imports.” Cool fact: The Post’s new proofreading app, Tansa — in addition to typos, it flags thousands of other potential violations of the Post stylebook — pointed out “foreign imports” when I ran it on the Invite (and this column) and suggested using “imports” instead. I remember worrying back in the early 1980s that newfangled spelling-checking software would take my copy-editing job away; fortunately it didn’t become good enough until I retired. (Tansa does not yet write punny headlines, at least.) *BEYOND COMPARE: A FEW THOUGHTS ON THIS WEEK’S CONTEST* Our perennial contest to compare two items on a list dates back at least to Week 155 in 1996; as was often the case in the Czarist era, the winner was Chuck Smith of Woodbridge, Va.: “What is the difference between *a bowling ball *and *the devoted followers of Pat Buchanan*? A bowling ball requires an opposable thumb.” In the more than 20 compare-and-contrast contests since then, a few joke constructions pop up almost every time. One is to note two similar-sounding phrases or spoonerisms. Like these two from 2012: *Michael Phelps *can outdo any guy in the pool, while*the Desperate Housewives *are out to do any guy in the pool. (Chris Doyle) *Beethoven,* stone deaf, created serious music; *Howard Stern*, tone deaf, creates Sirius mucus. (Harold Mantle) I can run lots of those in a given week, but there’s another perennial construction that I shouldn’t use more than once per contest: It’s “The difference between Item A and Item B: One is [you think it’s describing Item A]; the other is Item A.” The joke lies in the surprise to the reader, so running several of these entries at once would kill their effect. But I think they still work well one at a time. Last year this one from First Offender (and still One-Hit Wonder) Paul Totman was a runner-up: *The last Cheeto in the bag *vs. *Tiny Hands:* One is an unnatural orange mess that leaves a bad taste in your mouth; the other one isn’t a nickname of someone running for president. The form nabbed Ellen Ryan a whoopee cushion in 2013: *The National Zucchini Fair* vs.*the Rolling Stones*: One is a celebration of phallic vegetables. The other is a gardening event. And here’s one by David Genser from back in 1997: What is the difference between *an ethics lecture from Newt Gingrich *and*Ruth Bader Ginsburg doing the Macarena?* One is an elaborate dance done with the palms out, and the other is a Supreme Court justice. (That one inverts the order; I think it would have worked a bit better with Gingrich and Ginsburg switched.) Similarly, this from Joseph Romm in 1996: The difference between*Bob Dole’s grandfather *and *Saddam Hussein’s brother-in-law?* One of them was a blood relative of a man who has been in power far too long and is on the verge of leading his nation to ruin, and the other was related only by marriage. Last year I specified for the first time that in addition to saying how the two items were similar or different, you could also “connect them some other way.” That extra flexibility paid off with Kathy El-Assal’s runner-up: “An *all-you-can-eat buffet *and*leftover Valentine’s candy:* Oh, you Match.com Casanova, you!” Kathy could have just said “They’re both part of the worst Match.com date ever,” but her version is so much funnier. So I welcome other creative links this year as well. And I’ve also started welcoming multi-item links; last year I’d specified two items and had to bend the rules because this entry from Chris Doyle was just too good: *The Pentagon:* Think eyes on Iraq. *Scrabble tiles:* Think I’s on a rack. *7th-grade boys:* Think eyes on a rack. *CHARGE UP TO GETTYSBURG: LOSER BRUNCH*TOUR THIS SUNDAY!* (Repeated from last week’s Conversational) Once again — and at a much more seasonable time of year than the past midsummers — Losers and Gettysburg residents Roger Dalrymple and Marty McCullen will host a Loser brunch followed by a tour of the Gettysburg battlefield and other historic sites. It starts at noon on Sunday, April 23, with lunch at the Appalachian Brewing Company pub, and then Roger, who’s an experienced and delightful tour guide, will take the Loser delegation around and point out the fascinating fictoids. I can’t make it this year, but I’ve gone several times and really recommend it, especially if you enjoy walking. Our usual brunch coordinator, Elden Carnahan, is in Europe right now, so it’s best to contact Roger directly at rogerandpam (at) comcast (dot) net if you’d like to come. ====================================================================== WEEK 1226, published May 7, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1226: At the restarting gate The Style Invitational Empress looks back at the foals and ahead to the grandfoals Some of the 200 pages of printouts containing the 3,909 entries for Week 2226. With the entries sorted alphabetically, the Empress found it handy to work from actual paper. (Pat Myers*The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** May 4, 2017 Whew! Yeah, it took a long time to peruse more than 3,900 entries for our 23rd annual contest to “breed” the names of the year’s Triple Crown-nominated horses. But I actually look forward to judging this contest every April, because I haven’t the slightest worry that I’ll be short of usable material, and simply because so many of the entries will be fun to read. I’ll take that anytime over scrolling worriedly through a small list of jokes that struggle to make something out of what seems to be a lost cause. I hope you enjoy reading the results of Week 1222 as well, though I guess they’ll be more enjoyable for a certain 53 people than for a certain 307 other people. *A note right up top for the Losers this week:* If your exact entry for Week 1222 (or the same entry with the names flipped) got ink today but your name isn’t on it, email me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll fix the online version (the print version is published Thursday afternoon). My apologies in advance. My judging has been much more systematic (and accurate), however, in the past few years thanks to the invaluable and totally unpaid-for entry-sorting assistance of Loser Jonathan Hardis, but after I make my picks, I still have to search through the pool of submissions for each entry to find out who wrote them, and I can still screw up there, especially in cases of double or triple credit. I had to toss so many clever ideas when I slashed my “short­list” from 300 inkworthies to 200, then 100 and then the final 58 inking entries. (Yes, of course, that 59th one was yours.) Still, I managed to sleep last night (though it might have to do with not having much sleep during the previous week), knowing that it doesn’t take untold hours to write up a foal name. It’s not as if I hurriedly scrolled past your photo of the Peeps diorama you’d spent a month working on. As promised in the Invite, here are the*best* of the clever entries that crossed American Anthem, including the four that got ink this week: American Anthem x Always Dreaming = Oh Say Can You Zzz (Michael Porcello) American Anthem x The Stranger= Oh Say Camus See (Mary McNamara) American Anthem x Cloud Computing = O Say, Can You C++ (Dion Black) American Anthem x Caustic = Don’s Surly Slight (Jesse Frankovich) American Anthem x Downhill Racer = Oh Say Can You Ski (Pamela Love) American Anthem x Run for the Cup = Oh Say Can You Pee (Paul Burnham) American Anthem x Foggy Night = Nope, Can’t See It (Laurie Brink) American Anthem x Irap = Yo Say Can You See (Julia Shawhan) American Anthem x No More Talk = OSayCanYouCease (Claudia Raffman) American Anthem x Sonneteer = OSayCanYouABBACDDC (Sam Kyung-Gun Lim) American Anthem x Takeoff = Dawn’sEarlyFlight (William Kennard) American Anthem x MarchToTheMusic = RockettesRedGlare (Matt Monitto) Iliad x American Anthem = Homer the Brave (Paul Burnham) American Anthem x Talk Logistics = Star Spangled Banter (Hildy Zampella) Practical Joke x American Anthem = StarSpangledBannon (Lynne Ann Larkin) American Anthem x Excitations = StarSpangledBoner (both Rob Huffman and Jesse Frankovich; it’s cute but we can’t run “boner”) Gummy x American Anthem = TarSpangledBanner (David Peckarsky) American Anthem x No More Talk = Star Spangled Ban (Pie Snelson) Plus a couple of other patriotic anthems: Gummy x American Anthem = MyGumTreeTisOfThee (Chris Doyle) American Anthem x Midnight Pleasure = Grand Old Shag (Larry Passar) If you didn’t get ink this week (and of course if you did), you should try again next week with our 12th annual “grandfoals” contest, Week 1226 , in which you breed any two of the week’s inking entries, including the three I mention in the introduction to the results — Erin Go Braghless, Eureka! and Carnegie Dali. (At the bottom of this column, as a reward for reading The Style Conversational, is a handy list of all 61 foal names, courtesy of Jesse Frankovich, who immediately compiled it this morning upon reading the results and shared it on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page. ) You’re almost certain to have less competition than in Week 1222; for several reasons: One, the first contest is probably better publicized. Second, I think some entrants feel outclassed upon seeing the results and sit out the next round. And third, the grandfoal names are harder to work with than the real names; they’re already full of puns and contain multiple references, so it can be daunting to combine two of these names to make even more wordplay. And do you play on the *original* that the first pun alluded to? No, you don’t have to allude to every element in both parents’ names; it’s better to have a funny, readable joke. Here’s a random honorable mention from last year: Let My Pimple Go x Glock Watcher = ZittyZittyBangBang (Charles Trahan). He gets Pimple in, he gets Glock, and maybe he gets Watcher (since it’s a pun on a movie title), but he doesn’t bother with anything about Moses or clocks. No problem. --- I always time the foal contest so that the results run in time for the Kentucky Derby. Eighteen of the 20 colts scheduled to run Saturday were on the list I supplied for Week 1222 (pretty good, given that I chose only 100 of the 429 nominees). And 10 of those 20 horses got ink today, though just one of them, Irap, placed “above the fold.” So I’ll be shouting, “Come on, Always Dreaming, Classic Empire, Girvin, Hence, Irap, Irish War Cry, McCraken, Practical Joke, Sonneteer and Untrapped!” But I’ll also be rooting for another horse from our list, Patch. Aww. It’s the second Inkin’ Memorial — we now have just seven of them left — and the 115th blot of ink for Loser Jon Gearhart, whose elegant pairing of Midnight Pleasure x Archimedes = Lover & Lever turned out to be the top pick not just of the Empress, but also of the Czar, whom I’d shown about 100 entries (I’d already chosen my top four, but hadn’t told him which ones). The Czar usually marks the ones he likes with “Good”; after Jon’s he wrote “Great.” Given his inestimable help to me with this contest, I was thrilled to find out that the author of the No. 2 pedigree, Factorial x Confederate = Jeb! Stuart, was a second Jonathan, Dr. as in Physicist Dr. Hardis. (There’s absolutely no way I know who’s written what, so why shouldn’t he have a chance to enter?) I got lots of good entries that incorporated “!,” the math symbol for a factorial, but I thought Jonathan made the cleverest and definitely the most unusual use of it: to refer to the “Jeb!” campaign slogan of Jeb Bush in the past election. Third place this year, for the zingy mix(-a-lot) of Irap x Rapid Dial = I Like Big Buttons, goes to Laurie Brink of Missouri, who’s been joining us almost exclusively for the horse contests for many years, with lots of success — including her three blots of ink today, which bring her to the 50-ink milestone. Laurie lives with her father, Bernard Brink, and he usually enters a few horses every year as well. And he got ink today too! And there’s Good Ol’ Chris Doyle (MarchToTheMusic x It’s Your Nickel = The Half-Dime Show) in what would be just out of the money on the track, but part of the Losers’ Circle here. Chris now has between 6! a nd 7! blots of ink. It might take longer than usual for me to send out all the prizes this week, but I was delighted to see so many Losers get ink, especially a whopping six First Offenders (okay, you all may stop whopping now) and several people who used to be regulars but had made themselves scarce in Loserland lately; they include Mark Eckenwiler, Malcolm Fleschner, Dion Black, Harold Mantle, Larry Yungk and Brad Alexander, who together have amassed 643 blots of ink over the years. I hope they all stick around awhile. **Note:*If you don’t get one or more of this week’s entries, you’re not alone, * as evidenced by the questions posted on the Devotees page this afternoon. Kevin Dopart’s “Rubenesque Chance,” for instance: “Rubenesque,” as in the Old Master paintings by Rubens of voluptuous women, is a polite term for “fat.’ Laurie Brink’s “Girvin x Midnight Pleasure = Fledowered” took me a minute; she cleverly flipped Girvin to Virgin, then did the same to Deflowered. When I get a chance, I’ll add some explanatory links to entries. On the other hand, someone told me she didn’t get “Jeb! Stuart”; not sure how I could link to something about the factorial symbol, something about Jeb Bush’s campaign, and something about Confederate war hero Jeb Stuart — all three of which you have to be familiar with on some level. Please feel free to ask for explanations on the Devotees page, in the thread under where I posted the Invite (at the top of the page). I promise that no one will mock you; it’s the most civil group around. *Speaking of First Offenders:* I’ve been apprised by Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan that as of this week, and by his count, 4,997 people have gotten ink in The Style Invitational since its debut in March 1993. I’m taking suggestions for how to celebrate the 5,000th. *Here’s the list of foals to be used in the Week 1226 grandfoal contest. As for the foal contest, please use these guidelines: * ● Type each entry on a single line. This is essential: If you have the parents’ name on one line and the foal on another, little Junior is going to get lost from Mom*Dad and Mom*Dad when we do The Big Sort. Remember, use this format: Foal Name A x Foal Name B = Grandfoal Name. And spell the names correctly so that Jonathan’s program can find them. ● Don’t number your list of entries. Numbers at the beginning of a line will give fits to our name-sorting system. You’ll have to count to 25 on your 25 fingers. ● Observe the 18-character limit, including spaces and punctuation marks. In other Invite contests, the Empress has occasionally given ink to an entry that didn’t technically fit the rules, if it was especially clever or funny. But there’s no give on the letter limit on horse names — it’s part of the challenge. ● If you need to revise an entry,**do not send all your entries over again;** I had to keep checking last week whether several people had sent the same entry or if it was just someone sending them over and over. Just submit that one entry again correctly on another form at bit.ly*enter-invite-1226. All Systems Ergo Baba O’Really Bare It Browning Bed Bath N Bayonne Bomb Bard Bonus Pints Carnegie Dali Carnegie Endowment Chinese Checkers Congrats, Loser Disappearing Inc. Dispencer Don’s Surly Slight ’Ell, a Beer! Emir Trifle Eric Clap Erin Go Braghless Et Tupac? Eureka! Felon of Troy Fillet of Seoul Fish Shtick Fledowered Good Vibe Rations Haribo Diddley Have One Skittle Help a Thief! Hive Got Rhythm Ho California Horse Fly United I Like Big Buttons In a Minute Dear Jeb! Stuart Jethro Dull Koch-Conspirator Left Right Repeat Love Hertz Lover & Lever Man Asses Muck Rakin’ No, It’s Iowa Now It’s MY Nickel O Say, Can You C++ Oh Say Camus See Oh Say Can You Zzz P.A.T. on the Back Punk’d-uation Read It and Veep REMbrandt Rubenesque Chance Ruble Yell Shall I Comp Thee? Shenand“O”ah Spruuuuce!!! The Half-Dime Show The Who? Titan the Screw Too Loose Lautrec Troy, Troy Again Up in Sfumato Walk Off Homer ====================================================================== WEEK 1227, published May 14, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1227: MASTERMINDS INFILTRATE NEWSPAPER The Style Invitational Empress discusses the week’s new contest and results We don’t always dwell on Trump: We’re an equal-opportunity strongman-mocker here at The Style Invitational. Here are Putin and Turkey Head, the latter of whom ended up with runner-up ink in this week’s results. (Yuri Kochetkov*Pool photo via AP) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** May 11, 2017 Sorry, if you didn’t get a lot of laughs out of the results of Week 1223 in this week’s Style Invitational, you might as well ditch the Invite and move on to the stock listings; this week’s juicy headlines for non-juicy news are the essence of Gettable Invite Humor. I laughed out loud repeatedly while judging this contest, and the other people I shared the results with beforehand — including the Royal Consort, who patiently listens to me read them in the car — got a kick out of them too. But along with the gems were a surprising number of headlines, long lists of them, that didn’t fit this contest. I thought my description was pretty clear when I announced Week 1223 : “Write a humorously sensationalistic, misleading headline on an otherwise mundane article or ad published in The Post or elsewhere from April 13 to April 24.” In addition, I’d provided several clear examples in the Invite from Week 540, when we did this contest earlier, as well as thewhole set of results from that contest in this column. But a lot of people instead sent me sort of upside-down entries for our perennial Mess With Our Heads contest. In that one, you take just the headline of the story and write a “bank head” based on a misinterpretation of that headline. Which is what some people must have been thinking of when they sent heads like this: SOCCER STAR SOLO FIGHTS THE LAW AGAIN In Uganda, Hope Imprisoned (real headline from The Post) and RABIES SCARE HAUNTS FAN AT BALLGAME! Injured by errant bat at Orioles game, woman sues I do sometimes find, though, that a contest description that was totally clear to me is confusing to others; in fact, I rewrote the Week 1227 description twice after posting the Invite this morning and getting feedback on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page. (More on that below.) Anyway, clearly enough Losers (including two First Offenders) understood what the Empress was looking for; I’d call these a classic set of results. And I might use a few more when I’ll be running some extra honorable mentions from various contests when I’ll be on vacation in mid-July (I might have to do an unprecedented two columns in advance). Then maybe I’ll have a chance to run one or more of the many good sports-themed entries that missed the cut this week; I didn’t want to swamp this week’s results with more than the several that did get ink. This week’s Inkin’ Memorial goes to Jon Gearhart — for the second week in a row: Last week’s Jon’s “Midnight Pleasure x Archimedes = Lover & Lever” beat out 3,900 entries in the foal name contest. Winning the Invite for two straight weeks is a rare though not shocking occurrence — it last happened in July 2016 (Annette Green) and before that in July 2015 (Brendan Beary). What’s rarer is that both entries were the unanimous choice of everyone I showed the entries to: With the word “after,” which can mean one second later or a million years later, and might or might not imply causation, GOP CONGRESSMAN FOUND DEAD AFTER CALLING FOR PRESIDENT’S IMPEACHMENT perfectly fooled the reader into thinking that the headline was about something that just happened, something that would be at least 10 percent more shocking than the actual political events that are unfolding daily. (Jon’s headline actually refers to the obit of a member of the 1974 House Watergate Committee.) This Inkin’ Memorial is now Jon’s third; I was going to send it out in a box with the other one, but I wasn’t sure he’d rather have three bobbleheads rather than another prize. Another Loser who’s on a roll lately is Dave Matuskey, our second-place winner, scoring with ROCKETS TAKE OUT ACTIVE SHOOTER for a basketball story. Dave is still an Invite rookie, with a modest-sounding total of 23 blots of ink — but 11 of them have been since mid-March. As first runner-up, Dave gets those lovely squares, hand-crocheted by Loser Jesse Frankovich, that spell out LOSER or SLORE or ORLES et al. (I love to award handmade Loserly crafts as prizes.) While Duncan “Turkey Head” Stevens is a familiar name in the Losers’ Circle, fourth place this week goes to a First Offender: Kathy K. MacDonald’s “BABY WITH 4-FOOT NECK” was my favorite of about a dozen April the Giraffe entries; the other one that got ink combined elements of Frank Osen’s and Chris Doyle’s entries (“prisoner” and “without mother’s consent”). *What Doug Dug: * Ace copy editor and former Boss Of The Empress Doug Norwood tells me that in addition to especially enjoying the results and agreeing with the “above the fold” choices, he also particularly liked Chris Doyle’s OLDER WOMEN FIND PADDLING A TURN-ON (about rowing); Frank Osen’s SAW-WIELDING MAN VOWS TO RIP MUSICIAN A NEW ‘F-HOLE’ (about a guitar builder); THOUSANDS OF AFFLUENT D.C. RESIDENTS EXPLOIT MEALS ON WHEELS (about food trucks) by another First Offender, Michelle Kelley; and Seth Tucker’s FOX KILLS HOUND, about the cancellation of Bill O’Reilly’s show. *A GAME OF SINGLES: THIS WEEK’S NEOLOGISM CONTEST* I’m always looking for a new set of parameters for a neologism contest; I regularly receive emails asking when the “annual neologism contest” will be, from people who’ve read, say, the results of Week 278 on someone’s blog. We actually manage to keep expanding the English language with contests several times a year; our last one was in February, when we put up a word-search grid in Week 1216 and asked you to discover new terms within it. Loser Jeff Shirley — who also scored four blots of ink this week — came to the rescue with this week’s contest, Week 1227, which presents the challenge of coming up with a term in which no letters repeat, as well as the mild limitation that it had to be about “a life form” rather than, say, a kitchen appliance or a tax form. (Yes, the president of the United States counts as a life form.) It was a good thing that Jeff also supplied several good examples, since when I started looking through previous neologism results, there weren’t all that many in which no letter appeared twice. (By the way: I’d originally said that the name of the new “life form” must “not repeat any letters.” But a moment after I published the Invite this morning, it occurred to me that a reader might think I meant that you can’t use two letters in a row, but might have the same letter in different places within the term. So I quickly changed it to “no letter in the term may be used twice.” But then a veteran Loser expressed confusion with that construction. So now it reads “all the letters of its name must be different.” I hope you understand.) As always, neologisms are almost alterations of existing words or a combination of two. But there’s no rule this week that requires, for example, that only one letter be changed; there’s not even a rule that you have to play on another word — if you can come up with a novel and clever term that doesn’t, go for it: I can’t think of one now, but we must have used sui generis terms*sometime* in our dozens of past neologism contests. And remember, the Empress will take out for ice cream any local who suggests a contest I go on to use. I’m picky; I have to feel confident that the idea will work (good examples are persuasive!) but I really do appreciate and use lots of ideas. Not just neologisms, of course; anyone have a good theme or parameters for our next song parody contest? *READY TO FLUSH?: GET INVITED TO THE JUNE 17 FLUSHIES * Now that our general Style Invitational email notification list numbers 10,000 Losers, Aspiring Losers and General Hangers-On (as the salutation of the weekly email addresses them), I’m not going to send all those people an invitation to this year’s Flushies, the Losers’ annual awards “banquet” (potluck*songfest*silliness at someone’s house). Instead, we’ll do it through Evite.com, which worked well for the Loser Post-Holiday Party this past January. As it was last year, the 2017 Flushies will be on a Saturday afternoon at RK Acres, the 10-acre farmstead of Loser Robin Diallo and non-Loser husband Khalil, out in Lothian, Md., in Anne Arundel County south of Annapolis. The Diallos have a big barn and numerous pettable barnyard animals, so it’s a family-friendly site. The Flushies are a great way to meet the Losers, some of whom come in from out of town for the occasion. (It’s rumored that there are some sightseeing opportunities in nearby Washington and Baltimore.) I’ll start with the Evite list from January and add local people who’ve gotten ink recently. But if you’re reading this column, even if you’re not a Loser, you’re invited. If you want to make sure you get the Evite, email me at pat.myers@washpost.com, with something in the subject line that I’ll see, and I’ll add you. (Even if you think you’ll get the Evite, I won’t mind if you contact me anyway.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1228, published May 21, 2017  Style Conversational: FAQs on ABCs The Style Invitational Empress discusses the Week 1229 contest and Week 1225 results Our Bob Staake's homage to the darkly funny artist and kindred spirit. (Art and design by Bob Staake) By Pat Myers By Pat Myers Discussions May 25 Before we get to our Week 1229 contest and the results of Week 1225 , I wanted to invite you over to the house. Actually, it’s someone else’s house: The Loser Community’s 22nd annual Flushies awards “banquet” will be at RK Acres, the 10-acre farm*house of Loser Robin Diallo and her husband Khalil in rural Lothian, Md., south of Annapolis. It’s a potluck on Saturday afternoon, June 17, and if you’re interested enough in The Style Invitational to find yourself reading this column, then you and yours are hereby invited. Last night I sent out an Evite (you can read it, with all the details, here ) from my personal email address; if you got it and you’d like to go, please respond to it (duh) so we’ll know and so that you’ll get any updates. (I think you’ll also be able to see who else is coming.) If you’d like to come and*didn’t* get the Evite from the Empress, please email me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll add you. (If you’re a total stranger to me, we might chat first.) *NOW WE BURN OUR ABC’S: THIS WEEK’S GOREY CONTEST * As I mentioned in the intro to Week 1229, we’re doing a third run of our “Gashlycrumb Tinies”-inspired contest because it fits so well with our prize this week: the coming-soon poster for “Gorey: The Documentary,” a film by Christopher Seufert, who made much of the footage, with Edward Gorey’s participation, from 1996 until the artist and author died in 2000. (Filmmaking requires a lot of resources; this project is being funded with the help of Kickstarter and Indigogo campaigns, as well as proceeds from Bob Staake’s gorgeous poster.) Gorey surely provided his biographers with plenty of material. While his faux-Victorian*Edwardian Gothic style leads many people to assume he was English, he actually grew up in Chicago, eventually making it to Manhattan, where in the 1950s he illustrated books and covers for Doubleday, like this classic 1960 reissue of H.G. Wells’s “The War of the Worlds.” My knowledgeable personal source, Ms. Wikipedia, also notes that he published under such anagrams as Ogdred Weary, Dogear Wryde and Ms. Regera Dowdy. (How fitting for the Loser Community, in which virtually all 5,000 people who’ve gotten ink in The Style Invitational are given Loser Anagrams, a.k.a. Granola Smears, in the stats maintained by Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan. ) Gorey went on to create more than 100 books of his own, including the 1963 abecedarian “Gashlycrumb Tinies,” which we play off in this week’s contest. (According to Wikipedia, “he did not associate with children much and had no particular fondness for them.” Maybe this is why he could so gleefully rhyme about “C is for Clara who wasted away,” or “I is for Ida who drowned in a lake.”) And he lent his signature style to many stage and TV works as well — most famously the animated introduction to the long-running PBS series “Mystery!” Gorey eventually moved to Chatham, Mass., on Cape Cod — which happens to be the current home of Our Own Bob Staake! But. As Bob emailed me yesterday: “I was looking forward to finally having the chance to meet one of my literary heroes once I bought a house on Cape Cod, but as soon as I did, he did a very Gorey thing — he died. In 2005 I wrote and illustrated a very stark black-and-white story called ‘The Orb of Chatham.’ One of Gorey’s best friends saw the book and told me , ‘Oh, Ed would have*loved* you.’ So I’m heartened that I can at least take that to the grave with me — though hopefully not anytime soon.” Bob regularly so discusses his artistic and literary approaches on his Facebook page. Here’s what he posted this morning as he shared this week’s Invite art (as well as a link to the contest — thanks, Bob!): “Every now and then I have to ‘ape’ some famous (usually dead) artist’s work in an illustration. Sometimes it’s Al Hirschfeld, sometimes it’s Dr. Seuss, on occasion it’s Charles Schulz or Bill Watterson, and I have even done Robert Crumb (well, not “done” per se, but you know what I mean). Yet the one artist I seem to have to imitate most often over the years is Edward Gorey. “Each time I’m forced to parody his work I realize once again what a terrific draftsman he was — and at the same time find it difficult to understand why with all that insane, anal-retentive crosshatching the guy didn’t go bats[---] crazy by the age of 35. To crosshatch beautifully is a technique mastered by very few — and Gorey was indeed a master of it. Me, I get in there with my pen and ink and after a hundred 45-degree strokes to the right and a hundred 45-degree strokes to the left, I’m ready to fake it as best I can on the other 5,000+ strokes and call it a day ... exhausted, humbled and even more appreciative of his adroit pen-and-ink work.” *FAQ’S ON THE ABC’S: ENTERING WEEK 1229 * This week’s contest echoes “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” in its form of alphabetical couplets, but its scope and form are much wider than in Gorey’s little masterpiece. Here are the top winners from our two previous contests, along with links to the rest of the results. In those contests, I presented a list of my faves among all 13 letter pairs (noting which were the top four winners), then followed with the remaining honorable mentions. I’ll probably do that again. *From Week 757 (March 2008),* which ran right after New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was forced to resign in a prostitution scandal : 4. *C’s Callipygian *, my favorite form. *D is for Droopy *-- alas, that’s the norm. (Tom Witte) 3. *S for Spitzer *squanders sums for sordid sex: sore luck. *T is for Testosterone*: turns titan into schmuck. (Ellen Raphaeli) 2. *G’s the ex-Guv *of the state of New Yawk. *H is the Hooker *he’d hoped wouldn’t tawk. (Christopher Lamora) And the winner of the Inker: *W is for Writer’s block,* thinking “What next?” *X is for . . . ??? *(Beth Baniszewski, winner of the Inker) See the rest of the 2008 results here (scroll past that week’s new contest). *From Week 1024 (2013) ,* when the headlines were about Gov. Schwarzenegger’s housekeeper*mistress, and controversy over the name of Washington’s football team: 4. *E is for Enema,* cleaning you out; *F, your Financial plan:* same thing, no doubt. (J. Calvin Smith) 3. *S is Scalia,* harrumphing and hefty. *T is the Talmud,* which he’d find too lefty. (Brendan Beary) 2. *A is for Arnold,* who diddled his aide; *B’s for the Bed *she then dutifully made. (Danielle Nowlin) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: *M is for Money,* which hardens a man; *N is for Name change *— eventually, Dan. (Jennifer Gittins-Harfst) See the rest of the 2013 results here. *Q.* *Can I do my rhyme with a B-word and a C-word? * *A.* *Don’t you dare. * They must be A-B, C-D, etc. As I say above, I will probably print a full set of the 13 best pairs. *Q.* *Do I have to start the line with the letter in question?* *A. *Yes. *Q. * *All the lines in “Gashlycrumb Tinies” are triple dactyls (OOM-pah-pah) with a strongly accented syllable at the end; does my entry have to be in that same meter?* Note the eight “above-the-fold” winners above. Note that*one* of those eight does not use that meter. Note that, while it’s clever (enough to win a T-shirt in 2008), that entry seems clunky and sort of confusing juxtaposed against all the Triple-Dactyl-BOOMs. So while I won’t *require* the TDB, I can virtually promise that such an entry won’t make it into that first set of 13. *Q. * *If I win, can I get the Gorey poster?* *A. * Nope! It’s the second prize. This is how we remind you that even Style Invitational winners are Losers. REPORT FROM WEEK 1225: *WINNERS OF OUR DISCONTENT*: THE WEEK 1225 PROTEST SLOGANS* *(*Non-inking, great but way too long alternative headline by Jon Gearhart)* Yes, someone — at*least*some-*one* — actually sent in “Visualize Whirled Peas.” Which is not only an ancient joke, of course, but also a lame, contrived pun — because the only time peas are “whirled” is for lame-pun purposes. Today’s inking entries show much better how slogan-punning is done. It’s the — oh, brother — 12th win for Gary Crockett, whose career in the tech world no doubt inspired his “Middle Managers March” slogan “If It Were Up to Me, I’d Say Yes.” Gary has long since passed on any further Style Invitational prizes, which means that there are still six more Inkin’ Memorial bobbleheads to be awarded before we switch to our new first-place trophy — one that Loser Larry Gray and I will be making this very weekend here at Mount Vermin, the Empress’s suburban palace. Ira Allen, a longtime news journalist, usually goes for withering political humor, so I was surprised to discover that he was the author of the cute, sunny “Cat Lives Matter, Matter, Matter, Matter, Matter, Matter, Matter, Matter, Matter.” Definitely deserving of an elephant crafted of glued-together peach pits that was originally given to Elden Carnahan in 1993 for suggesting a contest. Newbie Dave Matuskey (The Luddite March: Stop Thinking About Tomorrow!) is swiftly becoming an Invite household name, while Oldbie Tom Witte (March to Support Team Sports: We Are the 110 Percent!) has been one since Year 1 in 1993. But with 23 inks, Dave can catch up to Tom (if Tom suddenly stops getting any more entries printed) with a mere 1,414 blots. *What Doug Dug: * In addition to Gary’s winning Million Managers March, Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood “loved” (a term he doesn’t usually use) Sarah Jacobs’s three-sign Parents’ March, Jesse Frankovich’s triple-poop-joke Rally for Regularity, and the two jokes about D.C.’s woeful Metrorail system, credited to Mark Raffman, Perry Beider and out-of-towner Bird Waring — who nevertheless does a spot-on transcription of the subway’s in-car PA system, down to the bing-bong. ====================================================================== WEEK 1229, published May 28, 2017 Style Conversational: FAQs on ABCs The Style Invitational Empress discusses the Week 1229 contest and Week 1225 results Our Bob Staake's homage to the darkly funny artist and kindred spirit. (Art and design by Bob Staake) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** May 25, 2017 Before we get to our Week 1229 contest and the results of Week 1225 , I wanted to invite you over to the house. Actually, it’s someone else’s house: The Loser Community’s 22nd annual Flushies awards “banquet” will be at RK Acres, the 10-acre farm*house of Loser Robin Diallo and her husband Khalil in rural Lothian, Md., south of Annapolis. It’s a potluck on Saturday afternoon, June 17, and if you’re interested enough in The Style Invitational to find yourself reading this column, then you and yours are hereby invited. Last night I sent out an Evite (you can read it, with all the details, here ) from my personal email address; if you got it and you’d like to go, please respond to it (duh) so we’ll know and so that you’ll get any updates. (I think you’ll also be able to see who else is coming.) If you’d like to come and*didn’t* get the Evite from the Empress, please email me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll add you. (If you’re a total stranger to me, we might chat first.) *NOW WE BURN OUR ABC’S: THIS WEEK’S GOREY CONTEST * As I mentioned in the intro to Week 1229, we’re doing a third run of our “Gashlycrumb Tinies”-inspired contest because it fits so well with our prize this week: the coming-soon poster for “Gorey: The Documentary,” a film by Christopher Seufert, who made much of the footage, with Edward Gorey’s participation, from 1996 until the artist and author died in 2000. (Filmmaking requires a lot of resources; this project is being funded with the help of Kickstarter and Indigogo campaigns, as well as proceeds from Bob Staake’s gorgeous poster.) Gorey surely provided his biographers with plenty of material. While his faux-Victorian*Edwardian Gothic style leads many people to assume he was English, he actually grew up in Chicago, eventually making it to Manhattan, where in the 1950s he illustrated books and covers for Doubleday, like this classic 1960 reissue of H.G. Wells’s “The War of the Worlds.” My knowledgeable personal source, Ms. Wikipedia, also notes that he published under such anagrams as Ogdred Weary, Dogear Wryde and Ms. Regera Dowdy. (How fitting for the Loser Community, in which virtually all 5,000 people who’ve gotten ink in The Style Invitational are given Loser Anagrams, a.k.a. Granola Smears, in the stats maintained by Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan. ) Gorey went on to create more than 100 books of his own, including the 1963 abecedarian “Gashlycrumb Tinies,” which we play off in this week’s contest. (According to Wikipedia, “he did not associate with children much and had no particular fondness for them.” Maybe this is why he could so gleefully rhyme about “C is for Clara who wasted away,” or “I is for Ida who drowned in a lake.”) And he lent his signature style to many stage and TV works as well — most famously the animated introduction to the long-running PBS series “Mystery!” Gorey eventually moved to Chatham, Mass., on Cape Cod — which happens to be the current home of Our Own Bob Staake! But. As Bob emailed me yesterday: “I was looking forward to finally having the chance to meet one of my literary heroes once I bought a house on Cape Cod, but as soon as I did, he did a very Gorey thing — he died. In 2005 I wrote and illustrated a very stark black-and-white story called ‘The Orb of Chatham.’ One of Gorey’s best friends saw the book and told me , ‘Oh, Ed would have*loved* you.’ So I’m heartened that I can at least take that to the grave with me — though hopefully not anytime soon.” Bob regularly so discusses his artistic and literary approaches on his Facebook page. Here’s what he posted this morning as he shared this week’s Invite art (as well as a link to the contest — thanks, Bob!): “Every now and then I have to ‘ape’ some famous (usually dead) artist’s work in an illustration. Sometimes it’s Al Hirschfeld, sometimes it’s Dr. Seuss, on occasion it’s Charles Schulz or Bill Watterson, and I have even done Robert Crumb (well, not “done” per se, but you know what I mean). Yet the one artist I seem to have to imitate most often over the years is Edward Gorey. “Each time I’m forced to parody his work I realize once again what a terrific draftsman he was — and at the same time find it difficult to understand why with all that insane, anal-retentive crosshatching the guy didn’t go bats[---] crazy by the age of 35. To crosshatch beautifully is a technique mastered by very few — and Gorey was indeed a master of it. Me, I get in there with my pen and ink and after a hundred 45-degree strokes to the right and a hundred 45-degree strokes to the left, I’m ready to fake it as best I can on the other 5,000+ strokes and call it a day ... exhausted, humbled and even more appreciative of his adroit pen-and-ink work.” *FAQ’S ON THE ABC’S: ENTERING WEEK 1229 * This week’s contest echoes “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” in its form of alphabetical couplets, but its scope and form are much wider than in Gorey’s little masterpiece. Here are the top winners from our two previous contests, along with links to the rest of the results. In those contests, I presented a list of my faves among all 13 letter pairs (noting which were the top four winners), then followed with the remaining honorable mentions. I’ll probably do that again. *From Week 757 (March 2008),* which ran right after New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was forced to resign in a prostitution scandal : 4. *C’s Callipygian *, my favorite form. *D is for Droopy *-- alas, that’s the norm. (Tom Witte) 3. *S for Spitzer *squanders sums for sordid sex: sore luck. *T is for Testosterone*: turns titan into schmuck. (Ellen Raphaeli) 2. *G’s the ex-Guv *of the state of New Yawk. *H is the Hooker *he’d hoped wouldn’t tawk. (Christopher Lamora) And the winner of the Inker: *W is for Writer’s block,* thinking “What next?” *X is for . . . ??? *(Beth Baniszewski, winner of the Inker) See the rest of the 2008 results here (scroll past that week’s new contest). *From Week 1024 (2013) ,* when the headlines were about Gov. Schwarzenegger’s housekeeper*mistress, and controversy over the name of Washington’s football team: 4. *E is for Enema,* cleaning you out; *F, your Financial plan:* same thing, no doubt. (J. Calvin Smith) 3. *S is Scalia,* harrumphing and hefty. *T is the Talmud,* which he’d find too lefty. (Brendan Beary) 2. *A is for Arnold,* who diddled his aide; *B’s for the Bed *she then dutifully made. (Danielle Nowlin) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: *M is for Money,* which hardens a man; *N is for Name change *— eventually, Dan. (Jennifer Gittins-Harfst) See the rest of the 2013 results here. *Q.* *Can I do my rhyme with a B-word and a C-word? * *A.* *Don’t you dare. * They must be A-B, C-D, etc. As I say above, I will probably print a full set of the 13 best pairs. *Q.* *Do I have to start the line with the letter in question?* *A. *Yes. *Q. * *All the lines in “Gashlycrumb Tinies” are triple dactyls (OOM-pah-pah) with a strongly accented syllable at the end; does my entry have to be in that same meter?* Note the eight “above-the-fold” winners above. Note that*one* of those eight does not use that meter. Note that, while it’s clever (enough to win a T-shirt in 2008), that entry seems clunky and sort of confusing juxtaposed against all the Triple-Dactyl-BOOMs. So while I won’t *require* the TDB, I can virtually promise that such an entry won’t make it into that first set of 13. *Q. * *If I win, can I get the Gorey poster?* *A. * Nope! It’s the second prize. This is how we remind you that even Style Invitational winners are Losers. *WINNERS OF OUR DISCONTENT*: THE WEEK 1225 PROTEST SLOGANS* *(*Non-inking, great but way too long alternative headline by Jon Gearhart)* Yes, someone — at*least*some-*one* — actually sent in “Visualize Whirled Peas.” Which is not only an ancient joke, of course, but also a lame, contrived pun — because the only time peas are “whirled” is for lame-pun purposes. Today’s inking entries show much better how slogan-punning is done. It’s the — oh, brother — 12th win for Gary Crockett, whose career in the tech world no doubt inspired his “Middle Managers March” slogan “If It Were Up to Me, I’d Say Yes.” Gary has long since passed on any further Style Invitational prizes, which means that there are still six more Inkin’ Memorial bobbleheads to be awarded before we switch to our new first-place trophy — one that Loser Larry Gray and I will be making this very weekend here at Mount Vermin, the Empress’s suburban palace. Ira Allen, a longtime news journalist, usually goes for withering political humor, so I was surprised to discover that he was the author of the cute, sunny “Cat Lives Matter, Matter, Matter, Matter, Matter, Matter, Matter, Matter, Matter.” Definitely deserving of an elephant crafted of glued-together peach pits that was originally given to Elden Carnahan in 1993 for suggesting a contest. Newbie Dave Matuskey (The Luddite March: Stop Thinking About Tomorrow!) is swiftly becoming an Invite household name, while Oldbie Tom Witte (March to Support Team Sports: We Are the 110 Percent!) has been one since Year 1 in 1993. But with 23 inks, Dave can catch up to Tom (if Tom suddenly stops getting any more entries printed) with a mere 1,414 blots. *What Doug Dug: * In addition to Gary’s winning Million Managers March, Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood “loved” (a term he doesn’t usually use) Sarah Jacobs’s three-sign Parents’ March, Jesse Frankovich’s triple-poop-joke Rally for Regularity, and the two jokes about D.C.’s woeful Metrorail system, credited to Mark Raffman, Perry Beider and out-of-towner Bird Waring — who nevertheless does a spot-on transcription of the subway’s in-car PA system, down to the bing-bong. ====================================================================== WEEK 1230, published June 4, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1230: More BNAG for the buck — our new trophy The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s new contest and results Loser Larry Gray -- who gets his 100th ink this very week -- displays our next first-place trophy. Larry crafted 53 bases of cherry wood, and designed and made the flags as well. He and the Royal Consort assembled 14 of the trophies this week. (Mark Holt) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 1, 2017 I’m not yet officially announcing the debut of our new Style Invitational trophy, because I still have six or seven more Inkin’ Memorial bobbleheads to give out; this week’s winner, Chris Doyle, will decline his Bobble-Linc, given that he could build a retaining wall with the ones he’s already won along with his almost 2,000 blots of ink over the years. But since we now have 14 of the new Lose Cannon trophies assembled, I think it’s right that Chris should get one now. I thought up the Lose Cannon last year, inspired by a then-candidate’s tweet about Hillary Clinton ; while I knew the “covfefe”-type mockery over that tweet would subside quickly, I figured that the word would continue to work fine for the Loser community. When I shared my idea on Facebook with the Style Invitational Devotees group, Loser Larry Gray offered to help create them. And as you can see, his handsome hardwood bases are really a bit too nice for a Loser prize, though his “BNAG” flags, made from sticky labels, are just Loserly enough. The little cannons are pencil sharpeners that I ordered from a school-supply website; I ordered 50 but I’m still waiting for 23 that weren’t in stock. On Memorial Day, Larry drove all the way down from Almost-to-Pennsylvania, Md., to the Empress’s south-of-D.C. palace, Mount Vermin, and he and Royal Consort Mark Holt put together the first 14 Lose Cannons after trying various methods. Too bad Larry gets only a magnet this week, rather than one of these — but at least it’s his milestone Ink No. 100. And he did happen to win the grandfoal contest last year, with Autocorrect: Nose x Señor Moment = No Sé . AdChoices ADVERTISING In coming weeks, I’ll continue to award the Inkin’ Memorial to first-place winners who hadn’t won one before; those who already have an Abe may opt for the cannon. But I really hope that they don’t display the cannon barrel facing up at the bobblehead. *ONCE WE DID A CONTEST CALLED ‘WHAT DOES GOD LOOK LIKE?’* Shown on the cover of a tribute by a fellow Mad Magazine legend, Bob Staake’s idea of what God must look like. Week 43, 1994. It was one of the biggest flops ever: As the Czar put it three weeks later: “We expected trouble with this one. What we anticipated was a mailbag full of hilarious, bladder-weakening entries far too tasteless to publish. The good news is, we got almost nothing that was tasteless. The bad news is, we also got almost nothing that was funny. Fact is, we got almost nothing at all, a mere 200 entries, possibly because the premise of this contest was so insulting that decent human beings gave it a wide berth. Or possibly we were being punished by God Himself, who — mandibles flailing and blowhole snorting — bollixed up the responses. Possibly this contest was simply an idiotic idea.” After filling space with other stuff, the Czar finally printedthis much. But for this week’s contest, Week 1230, Bob Staake knew exactly how he wanted to depict the Creator: as the late William M. Gaines, the publisher of Mad magazine, for which Bob remains one of “the usual gang of idiots.” “We always joked that he resembled our impression of what God would look like,” Bob says. I’m optimistic that this week’s contest — in which some Creator ponders some creation — will fare much better. While you could argue that the sample tweets derive some of their humor or at least hipness from the lowercase, minimally punctuated, flat-affect presentation, I think they’ll come off better Invite-wise in standard structure. (One or two, kinda cute; 25 in a row, they start to grate on me.) Also, duh, we’re not going to run language like what’s in this one about whales. And: As always, you have to use your own name that people call you in daily life, not a Twitter handle. The entries don’t have to be of tweet length, but they shouldn’t be huge paragraphs either. Brevity is definitely part of the charm. Here’s the BuzzFeed listicle compilation from 2016, headlined“24 Hilarious Tweets About God Creating Animals.” Not all of them provoked my personal hilarity. I did like, in addition to the three examples I used: [god creating snakes] how about a sock that’s angry all the time (Horny Rae Jepsen) Most days on Facebook, I post an Ink of the Day; most aren’t this graphically fancy, though. (Thanks to Valerie Holt, the Empress’s Thing Two.) Click “like” at bit.ly*inkofday to see them regularly. (Design by Valerie Holt) [God creating platypuses] God: This is my best work. Yes, Karen I am high, but that has nothing to do with it. This is perfect. Send it out. (Jom) [God, creating pigeons] Make them pace back and forth like a lawyer. (Viktor Winetrout) *HORSE DO-OVEURES*: THE GRANDFOALS OF WEEK 1226* **Non-inking headline by Jon Gearhart* As in many of the past dozen years, the entry pool for the Week 1226 “grandfoals” spinoff contest — to “breed” any two of the “foal” names that had been derived from any pair of Triple Crown nominees on a list we showed in Week 1222 — was only half the size of the original. BUT that meant more than 1,900 entries, which as always gave me lots of clever wordplay to choose from. I won’t have the least trouble finding a couple dozen more to publish (along with more foal names) on one of the two Thursdays in July when the Empress will be on vacation. (It’s the first time ever that the E will skip two consecutive contests, preventing her from even being able to judge entries in the hotel room and river cruise ship. Royal Consort: “Good.”) Combining (mostly) puns with puns didn’t deter the Loser breeders from producing some great punpun puns. Some inkworthies were submitted by too many people to get individual credit: among them, Man Asses x Help a Thief! = Buns of Steal; Shall I Comp Thee? x Hive Got Rhythm = FreeBee; Love Hertz x Fish Shtick = Rent-a-Carp. Occasionally I chose one grandfoal name over an identical one because it was from a better cross of “parents.” It was during a horse names contest that I first became conscious of this extraordinary Chris Doyle person; in 2001 I was filling in as “Auxiliary Czar” for a couple of months, and was overwhelmed with entries; there was not yet a 25-entry limit; some people would send in literally hundreds. And while I remember rejecting whole pages of some printouts with a swipe of my pen, I remember getting to the exactly 100 entries from this Chris Doyle, and going ✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔, on and on down the page and the next. That year, my solution was to run a huge supplement of honorable mentions online (a fairly new platform), with a total of more than 200 entries. (I had to develop discipline over the years.) Chris got 17 blots of ink, all honorable mentions. Russell Beland got even more, but he’d sent 422 entries. This year, percentagewise, Chris did even better: five blots of ink — including the win — out of 25 entries. His breeding of Too-Loose Lautrec with Eric Clap to make Tool-Ooze Lautrec combines ingenious wordplay with laugh-out-loud off-color gross-out humor — pretty much the definition of What The Style Invitational Does. This is Chris’s FIFTY-SIXTH Invite win. The rest of the Losers’ Circle — newcomer Elliott Shevin, recent phenom Jesse Frankovich, longtime but dabbling Loser Dave Letizia — showed a variety of approaches: Dave with You Reeka, a pun similar to Chris’s; Jesse and Elliott with topical humor; and Jesse’s “No, Mr. President!,” one of the few non-pun grandfoal names. *What Doug Dug:* The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood this week: “I liked the winner and runners-up, Plus LookAwayLookAway [Rob Huffman], Peri-pathetic [Mary McNamara], Plunder&Whitening [May Jampathom, returning after a long absence], My Vast Duchess [Week 1222 runner-up Laurie Brink], Sheikh Yerbuti [Mark Raffman] and IPA Lot [May Jampathom again]. *THERE’S STILL TIME TO FLUSH: THE FLUSHIES, JUNE 17* ** We’re currently up to 53 yeses (including a number of kids) for the Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual award “banquet,” which for the second year is a potluck lunch and schmoozefest at the home*farm of Loser Robin Diallo and husband Khalil in Lothian, Md., south of Annapolis. Here’s the Evite; if you’ve read this far down this column, you’re invited. ====================================================================== WEEK 1231, published June 11, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1231: Tanka from the memories The Style Invitational Empress looks at the week’s new contest and results A coywolf, the subject of a runner-up TankaWanka in a previous contest. (ForestWander.com*via Wikipedia) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 8, 2017 Ooh, I’m feeling so poetic today, just in time for this week’s Style Invitational TankaWanka contest, Week 1231. That’s because I’m writing this from West Chester University in the Philadelphia suburbs, where I’m attending the 22nd annual West Chester Poetry Conference for the third time. As I did last year, I’ll be sitting in on a three-day workshop on light verse and parody, led by Invite Loserbards Melissa Balmain and Frank Osen. What a gig! I don’t have to make any presentations; I just sit there and shoot off my mouth whenever I think of something. In fact, my biggest challenge is*not* to shoot off my mouth every minute, and let other people talk for a change. Also: those little cheesecake-cupcake things for dessert. Dang, so good. So I’m pretty much going to leave you here today with the results of our last two (also first two) TankaWanka contests, from 2015 and 2014. I came up with the name as a way to avoid gripes that I was doing it all wrong because everyone knows that a tanka doesn’t rhyme. Yeah, well, a TankaWanka does. Note that this week I spelled out that at least two*lines* have to rhyme: previously I’d said that the poem had to*contain* at least one rhyme. In general, I favored the rhyme in those last two seven-syllable lines; that little final couplet gave the feel of a micro-sonnet. But that’s certainly not required. You’ll see that these inking TankaWanka were highly topical. Fine with me — as long as they’ll still work four weeks from now. I admit that seems an eternity these days, when literally two days after the president tweeted about negative “covfefe,” the fabulous parodists (and Style Invitational Devotees) Sandy and Richard Riccardi posted this, based on the old jazz song “Black Coffee,” and one day later, the beyond-fabulous Randy Rainbow came out with this tour de force show tune medley . And the very day Trump made the tweet, there was already a verbal tweet-tussle between Covfefe the Strong and The Wizard Covfefe: “No, you fool! It is I who have been summoned! By the Great Orb of T’kketh!” ’Sokay. Covfefe is good for a few more weeks. Here are the top winners from Week 1148, November 2015. *It’s a tanka gas: The top TankaWanka news poems* In Week 1148 we presented our second annual contest for TankaWanka poems on the news. The TankaWanka — a form the Empress named so nobody could accuse us of doing it wrong — is a variation on tanka, a classic Japanese poetry form. Like tanka, the TW has five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables (like a haiku that forgot to stop), but it also contains at least one rhyme. 4th place:*Ben Carson believes Egyptian pyramids were used by biblical Joseph* Carson: Pyramids Were for the storage of grain. Evidence for this: They’re sealed against the outside. Much like Dr. Carson’s brain? (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) 3rd place:*Coywolf, coyote-wolf hybrid, sees population boom* Wolf, in search of mate, Struck out, then said, “You know what? Coyotes look great!” Fairy tale changes wryly When Riding Hood meets Wile E. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) 2nd place:*Nationals lose manager choice over too-low offer* “Bud Black is our guy! He can run our pitching staff!” But they made a gaffe With their offer so mulish— Penny-wise and mound-foolish. (Perry Beider, Silver Spring, Md.) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:*Google self-driving car pulled over for driving too slowly, impeding traffic* California fuzz Stopped a car, and found it was Driving by itself. Gave a warning, didn’t cite. Need I say the car was white? (Nan Reiner, Boca Raton, Fla.) Read the rest of the results here. ------------------------ *In Week 1095* we asked for a poem relating to events in the news, in a form something like the Japanese tanka: five lines with a syllable count of 5-7-5-7-7. But since real tankas don’t rhyme, and we insisted on at least one rhyme per poem, we’re calling ours TankaWanka. The deadline for this contest was before Election Day. The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:*“Gamergate,” harassment of women in the gaming world:* Gamer dweebs all say Girls are not supposed to play. Hey, guys: Get a clue. We have learned what we can do With our joysticks, without you. (Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.) 2nd place: Midterm votes are done: Optimism’s fading fast That the folks who won Somehow will — unlike the last — See that more than gas gets passed. (Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.) 3rd place: Sunni on Shia, Russian troops in Crimea, Ebola, ISIS, Worldwide crisis and drama — As per Fox: Thanks, Obama! (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) 4th place:*[The actress Renée Zellweger had been the target of mockery for heavy facial surgery] *Ms. Zellweger: Were she the sole entrant in A contest to choose The one who looked most like her, Could Renée herself still lose? (Perry Beider, Silver Spring, Md.) *Stanka: honorable mentions* *Department of Homeland Security employees put $30,000 worth of Starbucks on government credit card:* At the DHS, When they make a coffee run It costs thirty thou. If they want to get Starbucks, They should not pay with OUR bucks. (Nan Reiner) Kerry won’t pander, So Israelis throw a fit From State staff’s candor. “Netanyahu’s chicken[poop]” – (I confess I laughed a bit.) (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) The conservative Wing of the Catholic Church Was left in the lurch. The libs are ecstatic in Pope Francis’s Vatican. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) See the full results of Week 1095 . *GOAT, GOAT, GONE! FLUSHIES UPDATE* *Good news! Bad news! Good news! * Some late developments about this year’s Flushies awards “banquet” potluck on Saturday afternoon, June 17, *to which you are personally invitedwith this invitation if you are reading this column:* *Good news No. 1:* Our host Robin Diallo will soon become a top U.S. diplomat in Haiti! So she and husband Khalil will be moving there in a few months. Robin, who’s currently in Baghdad and has also served in Kabul, doesn’t shy away from challenging posts! *Bad news: *This means that the Diallos have had to find new homes for their farm animals. There’s a good chance that most or all will be gone by June 17. *Good news: *The Diallos do have a pool that’s not going anywhere — and everyone is welcome to play in it. And emcee Kyle Hendrickson says he’s come up with a new game to play during the festivities. So far, none of the 54 guests who’ve signed up so far (including several families) have changed their minds. But if you’d still like to come, please answer the Evite soon, and come meet the Losers, the Empress, etc. The next best thing to a bunch of goats — and really not all that different. We hope that you’ll still want to come to the Flushies, goats or no goats. But we’ll understand if you change your mind. *BEGET A LIFE*: RESULTS OF WEEK 1227* **A non-inking headline by Tom Witte* These were my instructions for the Week 1227 neologism contest, the one suggested by Jeffrey Shirley with several funny examples: “Name and describe a new life form — and no letter in the term may be used twice, as in the examples above. ‘Life form’ is pretty vague on purpose; the E always appreciates creativity, and of course The Funny.” By “vague,” I meant I could take, say, Sean Spicer. I didn’t mean I could take any of these -- and these were from just the first few pages of entries: A sports car What someone says when... A deer trap A court To think someone is ... A musical instrument A coffee machine Mascara A budget A brochure Fortunately, though, there were plenty of clever neologisms describing some fanciful animal, plant, fungus, president, etc. The Week 1227 results include close to 50 inking entries (including a whopping six by Kevin Dopart). Many of the best entries ingeniously used biological terms to describe an “organism” that’s clearly representing something else. They’d be topped by this week’s Inkin’ Memorial winners, “D.J.T. Rex” by Seth Tucker, that dinosaur with diminutive forelimbs and backward vision. It’s the second Bobble-Linc for Seth, who now has a total of 34 blots of ink — five of them “above the fold.” Joining Seth in the Losers’ Circle this week are perennials Frank Mann (62 inks) and Mark Raffman, who with OMG 397 blots (including four this week) is next in line to reach the 500-ink Hall of Fame, since David Genser retired with 404. But in fourth place is an almost-newbie: It’s just the third blot of ink, and first above the fold, for Selma Ellis of the Chicago suburb of Rolling Meadows, Ill. What*didn’t*work — and I got a lot of these: “animals” or “plants” described with traits that aren’t at all animal- or plantlike. Like: “Preach: Fruit that won’t stop talking about how good it is for you.” Or “Kumquit: A bitter fruit that takes its toys and goes home.” Bitter, good; taking its toys, not good. What also didn’t work: Words that didn’t follow the only other requirement — that no letter appear in the word twice. That killed “E*n*dolphi*n* (the happiest animal in the sea) and “W*oo*f spider” among others. I*think* I caught any other offenders. *What Doug Dug: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood reports that he especially liked all four of the top winners and also singles out Kevin Dopart’s “Iowasp” (emerges in large, noisy swarms in four-year cycles), Ira Allen’s “Mikajoe,” Mark Raffman’s “U-tern,” Seth Tucker’s “Yo’ma,” Dave Matuskey’s “E. moji,” and Beverley Sharp’s “Shyena.” -- Well, I’m off to pontificate about light verse — and will be sure to note to the students that nice TankaWanka ink for Frank Osen and Melissa Balmain I show above. ====================================================================== WEEK 1232, published June 18, 2017 ** 1 Desktop notifications are on | Turn off Get breaking news alerts from The Washington Post Turn on desktop notifications? Yes Not now * ** * Sections** <#> *** <#> * Home The Washington Post logo Democracy Dies in Darkness <#> * Try 1 month for $1 * Elden Carnahan * Sign In ------------------------------------------------------------------------ o My Post * * o My Reading List * * o Account Settings * * o Newsletters & alerts * * o Gift subscriptions * * o Contact us * * o Help desk * * * Elden Carnahan * Basic Digital subscriber * Sign out * My Post * * * My Reading List * * * Account Settings * * * Newsletters & alerts * * * Gift subscriptions * * * Contact us * * * Help desk * * * Accessibility for screenreader The Washington Post Discussions Style Conversational Week 1232: The smear campaign Add to list On my list ‘Granola Smear,’ that is -- a.k.a. Loser Anagram. Plus a look at this week’s Style Invitational. It turns out that Steven Halter's name is wrong in the Loser Stats -- so he'll need a new Loser Anagram, a.k.a. Granola Smear. See below for some of the options. (From NRARS.org) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 15, 2017 When I was double-checking names last night for this week’s Style Invitational results , to see who’d gotten ink before, I realized that Steven Halter’s name was misspelled in theLoser Stats, an insane labor of love maintained by Loser Since Year 1 Elden Carnahan with the assistance of a few fellow have-no-lifes. Making the fix — it was the Invite’s mistake, not Elden’s, back in 1997 — wasn’t just a matter of changing “ph” to “v.” Because virtually every one of the 5,000-plus names of the people who’ve gotten Invite ink over the past 1,231 weeks is accompanied by a Loser Anagram — or, as it’s called in the stats, a Granola Smear. And so I emailed Elden and henchmen Jeff Contompasis and Michael Kilby, explaining that “Shrapnel Teeth will no longer cut it. As it were.” We needed an anagram for Steven, not for Stephen. I awoke a few hours later to replies from both Jeff and Michael (Elden was busy preparing for Saturday’s Flushies; see below). Jeff’s first suggestion “Did you give him the option to go to court and change it?” Okay, I’ll do that now: Steven, if you want to hold on to Shrapnel Teeth, please change your name. If not, you may change from one of Jeff’s suggested anagrams: 1. Eleventh Tsar 2. Seventh Alert 3. Nettle Shaver 4l Svelter Thane Or you might take one of Michael’s: 5. Leather Vents 6. Ten TV Healers 7. Svelte Anther 8. Navel Tethers 9. Nether Valets This is, by the way, Steven’s third blot of ink in 20 years. His first was when the Czar asked for jokes in the format “A without B is like C without D”: Steve offered the brilliantly surreal “A politician without a conscience is like a billiard ball without a mustache.” His second, from the Empress in 2009, was for a bad name for a fast-food restaurant: Squirrel-fil-a. Let’s hope we hear from Steve again before 2025. We promise to get his name right. Meanwhile, *you don’t have to be a Loser to get your named anagrammed! *That’s the welcoming gift when you join the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook. After I wave you in, the Devs commence to chime in with a slew of anagrams for your name or pseudonym, leading you to wish you’d been named Xfcstb. *PEOPLE ARE TALKING! THIS WEEK’S CAPTION CONTEST* This week’s contest for captions for Bob Staake cartoons is much like our dozens of previous ones (the “cartoons” category of Elden’s indispensable Master Contest List l comprises some 67 contests). But this time, in all four cartoons one or more of the characters are saying something — allowing for captions of dialogue or monologue, rather than just “this is what this picture shows.” You don’t*have* to include quotes in your entry, but at least you have the opportunity. Meanwhile, I’d really appreciate it if — note the beseeching, un-Empressy tone — you follow the instructions and send in your entries like this: *LIKE THIS: * *Picture A: [something incredibly funny]* *Picture A: [something even funnier]* *Picture B: [I just spit out my drink]* *AND NOT LIKE THIS: * Picture A: An entry about Picture A Another entry about Picture A Because I use Microsoft Word to sort the entries, and Word looks for line endings, the second format will separate your entry from its label, and I might not be (or inclined to be) smart enough to pick your incredible brain. *One more thing:* Bob’s cartoons appear in color online, but in black-and-white on the print page. If your entry is a joke focusing on colors (we’ve had them), it won’t make sense for me to run it in the paper. But I could add it to the online results, were it unforgettably dazzling. *GREAT FLUSHIES NEWS: We WILL have goats! * Last week I shared the news that Robin and Khalil Diallo, this (and last) year’s hosts of the Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual awards potluck, were moving to Haiti in a few months, and so were finding new homes for all their farm animals. But this morning Robin emailed me from Baghdad (she’ll be co-hosting via Skype while she’s at her State Department post) to report that “we will still have 3 baby goats, chickens, turkeys and the peacock” this Saturday afternoon at RK Acres in Anne Arundel County, Md. “Two llamas but they aren’t too people-friendly — they run away.” The backyard pool will be open, too (for humans). So bring the kids and the cameras — we’re back to Photo Op Central. And of course there’s the Flushies gathering itself, a chance to match up names and faces, to connect with new Losers and Devotees and reconnect with the vets. The Loser of the Year will be serenaded with a song parody written for the occasion; milestones will be marked by the tossing of custom-inscribed rolls of toilet paper; emcee Kyle Hendrickson promises a game (including something family-friendly). And of course there’s the food: At a potluck with 55 people, you know you’re going to pig out in bliss (or brisket out, for kosher types, or tempeh out, for you veggies). Did you forget to RSVP, or not get the Evite? It’s not too late! Use this link : and send in your Yes. If it doesn’t work, email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. And yes, even*you *are invited; if you’re interested enough to be reading this far into this column, you’re Loserly enough for us. The Diallos and the Flushies Organizing Committee are providing soft drinks, paper products, cups, tablecloths, etc., plus the plaques and other awards, so we’ll put out a bucket into which you can drop in a couple of bucks or five to pay them back. It seemed silly to*bill* everyone $5. *CINÉMA FALSITÉ*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1228 ***Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich, who got four inks, so don’t boo-hoo for the poor man* The Empress was holding her breath on this contest for movie “secret inspirations” -- sure, she’d get lots of entries; she always does for contests that require little or no writing. But would simply pairing up a name and a movie title provide enough wit? Oh yeah, not a problem. I did get a slew of entries, many of them from brand-new Losers (including Samantha Wareing and Jerry Mindes, who get ink today). And while a lot of entries weren’t particularly inspired (like those along the line of “Swimmer”: Michael Phelps), we have more than 40 inking entries, plus the long list of uncredited ones “inspired by” Trump. Foremost among them was Frank Osen’s “James and the Giant Peach,” as inspired by Mr. Comey and President Giant Peach. Coincidentally (it’s blind judging), I happened to see Frank just last week at the West Chester Poetry Conference in Pennsylvania, where he and fellow Loserbard Melissa Balmain led a workshop on parodies and light verse (I sat in to impart my Great Wisdom). Frank’s innate funniness was most evident during an evening of faculty readings: When it was his turn, he walked to the lectern and launched a killer Bob Dylan imitation, to tease some people on an earlier panel, and got a huge laugh — even though the previous writer had just finished her wrenchingly powerful poem about the death of an infant. This is Frank’s 15th Invite win, and so we’ll save our remaining half-dozen Inkin’ Memorial trophies for future first-place winners. Instead, we’ll send him our next trophy, the Lose Cannon , which I’ll present in the Invite when we’re down to the last Bobble-Lincs. The other occupants of the Losers’ Circle are also familiar names: Seth Tucker won last week’s Invite with his “life form” D.J.T. Rex Robert Schechter grabs his 22nd ink “above the fold,” and The Mysterious Lawrence McGuire — the highest-scoring active Loser the Empress has never met in person, even though he lives almost in her back yard — gets fourth place plus four honorable mentions, for an all-time 230 blots of ink. *What Doug Dug: *In addition to seconding the four top winners, Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood singled out Duncan Stevens’s “The 39 Steps” for Charlie Sheen and Hildy Zampella’s “Fargo” for Yoda, two entries that required a moment’s thought. *Vincing Argumement:* Another decades-long colleague, the always funny Vince Rinehart, says: “Okay, this was one of my favorite contests. When I got to “While You Were Sleeping” [for Bill Cosby,from both Dave Matuskey and Kathy MacDonald] ”I about wet my pants.” Vince, the entire newsroom thanks for not finding it any funnier. *WARNING: SPARE TIME AHEAD!* There won’t be a new contest next week — or the week after that. For the first time ever, the Empress is skipping two contests in a row so that a month hence, she and the Royal Concert may tour their far-off dominions. And because of entry deadlines vs. publication deadlines, she can’t even take a set of entries with her to judge (Royal Consort: “Good”). But, as always, there will be an Invite: The next two columns will feature the results of Weeks 1229 and 1230, and in mid-July, when we’re away, there will be two pre-written new contests, plus extra honorable mentions from the Week 1222 and 1226 horse name contests, plus a mix of other recent ones. Which means that the E’s streak of columns continues since she deposed the Czar in December 2003 (and these are only her ninth and 10th skipped contest out of almost 700). And the Invite itself has appeared uninterrupted once a week since Year 8, January 30, 2000.( … she bragged, starting up a game of chicken with Fate ... ) *NERD ALERT* Starting this week, the E-Z to Type links to each week’s Invitational, Conversational and Invite entry form will read “wapo.st*invite[week number]”; “wapo.st*conv[week number]” and “wapo.st*enter-invite-[week number].“ That’s because I’m now using The Post’s bit.ly account rather than my personal one. Not only does that let The Post know we’re here (please click on the links many times!!), but this could solve the problem of office systems that block blt.ly prefixes -- “ly” is Libya; hopefully they won’t be so concerned about domains from São Tomé and Príncipe. See you at the Flushies! . Pat Myers Pat Myers is editor and judge of The Style Invitational, The Washington Post's page for clever, edgy humor and wordplay. In the role since December 2003, she has posted and judged more than 700 contests. She also writes the weekly Style Conversational column and runs the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. Follow** Subscriber sign in We noticed you’re blocking ads! Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Try 1 month for $1 Unblock ads Questions about why you are seeing this? Contact us ====================================================================== WEEK 1233, published June 25, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1233: You were expecting sophisticated repartee? The Losers’ 22nd annual Flushies award ‘banquet’ Not exactly the Algonquin Round Table: Style Invitational Losers Cate Hagman, Matt Monitto and Duncan Stevens display their ball skillz at the 22nd annual Flushies, the Losers' award festivities, on June 17. (Mark Holt) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 22, 2017 It always makes me laugh, if in exasperation, when some Style Invitational newbie tells me that he’s “not ready” to come to a brunch with some fellow Losers, that “I’m not clever enough,” that it would be “intimidating.” Clearly the person has an image of a little gathering of tweedy toffs trading bons mots as they knock down martinis There’s a reason that the official name for the Loser Community is the Not Ready for the Algonquin Round Table Society. And at the Flushies — the apotheosis of the Loser event calendar each year — you’re most likely to hear buns mots. Begun 22 years ago, in the Invite’s salad days, by Loser Since Year 1 Elden Carnahan and a few fellow obsessives, the Flushies “honor (and by ‘honor’ we mean ‘attempt to cover in abuse and ridicule’) many who have appeared in the Invitational in the past contest year.” This year’s event, for the second straight year, took place at RK Acres, the home and little farm of Loser Robin Diallo and her husband, Khalil. Actually Robin, a State Department official, arranged to avoid the festivities by being stationed in Baghdad (soon it’ll be Haiti); she greeted us via Skype. As did this year’s Loser of the Year, Jesse Frankovich. Jesse, who lives in Lansing, Mich. — he would have flown in, but he’s getting ready to move to a new house — amassed 101 inks during Loser Year 24 (March 2016-March 2017) and got ink in 41 of the year’s contests. Though he first appeared in the Invitational way back in 2004, Jesse went on to have a real life after that, working for the Michigan transportation department, and it’s only in the past couple of years that he came back to us and started inkin’ up the joint. Here’s some of the classic Frankovich entries that I shared with the 55-odd (or 55 odd) Flushies guests: His first ink: “Earth Day: April twenty-second” anagrams to “Hardy planet? We CAN destroy it!” Clad in a vintage Loser T-shirt, Loser and light-verse poet Edmund Conti shows off his prize fidget spinner. (Catherine Hagman) Super Soaker is a good name for a water gun but a bad name for a mortgage company. George Ohwell: “You know, those telescreens do help with security . . .” *Neologisms containing S, H, A, R and P:* Ballparkish: Only approximately approximate. *Fictoids about how inventions came about:* The first airplane seatwas designed for Wilbur Wright, who was 5-2 and weighed 126 pounds. In honor of his contributions to aviation, modern engineers use the same specifications to this day. President Trump’s skin tone is so unusual, nothing rhymes with it. Change a movie title without changing its letters: Mad Ma X:In the 10th installment of the series, little Billy still hasn’t cleaned his pigsty of a room! Collective nouns: A Y’ALLIANCE of Southerners, a PRESCHOOL of roe, and an ANARGASM of anagrams. Flushies founder Elden Carnahan prepares to toss an inscribed roll of toilet paper to someone who's reached a milestone, e.g., 100 blots of ink. Loser Dave Prevar has taken off his chicken hat for the solemn ceremony. (Catherine Hagman) When Jesse visited Washington this past winter for a convention, he met me and a few other Losers for a snack, so we got to meet him in person. And we were talking about some of the legendary Losers -- like Brendan Beary, who once got 179 inks in one year. Jesse said: “I’m going to try to beat that.” Jesse, as usual, has several blots of ink inthis week’s A-to-Z couplets. Go for it, Jesse. If anyone can …. The Jesse got to be further embarrassed-but-lovin’-it when the Losers serenaded him via iPad with a song that Loser Mark Raffman wrote for the occasion, “Jesse’s World,” a parody of Rick Springfield’s “Jesse’s Girl.” Sample verses: ​Jesse’s got a wit, Jesse is a one of a kind He’s bringin’ home the Lincolns with his rapier-like mind While I just sit here doin’ what’ll make me go blind And he’s cookin’ up brand new words -- And he’s writin’ a haiku with a pun - I just know it And he’s dissin’ Trump in the style of Edgar Allan Poe I wish I lived in Jesse’s world , I wish I lived in Jesse’s world Why can’t my rhymes be funny like that? Each week I open up the link, But there’s no doubt who’s blotting up all the ink, You know we’re all big nerds who are destined to lose But the odds are on Jesse for the Empress to choose. ... Jesse didn’t get all the Flushies “honor.” Elden also presented a plaque to Rookie of the Year John Hutchins, who‘d brought his wife, three kids and mother to witness the historic event. We expect John to hang it next to, or perhaps right on top of, his Harvard Law School diploma. And the Cantinkerous award to Kyle Hendrickson — coincidentally the day’s emcee and game designer — for having the most ink without ever winning first prize in the Invite. Kyle has owned this title for several years now, with 86 blots of ink, second place and lower. And as always, there was the ceremonial Tossing of the Inscribed Rolls of Toilet Paper to those who’ve reached ink milestones: 50, 100, etc. If the Milestoner didn’t show up, a designated catcher with two name tags got a roll of TP to take home. (The Royal Consort and I will be using the Frank Mann Roll with pride.) In a new addition, some people who *almost*reached a milestone — like 299-inking Dave Prevar — received naked cardboard TP tubes. And there were Kyle’s games — one the Basket Case games pictured above will be the second prize forWeek 1231 — and of course the bounty of potluck food and drink. And this year the weather held out, and we were able to visit the remaining farm animals at RK Acres (the Diallos are finding new homes for them before their three-year sojourn in Port-au-Prince). True fact: A peacock sounds exactly like a child who’s suddenly had a fidget spinner taken away. We all missed the presence of our usual song leader, Nan Reiner, who’d moved to Florida but was going to come up anyway until she was sidelined by some pesky health issues (we’re delighted to see her back and inking all over the place in this week’s Invite results). But we were thrilled that octagenarian Dean of the Losers Edmund Conti came all the way up from Raleigh to the Diallos’ abode in Lothian, Md., and that twentagenarian Matt Monitto came down from Connecticut. You don’t have to wait till next summer to Hobnob With Loserdom; there’s a brunch or other gathering almost every month. See the calendar (“Our Social Engorgements”) on the Losers’ website at NRARS.org . ====================================================================== WEEK 1234, published July 2, 2017 Style Conversational: Pray, love, eat The mantis’s (post-) romantic appetites were just one of the Invite’s Week 1230 inspirations (Jeff Roberson*Associated Press) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 29, 2017 It*was* refreshing to get away from the political attack humor for a week here at Non-Internet-Taxpaying Fake News Central . The Style Invitational’s Week 1230 contest was practically G-rated and surely uncontroversial — except maybe for the millions of people who believe that the world’s magnificent array of life forms really was created in the way this week’s results describe the process, but with more thees and thous. Gary Crockett’s headline “Just-Not-So Stories” alludes to the genre of folk tales, famouslypresented in faux Native Wise Man style by Rudyard Kipling in 1902 , that tell of various adventures explaining how the leopard got its spots or why the snake has no legs. In Week 1230, which wasripped off from inspired by various tweets from a couple of years back, there’s a Creator (usually with an assisting angel) assigning the various weird animal and vegetable traits, rather than the animals picking them up along the way. Close enough. I am relieved to report that I have never (so far, anyway) received a complaint that the Invitational is misrepresenting religious doctrine — or endorsing it — when I’ve run entries about Saint Peter doing desk duty at the Gates of Heaven, or with Lawrence McGuire’s definition of “sinkhole” as “when God decides a vacation home in Florida needs a basement.” So I predict this week’s results will go down in the annals as uncharacteristically gentle, even wholesome, for the Invite; I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the inking entries show up on the Amen Corner page of your church bulletin. Loser Duncan Stevens (not pictured) seemed to think a geoduck -- pronounced "gooey-duck" -- looked like something else.- (Evergreen State College*via Wikipedia* Creative Commons) Since there’s no new contest to illustrate, Bob Staake drew runner-up Bird Waring’s “whale on a stick” narwhal, once again modeling God on one of his old bosses, the late Mad Magazine publisherBill Gaines . (Here’s Bob’s Bill-God from four weeks ago , ordering up the octopus.) The Loser Community, as well as quite a few newbies, took right to the form, with lots of cute transcripts from HeavenLabs LLC. I learned some cool fun facts from various entries — for instance, that there’s a Southeast Asian monkey*bear*weasel*cat calledthe binturong whose butt smells like popcorn; and that the platypus has a two-headed penis (and the echidna a four-headed one). I’m running a pretty long list this week but saved a few more to share in a few weeks, when I’ll be running entries from various earlier contests. It’s the sixth win, and the 146th blot of ink in all, for Drew Bennett, chancellor of Missouri State University’s West Plains campus, and a professor at the National War College here in Washington during his Marine colonel years; that’s when I met him at one of our Dorkness at Noon weekday Loser lunches. Since Drew has already won two Inkin’ Memorial trophies (his first three wins got him our earlier trophy, the Inker ), he can opt this time for our new first prize, the Lose Cannon . It’s the second ink “above the fold” (and 27th ink total) for Joe Neff, who wins the cute plushie strep bacterium. Joe’s previous runner-up, in last year’s Limericixon (for ge- words), was also about a critter: The gecko, when stalked, can prevent His assailant’s malicious intent: His tail can detach! That’s all that they catch. He saves more than 15 percent. The rest of this week’s Losers’ Circle, Rob Huffman and Bird Waring, are both regular denizens of the Losers’ Circle; Rob has 15 above-the-fold blots, Bird 19. Bird has been Inviting since Week 455, back in the Czarist era; Rob’s been with us since Week 918 in 2011. *What Doug Dug: * **The faves this week for Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood included the one about the cat, by First Offender Molly Elizabeth Haws, as well as Todd DeLap’s dialogue about the panda. *SO LONG, SUCKER * Molly — who as an Episcopal priest might have gotten some inside access to the Heavenly Database — also got ink with her dialogue about the praying mantis. A more expansive take on the same theme was submitted by Brendan Beary: G: How about this: a big bug, but long and sleek. The front legs are so long they fold like arms. A: “Kinda creepy, but has potential.” And they fold again at the end; it’ll look like hands that are praying. “Oh, very clever!” Then for breeding: After they do the nasty, she bites his head off. “Whaaaaa…??? Dude, what the actual…” AND EATS IT. “Where does this even come from? Did this come from your actual head?” It’ll be so awesome. “A cute little bug, and you’ve gotta go ‘Let’s add some post-coital cannibal decapitation!’ ” Yeah, and I’ll be like: See? You should’ve stuck with praying. It’s like a moral. Or an allegory. “Riiiiight. Because bugs completely understand the whole cause-and-effect thing.” (pause) “Risk-vs.-reward analysis, bugs are totally on top of that. Got it.” I’m gonna do it anyway. “Yeah, I know, whatever, it’s just … Dude, you’ve got such issues.” It’s gonna be awesome. “Seriously, your worst idea since that thing about the primates with thumbs instead of fur.” DO NOT QUESTION MY VISION!!! -- Talk about biting your head off. -- Don’t forget toRSVP for the next Loser brunch, Sunday, July 16, at noon at London Curry House, a pretty Indian restaurant in the pretty Cameron Station section of Alexandria. I really like this place and am sorry to miss it; I’ll be on the way to the airport. Have some samosas for me. ====================================================================== WEEK 1235, published July 9, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1235: Music in a Geek mode The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 6, 2017 Well, of the 26 TankaWanka current-events poems that get ink today in Week 1235 of The Style Invitational, a full dozen of them do*not* mock or despair about the current federal government (though two of them are about*trying* to think about something other than the federal government). But that 14:12 ratio doesn’t come close to reflecting the many hundreds of verses I received for Week 1231 : I didn’t do an actual count, but I’m guessing that easily 80 percent of the entries were political (and not exactly celebratory). Believe it or not, I went out of my way to make today’s results be*not*** so much trumptrumpgoptrumpaaaah. In the same vein, I leapt at the suggestion by Destined for the Hall of Fame Loser Mark Raffman that our next song parody contest be not “about something in the news lately,” as so many of our contests are, but on science and technology. Of course, science and technology are tied up in today’s politics in a million ways, and there’s no way I’d reject great political parodies. But I do aim to mix them up with less issue-oriented ditties. Because the Invite is a written contest, designed to be read, and because it also prizes the light-verse ideal of “perfect rhyme,” not all of the fabulous parodies being written today — and we’re in a golden age right now — would necessarily get work in The Style Invitational. (But almost everything by the fabulous Randy Rainbow ,Bald Piano Guy , Sandy and Richard Riccardi , and Roy Zimmerman would surely ink up the joint.) If you’re not intimately familiar with the Invite’s many previous parody contests, give a read to the top of my Style Conversational for our last one, bit.ly*conv-1202 . And that one links in turn to my advice in the Week 1113 contest, and to the winning parodies of several previous contests. (The winners of Week 1202 — parodies expressing hope, or “hope,” are here .) . Note that I’ve once again invited people to make their own videos; I always enjoy linking to good videos, though — especially for parodies that will run in the print paper — it’s the lyrics, not the video, that will earn the ink. You need, of course, to give me the link so that I (and others) can see it, but it doesn’t have to be searchable by the public. You know, I guess that, were you to make your own video, you could compose your own tune as well! (But of course that removes the humor potential of playing on an existing work.) Meanwhile, I’m glad that we happened to run the nonpolitical and mostly wholesome creation-dialogue results last week, because we’re certainly back to the prez-bashing of a string of previous contests. But this week’s winning TankaWanka poems show typically Loserly (well, to me it’s a compliment) wit and flair. And the wittiest and flairiest of all this week was one of our greatest Loserbards ever, Nan Reiner, in her 16th Invite win since she started Inviting well into our history, in 2010. Nan’s “deep covfefe” TankaWanka plus*five*honorable mentions hurtle her past the 350-ink mark. Nan has had some health issues in the past year, and it’s great to see her back on her formidable game. In fact, I’ve just checked who wrote the non-inking entries that made my short­list this week, and a bunch of them are Nan’s as well. Meanwhile, Duncan Stevens, who’s being a Shop-Vac of Ink lately, with multiple blots almost every week, get s the second-place Basket Case game — which, coincidentally, he got to try out on his personal stratospherically located noggin last month at the Flushies, the Losers’ award shindig. And how about two runners-up for Perry Beider? They double Perry’s all-time “above the fold” count, for a total of 24 blots of ink. I especially liked his ”great ‘S’ cape” line in his poem about superhero movies in a time of despair; though Superman of course wears his monogram on his chest, Perry was totally justified in pulling his poetic license out of his pocket for what be this week’s single best line. Perry gets only one runner-up prize, however, because we’re cheap. *What Doug Dug: * The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood were the first- and second-place entries, plus Nan’s “red tie” wordplay, Barry Koch’s lament about the Nationals’ bullpen, and Bill Dorner’s musing on “covfefe” as a well-timed neologism. Meanwhile, Fellow Ace Copy Editor Vince Rinehart singled out Nan’s “multi-porpoise room” TankaWanka. Vince, who was my first hire as Style section copy desk chief back in the mid-’80s (not long before Doug), said Nan’s joke “made me laugh for reasons you probably remember well from what I gave you when I was applying to work for you”: Along with his résumé from the no-nonsense trade newspaper Oil Daily, Vince had demonstrated his potential for Style’s wordplay-laden headlines by including a cover letter salted top to bottom with fish puns. It worked. I’ll be here for one more Conversational next Thursday before I go on vacation (as Empress, I’m planning to have a beach shut down for my exclusive use). After that, I’ll skip doing the Conversational for Weeks 1237 and 1238, but I’m working up those Invitationals now. Along with the new contest, Week 1237 (which I’ve finished) will include more honorable mentions from our Week 1222 and 1226 “foal” and “grandfoal” name contests. And then Week 1238 will have extra inkworthies from three or four other recent contests. Yay! I made it through a rainstorm at home today without losing the Internet once! (On the other hand, I just paid a very wet guy $$$$.$$ to replace my conked-out, outdated heat pump. Maybe I should have offered him a tiara . . .) Oh, and thanks to Brady Holt, the Empress and Royal Consort’s Thing One, for modeling this week’s second prize. It is perhaps not the most dignified photo ever taken of him. ====================================================================== WEEK 1239, published August 6, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1239: Nerds & Music The more esoteric material from the science parody contest — and where to find more of it Maxwell’s equation. The Empress received no “Silver Hammer” parodies. (tes.com) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 3, 2017 I hope you didn’t miss me too much when I was off Not Doing This for two weeks. I hope you missed me just the right amount (desperately). While on vacation in Europe late last month, I did look at a number of the sci-tech song parodies submitted for Week 1235 of The Style Invitational, but I didn’t really curl up with them until late last week. As always, I was swimming in great material, using a wide range of topics and musical genres. (The results.) Every time I run the results of a parody contest — usually once or twice a year — I feel bad that I couldn’t include so much of the creative, well-crafted, clever, funny work; a human can read only so many sets of lyrics in a row, especially if the reader is singing along, literally or mentally. I first knocked myself for having such a broad scope; we had enough good songs on global warming alone to fill a page of parodies. But it’s so nice to present a lively mix of subject matter to readers. Ah, readers. While The Washington Post’s readership is highly educated — according tothis 2008 release I found, 77 percent have college degrees and 42 percent graduate degrees — that doesn’t mean they’re all comfortable with technical terms and issues, especially in the sciences. On the other hand, those same specifics and inside terms can be exactly what makes a parody — or other inside joke — so much fun to a niche audience, like your own colleagues or students. I discovered that writing songs for your university students and associates is a long-standing and beloved tradition, to judge from the many examples I received from academics. And I enjoyed many of them, even if they didn’t rhyme well enough to work well on the page (height* thrice; “oy vey”*range) or assumed arcane terminology (“When f prime swaps sign, findin’ extrema local;” “Beta lactam ring’s reactive site* Starts bonding with D-D-transpeptidase”). You can make such language work in a general song, but the lyrics have to bring the reader into it, not assume it’s already understood. While this week’s Invite ink went largely to our regular Losers, especially those who’ve done so well in previous contests, I do want to shout out the work of the clever profs who sent me their greatest hits, and encourage the more sciencey among you to check it out. (I’m pretty sure that virtually all these songs were written for occasions other than this contest, which was fine with me as long as our own readers were unlikely to have seen them.) First, I’d like to salute *Kevin Ahern, *who had some Invite ink before getting his honorable mention with “Viagra”*“Maria” today. Kevin is a biochemistry professor at Oregon State, and gained renown (and enormous thanks) some years ago for posting his textbook online for free. Kevin has a Web page linking to the “Metabolic Melodies” he’s written for his students, including at least some of the 25 he submitted for Week 1235. Kevin also writes and posts a new limerick each day, which he posts on Facebook (and so he might not want to shut off those Style Invitational contest notifications just yet ...). The award for Slickest Video — not to mention Neatest Video Inspiration — goes to statistics professor *Michael Posner* of Villanova University for “Stats Are Cool, You See,” a parody of“Cooler Than Me” by ... pop star Michael Posner. The video was made by students in a film production class. *Greg Crowther,* a professor at the University of Washington medical school, has been writing “STEM songs” to interest students since 1999. The parody I got the biggest kick out of was of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”; it begins, “Find the concentrations of ions out and in;* Figure out the quotient, and take the log (base 10).* Multiply by a “constant” like 58 mV;* Divide by ion valence, z, to find potential E.” But he’s got a million of them, complete with karaoke music. Anatomy students, you have gold here, with “Cardiac Output & Pulmonary Ventilation” and “Obstructive and Restrictive Lung Disease.” Sing it! Penn State’s *Dennis Pearl, *director of the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education, sent me a great recording of “Old Time Random Poll,” a parody of “Old Time Rock and Roll.” University of Oregon geologist *Greg Retallack* referred me to his sung parody of “As Time Goes By” that relates to his work on how the state’s soil affects the taste of local wines. (He didn’t send me the words, though — and so the terroirist didn’t win.) The Loser Community itself is emphatically not without a nerd contingent; our MIT grads alone could fill up a Loser Brunch venue (while analyzing all the food with a spectrometer) . But most of them figured correctly that Ms. Word Person would go less “niche,” as psychotherapist and 28-time Loser *Josh Feldblyum *put it. Josh gave it a shot anyway with a parody of “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” that points to some evidently nasty disagreements in the psychiatry community with the cognitive-theory approach of Aaron Beck: For the benefit of Dr. Beck We shall talk about some dreck inside your mind. Ralph Ellis will be there as well, Sigmund Freud can go to hell I think you’ll find All this talk of insight and defenses Fails to address the real problem. And you’ll see, Dr. B will challenge the field! [Several verses follow.] But to the Invite Community, the most renowned Loser Nerd of all is the beloved Hall of Famer and chemical engineer *Jeff Contompasis,* who revels in his geekiness. Jeff got ink this week with his Made for the Masses physics celebration of “My Favorite Springs.” He didn’t, however, with this parody of the treacly “Ebony and Ivory” that began: Entropy and enthalpy are two portions of Gibbs Free Energy* For the maximum non-expansion work reversibly ...” All kidding aside, I*love*the idea of using songs in teaching, and I heartily applaud the work of all these guys. I’m almost inspired to take a beginning course in chemistry or physics, the two courses I struggled most with in high school in the 19zubzubs, just to try out these songs. (Almost.) As for the less technical songs (or for requests of more of the above), I plan to share a number of this week’s worthy non-inking entries over the next week or two in theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook group. Because the posts keep moving down the page, search for “science parody” in the search bar on the left rail, and I’ll make sure to include that phrase every time I post a new one. If you haven’t joined the group yet, we’re eager to welcome you with the traditional Anagramming of the Name. *OH, YEAH, A NEW CONTEST: MOVIE MASHUPS * Week 1239 is an encore of contests we did in 2005 and 2011, and I think it’s pretty straightforward, as long as you note my leniency where I wrote *“Note:”* Unlike the “Before and After” game often featured as a “Jeopardy!” category, and in some of our other portmanteau contests, the exact letters of the title don’t need to overlap. The standard is: Will the reader recognize two movie titles? If so, combine them as you like; if not, it won’t be funny. (Hint: Recognizing a movie title generally includes having heard of it.) So that you don’t repeat what’s already gotten ink, here are there results of those two contests (scroll down past each week’s new contest to see the winners): Results of Week 610 Results of Week 939 (Word to the freeloader: The links for the results above go to Lose Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List of all Style Invitational columns. They appear on his own Web page, on the Losers’ website at NRARS.org, and thereby do not come up against The Post’s paywall for nonsubscribers. If you want to look at an Invite contest — any or all of the previous 1,238 — you can see it there in formats ranging from scanned text to PDFs. Elden sometimes falls a few weeks behind — the man has had a lot to deal with lately — but has always caught up eventually.) *The headline “Nerds and Music” was a frequently submitted headline idea for the Week 1235 results. We might have used it before, but I don’t care.* ====================================================================== WEEK 1240, published August 13, 2017 ** 1 Desktop notifications are on | Turn off Get breaking news alerts from The Washington Post Turn on desktop notifications? Yes Not now * ** * Sections** <#> *** <#> * Home The Washington Post logo Democracy Dies in Darkness <#> * Try 1 month for $1 * Elden Carnahan * Sign In ------------------------------------------------------------------------ o My Post * * o My Reading List * * o Account Settings * * o Newsletters & alerts * * o Gift subscriptions * * o Contact us * * o Help desk * * * Elden Carnahan * Basic Digital subscriber * Sign out * My Post * * * My Reading List * * * Account Settings * * * Newsletters & alerts * * * Gift subscriptions * * * Contact us * * * Help desk * * * Accessibility for screenreader The Washington Post Discussions Style Conversational Week 1240: Golly gi-, we have limericks AND alliteration Add to list On my list The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results This week’s prize T-shirt is too crude to show on any Washington Post page, so instead I’m sharing this shirt advertising the Uranus Fudge Factory of Uranus, Mo., sent me by Loser J. Larry Schott. I don’t know if I can give this out either. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 10, 2017 Hello, Limerick People. Every year, The Style Invitational receives entries for our annual Limerixicon contest from readers who don’t enter any of our 51 other contests all year. Some of them, of course, are devotees of OEDILF.com, the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, which Chris J. Strolin founded in 2004 — mere months before we found out about it and started our connected contest. But other entrants are just partial to the limerick form — or what they consider the limerick form. Over its history, the Invite and OEDILF have helped each other out in a big way. A number of our “Loserbards” — people who get a lot of ink in our many light-verse and song parody contests — heard about the Invite through OEDILF; Stephen Gold and Hugh Thirlway have amassed almost 100 blots of ink between them, and I’m sure there are many others. Meanwhile, since our first Limerixicon (Week 572, ai- through ar-), Losers have submitted thousands of limericks to OEDILF; Chris Doyle alone shows the following line on the website’s stats : Limericks submitted — 5,692. Limericks approved — 5,692. Other Losers whose names I see on the stats, with hundreds of lims each: Brendan Beary, Jane Auerbach, Jesse Frankovich, Seth Brown, David Schildkret. And OEDILF, unlike the Invitational, allows pseudonyms; I’m not going to ask who Birdbarf (318.5 limericks) is, but it sounds like a Loserly name to me. When I post a contest that we’ve run before in some way, I like to cite a previous winner as an example. So I looked through the Invite’s 13 previous Limerixicons (and its handful of other limerick contests) for one that had a fairly prominent gh- or gi- word, as well as being Bob Staake-cartoonable. Early on in my search I found the 2005 honorable mention by Chris Doyle that I used this week for Week 1240 . I found a few others of note as well: *Also from 2005:* At the newsstand one frequently sees An assortment of bared double-D’s. Don’t begrudge the fair sex A few well-toned pecs: We*girls* want some beefcake, not cheese-. (Pam Sweeney) A very well constructed limerick — Pam is an ace — but I’d argue that now, a dozen years later, we’re less likely to say that “we girls want some beefcake.” If a peddler in Athens declares You’ll receive, if you purchase his wares, A free panda that dances, Don’t take any chances: Beware of a Greek*gifting* bears. (Tim Alborn, a regular at OEDILF) Love the pun in the last line — wordplay at the end of the verse is so useful when you want your limerick to serve as joke, as we do. The Greek “panda” was a bit of a stretch, making the joke seem a tad contrived. *From 2007 (da- words):* A heavy *girl* often went dateless; She feared that in life she’d be mateless. A friend warned, “Your inner Tube has to get thinner. So when you’re at dinner, inflate less.” (Peter Metrinko) A very clever lim by a Loser who quickly accumulated more than 300 blots of ink before retiring many years ago. But I didn’t want another cartoon mocking fat people, right after I asked Bob to draw Chris Christie just three weeks ago, and Trump in the two contests after that, in Weeks 1238 and 1239. *And then there was the winner of the whole contest in 2009:* She’s a *girl* of outstanding dimensions (Two of which were her surgeon’s inventions). She’s got 36D- 22-33 . . . And a PhD nobody mentions. (Andrew Burnet, writer of almost 300 OEDILF limericks, and a First Offender for us that year) I liked the content of that limerick so much that — this was such an unusual thing for me to do — I hadn’t noticed the flaw in the rhyming: Lines 1 and 5 form what’s called an identity; instead of rhyming, the final syllables are pronounced the same way: -mensions*-mentions. While I’m not going to say that the flaw should have disqualified the entry entirely, I certainly didn’t want to use it this week as an example of how a limerick*should*** be written. (But word to the wise: Don’t use identities.) My last word of advice for Week 1240: If you write about a gherkin as related to someone with tiny hands, your limerick would need to be both highly skillful and highly subtle. *WHAT WIT WE WIELDED*: THE ALLITERATIVE HEADLINES OF WEEK 1237 * **Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich* Really, I cannot go on vacation anymore; it clearly takes me ages to get back in gear and rehone my razorlike mental acuity so that I will, oh, know what week it is. Anyway, it’s actually good not to have to wait another week to run the results of Week 1237 , what with the hyperspeed that news now flashes in front of us, then is almost obliterated by the glare of the next flash moments later. So before we forget Scaramucci and the Boy Scout speech and — remember him? — Sean Spicer, we get to run these alliterative headlines about them. In fact, we get to chronicle That Whole Mess as it transpired, beginning with the ouster of Spicey and the appointment of his rival Scaramucci; then the ouster of also-rival Reince Priebus; then the Mooch’s Wildest Thing to Say to a Reporter (While’s He’s Typing Away) Ever; then the hiring of A Grown-Up; then the Grown-Up’s de-Mooching — all within our July 21-31 contest window. I couldn’t judge many Week 1237 entries at one sitting. I think this week’s 25 inking entries make for a fun read — especially out loud — but 40 times as many proved something of a slog. (My secret performance-enhancing drug: half a tablet of Walmart-equivalent NoDoz.) The Losers who subscribe to the Losernet email group, on which some contestants share their entries after the contest deadline, may have gotten an inkling, so to speak. But this is why we have editors, or, in current parlance, curators. This was a heck of a week for Hall of Fame Loser Jeff Contompasis, whom I’m forcing to choose between his fourthLose Cannon (the as-yet formally unannounced new trophy I’m giving out to recidivist winners while we still have a few moreInkin’ Memorial bobbleheads) and the second-prize musculature-pattern leggings that would fit his science-whiz daughter perfectly. (Emily, I know he’s going to be sensible here.) While I ran all the other entries with the original headline preceding the alliteration, I felt that Jeff’s winner was funnier with the one-word real headline, “Lotteries,” following Jeff’s string of academic-sounding R-words. It’s an all-veteran Losers’ Circle this week. In addition to Jeff’s hogging two of the four spots, our runners-up go way back to the salad days of the Invitational: Phil Frankenfeld has blotted up 143 Invite inks since Week 188 in 1996, and Mae Scanlan has managed to accrue more than 300 blots of ink — three this week! — since 1995 while refusing to send any entries she’d be embarrassed for her pastor to read that Sunday — a standard that can rule out a lot of potential Invite ink. *What Doug Dug: *Ace copy editor Doug Norwood agreed with my picks for the “above the fold” headlines, and also singled out Kevin Dopart’s “Missed Manners” Scaramucci head as well as Roy Ashley’s ingenious Seychelles-set entry that I saved for last. *UP FOR A PARODY-SING? * The two big Loser events of the year — the Flushies awards in late spring and the Post -Holiday Party in January — usually feature a musical component in which we sing a few song parodies penned by Losers for the occasion. But who’d be up for a gathering at someone’s home where the main activity would be sitting around with song sheets and singing some of the many parodies that have gotten ink in the Invitational over the years? Food would be uncoordinated potluck, the date depending mainly on the schedules of whoever volunteers to play host as well as the person or people who can play (mostly) show tunes on a keyboard, as well as a guitarist who could do rock-type songs. This could happen whenever, but presumably not too close to January or June. Let me know, prospective hostst! *KILROY’S WILL BE THERE: NEXT LOSER SIGHTING, AUG. 20* This month’s Loser brunch is on Sunday, Aug. 20 (probably at noon), at Kilroy’s, just off the Beltway at the Braddock Road exit in Northern Virginia, a spot we’ve visited many times. It’s now a breakfast buffet ($12) rather than the costlier breakfast*lunch combo, but there’s still a lot to choose from, including little waffle-boats that each can hold thousands of calories. I’m planning to be there; especially if you’re coming to a Loser event for the first time, or for the first time in a long while, let me know so I’ll be sure to make it. Pat Myers Pat Myers is editor and judge of The Style Invitational, The Washington Post's page for clever, edgy humor and wordplay. In the role since December 2003, she has posted and judged more than 700 contests. She also writes the weekly Style Conversational column and runs the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. Follow** Subscriber sign in We noticed you’re blocking ads! Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Try 1 month for $1 Unblock ads Questions about why you are seeing this? Contact us ====================================================================== WEEK 1241, published August 20, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1241 (n, fr. Engl., ‘converse of sensational’) Add to list On my list The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over the week’s contest and results Evan Birnholz's full grid. It's okay if you use the same word in your entry, as long as you have a brilliantly original and funny clue to go with it. (DevilCross.com) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 17, 2017 Week after week these days, I find myself saying these things: 1. Great week for news items to use in The Style Invitational! 2. [Today’s Worse Than Ever Outrage] has made it hard to laugh at anything today. It’s a credit to the Loser Community that I found plenty to laugh about while judging the Week 1236 fake portmanteau etymologies over the past weekend. While this week’s ink coalesced around significantly fewer Losers than usual, I was checking off worthy entries on almost every page of my printout (which had no entrants’ names attached). One of the casualties of blind judging is that I can’t even unconsciously ensure some ink for a Loser who had several good entries and oughta get*something.*So if you entered and didn’t get ink this week — that would be all but 12 of you — I’m sure you were soooo close, several times over. If you gambled on Invite contestants — they have that in Vegas, right? — you might not get a huge superfecta payout if you’d bet Doyle-Dopart-Frankovich-Raffman. Among them, Chris, Kevin, Jesse and Mark have tallied 3,841 blots of ink over the year. And it’s Doyle’s 57th win of the entire contest, almost twice that of the second-winningest ever, Russell Beland. Meanwhile, in recent weeks, Kevin has passed the 1,300-blot mark, and Mark (who started playing much later) is now past 400, inexorably inking his way into the 500-blot Hall of Fame. And though she didn’t get ink in the contest she suggested — hmm, that may be because she didn’t enter! — Ann Martin wins some ice cream from the Empress for the idea. There were a few unprintable portmanfaux this week; see the bottom of this column. *UP AGAINST THE (PAY)WALL? * I’m regularly hearing now from Losers who click on the links to the Invitational and Conversational that are included in the Invite’s e-mail newsletter or are posted on Facebook — and see nothing but an ad to sell online subscriptions. Yes, The Post’s paywall that blocks nonsubscribers comes up more quickly than before; I don’t know how many stories you can read for free anymore in a given month, but it’s more than one and a lot fewer than the 20 that used to be allowed. I’d love it, of course, if the Invite and Conversational were exempt from the paywall, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. (I did ask.) So here are some things you can do. 1. The best thing, of course: SUBSCRIBE! For $99 a year — $8.25 a month — you get everything The Post has to offer online, more than 700 pieces of content*a day.* And I don’t have to tell you how important The Post has been in bringing to light the important news that the government is doing its best to hide from us. Also, poop jokes. *IMPORTANT: *If you have access to an email address with a .gov, .mil or .edu suffix, you get a free subscription! Just be sure to sign up with that address, and log in with it later. 2. If you just want to enter one particular contest — say you just want to do limericks for Week 1240 — note that The Post offers a promotional rate for four weeks for 99 cents. You could cancel after that, before the $8.25 rate kicks in. 3. It’s nowhere as nice and useful, but I have begun to post copies of the Invitational and the Conversational on theStyle Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. You can see the files by clicking on “Files” on the left column of the Devotees page. I’ll put this week’s grid there as well. You might not have all the photographs, but there should be enough to let you enter the contest. 4. You can see PDFs (or other formats) of all past Invitational columns (but not the Conversational) on the Master Contest List on the Losers’ own website, NRARS.org . Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan is a few weeks behind right now, but will be catching up soon. *GRIDDY REALITIES: THIS WEEK’S PARTIAL (NON-) CROSSWORD* I admit that the whole concept of Week 1241 is silly, given that you can’t cross the sucker, but this spinoff of our standard reverse crossword produced good results in Week 873 (results here ) and Week 1061 (here ). I asked Evan Birnholz, who constructs The Post’s Sunday crossword every week — it’s always imaginative and ingenious, with clever clues — for a grid that had a sizable number of long words or phrases. The filled-in grid is atop this page; it’s okay to use the same word Evan has, as long as your clue is substantially different (scroll down to see his clues on this page on his website, Devil Cross. I think it’s especially fun to show readers very different solutions for the same line. *How to print out this week’s grid: *If you just click “Print” on The Invitational’s Web page this week so you can write on the grid, you’ll probably get a version without the grid! Instead, right-click on the grid itself and click on “Save As,” then print the resulting .jpg picture from your computer. *ORRRRRRR ... *And we should all thank Loser Jesse Frankovich for posting on the Devotees page this very afternoon — in time for me to steal it and publish it here — this handy-dandy list: Across 1: S--C-C---S 11: SL-- 15: -A-LI-M-N- 16: --NE 17: IT-U-T-YO- 18: ED-- 19: T-E- 20: BE-- 21: -L-ES 22: -L-B 24: MAI--- 26: HI- 29: --A-O-- 31: -P- 33: A--UND 35: -U--OR-D 37: -OM-- 38: -S- 39: B---D 40: ON-S-AR- 42: R--OC- 43: --O 44: -VE-S-- 46: -E- 47: A-DR-- 49: -IL- 51: WI--N 52: CH-- 54: -ALF 58: I--L 59: -OIS--A-E- 61: -EW- 62: A---N-LI-E 63: --NS 64: G---THE--D Down 1: S-IT 2: -AT- 3: ---E 4: CLU-- 5: -I- 6: C-TB--D 7: -M-EBA 8: --Y- 9: -NO-MOU- 10: S-- 11: S-EL- 12: L-D---R-O- 13: -N-E-P--CE 14: -E-S 21: -I--B--L 23: L-N---RN 25: A-- 26: HA-O- 27: I-ON-AI-E- 28: --M-O---WN 30: --S-- 32: -DD-- 34: U-S 36: O-- 38: -RE-CO-- 41: AV- 42: R-I--NT 45: S--S-- 48: D-L-S 50: --ALE 51: WI-- 53: HI-- 55: A-I- 56: LE-- 57: F-ED 59: -AG 60: --H *WHO’S UP FOR BRUNCH SUNDAY? OR EVEN SATURDAY? * This month’s Loser Brunch — No. 199, Elden Carnahan informs us — is the breakfast buffet at Kilroys on Sunday, Aug. 20, at noon. Please let me know at pat.myers@washpost.com if you’re planning to come (as well as to RSVP to Elden here ). And it happens that Loser Jeff Shirley is going to be up on Richmond on Saturday, and is going to join the Royal Consort and me at the Indian restaurantAditi in suburban Kingstowne (across from the movie complex) for an early lunch at 11:30 on Saturday. (Excellent buffet plus the regular menu.) If you’d like to join us for that, let me know as well. *NO + WAY: THE UNPRINTABLES* Banal: Combination of “ban” and “anal.” A situation where fun, daring, adventurous activities are proscribed. “How was the party?” “Banal – boring.” (the never boring, though predictably risque, Tom Witte) Brothel: From “brotherhood” and “morsel.” A place where the guys gather and each sample a piece. (Duncan Stevens) Floozy: Combination of “Flo” and “oozy.” A term for a woman who is apparently always ready for love. (Witte again.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1242, published August 27, 2017 The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest and results — and the upcoming Planet Word Museum In Week 303 (1999), Brian Broadus got an honorable mention with this then-and-now for the baby boom generation. So what will we do for 2017? By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 24, 2017 I’m eternally grateful for the Style Invitational contest suggestions that Losers and just-readers send me. (In fact, if I use your idea and you don’t live too far away, I’ll buy you an ice cream cone. ) More often than not, though, I don’t find the suggestion workable for any of various reasons, one being We Did That One: I’ll show the suggester the dozens of funny inking answers from the previous contest, concluding that there wouldn’t be enough totally different entries to make the idea succeed all over again. But if anyone can outdo me in both Invite History and the seeing the possibility of wringing more use from an old contest, it’s Chris Doyle, 57-time first-place winner and, before long (Chris, God and Bezos willing), the first Loser to sop up 2,000 blots of ink. And Chris suggested redoing Week 303, the 1999 contest to compare old and new concerns for the baby boom generation — but updated for millennials. And as several ice creamed Losers can attest, the way to persuade me to run a contest is to show me some good examples — as Chris did for what became this week’s contest, Week 1242. (He had others as well, but I don’t want to rule them out as entries, so I won’t share them here.) But I also didn’t want to rule out more gems that the Loser Community might come up with about aging, given how much experience some of us have had with it; for instance, Tom Witte and Dave Zarrow, who both get ink this week, have aged 24 years since first playing the Invite (though both of them look exactly the same as in 1993). The results of Week 303 are classic — one of our best sets of results ever. They’ll be hard to top. Feel free to try, but it may well be more fruitful to work with more contemporary references. I hope to give ink to both categories. *REPORT FROM WEEK 303,* in which you were asked to come up with old and new concerns for people of the baby boom generation. *Fifth Runner-Up:* Then: Paar. Now: AARP. ([the late] Ralph Scott, Washington) *Fourth Runner-Up: *Then: Being caught with Hustler magazine. Now:Being caught by Hustler magazine. (Joseph Romm, Washington) *Third Runner-Up:* Then: Killer weed. Now: Weed killer. (John B. McElhatton, Vienna) *Second Runner-Up:* Then: Hoping for a BMW. Now: Hoping for a BM. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia) *First Runner-Up:* Then: The Grateful Dead. Now: Dr. Kevorkian. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) *And the winner of a fine plastic floral arrangement: [in the Czarist era, the gag prize went to the winner; there was not yet a trophy]* Then: Getting out to a new, hip joint. Now: Getting a new hip joint. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) *Honorable Mentions:* Then: Moving to California because it’s cool. Now: Moving to California because it’s hot. (Larry Phillips, Falls Church) Then: Being called to the principal’s office. Now: Storming into the principal’s office. (Kelli Midgley-Biggs, Columbia) Then: The peace symbol. Now: The Benz symbol. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville) Then: O.J., cutting and slashing. Now: O.J., cutting and slashing. (Jim Thelen, W. Nyack, N.Y.) [This is not a reference to Simpson’s assault on memorabilia dealers for which he was convicted (that would be many years later); the first “cutting and slashing” alludes to his earlier career as an amazingly agile running back.]. Then: Getting your head stoned. Now: Getting your headstone. (Bella Portillo, Silver Spring) Then: “The Making of the President.” Now: The making of the president. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) [Bill Clinton’s presidency began two months before the Invitational did, giving us prodigious joke fodder ever since.] Then: “Going blind.” Now: Really going blind. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Then: Long hair. Now: Longing for hair. (Marianne Jemiano, Beltsville) Then: Acid rock. Now: Acid reflux. (Kathy and Brian Hollen, Leesburg; Bobbie Miller, Laytonsville; Bill Hole, Silver Spring) [Here’s an example why I don’t like to give out long credits to contestants.] Then: Obsessing over your PSAT scores. Now: Obsessing over your PSA scores. (Marcy Alvo, Annandale) Then: Worrying about no one coming to your party. Now: Worrying about no one coming to your funeral. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia) Then: President Johnson. Now: The president’s johnson. (J. Larry Schott, Gainesville) [“Johnson” is one euphemism we’ve always been able to run in the Invitational. We’ve also had subtle reference to printable. “Dick” still isn’t printable. A couple of weeks ago we ran “dingus.”] Then: Fighting to get rid of the lying president. Now: Fighting to keep the lying president. (Jason Zweiback, Livermore, Calif.) [You think it’s new that we go after the president?] Then: The perfect high. Now: The perfect high-yield mutual fund. (Steve Krauss, Danbury, Conn.) Then: Elvis in the army. Now: Elvis in a UFO. (Russ Beland, Springfield) Then: Keg. Now: EKG. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) Then: Swallowing acid. Now: Swallowing antacid. (Ted Allen, Bethesda; Sandra Hull, Arlington; Stuart McKinnon, Ellicott City) Then: You’re growing pot. Now: Your growing pot. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park) Then: Watching John Glenn’s historic flight with your folks. Now: Watching John Glenn’s historic flight with your kids. (Sandra Hull, Arlington) Then: Trying to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor. Now: Trying not to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor. (Douglas Olson, Laurel) Then: Passing the driving test. Now: Passing the vision test. (Douglas Olson, Laurel) Then: Seeds and stems. Now: Roughage. (Ellen Hill, Kensington) Then: Popping pills, smoking joints. Now: Popping joints. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Then: Whatever ... Now: Depends. (Rebecca Plunkett, San Antonio) Then: “Off the pig.” Now: “No bacon, please, I am watching my cholesterol.” (Rebecca Plunkett, San Antonio) Then: Ommmm. Now: Um ... (Ralph Scott, Washington) Then: Our president’s struggle with Fidel. Now: Our president’s struggle with fidelity. (Ralph Scott, Washington) Then: Catching rays. Now: Raising cats. (Paul Whittemore, Gaithersburg) Then: Getting shot down in a U2. Now: Getting shot down on F2. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) [That’s the Sunday Style section page where the Invite ran in its first years; after several intermediate address changes, it’s now almost always on the second-to-last page of the Arts & Style section, however big the section is each week. Which does diminish its joke potential.] *And Last:* Then: Changing the world. Now: Nailing the “And Last” in the Style Invitational. (David Salzman, Chevy Chase) *MOS’ DEF INDEED: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1238* I don’t know if we’ll get to X-Y-Z, but here’s Part 2 of the series we began last year for phrases incorporating three successive letters of the alphabet. When he suggested the A-B-C contest last year, Loser Jeff Shirley was inspired by our contests that asked you to look at Wikipedia lists of the many things that are referred to by the same three-letter abbreviation, then explain how any two were alike or different. (Winner of Week 1104, by Larry Gray: HDP: The law firm Harness, Dickey & Pierce vs. high-density polyethylene: “High-Density Polyethylene” would make a lousy title for a porn flick.) For Week 1238, I didn’t require that the DEF, FED, EFD etc. -phrase could conceivably be referred to by its three-letter abbreviation, but most of this week’s inking entries do work that way, and often draw their humor from the idea — Tom Witte’s first runner-up “Don’t Even” Face, for example — “I got the DEF.” The two most frequently used words in the phrases: “Donald” and various forms of the f-word, including E for Effing. Hooray, finally I get to give away one of our final Inkin’ Memorials: It’s the first win — in fact, the first ink “above the fold” and the fifth blot of ink ever — for Peter Shawhan. (One of his earlier inks, in a contest for homophone jokes: “Westboro Baptist Church’s funeral-crashing strategy? ‘If we stand shoulder to shoulder, we will be a fence of people.’ ” ) For a couple of months now, most of the first-place winners have been many-time winners, and so I’ve started to award them our new Lose Cannons while saving the last few Inkin’ Memorials for the newbies. And note the Shawhan triple! In addition to Peter’s win, wife Julia gets two honorable mentions, her seventh and eighth ever. Since Elden Carnahan’s Loser standings are based only on the*number* of ink blots rather than their placement, that’s going to put Julia way ahead of Peter on theall-time stats list at nrars.org. And it’s a sorta double among runners-up Jeff Contompasis and Ellen Ryan — Ellen is Jeff’s wife’s sister! *WHAT WOULD BE FUN TO HAVE IN A WORD MUSEUM? * Next Tuesday I’m going to meet with Ann Friedman, one of the founders of a fascinating new venture scheduled to open in downtown Washington in 2019: It’s called Planet Word , which describes itself as “a museum with a mission: to inspire a love of language in all its forms. . . . At Planet Word we inspire and renew a love of words and language through unique, immersive learning experiences.” Ann wrote to me recently to ask for ideas about how humor and wordplay might be incorporated into the center, which will be in the gorgeous big old Franklin School building at 13th and K streets, catercorner to The Post; the building was designed in 1869 by the famed architect Adolf Cluss (who also did the similar Arts and Industries building on the Mall) and has been vacant for years. Ann wrote me: “Word play, of which you are certainly the local empress, will be an important ingredient – ensuring that our exhibits and experiences leave visitors smiling, surprised, and excited about words. We hope that word play will be “on the menu” of the museum restaurant, on the restroom walls (bathroom humor, anyone?), and displayed in exhibits or on the auditorium stage. . . .  Although the museum will be about language in general and not just English, I do want to highlight the characteristics of English that make it ripe for word play, jokes, riddles, and puns.” So before next Tuesday, feel free to suggest to me (and so to Ann) not just some specific ways to put humor into the museum (though that would be great), but also what you’d enjoy having at such a venue. I was thinking, for example, that it would be a great place to stage a light-verse reading like the one hosted by Loser Melissa Balmain at Catholic University a few years ago, and a great base for crossword events, like the one produced by Washington Post constructor Evan Birnholz in D.C. Write me at pat.myers@washpost.com. *SWALLOWING MY T * I got an email this week from Robert Croog of Washington, who complained about the example I used for our Week 1240 Limerixicon contest: *Most election reformers believe Contributions are bad. (How naive!) But my Bible instructs What to do with my bucks: Says it’s better to give, then receive.*(Chris Doyle) The limerick has a flawed rhyme, Mr. Croog charged: “Instructs,” he insisted, does not rhyme with “bucks.” Obviously, they do in my book. Unless I were speaking in exaggerated slow motion, I would barely form the final T. In any case, “ucks” and “ucts” are spoken interchangeably often enough to be fine for limericks. I now officially close this debate with a big strip of Duck® tape. ====================================================================== WEEK 1243, published September 3, 2017 ** 1 Desktop notifications are on | Turn off Get breaking news alerts from The Washington Post Turn on desktop notifications? Yes Not now * ** * Sections** <#> *** <#> * Home The Washington Post logo Democracy Dies in Darkness <#> * Try 1 month for $1 * Elden Carnahan * Sign In ------------------------------------------------------------------------ o My Post * * o My Reading List * * o Account Settings * * o Newsletters & alerts * * o Gift subscriptions * * o Contact us * * o Help desk * * * Elden Carnahan * Basic Digital subscriber * Sign out * My Post * * * My Reading List * * * Account Settings * * * Newsletters & alerts * * * Gift subscriptions * * * Contact us * * * Help desk * * * Accessibility for screenreader The Washington Post Share Options Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Tumblr Comments <#comments> Link to homepage Resize Text Print Article Discussions Style Conversational Week 1243: Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before Add to list On my list The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest & results It wasn’t until last night, after seeing Bob Staake’s finished illustration for this week’s example, that it occurred to me that we’d used this very example before, 12 years ago. (By Bob Staake, from the March 20, 2005, Style section) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 31, 2017 Ha, yeah, that was a good one. In March 2005, a year and a bit into my Empressacy, I ran a Style Invitational neologism contest to change a word by one letter — a repeat of the contest I call Our Greatest Hit. Theresults of Week 278, from 1998, continue to circulate through the Internet to this day, often misattributed and corrupted by inferior additions . The 2005 redo had one change from the 1998: It restricted the neologisms to plays on words that begin with A- through D-. The neologisms themselves, though, didn’t have to begin with those letters; the first letter of the word could be changed to any other letter — and I wanted one of the contest examples to make that clear. So for Week 602, I asked Bob Staake to illustrate one of the Week 278 honorable mentions, “vaseball” by Enormously Obsessive Loser Russell Beland, who was then the father of two young boys. It wasn’t until this past Tuesday night, when Bob showed me his illustration forWeek 1243 , that it rang a bell. Bong. I’d given Bob a list of possible neologisms, and he chose this one, obviously not remembering its predecessor either. I asked him if he noticed any changes in his own style over the past dozen years. “My vases looked more Navajo-inspired in 2005,” Bob observed. Anyway, it turns out that there are a few — but remarkably few — neologisms from our many past contests to work in this week’s contest. Loser Mark Raffman had first suggested a contest in which nothing in the whole joke would contain a T, R, U, M or P, but we agreed that was a maddeningly tall order. This one — that just the term be t-r-u-m-p-less — still offers a large array of options. *A bit of advice:* Before you send in your list of entries, make a list of your neologisms and then search on your computer for each of the five verboten letters. I can tell you that they’re easy to miss: As an illustration of how a word could lack the letters but still allude to the guy, I had almost used Stephen Dudzik’s 2008 “Innuendow: The implication that the size of one’s hands and feet correspond to other appendages.” It has a U. This is the second neologism contest in three weeks; usually I wait at least a month. But I don’t expect much overlap with Week 1241’s crossword fill-in , a contest I haven’t judged yet. (But first I have to finish the limericks of Week 1240 .) *MASHIN’ PICTURES*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1239* **Non-inking headline entry submitted by both Chris Doyle and Tom Witte* Though I hate wasting paper, I do indulge myself sometimes by working from a printout to judge the week’s entries; I can curl up in a chair or bring it into a waiting room, and scribble notes for later. I usually use pretty small type, though; for the Week 1239 movie title mash-ups, 18 to 20 entries fit onto a page. (Okay, there were more than 100 pages, but I used both sides.) So it was rather dismaying when I started judging this contest and couldn’t find a single movie mash-up I liked on the first page. Or the second. So many of the entries combined two movies but went nowhere with them to make a joke (e.g., “Goldilocks and the Three Stooges: Shirley Temple and Moe, Larry & Curly star in this comedy version of the classic fairy tale”). But even with my top-to-bottom pen slash through many a whole page of entries, I also encountered dozens of good ones, often in clumps. When you have 2,000 entries to choose from, it doesn’t matter one bit if 95 percent of them are yawners — as long as the remainder are funny. And in fact, I ended up adding a few extra entries to the results of Week 1239 that didn’t fit on the print page. And so, hurrah, we have a fun list of single-multiplexes from 28 individual Losers (I’d feared there would be only a few, because of the aforementioned clumping). They’re topped by Jon Gearhart’s suddenly timely “A Few Good X-Men,” which combines the military theme of the first movie with wordplay on the second. It’s Jon’s fourth Invite win (and 126th and 127th blots of ink in all), so if he’d like, I’ll send him one of our newLose Cannon trophies instead of a fourth Inkin’ Memorial bobblehead. (I still a few more Abes left!) iThird- and fourth-placers Jesse Frankovich and Mark Raffman already have more Loser bags and mugs than they know what to do with, so I’ve been sending them some vintage honorable-mention magnets from before they began Inviting. But it’s the first “above-the-fold’ ink — and just the fourth blot ever — from James Kruger, who wins the pig snout ball cap. James’s first ink was also a movie-themed contest, Week 1008, in which you had to rearrange the words of a title: “Kids, I Shrunk the Honey: One family manages just fine on unsweetened tea.” But it was most memorable for James’s location at the time: Butha-Buthe, Lesotho. (He was in the Peace Corps.) We haven’t had a whole lot of Basotho (that’s the adjective) ink since then. This week also marks the welcome return of a Loser From Really Way Back: Arthur Adams got his first of his nine inks (before today) in Week 84 — 23 years ago — and his most recent in Week 898 ... when he won the whole contest. Late-2010 predictions for 2011: “April 11: President Obama begins a Rose Garden news conference by saying he loves spring and April is his favorite month. Bill O’Reilly fumes that Obama’s clear hatred of December is part of the War on Christmas, while Glenn Beck ominously reminds his viewers that Hitler was born in April.” Arthur’s two honorable mentions catapult him from No. 458 to 417 (okay, it’s a mini-catapult) in the all-time Loser standings. Meanwhile, I’ve saved a list of 16 funny mash-up movie titles whose descriptions, well, weren’t quite as funny. Maybe I’ll use them as part of a future contest, offering them up to the entire Greater Loser Community to do them justice. 0 Comments conversations Read These Comments newsletter The best comments and conversations at The Washington Post, delivered every Friday. Join the conversation. Thank You! You are now subscribed to*Read These Comments* Please enter a valid email address You might also like... Sign up See all newsletters By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Pat Myers Pat Myers is editor and judge of The Style Invitational, The Washington Post's page for clever, edgy humor and wordplay. In the role since December 2003, she has posted and judged more than 700 contests. She also writes the weekly Style Conversational column and runs the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. Follow** Latest episode The Texas teenagers who allegedly smuggled immigrants across the southern border Listen25:02 Unparalleled reporting. Expert insight. Clear analysis. Everything you’ve come to expect from the newsroom of The Post -- for your ears. 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Try 1 month for $1 Unblock ads Questions about why you are seeing this? Contact us ====================================================================== WEEK 1244, published September 10, 2017 ** 1 Desktop notifications are on | Turn off Get breaking news alerts from The Washington Post Turn on desktop notifications? Yes Not now * ** * Sections** <#> *** <#> * Home The Washington Post logo Democracy Dies in Darkness <#> * Try 1 month for $1 * Elden Carnahan * Sign In ------------------------------------------------------------------------ o My Post * * o My Reading List * * o Account Settings * * o Newsletters & alerts * * o Gift subscriptions * * o Contact us * * o Help desk * * * Elden Carnahan * Basic Digital subscriber * Sign out * My Post * * * My Reading List * * * Account Settings * * * Newsletters & alerts * * * Gift subscriptions * * * Contact us * * * Help desk * * * Accessibility for screenreader The Washington Post Discussions Style Conversational Week 1244: Taking the Gherkin Challenge Add to list On my list The Style Invitational Empress looks at this week’s winning limericks Gherkins. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 7, 2017 Four weeks ago in this column, I offered this anticipatory warning: “My last word of advice for Week 1240 of The Style Invitational: If you write about a gherkin as related to someone with tiny hands, your limerick would need to be both highly skillful and highly subtle.” Perhaps Nan Reiner used that as a challenge — with aplomb: Her runner-up limerick in this week’s results doesn’t mention any particular president of the United States. In fact, it doesn’t mention any humans; it’s (ostensibly) about a stew, complete with yam, ham and, of course a “limp, insignificant” mini-pickle. Concerns were indeed raised on the copy desk, but I’m relying on almost 14 years of Empressosity to argue that the (extremely few) people who’d complain about tasteless Invite entries are*not* the people who’d get one like this; it’s particular words they respond to — or, more often, pictures. Scheduled for this weekend, by the way: a “Free for All” letter from a woman complaining that one of the examples for the Week 1242 “then vs. now” contest — “The Kids Are Alright”* The kids are alt-right — was “reprehensible,” though she doesn’t explain why. Late update: My predecessor, the Czar of The Style Invitational, admits scanning the top winners and not immediately realizing what Nan’s limerick was about. That’s “highly subtle” enough for me! As always, there were lots of fine entries in this 14th annual Limerixicon contest, this year for limericks featuring words beginning gh- or gi-. While even Master Loserbard Brendan Beary had worried out loud that OEDILF.com chief Chris Strolin had chosen too narrow a sliver of the alphabet this year, I received 694 entries, including more fine ones than I could reasonably share even online (I added five entries to those running in the print paper). I also, as always, received many unfine limericks, bedeviled by bad rhyming (pickle*civil*giggle), bad meter, tortured accenting of words (“ca-PIT-alist”), convoluted syntax, illogical wording, wrong information (Bryce Harper didn’t hurt his knee in “mid-inning three,” but in the first, even if it doesn’t rhyme with “knee”); weak Line 5 “punchlines”; and the occasional bitter screediness. But as always, it’s the entries that get ink, not the many that don’t, that determine the success of the contest. In the process, I got to acquaint or reacquaint myself with such terms as ghrelin, “the hunger hormone” whose name is based on an acronym; the ginglymus, or hinge joint (like an elbow or knee); a Gibus, a crushable top hat; a gisarme, a medieval weapon like a poleax; Ghibelline. an aristocrat allied with the German emperor against the pope; and gîte (pronounced zheet), a French home rented by vacationers. (Hmm, none of those ended up getting ink, but several of the lims were lots of fun.) I have a feeling that everyone who sent in a limerick featuring “ghoti” thought that it would be the only one. But I got almost a dozen of them, and it was hard to choose which to use. It’s usually attributed to George Bernard Shaw that “fish” could be spelled “ghoti” if you use the “-gh” of “tough,” the “-o-” of “women” and the “-ti-” of “nation,” but I learned this week that the observation appeared pre-Shaw, in an letter by one William Ollier Jr. (born 1824). And it’s nowhere to be found in Shaw’s writings. First, I rejected any entries that rhymed “ghoti” with “hottie” or “toady” — that’s counter to the whole idea of the spelling. But I did like how this one by Chris Doyle explained the spelling: G.B. Shaw told a wide-eyed young hottie, “Spelling FISH ‘F-I-S-H’ is dotty! Take G-H from ENOUGH, NATION’s ‘T-I,’ and stuff WOMEN’s ‘I’ in between – and it’s GHOTI.” The limerick also had to either say or hint at “fish,” to show what “ghoti” is supposed to be. I remember my second-grade teacher telling about “ghoti” to my class, but we can’t assume everyone’s heard of it. Otherwise, I really liked Elliott Shevin’s humorously spelled limerick, which also noted Ollier rather than Shaw (though again, that would confuse a reader without some clue): William Ollier served up some ghoti, Which he’d brought on a sizzling doti. So proud of his spelling, He found himself kvelling, “By golly, it’s all I could woti!” Craig Dykstra’s entry did all these things superbly, but regrettably rhymed wish*fish*capisce. It’s ca-PEESH: Say G-H like in “tough,” if you wish Then add O like in “women,”capisce? Add T-I like in “motion” Then you’ll see my notion That “ghoti” should be pronounced “fish.” And until I found out that it wasn’t really Shaw, I was pleased with this one from Almost First Offender Brian Krupp: For those phonics fanatics who’d wish For correct English, here is a dish That would stick in their craw, Cooked by George Bernard Shaw, Who spelled one type of seafood as “ghoti.” (Though I’m not sure of the logic of why it would “stick in the craw” of “phonics fanatics”; also, I’d tweak the last line, with its strained “one type of seafood,” to something like “Whose favorite seafood was ghoti.”) But finally I went with this one by Nan Reiner, who makes it clear that “ghoti” is pronounced “fish,” not only by using the giveaway “kettle of ghoti,” but also by putting it at the very end, after the reader encounters “dish” and wish.” And the limerick is about the whole concept of the difficulty of English pronunciation rules. My only quibbles were that “dish” is a bit of a stretch in Line 1, and that Lines 3 and 4 are slightly confusing. But still, a clever, funny and eminently inkworthy entry: Learning English’s a difficult dish. We spell phonemes however we wish. You want regular? Tough. “Nation? Women? Enough! All in all, a fine kettle of ghoti. It’s the third win — and 89th blot of ink — for Ann Martin, who’s currently teaching Latin at a Catholic high school. I was thinking that Ann’s fabulously zingy limerick about Trump’s clueless comments in February — “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice” — was the Invitational’s first commemoration of the event, but I’d forgotten Frank Osen’s haiku: Frederick Douglass is Even greater now than when he was dead. Thanks, Trump! Limericks are famously risque — some people maintain that all limericks *should*be risque — and so it’s not surprising that we have some unprintables this week. See the bottom of this column if you like, but don’t turn around and complain to management. *AMAZON REVIEWS: WILL THE STARS COME OUT?* It’s our third go-round for a contest seeking creative reviews for some of the literally millions of products available on amazon.com. You can Google “funny Amazon reviews” for a feel for what’s become a beloved humor genre; I strongly believe that it is the most important influence Amazon has had on our society. But because of the configuration of our print page in the Arts & Style section, as well as my preference to run a couple dozen shorter items than just a few long ones, don’t write a whole book. For guidance, here are the results of the two previous contests, some of which are in the form of light verse. Results of Week 960 (scroll past the new contest). — thread, salt, emery boards, dishcloths, comb Results of Week 1098 — paper clips, ruler, Pringles, cotton balls, solar dancing turkey. Incidentally, like thesolar dancing turkey, this week’s Poop Emoji Pool Float was a recent Style Invitational second-prize award, this one donated by Jeff Contompasis and won recently by the poolless Kevin Dopart. I’m sure Kevin will be eager for ideas for what to do with a smiling five-foot-long inflatable brown wedge. *DINE WITH SOME LOSERS AND ONE EMPRESS: LOSER BRUNCH, SEPT. 17* I plan to return to the buffet at Brion’s Grille in Fairfax, Va., at noon Sunday, Sept. 17, for — dingdingding — Loser Brunch No. 200. As always, I’m looking forward to meeting new Losers (or just fans of the Invite) as well as reconnecting with the Usual Suspects. Let Elden Carnahan know you’ll be coming; see NRARS.org and click on “Our Social Engorgements.” *Limerisqué: Unprintables from Week 1240* Among them: Your mama likes wearing stilettos When she goes to work in the ghettos Where she works more wood For the boys in the hood Than ever got worked at Geppetto’s. (Jon Gearhart) The white man’s supreme, and that’s it. Don’t agree with me, boy? Well then git! Let those liberals scream. We’re the cream of the cream, And we’ll float to the top - just like…. (Stephen Gold) But the Scarlet Letter goes to Dave Airozo for this one about the Risqué Businessman himself: Scaramucci says Steve Bannon’s gherkin Like the man, is a tool, made for jerkin’ Since the Mooch claimed Steve could Even suck his own wood, Guess he spews more than hate when he’s workin’. Pat Myers Pat Myers is editor and judge of The Style Invitational, The Washington Post's page for clever, edgy humor and wordplay. In the role since December 2003, she has posted and judged more than 700 contests. She also writes the weekly Style Conversational column and runs the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. Follow** Subscriber sign in We noticed you’re blocking ads! Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Try 1 month for $1 Unblock ads Questions about why you are seeing this? Contact us ====================================================================== WEEK 1245, published September 17, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1245: Talkin’ ’bout misinformation The Style Invitational Empress dishes on this week’s contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 14, 2017 The Washington Post’s Free for All page, which runs every Saturday in the print paper, contains a selection of letters to the editor that, rather than debating the issues of the day, criticize The Post’s coverage or presentation, often making, well, unusual points. This past Saturday’s included a note from a woman who disputed fashion critic Robin Givhan’s assertion that very high heels are uncomfortable (“I ran four New York City blocks in 3 1*2-inch heels to make the “Lion King” curtain. . . . It wasn’t that bad”), as well as a letter from a dog owner outraged that ousted Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka was called a “pit bull”; “The Post should apologize to pit bulls everywhere for the assertion that they are violent or otherwise have anything in common with white nationalists.” And down in the bottom left corner, the headline “Not alright”: *I have never understood The Style Invitational contest. Nevertheless I must vigorously protest the examples given for the Aug. 27 contest prompt, Generation Yux [Sunday Arts]. Changing the name of the Who’s well-known song “The Kids Are Alright” to “The kids are alt-right” is reprehensible. —**Patricia Marx, Arlington* I guess the letter writer’s point was that we were denigrating the song, or the Who, though I’m not totally sure. I*am*sure that Ms. Marx’s first sentence is totally correct. Anyway, the Free for All letter gives us a peg, as they call it in journalese, for another rant contest for Week 1245 — I should take Patricia out for ice cream for supplying the contest idea. Back in 1998 the Czar ran a contest headlinedFree for Oil (no idea what that meant); the example was: *To the Editor: I am writing to express my shock and dismay over Miss Manners’s rudeness. She had no right to publish the names of persons whose only offense was to ask her advice on a personal matter of wedding etiquette. Your newspaper owes Ms. Jane Jones and Mr. John Smith, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Host, an apology for this unconscionable invasion of their privacy! — An outraged reader* The Week 297 winner, by David Genser: *HAND-DELIVERED. URGENT! To the editor: Do not let them bury those people whose pictures you showed in Sunday’s obituaries! Most of them look like they are still alive!* Most of the inking entries from that week, though, were funny misreadings of headlines, a source that we regularly tap for our “Mess With Our Heads” contests. It’s fine to do that as well this week, but it has to be in the form of a humorously outraged letter. Like this one: *“Maryland Agrees to Tobacco Settlement”: Well, that’s just great. Just what we need-an entire settlement of people devoted to their cancer sticks. What’s next, a drunk-driving commune? (Jean Sorensen, who’d suggested the contest)* Results of Week 297 (scroll down past that week’s new contest) Five years later, the Czar ran a contest headlined “A Major Offensive”: “This Week’s Contest was suggested by a reader who wrote in complaining about last week’s contest, which offended him deeply. He was appalled that we offered kosher dog food as a prize for a contest to come up with really miserly ways to save money in the recession. Taken together, he said, these two facts insidiously reinforce the stereotype that Jews are stingy enough to eat dog food. Since the Czar is Jewish, the letter suggested, he must be a self-loathing Jew. Even though prizes never have anything to do with the contest, The Czar feels simply terrible about all this, and for penance dedicates this contest to the letter writer.... Find something anywhere in today’s Washington Post or washingtonpost.com ... and complain about it with absurd oversensitivity.” The winner of that contest, Week 493: *I was deeply offended that the Czar chose to conduct this week’s contest at the expense of oversensitive people; haven’t we suffered enough for our condition? (Cecil J. Clark, Arlington)* Second place was Dave Zarrow’s “terrorist map” entry that we use as an example this week, and for which Bob Staake revised the cartoon for me five times. We may well still make Free for All anyway. Results of Week 493. Week 779 (2008) was prompted by an exchange in The Post in which someone’s long tirade was answered by a reader: “Of all the pressing local issues that need airing through additional public discourse such as the editorial pages, coughing at symphony concerts would not have made my top 100 or so.” So that week’s contest was to “rant about an issue that wouldn’t make your top 100 for airing in The Post.” That contest didn’t require that the complaints be about The Post, but this second-place winner would have worked in this week’s contest: *I am disgusted at the excessive and obscene “nipple shots” that for several weeks have plastered the front page of what should be a respectable family paper. Just because some fellow won a gold medal in swimming . . . (Zak Kemenosh, Washington, a First Offender)* Results of Week 779. And in 2011 I ran a contest headlined “How DARE we?” — a contest identical to this one. The winner of Week 930, by Peter Jenkins: *Re “Gun industry sues to block reporting rule”: When will The Post stop referring to the hardworking craftsmen and women who lovingly fashion personal firearms as a soulless “gun industry”? I suggest neutral wording such as “independent Mom and Pop freeholders handcrafting Second Amendment protection devices.”* Results of Week 930. *BLANK SPACES MATTER*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1241 ***Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich, who gets three blots of ink this week anyway* I’m not at all surprised that despite our promotion of Week 1241 in the crossword-nerd community, this week’s ink includes a grand total of one First Offender (congratulations, Allan Zackowitz of Brookeville, Md!). Except for the grid on which we presented the list of partial words, the contest really wasn’t about crosswords at all: With a few exceptions, almost none of the winning “clues” would be at home in a real crossword; they’re just jokes. But it’s a fun format, and once again it brought the Empress a long, long list of entries with plenty of good results. I especially enjoyed showing varying solutions for a single line on Evan Birnholz’s grid. It’s the sixth Style Invitational win (and 174th blot of ink) for Barry Koch (pronounced Cook), but it’s just his second Inkin’ Memorial trophy; his previous wins, from Weeks 758 to 867, were all Inkers. Barry used RELOCO to mean a job transfer to D.C., but it would also make a great verb, or a noun to describe someone who took the job. (I love neologisms that you can actually use in daily life.) Meanwhile, runners-up Duncan Stevens, Frank Osen and Jesse Frankovich are such frequent denizens of the Losers’ Circle that we’ve installed facial-recognition software for them. (Jesse’s extremely clever “OXY: Clever moron” might actually make a great clue in an edgy real crossword.) *What Doug Dug:* Ace copy editor Doug Norwood — finally back from vacation — named as this week’s favorites Frank Osen’s runner-up LOIS IS A TEN (my favorite among a*lot* of Lois Lane jokes this week, and already being lauded on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page); Duncan Stevens’s A-HOUND; Steve Glomb’s ONE SHARK as a low lawyer rating; and John Hutchins’s GET THE NOD (which happened to be the original term) as being hired at the bobblehead factory. *Penalty Boxes*: The Unprintables* **Headline by Jeff Contompasis, who actually submits headline ideas for the Unprintables section of the Conversational* Among the entries that are better shared here, rather than to people who will instantly use it for their rants to this contest or straight to management: **1A (SNACK CAKES) SIX CUCKOOS: “___ tweeting,” follows “five golden showers” (Frank Osen) 1D (SPIT) SH! IT … The first two words to “Don’t Wake the Alligator” (Dave Prevar) 38A (ASS) ASS: A cassock without this part reveals a cock (Jeff Contompasis) 13D (INNER PEACE) UNDER PIECE: A pantyshield for that cod-awful smell (Jon Gearhart) 42D (ROCOCO) RECOCK: John Bobbitt’s surgery (Jeff Hazle) *FALL FILL-UP: LOSER BRUNCH NO. 200 THIS SUNDAY * Brion’s Grille in Fairfax, Va., near George Mason University, has a lunchroomy atmosphere but a nice brunch buffet with an omelet station, a pasta station and even a sundae station. And it’s the site for the 200th monthly Loser Brunch, an institution begun Back in the Day by Loser-before-they-called-it-that Elden Carnahan. Currently not too many people are signed up, but we have that critical mass (if not a hypercritical mass), and so as always, I’m looking forward to meeting new Losers and reconnecting with the Usual Suspects. RSVP to Elden at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). It’s scheduled as usual for noon, but at least one person won’t be coming till 1 p.m., so if the pastor’s sermon is running long on Sunday, you don’t have to yell out “Dayenu! ” just for us; just let us know you’ll be late. *HAPPY NEW YEAR! * There probably won’t be a Style Conversational next Thursday, because it’s Rosh Hashanah and I’m going to be at the synagogue for a big chunk of the day, as well as on Wednesday evening. So unless I have my act together very early in the week and do the Convo several days early, let me take the opportunity to offer thetraditional Jewish New Year’s wish : May you get lots of ink in the Book of Life. ====================================================================== WEEK 1246, published September 24, 2017 The Style Invitational Empress has all the answers about this week’s contest and results The example accompanying Style Invitational Week 561, June 2004. We’re doing this contest this week for at least the 13th time. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 21, 2017 (The Empress is doing that wild New Year’s thing in the synagogue on Thursday, so most of this column was written in advance.) In 1998, The Czar of The Style Invitational ran a contest called Double Jeopardy, suggested by Jacob Weinstein of Los Angeles. The first example for Week 254: *She is now in jail, charged with aggravated battery and domestic battery. Question: What happened to the woman who mugged the Energizer Bunny?* Thus began one of my favorite Style Invitational contest series, in which, by my count, we bring you No. 13 this week with Week 1246 . There’s always fresh material for what’s now usually called Questionable Journalism, because we use that week’s newspapers. And since many of the best entries draw their humor from putting a sentence in a totally different context (without explicitly explaining it), they work well with people who’d recognize that context without help — people who read the paper a lot. Which would describe your typical Invite reader. The contest has been pretty much the same over the years: The first couple, in the pre-Internet era, were restricted to that day’s Washington Post, since everyone who was reading the contest had the paper right there. Starting in 2004, the Empress’s first year, we started to cater to online readers and invited people to use anything from either the print Post or washingtonpost.com over the space of a week (later, more, as the online Invite began to be published earlier and earlier; now it’s three days before the print contest appears in Sunday’s Arts & Style section). And this year, now that The Post has beefed up its paywall — the limit on articles that can be viewed without a subscription — I’m going to let you use sentences from other publications that have current dates (not books, past magazines, etc.), provided you can let me see the sentences in their original contexts. (It’s amazing how many of you will incorrectly quote the sentences, misspell people’s names, etc.) Also this year, for the first time, I’m allowing some headlines: the kind that read as full sentences rather than “headlinese,” with missing articles, forms of “to be,” etc. Full-sentence headlines, especially online, where space often isn’t as tight, have become much more common at The Post. Compare these two headlines I see at this moment on washingtonpost.com: Not okay for Week 1246: In sign of U.S. economy’s strength, Fed to start unwinding major stimulus program Okay for Week 1246 (either part): Puerto Rico’s power company was already bankrupt. Then Hurricane Maria hit. For guidance and inspiration, here are some inking entries from the earlier years of the contests. (For more results, see Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List at NRARS.org, and search on “question” till you find one of these contests.) *Week 254 runner-up, 1998:* “Well, we’re glad to be here,” astronaut Bonnie Dunbar replied from the shuttle. Q: Has President Clinton ever made inappropriate advances to female astronauts? (Dave Andrews) (*Note:* While my “significant part of the sentence” rule means that you don’t have to use the whole thing, see here how Dave Andrews used “astronaut Bonnie Dunbar replied*from the shuttle”*to make the joke. Nifty.) *Week 415 winner, 2001:* We gain information, via photons, of distant objects. Q. How does Al Gore challenge the notion that he is too wooden and remote, and that he lacks vision? (Russell Beland) *Week 415 honorable mention:* We put beers in it to stay cold — a mysteriously satisfying way to store beverages. Q. If Dr. Laura has a heart, what purpose could it possibly serve? (Drew Knoblauch) *Week 561 runner-up, 2004:* In a good way. What line never works after informing your wife that her new outfit does indeed make her look fat? (Russell Beland) *(Note: * Here’s an entry that gives no idea of the original context of the original line — and it doesn’t matter, thus proving Ye Old Exception to the Rule.) Week 621 winner, 2005: His response: “I’m not worth anything anymore.” What did the English teacher reply when his depressed son said, “I ain’t worth nothing no more”? (Russell Beland) (For many years, Russell was the Invite’s highest-scoring Loser ever, amassing more than 1,500 blots of ink before he gave it up.) *Week 706 honorable mention, 2007:* This is the place that made me who I am. What’s so special about the back seat of your parents’ SUV? (Jay Shuck) *SEX, DRUGS & ROCKIN’ CHAIR*: THE THEN*NOWS OF WEEK 1242 * **From a non-inking entry by Jon Gearhart* I got numerous then-yuks*now-LOLs from the results of our second “then vs. now” contest, an update of the hilarious contest we ran in 1999 about “old and new concerns for the baby boom generation.” This time, almost two decades later, I welcomed both getting-old jokes and those about how times have changed (over various intervals, some less than a year). I vacillated about running the results in two separate lists, but ultimately decided to mix them up — this time I went along with the opinion of my predecessor, the Czar, rather than that of the Royal Consort, who thought that mixing the two kinds would be somewhat jarring. But we all had the same choice for the winner: Bruce Carlson’s devilishly clever and ruefully timely Mayberry and Opie* Mayberry and Opioids. Were the reference not too subtle as only its second half, it would be a perfect headline for an article about how the epidemic has ravaged many a small town. Granted, it’s not guffaw-humor, but it’s not screedy either (compare with: Then: Donald Trump, disgracing himself. Now: Donald Trump, disgracing this country). And we have plenty of gigglemakers for balance. I discovered this too late to announce it in this week’s Invitational, but it seems that Bruce Carlson is the final winner of the Inkin’ Memorial; after he gets his, there’s just one left, and that’s how-you-say the Empress’s cut. So next week — months after I showed it off in this column and at the Flushies awards in June — I’ll officially announce and display our “new” first-place trophy —the Lose Cannon , complete with a “BNAG” flag flying popgun-style from the bore. This is Bruce’s second Inkin’ Memorial; he won one of the first ones back in Week 964 (2012) for his great Loser Magnet idea, “NOT(E) WORTHY.” And it’s his 25th ink of all time, though they go back to Week 412. Meanwhile, Frank Mann grabs second place and his 69th blot of Invite ink with his Houston*Houston entry. Several people submitted “Houston, we have a problem* Houston, we have a problem.” But Frank played on*two* uh-oh movies with “Houston, we have a problem * Houston,you’re gonna need a bigger boat .” Bill Dorner and David Garratt can tell me their choices of Grossery Bag or Loser Mug for their 12th and 74th blots of ink, respectively. *What Doug dug: * Ace copy editor Doug Norwood also really liked Bruce Carlson’s Mayberry and Opie* Mayberry and Opioids winner. Doug also singled out David Garratt’s “bell-bottom bottoms,” Chris Damm’s “unleaded water,” and Hildy Zampella’s three-parter about rewinding a cassette. *Then: Are you kidding? Now: Put it in that column nobody reads, down at the very bottom.* Actually, this week’s unprintables aren’t all that shocking, but we need something for this section. The president’s deposition, then: “Depends on your definition of ‘is.’” The president’s deposition, now: “Depends on your definition of ‘whiz.’” (Frank Osen) (I am going to assume that the president in the second line will never be deposed on this matter.) Then: Moon landing. Now: Mons handling. (Rob Huffman) Then: Tricky Dick in the White House. Now: Some things never change. (Jon Gearhart) ====================================================================== WEEK 1250, published October 22, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1250: Ode on a Broken Mug, Part II To eulogize a Loser prize: Once again, the Loserbards spring into action James Yanovitch, 14, may be in the doghouse after breaking his mom's Loser Mug. But he proved to be a literary inspiration. (Amanda Yanovitch) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 19, 2017 A mere three weeks ago, The Style Conversational shared the sad story of Melissa Balmain’s broken Loser mug — and the happy consequence of fellow Loser Brendan Beary’s commemoration of it in a brilliant parody of “Ozymandias” in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group. (That poem appears farther down this page.) I swear: I do*not* coat the surface of our runner-up prize with a thin but dangerous application of olive oil. Nevertheless, just two weeks later, 53-time Loser Amanda Yanovitch posted the photo above to her fellow Devotees. Amanda, a writing teacher at Tyler Community College near Richmond, Va., is the mom of three extraordinarily active young sons; I see her Facebook posts of her kids excelling in baseball, swimming and especially gymnastics. So maybe it’s more impressive that Amanda’s “This Is Your Brain on Mugs” Mug — the first of four designs we’ve issued — lasted several years before 14-year-old James prompted Amanda to play off the old dog-shaming meme with some good-natured offspring-shaming. “My kid just dropped my loser mug,” Amanda lamented. “Yesterday he dropped the lid of the butter dish we got when we got married. I was bummed. But THIS!” Brendan Beary — himself the dad of two youths — mused: “I don’t doubt that you'll earn another mug, but remarrying to get a replacement butter dish will take some explaining.” Then added: “And BTW, if you're expecting another broken-mug poem of the sort I did for Melissa Balmain, you're out of luck. First come, first served.” So Melissa —*also*the mom of two teens, as well as a writing instructor at the University of Rochester and the editor of the poetry journalLight — couldn’t let Amanda be wounded doubly, so she offered this limerick: *“Who destroyed this?” growled Mom, the accuser, But her kiddo was quick to defuse her. “Me, me, me!” he replied, His small chest puffed with pride. “Now I'm just like you, Mommy — a loser!”* *Then: Brendan: * (sigh) Okay. You know I never could say no to you. *By the shores of Whatsit Tooya In the tranquil Old Dominion, Stood Amanda, tribe of Waltman (Now a Yanovitch by marriage), With a heart packed full of grieving O'er a Loser mug, now shattered. She who, only separated By a single sunset’s passing From the similar destruction Of another prized memento -- That, a butter-holding relic Of the day that she was wedded, She, who knew that these destructions Were not brought upon her household By the evil Megissogwon Nor some other dreaded shaman But the progeny she raised there In that home in Old Virginny, She took in these grievous burdens, And did channel then the spirit And the words of every mother Through the countless generations As she spake unto her children, "This is why we can’t have nice things!"* However much you care for “Hiawatha,” I hereby declare Brendan’s poem a Higher Watha. Brendan’s idea in the Devotees thread: Whoever breaks a Loser mug next, it’ll be Amanda’s turn to write the mugular thanatopsis. Meanwhile, here’s Brendan’s definitely-worth-repeating parody of “Ozymandias” for Melissa’s mug: *I met a Loser from upstate New York* *Who said: The rubble of a well-earned mug* *Lay strewn here on my floor. I’m such a dork;* *My absent-minded swatting at a bug* *Unleashed this fine ceramic to its fate.* *Upon its lip my lipstick glints, and then* *I all alone beweep my outcast state,* *To know that it and I won’t kiss again.* *Caffeine and great encouragement it lent,* *And thus urged on, no obstacle I saw —* *Declaring, for each entry that I sent,* *“Look on my works, ye Empress, and guffaw!”* *Nothing beside remains. From the parquet,* *The lone and level shards, swept all away.* *AND NOW, BACK TO THE INVITE POEMS* I’m so excited about this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1250 — for one thing, even in the couple of hours since I published the Invite this afternoon, the @StyleInvite Twitter account has been dinging off the hook with likes and retweets. That’s thanks to Merriam-Webster, which spread the word about the contest, in which you use M-W’s Time Travel tool as a prompt for a poem. Surely, the wordies who follow a dictionary’s Twitter feed are as good a cohort as any to become Invite fans. It turns out that there’s no link to Time Traveler directly from the M-W home page; instead, you have to go to a definition of some word, which now included its “first known use” year, and a link to others from that same year. But m-w.com*time-traveler will take you there as well. Meghan Lunghi, M-W’s marketing person (thank her for the tote bag donation), emphasizes that the word might not have made it into the dictionary in the listed year, only that it was found in some published writing for the first time. I think the rules are pretty clear for this contest, but I’ll emphasize (or reemphasize) a few things: — A clever, zingy, readable poem with just three of the year-words will be more likely to get ink than one that’s impressive only for how it got so many words in. Quality, people. — New Losers, take note: Our typical light-verse length is four to eight lines. If you write a sonnet, it had better be both brilliant and funny. — PLEASE write your year-words in ALL CAPITALS. I don’t want to have to track them down, and that ‘s the only way they’ll be apparent to me. Our entry form doesn’t read boldface. — You may use a slightly different form of the word: plural, past tense, adverb, etc. — There’s no rule that the poem has to rhyme. But in my experience of judging Style Invitational poetry contests, which has involved literally tens of thousands of entries, poems that have perfect rhyme and strong meter tend to be more clever and end up getting the vast majority of ink. Remember, we’re a humor contest; I’m not ruling on what is the Greatest Art. — Haiku? Fine with me if you can make it interesting. I like to mix up longer and shorter poems, so there’s a decent chance that I’ll run at least one haiku. — Song parody? I won’t say no. — Should the poem relate somehow to the words’ year? It doesn’t have to. But I could see how that might make a very clever entry. — New people, please note that you can write as many as 25 entries, all from one year or 25 different ones; it doesn’t matter to me. And there is absolutely no advantage in sending them in before the Oct. 30 deadline. I read them in one big list, and I won’t see your name during the judging. My thanks to Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, who suggested I add the first-known-use date of “duh” — 1943 — in my instructions. *Q CARDS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1246* *(I’d actually made that my headline winner this week, until I was alerted by Jesse Frankovich that we’d already done that headline — even though it was Jesse’s own entry)* I’d be happy to do our Questionable Journalism contest every few weeks if it didn’t require so much work for the entrants; there’s never a shortage of fresh source material — that week’s paper — and never a shortage of laughs. But as you might guess from this week’s results , which drew ink for only 16 Losers, not many people wanted to look all over their Post (or other paper) for suitable material; fewer than 100 people entered, a number that would frighten the blank out of me had I not be confident that I could fill the page with the work of five or six of the True Obsessives. And indeed, just about everyone who got ink this week, most of them more than once, is a household name in Loserland. But I was shocked to discover — just this moment, it turns out, as I check theLoser Stats — that it’s the first win ever, out of 73 blots of ink, for Steve Honley. This bumps Steve off the Cantinkerous list of people who get the most ink without ever having won a contest. (Kyle Hendrickson, who once again came close last week with two honorable mentions, still stands atop Mount Cantinkerous with 89 always-a-bridesmaid blots.) But runners-up Mark Raffman, John Hutchins and Jesse Frankovich are soaking in ink so deeply that I’m not going to dirty my typing fingers by discussing them further. I decided that linking to all the original sentence to show them in their original habitat wasn’t worth it; I hope you sense that Steve Honley’s “don’t care for brown and reds together” was about interior decorating, for example. , or that “dropping shoes” meant that Mueller was talking about “letting the other shoe drop” with some revelation. *What Doug Dug:* It’s been a while since Doug agreed with me on the winners, but he liked all the “above the fold” entries this week, also singling out Mary Kappus’s 300-square-foot studio for 1-percenters; Kevin Dopart’s yoga pants joke (“pants” is a great joke word); and Frank Osen’s “dunked in soy sauce.’ *Unquestionable: The unprintables of Week 1246:* A lot of stuff this week that clearly couldn’t see the light of the Invite: A. We’ve been going down, and everything has just gotten more and more depressing. Q. How have things been at the Thomas Hardy Memorial Brothel? (Duncan Stevens) A: “You’ve got to come right now.” Q: What is a typical direction while filming a porn movie on a strict budget? (Tom Witte) A: He’s jumping up and down, saying, ‘Nana! Nana! Nana!’” Q: What is one line in the script for “Grandma Likes her Incest Rough?” (Witte again. Sheez.) A: It didn’t matter if you were a good player or you sucked., Q: Did oral sex used to help one’s career as a professional athlete? (Guess who.) A. “This is what you’re going to reach for when your kids spill cereal in the morning.” Q. What is a belt? (Steve Honley) Yuck. ====================================================================== WEEK 1251, published October 29, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1251: Thanks, everyone In our previous ‘things to be thankful’ contests, not all linings stayed silver In 2006, Art Grinath was a runner-up in Week 685 with this entry: “I’m thankful that Kim Jong Il doesn’t have an evil twin.” Maybe not, but four years later we got the evil spawn. (ASSOCIATED PRESS) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 26, 2017 For one thing, I was thankful in 2006 for not getting too much heat for getting the week number wrong. In the Sunday, Oct. 22, paper that year, I announced the predecessor ofthis week’s Style Invitational contest as Week 686, failing to keep straight that the previous week’s contest was Week 684. What-everrrrr. The next week, I called that contest Week 686a. I am truly thankful now that such an error — like many others I make regularly — will no longer make it into the Sunday paper to remain for eternity: Now that I post the Invite online every Thursday, I know that numerous eagle-eyed members of the Loser Community will catch it and let me know in time to fix the print version before the Thursday evening typesetting deadline. Anyway, I’m still here, and so is our 1,251-or-so-week-old pal. Though we’ve had other “silver linings” contests — most recently about the 2016 presidential election;results here ), Really Week 685 is the exact antecedent of Week 1251. So if you’re entering this week, don’t use the jokes below. I’ve annotated the topical references from the middle of the George W. Bush era, which probably were very gettable back then. Most notable to me is the first entry in the list of results, the fourth-place entry by Art Grinath: “I’m thankful that Kim Jong Il doesn’t have an evil twin.” True, but not enough, alas: It would be just four years before the Dear Leader met his demise to be succeeded by the closest thing: his evil clone, Liddle Kim Jong Un. Enduring thanks: From the Week 685 Style Invitational, October 2006. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) Here are the rest: *Report From Week 686* *(a.k.a. Week 685),* in which we asked you to offer up some things to be thankful for. Some people supplied notes of thanks especially suited to the Thanksgiving table; others espoused more generally ridiculous*nasty*cynical sentiments. Most everyone expressed heartfelt thanks for the 22nd Amendment . *Third place: * I’m thankful that someone found my grandmother attractive. (Tim Vanderlee, Austin) *Second place, **the winner of the bobblehead of President Bush in his “Mission Accomplished” flight suit:* That I’m tall enough that I can’t smell my own feet. (Eric Murphy, Ann Arbor, Mich.) *And the Winner of the Inker : * We should all be thankful that bald eagles taste terrible. Their eggs, too. (Bruce Alter, Fairfax Station, Va.) *We’re Also Mildly Appreciative . . . : Honorable Mentions* That my daughter has not yet pierced her other eyeball. (Rick Haynes, Potomac, Md.) That here in the Washington area we have many wonderful cultural attractions, some of which I might get to one of these days if my relatives come to visit. (Dennis Lindsay, Seabrook, Md.) That dogs don’t know everyone else hates you. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.) For the sophistication of French cuisine, especially their fries. (Bob Dalton, Arlington, Va.) That I learned that x = 3 and y = 4, so now I’ll be able to help my son with his algebra homework. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) That they don’t allow remote controls at the movie theater. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.) That O.J. likes to play golf so much — otherwise he might still be looking for me. — T.R. Killer, Brentwood, Calif. (Jeff Brechlin) [as in “The real killer,” whom Simpson, upon his acquittal, vowed to search for] That zombies can be stopped by a sharp blow to the head. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.) [Well, they’re back in fashion.] That it’s bags of spinach that kill you and not bags of M&M’s. (Russell Beland, Springfield, Va.) [A month before, there had been a deadly E. coli outbreak traced to bags of the otherwise-superfood.] That you have to admit you have a problem before going through all the other steps. Man, did that save me a lot of time! (Drew Bennett, Alexandria, Va.) [Shortly after this, Drew relocated to West Plains, Mo., to become chancellor of the Missouri State campus there. He plans to retire next spring, but fortunately has kept entering the Invite — he wins this week.] I’m thankful yo mama so easy. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) That everyone realized Helen Keller was playing up her handicaps for effect. — R.L., West Palm Beach, Fla. (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis) [Rush Limbaugh had just attacked actor Michael J. Fox for “moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act.” Fox, who was endorsing candidates who favored stem cell research, has Parkinson’s disease.] That GM doesn’t make Hondas. (Rick Peterson, Bethesda, Md.) [General Motors was still in the midst of a coverup scandal involving cars whose ignitions suddenly turned off, causing several deaths.] That changing their name from Bullets to Wizards did so much to reduce gun violence in Washington. (Thad Humphries, Castleton, Va.) [Abe Pollin, then the owner of Washington’s NBA team, changed the name when the team moved from the suburbs to a new arena downtown. The original name, Pollin said, was to connote “faster than a speeding bullet,” but “today the connotation is a little different. It’s connected with so many horrible things that people do with guns and bullets”; the city had logged 416 murders the previous year. (That entry is an example of one that I’ve run although I disagree with its sentiments: I don’t think it’s fair to criticize a clearly symbolic high-minded gesture because it doesn’t produce empirical results.)] That Tibet and Somalia probably still don’t have nuclear weapons. (Jeannie Kunkel, Fairfax, Va.) [Still possibly true!] That no one on my kid’s soccer team knows that I’m a doctor, because when the coach’s kid broke his leg and people were shouting for a doctor, I was making a run for high score in Tetris on my cellphone. (Jeff Brechlin) [Jeff, fortunately, is not actually a doctor. This, in an only slightly different form, would have worked in Week 1248’s “True Confessions” contest, whose results run next week.] That your pets can’t testify against you. (Bob Dalton) That old age doesn’t last forever. (Dave Kelsey, Fairfax, Va.) I’m thankful that Uncle Billy finally croaked and I get a chance to sit at the big table. (Rich Carlson, Bowie, Md.) I am thankful for this squash from our garden, which cost about $75 to grow. (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly, Va.) That NFL halftimes are only 15 minutes, so we don’t have to waste lots of time sitting around the dinner table on Thanksgiving Day. (Marty McCullen, Gettysburg, Pa.) [That year, the NFL added a third game to the Thanksgiving schedule, allowing couch sweet potatoes to root themselves in front of the tube for something like 12 hours. This year’s triple-header, by the way: the Lions and Vikings at 12:30 Eastern; the Chargers and Cowboys at 4:30; and finally the New York Giants at Washington at 8:30.] That Steve Wynn is not a museum curator or an eye surgeon. (David Kleinbard, Jersey City) [In 2006 the flamboyant Las Vegas casino owner was showing off the Picasso painting he’d bought for $48 million and was about to sell it for more than $100 million, when he wheeled around and accidentally (duh) stuck his elbow through it. Amazing epilogue: The intended buyer, a hedge fund billionaire and well-known collector, eventually bought the painting anyway after restoration — for more than he’d originally agreed to pay.] That Mark Foley was thoughtful enough to put his feelings in writing. (David Kleinbard) [The previous month, it was revealed that Rep. Mark Foley of Florida had sent sexually suggestive emails and instant messages to teenage boys who had formerly served as congressional pages. A Republican who’d voted against gay rights legislation, Foley resigned.] That it turns out Ben Cardin ALSO loves puppies — whew!! (Ron Jackson, Chevy Chase, Md.) [Democrat-turned-Republican Michael Steele ran against Cardin, then a popular Democratic House member, for the Senate from Maryland. Steele rana commercial warning voters that people were going to say mean things about him like “Steele Hates Puppies,” and that, for the record, he actually loved puppies. It was cute, but Marylanders elected Cardin overwhelmingly.] That I don’t understand Portuguese, because that’s what the nasty voices in my head speak. (Bird Waring, New York) That there were no wild emu in 1621 New England. (Ben Aronin, Washington) That I don’t yet know which aisle of the supermarket has the Depends. (Patrick Mattimore, San Francisco) That my class president elections didn’t use Diebold machines. (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) [A number of voting irregularities had been discovered in Diebold voting machines in software, including in the crucial Florida vote in the 2000 presidential election. Closer to 2006, much was made of the fact that the chairman of Diebold was a major Republican fundraiser.] I’m thankful for women who love short, cheap, egomaniacal guys. (David Kleinbard) That it actually does get better than this. (Art Grinath) And Last: I’m thankful that for one more week, I don’t own that butt-ugly painting. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) [Style Invitational Week 686 for Real asked contestants to say why they should be awarded Loser Fred Dawson’soriginal portrait of a (very) red-haired woman , which Fred himself had touted as a terrible picture. Art Grinath had won the painting in an earlier Invite, but insisted on regifting it, saying that “frankly, it frightened my cats.” And who won the painting this second time? Not Brendan. It was . . .: *And the Winner of the Ugly Painting:* “I should get it because everyone thinks you’ll give it to me because that would be funny, but then people will think you would never resort to such a cheap and easy laugh, so they’ll be sure you won’t give it to me, and that’s when you’ll fool them. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park)” *TAKE 1,247: THE MOVIE RESCRIPT RESULTS * Ah, so much silly in the results of Week 1247, in which we asked you to reinterpret the title of a movie and supply a line from your “script.” Lots of fun this week — how can you not laugh at Gary Crockett’s “Shawshank Redemption: “I’m going to the pawnshop to get my shawshank back”? — and there were literally hundreds of entries I found amusing. But take it from me: the jokes start to wear thin after the first few dozen, which is why I cut off the list of inking entries at a still healthy 35, in which 27 Losers get ink. Once again, I was disappointed to end up without a First Offender, though it’s just the second blot of ink for Mark Prysant and James Kruger, the third for Danny Wysong and the fourth for Colin Schatz. The aforementioned Drew Bennett stubs his toe on the 150-ink milestone with his seventh win (but his first of the new Lose Cannon trophies). And runners-up Jesse Frankovich, Larry Gray and Danielle Nowlin — with 618 blots of ink among them, including 76 “above the fold” — each got multiple honorable mentions as well. *What Doug Dug:* The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood this week are from the HM list: Danielle’s “Boyz N the Hood” and “How to Train Your Dragon’; “The Thin Red Line” by Duncan Stevens, who suggested the contest; and Dave Matuskey’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” There were, unsurprisingly, a lot of similar “scripts” for many of the titles. There are a few joint credits, but I usually chose one over another for some reason (if it concerned your non-inking entry, it was because I just don’t like that smirk on your face). *Cut! Unprintables from Week 1247: * Among those not rated P (printable) this week (I sneaked Tom Witte’s “Must Love Dogs” into the Invite near the end, and at this writing it’s still there). I’m just looking up the names of the authors as I copy these entries in: On Golden Pond: “I guess threesomes and water sports are a bad combination.” (Duncan Stevens) He’s Just Not That Into You: “Ma’am, I think I’ve figured out why you and your husband Little Willy are having trouble conceiving.” (Duncan Stevens) The 400 Blows: “Ms. Lovelace, we all think it’s time for you to retire.” (Neal Starkman) Peter Pan: “Nigella, I’m afraid to ask but, which pot do I use to cook the spotted dick?” (John McCooey) 9 to 5: “It’s all right, really – so what if you’re not as big as my ex? I swear, I’m not comparing you!” (Tom Witte, who seems to have a fixation on penis length ... I mean penis length jokes) Die Hard: “Well, that about completes Mr. Dillinger’s autopsy. Let’s just check one last thing...HOLY SH*T!” (Rob Huffman) Going in Style: “This is a really nice hotel suite, Mr. Trump. Thanks for the caviar and all that champagne. What would you like Olga and me to do now?” (Mark Prysant) The reason that this joke is here and not in the Invite proper is that it concerns really scurrilous and really unproven allegations. I’ve run jokes that have alluded to the scandal, but I thought this entry was a bit too specific. By the way, the original movie title is a pun in itself; it’s a comedy about old men risking their lives in a bank heist. “How Green Was My Valley”: “My bikini waxer thinks I’d better cut out the kale smoothies before I need medical help.” (Barry Koch) *Next Loser Sighting: * Sunday, Nov. 12, the brunch buffet at Buddy’s Crabs and Ribs at the Annapolis City Dock. I plan to go. RSVP to Elden Carnahan here . ====================================================================== WEEK 1252, published November 5, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1252: Nerdy little secrets Sometrue‘true confessions’ from our recent contest From a rickety PDF, the examples for Week 356 (aka Week XXIII -- don't ask), July 2, 2000. (Cartoon by Bob Staake for The Washington Post*PDF via ProQuest) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 2, 2017 *(“Nerdy little secrets” was a non-inking headline by Chris Doyle.)* Along with the Stephen Colbert-style “True Confessions” that I asked for in Week 1248 of The Style Invitational, I also welcomed the Loser Community to share some that were actually true. Some Losers didn’t always specify which were which, causing me to look up who’d written some of the entries and ask those people about them. (Mark Calandra, if you really did eat corn on the cob vertically, that would have scored you a magnet just for weirdness; as just an idea, though, it fell a kernel or two short of inkworthy.) Here are a few true admissions that, while I didn’t think they fit the Invite as something to chuckle at, are certainly fascinating. *From Brian Allgar, *who’s from Britain but has lived in Paris for many years: “The passage just behind our garden has become infested by loudmouthed drug-dealing hoodies [I saw that and knew the writer wasn’t American; Brian, “hoodie” here is reserved for hooded sweatshirts]. We used to dispose of our dog’s droppings hygienically, but now we smear them on the wall where the hoodies sit. I wonder if they’ve noticed yet? Perhaps they just say “Hey, man, this is good s---!” From this, one assumes that Brian’s plan didn’t work, unless he just wanted them to hang around with dog turds.] *From Ward Kay,* who grew up in Detroit: “My favorite high school prank was to exchange the realtors’ signs on different houses for sale, so they still had a for-sale sign, just a different company.” I wonder how many home sales that funny ol’ Ward thwarted. Hey, kids: Ward lives in Vienna, Va. *Jon Ketzner,* of western Maryland, labeled the following as “mostly true”: “Every Thursday, I am compelled to join my wife as she breakfasts with her cohort of female retired professional educators. I am the only male. I put a look of bemused fascination on my face as they denounce yet again our duly elected knucklehead and I wonder as to the stylings of the pubis of each breakfasting lady — fulsome, landing strip, Kojak, etc. I am impressively turgid by the time the eggs Benedict are served. Thank you, President Trump.” Rather taken aback, I contacted Jon to ask which was the mostly part and which the non-mostly. He clarified: True, his wife has breakfast each week with her former colleagues, who are actuaries and educators. Also true that they “HATE HATE HATE” the current occupant of the Oval Office. Not true, alas: that Jon himself goes to these breakfasts; in fact, husbands are not invited. Also, “they eat at Denny’s which I don’t believe serves eggs Benedict.” And finally: “I only have carnal thoughts about my beautiful wife and my robust ardor has not waned in 43 years. Thanks for your interest.” Mrs. Ketzner, I’m guessing that you won’t be disappointed that your breakfast club and its participants and their nether regions will not be mentioned in the print pages of The Washington Post. ** **And then there was this, shared by*Lois Winkler *of Carrboro, N.C. Lois hasn’t had ink in the Invitational, but she’s a longtime Invite reader and also an active member of the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook. As I told Lois, I didn’t think her confession was right for a humor contest, but I think it’s fascinating and poignant. If she was willing to share it with the Invite, I hope that she actually writes an essay about it instead: “When ‘PBS NewsHour’ had its honor roll of fallen military, I would honor them by pretending, in that quick moment, to have sex with each one, man and woman, even though some weren’t my type. I wanted them to be deeply loved — and [loved] — as they faded into history.” The entries that did ink in this week’s results are all obviously jokes (don’t you figure that this statement will be refuted by someone who writes in and says, “No, I really did put the poop in the newspaper bag with my hands until I figured it out!”). It’s the ninth win in just a few years for Rob Huffman — who I will even more confidently say is the funniest librarian in the Stafford County, Va., school system — but it’s his first Lose Cannon, our new trophy. I tip my tofu-animal-head to Rob, who now has 165 blots of Invite ink. Still-a-Phenom Hildy Zampella, who didn’t start Inviting till Week 1140, gets her 10th ink “above the fold” along with the big cloppy Dutch clogs donated by Pie Snelson. If they don’t fit, they’ll still do the number on cockroaches. David Kleinbard, who’s dropped in and out here ever since Week 169, reaches Ink No. 101 with his third-place entry, earning him his choice of the Loser Mug or the Grossery Bag (don’t make me guess, David), and Jonathan Hardis, who said he’d been waiting forever to use this joke, fills out the this week’s Loser Circle with his 69th blot. *What Doug Dug: *Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me this week about the winner. He also singled out Bill Dorner’s confession about pouring his Sam’s Club whisky into those status-symbol Costco whisky bottles. *Several Hail Marys * are due (well, he doesn’t really have to say them, since he’s active in his Baptist church) from Ward Kay, whose entry was deemed Just Too Creepy by the Empress, the Royal Consort and even the Czar: “Candy doesn’t do it anymore: Now if I want to lure kids into my creepy white van, I have to tell them I have free WiFi.” *TAKE 25 AND CALL US IN A WEEK AND A HALF: THIS WEEK’S NEW CONTEST * I’m hopeful that for Week 1252 this week we’ll have plenty of wordplay and other humor still available that wasn’t used in our first go-round of this contest. Not all that many of the results in July 2000 were topical, but then again we have 17 more years’ worth of medical names to play off. Here are the winners from what we now label Week 356, sensibly ignoring the Roman-numeral count that began in January 2000, after the Invitational returned from a six-month hiatus, and was finally dropped in March 2003, on the Invite’s 10th anniversary. As I did in last week’s Conversational, I’ve added a few annotations. *Report from Week XXIII, * in which we asked you to come up with a new medication and its use. * *Third Runner-Up: Exceedrin: *A cure for hangovers. (James Pierce, Charlottesville, Va.) **Second Runner-Up: Barium Enigma*: An unpleasant procedure that usually provides an ambiguous, but curiously interesting, diagnosis. (Steve Fahey, Kensington, Md.) ** First Runner-Up:* *Forgivemycin:* A morning-after contraceptive. (Mike Serlin, Alexandria) [Hmm, I’m not sure that “forgive my sin” works too well with the designated use. ] ** And the winner of the gigantic bra and panties:* *Herbal Hoover: A *tranquilizer that’s been taken off the market because it was found to cause depression. (Chester Myslicki, McLean, Va.) ** Honorable Mentions:* *Noraephron--*A sleep inducer. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge, Va.) *Nadvil--*Relieves post-vasectomy pain. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg, Md.) *Prozaic*--A cure for the dullness of everyday life. (Richard B. Pearlstein, Falls Church, Va.; Twyla Vernon, Washington) *K.O. Pectate--*A cure for diarrhea that plugs you good. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park, Md.) *Testosteroni--*A hormonal supplement eaten as pasta. (Tom Witte) *Milk of Amnesia-*-An infant formula to help forget birth trauma. (Paul J. Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.) *Ginkgo Balboa--*A seasickness cure, particularly effective for long ocean voyages. (Roz Jonas, Bethesda, Md.) *Kinko Biloba*--Cures fetishism. (Joseph Romm, Washington) *Sexcedrin-*-What to give someone who says “not tonight, dear, I have a headache.” (Joseph Romm, Washington) *Oinkment--*A topically applied weight-reduction cream. (Dean Crews, Chevy Chase, Md.) *Darva-on--*Induces vomiting. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) [That year, Darva Conger was the first winner of the TV show “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire,” marrying one Rick Rockwell on the spot. Within two months, she had sought an annulment, claiming Rockwell had misrepresented himself. Later that year she posed nude for Playboy, and two years later won by unanimous decision a bout on “Celebrity Boxing,” defeating ... Olga Korbut.] *Pep El Cid*--For use by morticians; restores realistic look to corpses. (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) [I’m not getting this one. Is there something in the legend of El Cid?] *Aesthetominophen--*You don’t feel any better, but you look fabulous. (Meg Sullivan, Potomac, Md.) *Non-interferon--*A black-market drug often slipped to unsuspecting in-laws. (Meg Sullivan) *Conan the Barbiturate-*-A combination sleep aid*steroid. (Meg Sullivan) *Oil of Oy Vey-*-It couldn’t hurt. (Stu Solomon, Springfield, Va.) *Ibuprofane--*Relieves symptoms of Tourette’s syndrome. (Art Simpsen, Alexandria, Va.) *Preparation X--*A treatment for anxiety caused by those irritatingly successful 18- to 35-year-olds. (Janet Arrowsmith-Lowe, Ruidoso, N.M.) *Katopectate--*A treatment for lethargy. (Chuck Smith) [A reference to Kato Kaelin, O.J. Simpson’s Dude-like houseguest who gained fame as a trial witness.] *Tussaud--*Combats ear wax. (Chuck Smith) *Ropadopamine--*Retards brain damage from blows to the head. (Steven Feder, Arlington, Va.; Chuck Smith) [Given that “rope-a-dope” was the signature move of Muhammad Ali, we wouldn’t use that one now.] *Preparation Ouch--*Dry-ice suppositories for hemorrhoids. (Steve Fahey) *Sigfreudoscope--*A device for detecting repressed fantasies. (Jonathan Paul) *No D’ohs-*-Memory enhancer. (Jonathan Paul) *Mentalmucil--*Relieves writer’s block. (Jonathan Paul) *Prestidigitalis--*A cure-all. Works like magic! (Sandra Segal, Rockville, Md.) *Pepsid--*A cure for addiction to Coke. (Rick Howard, Germantown, Md.) *Histalavista--*Say bye-bye to those allergies. (Chuck Smith) ** The Uncle’s Pick:* The Uncle makes no pick today. The Uncle Explains: There is nothing funny about disease. [The prissy, clueless, explain-the-humor-away Uncle of The Style Invitational was a running joke instituted that year by the Czar; if it was intended to spoof anyone in particular, the Czar never said so. While sometimes “the Uncle’s pick” was a way to mock an actual lame Invitational entry (by having the Uncle love it), some Losers successfully submitted entries designated as Uncle’s picks. In May 2001 the Invitational reported that the Uncle was missing, and a contest was announced to explain what happened. The winner, by Tom Witte: “Disillusioned gentleman ISO sympathy. I recently discovered my view of the world has been terribly flawed, and my professional colleagues have been snickering behind my back for years. I thought I held a position of importance; apparently, I was just being indulged. I have dropped out of sight, left my wife, and am now in the process of reevaluating my life. I’d like the comfort of an old-fashioned, plain-spoken woman. Sense of humor a minus.”] *NOV. 12: BRUNCH IN HISTORIC ANNAPOLIS WITH HISTORIC LOSERS!* The next monthly Loser Brunch — No. 202 — is the annual visit to the buffet at Buddy’s Crabs and Ribs in downtown Annapolis on Sunday, Nov. 12, at noon. It’s also fun to walk around the streets and shops afterward. I plan to go; especially if you’re not one of the regulars, let me know if you’re coming so I’ll be sure to attend. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org ; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” ====================================================================== WEEK 1253, published November 12, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1253: Just a few more questions ... Some ‘noinks’ from the Ask Backwards contest Another of Bob Staake's proposed cartoons for Week 1253: "The thong, when worn through the armpits and across the head, was originally used to flatten the nose and reduce snoring." (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 9, 2017 The results that run in this week’s Style Invitational are of our 36th Ask Backwards contest, and at least the 14th I’ve judged. And since it’s hard to predict which “answers” we offer in search of matching questions will bear fruit, I tend to add a few extra categories as insurance. This week’s results, though, reminded me that I ought to keep the list to 12 items we used to do; there’s just more good stuff than there’s room to print. Whew, I’m going to be mailing out a slew of prize letters next week: Thirty-three Losers (including First Offender Susan Kaplan) got ink in Week 1249, with a total of 44 inking entries. But I used only 12 of the 15 categories. Here are some “noinks,” as they say in theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook group, from the other three. *Despacheeto, * which was a play on the current hit song “Despacito” (“Slowly”), whosevideo was made in Puerto Rico, and of course was going to be read by many as an allusion to You Know Who (though others were reminded of the 1970s Eagles song “Desperado”): What blockbuster hit contains the chorus “In a storm he’ll be your beacon* Long as you’re not Puerto Rican”? (Frank Osen) What leaves behind a greasy orange residue that is hard to remove even with paper towels? (Jesse Frankovich) I can see why she didn't make it say "Invitational": This week's second prize in progress. (Design, knitting and photo by Catharine Mefford) Whose touch turns Gold Stars a sad, rusty orange? (Kevin Dopart) Besides “Lady Marmalade,” are there any songs with foreign lyrics about orange foods? (Hildy Zampella) What is NSA’s code-word acronym for the classified report “Documentary Evidence Shows Putin Asked: Could Hillary’s Emails Elect The Orangeman”? (Chris Doyle) *There’s still no app for THAT:* Hey, now that I have an iPhone X, am I not now cool and popular? (Edward Gordon) Alexa, will you please take out the trash? (Bill Dorner) How can we get the Empress a sense of humor? (Steve Glomb) And then there were a few who used the other sense of the word, like: Wings, nachos, tater skins . . . I don’t know, what would get*you* hungry for an Applebee’s dinner? (Steve McClemons) *Blecchsit* What do you call it when a bad batch of fish and chips works its way back out? (John Hutchins) What does one do from a British restaurant serving only haggis, black & white pudding, and jellied eels? (Bill Dorner) What happens when you realize you were wrong to put the English muffin, Belgian waffle and French toast all in the same place at the same time? (Danielle Nowlin) How do some women now refer to the apparently common practice of running out of Harvey Weinstein’s hotel room? (Andy Promisel) What is the name of the movement to have Belgium, Luxembourg, Estonia, Croatia, Cyprus, and Hungary leave the European Union? (Aron Trombka) And if your best entry didn’t get ink and then was doubly robbed by not being mentioned here? Remember that each December, we have a retrospective in which you get to enter any of the past year’s contests. And you’re allowed to resubmit earlier entries; who knows, maybe the Empress will finally get that sense of humor. Meanwhile, it’s the first contest win, and the 11th blot of ink, for Deb Stewart, who got her first ink way back in Week 320. Losers on the Devotees page were commiserating over the difficulty of producing a zingy connection among the fidget spinner, the infinity scarf and Cher — besides the one that everyone did, “go on forever” — but Deb aced it with cool*warm*hot for three generations. The rest of the Losers’ Circle is populated with three Usual Suspect runners-up; I read Ward Kay’s “280 characters” joke right after I’d seen a Facebook post by a friend, a high school theater director, about a parent who demanded to know why her kid wasn’t in the front row in a dance number. By the way: If you said that what they don’t have at Whole Foods was a Slim Jim smoothie, get in line. It won’t be the express line. *Guest Copy Editor Weigh-In — the Feeney Funny: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood was off this week, and so my onetime Style copy desk colleague Mary Feeney was stuck with given the great honor of reading the Invitational. Actually, Mary is a longtime Invite fan, and she readily agreed to cite her favorites: “They were all pretty funny. These are the ones that made me laugh out loud.” Mary then singled out : Frank Osen’s Slim Jim Smoothie as the nickname Trump discarded as not demeaning enough for James Comey?; Bill Dorner’s “bag of frozen GMO batter-dipped manatee nuggets” as what I don’t think they have at Whole Foods; Three for “Wynken, Blynken & Stynken”: Mark Raffman’s eye surgery*hemorrhoid practice; Mark Calandra’s play on the poem “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” as “sailed off in a wooden loo”; and Steve McClemons’s “Syngles Night at Ben’s Chili Bowl”; Steve Glomb saying that “the comma before the storm” was Italian for “momentary truce”; And two for “nose hair extensions”: Jeff Shirley saying that’s what “made the prince suddenly retch when he finally reached Rapunzel’s window” and what Mark Raffman said were part of his son’s “Dad” Halloween costume. *FASHTOIDS: THIS WEEK’S CONTEST* Honestly, my first plan for a contest this week was to play off the “280 characters” in this week’s results, but didn’t figure out a good one. In case you haven’t heard, Twitter is experimenting with permitting tweets of up to 280 characters, double the current maximum. I personally think it’s a great idea — there are few Invite jokes that I can fit in a tweet if I also want to link to the contest — though many inveterate tweeters consider it a horrible invitation to verbosity (some snarky 280s here ). I was planning to have some sort of poetry contest but we just ran onethree weeks ago . Still, I’d like to do a 280-contest; feel free to email me with suggestions. Remember, if you’re in town and I use your idea, I’ll take you out for ice cream; if you’re out of town, I’ll buy two cones and mail you one. So instead we have yet another false-facts contest — a category for which I’m also open to new suggestions, because these contests always yield great jokes. Our fictoid contests — we’ve done movies, sports, history, medicine, word origins and several more — are basically spoofs on lists of “fun facts” trivia lists. As far as I know, however, nobody has perpetuated our bogus trivia across social media, claiming either that these things are real or that The Washington Post is lying lying lying. But there’s still hope! As I do most weeks when we redo a contest, I sent our cartoonist, Bob Staake, a choice of earlier entries to illustrate. But Bob instead came back with a list of ideas of his own, including the upside-down dunce cap I chose for this week’s example. It was a hard choice, though, between that one and the cartoon that appears at the top of this column, the thong as a nose flattener*snoring cure. The final determinant: I felt that the guy sitting up in bed didn’t quite convey “snoring,” not to mention that it looked a bit BDSM for a Sunday cartoon. Anyway, I loved the dunce cap joke — and found it nifty how Bob solved the problem of having to use a sharply horizontal space to depicting a person wearing a dunce cap. And how about that beautiful knit cap created and donated by Devotee Catharine Mefford — it’s even nicer than it looks in the photo. The burgundy and gold, Cat tells me, happened to be what she had on hand, and were not intended to echo the colors of the Washington football team. Four weeks from now, I’m going to make sure that the second-place Loser really wants it; if not, I’ll send that person another prize and make sure that the hat goes to someone who’ll appreciate Cat’s work (it’s an adult size Large, she estimates). *SUNDAY: PIG OUT WITH THE LOSERS IN ANNAPOLIS* You can find me atBuddy’s Crabs and Ribs in Annapolis, Md., this Sunday, trotting to and from the buffet line at this month’s Loser Brunch (No. 202!). Join me and a dozen or so other Losers at noon. It’s at noon, with both breakfast and lunch stuff available for gobbling. RSVP to Elden Carnahanhere so we’ll have a head count. ====================================================================== WEEK 1254, published November 19, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1254: Something ode, something new First use of ‘kook’: 1960 — whatever did they call us before that? (Screen image from m-w.com*time-traveler) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 16, 2017 *(Today’s headline was a too-long-to-fit entry by Tom Witte)* Well, that turned out to be a challenge, huh? Such a cool tool, Merriam-Webster’s Time Traveler, which shows you a list of terms whose “first known use” was in the year you specify. But as you can gather from the picture above, the “list” — which can’t be copied and pasted — isn’t that easy to work with when you’re, oh, say, trying to find at least three words from a single year, out of hundreds, that can form the basis of a funny poem. Not to mention that it’s hard to write a funny poem, period (first use of “period”: 1532). So it wasn’t a shock that I received only a few hundred poems for Style Invitational Week 1250 , nor that — with one notable exception — all of this week’s inking entries were written by regular entrants, and most of them qualifying as what I admiringly call Obsessive Losers. Mark Raffman not only wins the contest for the*twelfth* (pre-12th century, though*thirteenth* wouldn’t appear for hundreds of years later) time, giving him an even 50 blots of ink “above the fold,” but he gets three honorable mentions this week as well — almost a quarter of the this week’s total ink. So with 445 blots of ink, that sends Mark boinging over four cracks on the weedy sidewalk to the 500-Blot Style Invitational Hall of Fame. Third- and fourth-place Loserbards Hildy Zampella and Jon Gearhart are also fixtures of the Losers’ Circle. But it’s a totally new entrant to the Invite — with a tour de force of a narrative poem, along with several other also worthy entries — who grabs second place and that nifty “biweekly”-vs.-“fortnightly” tote bag sent us by Merriam-Webster itself. David Ginensky of New York went to college in the D.C. area a decade ago, and learned about the Invitational by reading Gene Weingarten’s column in the Post Magazine. (Whatever it takes!) He’s not a professional poet but “I’ve always liked writing (hopefully) funny poems in my spare time.” Sometimes when I get a very good entry from someone who’d never entered before, I worry that the person might have stolen the joke somewhere. No problem with Week 1250 — surely it’s the first Time Traveler poetry contest ever. Here’s one more from David (he sent me six) : *1947:* Lenny, the designer, and a *loner workaholic,* at the office *open bar* became an awful, ardent brute who insisted upon smoking near the rum, which, *hypergolic,* might have killed him had he not designed his *flame-retardant* suit. The bouncer saw the *foul-up* and gave Lenny the ole *heave ho,* which he should have gotten anyway for where he chose to smoke (he deserved the local *drunk tank*). But Lenny wouldn’t leave, though, so the bouncer grabbed his *Windsor knot* and gave ole Len a choke. *What Doug Dug: * In addition to all this week’s top winners, Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood singled out Jesse Frankovich’s Your Mama joke and Mark Raffman’s shaggy-dog poem about the Boy Scout fixing the car horn: “Beep repaired!” (For some year-poems from this contest that were too tasteless even for the Invite, go to the bottom of this column. If you don’t want to see them, please don’t go there.) *A LITTLE REBRANDING: THIS WEEK’S CHANGE-A-LETTER CONTEST * When Loser Matt Monitto suggested this variation of our classic neologism challenge, I couldn’t believe we hadn’t done it specifically. But I couldn’t find it on Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List at NRARS.org , I did, however, find a few entries from other contests that would fit the parameters of Week 1254, some of which I used as this week’s examples. One contest, which I judged back in 2001 when I was a wee Auxiliary Czar, was headlined “Sins of Omission” and asked readers to drop letters — as many as they liked — from a store name, as if the lights were out on a neon sign. This is where we got “Untie Anne’s,” which Bob Staake chose for his cartoon. This week, remember, you can’t drop more than one letter (I’ll let you play with spaces anyway you like, though), but I thought I’d share some of the Week 397 entries even though most drop far more: Fourth runner-up: KMART to K MA, the store where your child will try on the clothes you want him to. (Peyton Coyner, Afton, Va.) Third runner-up:TALBERT’S ICE AND BEVERAGE to TARTS AND BEER: Swing by and pick up a case! (Jim W. Pond, Holliston, Mass.) Second runner-up:KAISER PERMANENTE to AIEEEE, an anesthesia- free surgery center. (Bill Strider, Gaithersburg) First runner-up: PETITS PLATS restaurant to PETIT SPLAT, a bistro specializing in road-kill appetizers. (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) And the winner of the Baby Prince William paper dolls: WAL- MART to WART: Our name is synonymous with unwanted growth. (Selma Mathias, Harrisonburg, Va.) Honorable Mentions: SHUMAN’S BAKERY, Alexandria, to HUMAN BAKERY, specializing in gingerbread men and ladyfingers -- S. Todd, proprietor. (Ervin Stembol, Alexandria) BRITCHES OF GEORGETOWNE to BITES OF GEORGE W: Colonial dentistry, wooden teeth our specialty. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) HOWARD COMMUNITY COLLEGE to HOW COM COLLEGE: Accreditation pending. (Phyllis Kepner, Columbia) TIMBERMAN DRUGS, Alexandria, to TIMBER N RUGS, providing men with all their midlife-crisis needs from Viagra to toupees. (Ervin Stembol, Alexandria) KINKO’S to INKO’S: Documents copied by scribes while you wait. (Craig DuBose, Charlottesville) ADULT WORLD PLAYHOUSE CINEMA, Syracuse, N.Y., to A DULL HOUSE, featuring round-the-clock production of Ibsen plays. (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.) BURLINGTON COAT FACTORY to BUTT FAT, the plus-size center. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) BALLY TOTAL FITNESS to LOAFIN, not-so-total fitness. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) HEART IN HAND restaurant, Clifton, to EAR IN HAND, Mike Tyson’s favorite eatery. (Chris Doyle, Burke) RADIO SHACK to ADIOS, Jack Kevorkian’s one-hour finishing shop! (Stephen Dudzik, Olney) AUNTIE ANNE’S PRETZELS, Landmark Center, to UNTIE ANNE’S PRETZELS: So soft they come undone. (John Drummond, Alexandria) OLD NAVY to OLD NAY: Do we have it? NO! Can we get it? NO! You’ll save like never before! (Judith Cottrill, New York) GREAT CLIPS, Columbia, to EAT LIPS: We serve tongue, too. (Phyllis Kepner, Columbia) MCDONALD’S to NADS: Mountain oysters are our specialty. (Saul Rosen, Rockville) PLACE ONE CONDOMINIUMS, Alexandria, to LACE ON CONDOMS, Almost Perfect Prophylactics (Chris Doyle, Burke) PARFUMS DE FRANCE, Tysons Corner, to PRUDE FACE, cosmetics for the sexually repressed. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) GALAXY COMMUNICATIONS, Bethesda, to LAX MUNITIONS: Guns & Ammo — no ID, no limits. (Russell Beland, Springfield) THE WASHINGTON POST to HASH N POT: [Products sold for novelty purposes only — eds.] (Niels Hoven, Camperdown, Australia) ** *NOT FOR THE ANNALS: Unprintable entries from Week 1250* 1500: It is surely UNSMART and MISGUIDED and risky But her BACKSIDE has made him INCREDIBLY FRISKY. He can’t wait FOREVER if he wants to have her Class time’s almost up; she’s the med school’s CADAVER (ugh, Brian Cohen!) 1598: This café is rather luxurious! What aroma! My taste buds are curious! Blech! The COFFEE is GRITTY, Now my mood is s----ty, The barista (that F---ER), I’m furious! (Kyle Hendrickson did note that he knew it wasn’t printable) 1990: Big PROPS to boxers! They’re the best. TIGHTY-WHITEYS get no SHOUT-OUT. Guys don’t like their junk compressed When getting the old trouser trout out. (Chris Doyle — we’re close to being this crude in the paper these days, but not quite. Meanwhile, “props to something” is no older than 1990. Huh!) And while we’ve hinted coyly at the contents of the “dossier” compiled as opposition research on candidate Trump, we have to remember that the most titillating allegations are unsubstantiated, and so The Post does not even mention them in its news stories. Which is why we wouldn’t run this one in the Invite: 1880: A FETCHING young lady, unnamed, And no doubt UNINHIBITED, aimed Per instructions of his And proceeded to whiz. (Or that’s what the DOSSIER claimed.) (Jesse Frankovich) ====================================================================== WEEK 1255, published November 26, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1255: Loserz With Gratitude But for once, our phenom misses out — almost — on our Thanksgiving feast Bob Staake's sketch for another of this week's examples. We ended up going with Insanta Claus, to reinforce the holiday theme for Week 1255. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 22, 2017 *LAST-MOMENT THANKSGIVING BOUNTY — 50 percent off a digital subscription!* Literally minutes ago, I heard in-house about The Post’s new subscription promotion — $50 for a year of The Post online, with all its content. I get emails from regular Style Invitational and Style Conversational readers asking me how to avoid The Post’s paywall for nonsubscribers. But really, when a subscription costs less than $1 a week, isn’t it worth it to you to pay for it? Here’s the link ; I don’t know when it expires. (If you’re already a subscriber, you probably can’t see the offer unless you sign out of your Post account, or use another browser.) We now resume with your regularly scheduled program. **Ha, poor Jesse Frankovich. The guy has had an utterly phenomenal couple of years in The Style Invitational — this year’s Loser Stats show that since March 12 (the start of “Loser Year 25”) Jesse has amassed 104 blots of Invite ink in 36 weeks: On average, that’s 2.89 printed entries every week — putting him on a pace to score a ridiculous 150 by next March, by far the highest single-year total since the Empress instituted a limit of 25 entries per week. Which has made the predictive-modeling whiz for the Michigan transportation department a celebrity, at least in Invite circles. And the object of great envy, to judge from the entries from our Week 1251 contest for things to be thankful for: I was trying to choose among *four*entries that mentioned Jesse (as well as Scoringest Loser Ever Chris Doyle): Jesse Frankovich's Facebook profile photo. Jesse has been blotting up so much ink lately that at least four people sent in entries about him. Alas, they didn't work this week. (Family photo) — I’m thankful that Jesse Frankovich is limited to 25 entries. (Bill Dorner) — I am thankful that the Empress thinks this is so clever that it must have been submitted by Jesse Frankovich. (Dudley Thompson) — I’m thankful that I sent in 25 terrible entries in the name of Jesse Frankovich before he could enter for himself. (Jon Gearhart) — I am thankful that the Empress has not yet seen through my “Jesse Frankovich” and “Chris Doyle” pseudonyms, so I still get to submit 75 entries a week. (Duncan Stevens) So what happens in this week’s results? Bill, Dudley, and Duncan*all* get ink! (Sorry, Jon.) But not with any of the entries above because*Jesse gets nada!* For the first time since July 27 — 17 weeks ago — Jesse won’t win a Lose Cannon or gag second prize or Loser Mug or Grossery Bag or honorable-mention magnet: None of Jesse’s thank-jokes was among this week’s 37 inking entries, so obviously any the jokes above would be inexplicable to a reader who doesn’t regularly read the Invite. Looking back at my short­list, which had about double the number of entries that got ink, I see that several of Jesse’s efforts were in that second half (I don’t look up the entrants’ names until I’m putting them into the paper). But still, even coming up empty with thank-jokes, Jesse still manages to get ink this week — twice. His “Thanksgoofing” headline and “No Merci” honorable-mentions subhead count as points in Elden Carnahan’s Loser Stats , for Blots 251 and 252 all-time. *About “revised titles” entries: *By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever stated this as a rule, because it hasn’t been a judging problem, so here it is: You may suggest “revised titles” — the headlines for the week’s results — and honorable-mentions subheads in addition to your maximum 25 regular entries. And, were you to come up with a gusher of ideas for a single headline or subhead, don’t send me more than 25 each. You can send them either on the same entry form with your regular entries or on a separate form; they all end up on the same master list. Do note that because of a redesign of the print page, the alternative headline has to be short, just a couple of words, if I need to add some idea of what the contest is about. The honorable-mentions subhead gets two lines and can be slightly longer. Nasti Spumante, one of Bob's ideas for this week's Tour de Fours contest. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) *LOSERZ WITH GRATITUDE: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1251* Lots of fun “things to be thankful for” in Week 1251; I’m glad we repeated the Week 681 contest from 2006. And we’ll have 31 Losers (not counting Jesse) who might be thankful next week for a little Invite swag; the ink was really spread around this week, with no one getting more than two blots. As with the first time around, some of the entries were Thanksgiving-themed, like Kel Nagel’s relief that turkeys breasts don’t have nipples, or Christy Tosatto’s that Grandpa’s now too far gone to do his usual racist rants, or Frank Osen’s gratitude that it’s just on Turkey Day that we eat the mascot, rather than on Groundhog Day. But most were general observational humor — including the inevitable political digs. And of course the Loser Community wasn’t going to ignore Topic A this month: the horrifying but important revelations of sexual harassment (and worse) at the slimy hands of Harvey Weinstein and other exploiters of their power over other people’s careers and lives. And I just loved the proudly thankful, and vengeful, declaration by the Oscar statue itself that its naked body wasn’t going to be grabbed by Harvey ever again. That came courtesy of John O’Byrne, who’s been sending us entries from Ireland since back in Week 334, and has traveled across the pond to attend several Loser events over the years. It’s John’s 172nd blot of ink, and his fourth contest win, but his first of our new trophy, the Lose Cannon. Dudley Thompson, who along with wife Susan goes even farther back in Invite history (Week 171) wins the lovelyroast-turkey hat just in time for Thanksgiving 2018, with his thanks that Twitter doesn’t smell — a dig so good that we looked around to see if it was already a meme. It’s the 133rd ink for Dudley, and his 17th “above the fold,” including five wins. Rounding out the Losers’ Circle, by contrast, are newer names: Kel Nagel, of the turkey breast nipples, scores Ink 13, and his second runner-up prize. And yay, a First Offender! It’s the first blot of ink ever for Nancy Provorny, who’ll be getting her FirStink for her first ink, along with, like Kel, her choice of theLoser Mug or Grossery Bag . Let me know, guys! *What Doug Dug: * This week’s favorites of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood are Kel’s and Dudley’s runners-up, plus Beverley Sharp’s thanks that oysters on the half shell don’t have faces, and Barbara Turner’s “And Last” Russian-accented communique about the Invitational. *Gratuities Not Included* — the unprintables: * (*Headline suggested expressly for this purpose by Jeff Contompasis) Among those we were obliged to say no thanks to this week: I’m thankful that my vegan wife’s refusal to put anything in her mouth that had a mother extends only to her dietary requirements. (Jon Ketzner) ... that turducken contains no turd. (Bill Dorner) ... that my roommate won’t be pinching my cigarettes anymore, now that she has lung cancer. (Rachel Bernhardt). Rachel did preface her entry by wondering “Beyond the bounds of decency?” Yeah, I’d say so. *MORE ‘FOURS’ FEEDING: WEEK 1255 * Our Tour de Fours neologism contest — based on a similar one that ran regularly in the old New York Magazine Competition — hasn’t failed us yet, and I hope SANT (or ANTS, STAN, NATS, etc.) will do the trick — the letter block certainly*seems* promising. Don’t worry about highlighting the letter block in your entry, as I’ve done in this week’s examples , since boldface doesn’t transmit on our entry form, even with HTML coding. I think it’s pretty clear what we’re looking for, and of course we haven’t done this specific Tour de Fours before. But for inspiration, and just your reading pleasure, here are some links to previous results. Week 1201, NOVE . Week 1094, TAXI Week 1042, SANE Have a happy Thanksgiving weekend, all — even those who live in Thankless countries — and have fun with friends and family or just your solitary self with Week 1254 and Week 1255 . You have an extra day because we’re here a day early! And seriously, I cannot thank you enough for your support for this contest, for your patience with my sometimes bumbling execution of it, for your donations of ridiculous prizes, and for all the time you waste spend on it. ====================================================================== WEEK 1256, published December 3, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1256: He’ll doodle us proud You have 4 cartoons to use in this week’s caption contest. Bob Staake gave me 18. One of 18 sketches that Bob Staake worked up in no time flat as possible pictures for this week’s caption contest. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 30, 2017 There’s not a lot to elaborate on in eitherthis week’s new contest — our 30-umpteenth contest featuring the cartoons of Bob Staake — or today’s results of Week 1252, names for new medications. But I do want to, once again, marvel to y’all about Bob’s astonishingly prolific creativity: When I realized on Monday that even the 40 entries that I’d run this week wouldn’t come close to filling the print page — because they’re each just a few words long — I knew that this would be the ideal week to show four cartoons at a decent size. On Tuesday morning Bob emailed me with EIGHTEEN sketches — doodles, he calls them — labeled by letter. “Pick four,” he said. I’d like to share them all with you; each is wonderfully zany in its own way. But I don’t want to make them ineligible for a future contest, so I’m showing you just the 13th of the 18, which I won’t be using because I don’t want to invite ethnic or religious humor — even though the fat guy on the rug does have deliciously tiny hands. Remember, when you write captions for these pictures, that there*will* be a lot of duplication of ideas (especially puns), so funny writing might be what gives you the edge. I ask Bob to make the characters ambiguous so they could reasonably be identified as a range of people — for example, the man in Picture C could be of any ethnicity (though not Trump); the woman in B, though, can’t be Michelle Obama or Nancy Pelosi or even Hillary Clinton. As always, I’ll give double credit to two people who did the same joke and whose wording was equally good, or if I combine elements of each of their entries into one. But usually I find some rationale in choosing one entry over another. For inspiration and guidance, here are links to some earlier Picture This results; if the link takes you to the top of the page, scroll down to the caption results. Week 1232, June 2017 Week 1197, 2016 Week 1126, 2015 Week 1096, 2014 And for something completely different, but even more marvelous: Read about Bob’s gorgeous new picture book for children, “The Book of Gold.” It is a visual masterpiece. *URGENT LOSER-SIGHTING NEWS: TWO BRUNCHES AND THE PARTY* We’ll get back to this week’s results in a moment; I just wanted to be sure you saw this. The next *Loser brunch,* on Sunday, Dec. 10, at noon, is at the expansive buffet at Paradiso, an Italian place on Franconia Road, close to the Beltway between the Van Dorn Street and Springfield exits. It’s been the site of many Loser Brunches, with such memorable moments as Jeff Contompasis displaying his prowess in the Nose Aerobics glasses-basketball game(actual video) and Jeff Shirley introducing himself by presenting the Empress with a giant papier-mâché toilet plunger, which she promptly placed on her head . I’m very sorry that I can’t attend this time; I’m singing in achoral concert that day in Maryland and the performers have to be there by 2, without plunger headwear. But you can have my buffet portion: RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ Web page, NRARS.org ; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” As with all our get-togethers, you don’t have to have Invite ink to attend; everyone is welcome, even The Merely Curious. Meet the Losers! I*will* be at a *Special Unofficial Supplementary Loser Brunch* on Saturday, Dec. 30. It was requested by 71-time Loser Edward Gordon, who’ll be visiting from Texas and has to return later that afternoon. He’ll be staying at a hotel near the King Street Metro station in Alexandria, and so we’ll have lunch at noon at Hard Times Cafe (1404 King St.; free parking), a joint that specializes in four kinds of chili. If you’d like to join us during that between-the-holidays lull, let me know so we can get a head count. And!!! Clearly under the influence of some terrible potion, 35-time Loser Steve Langer and Style Invitational Devotee Allison Fultz once again have offered to host the*Loser Post-Holiday Party *at their lovely, close-to-the-Metro house in Chevy Chase, Md., on the evening of Saturday, Jan. 13. As always, it’s a potluck and we’ll have some sort of parody singalong amid the general schmoozage. In a few weeks I’ll be sending an Evite and will add details here as we have them. *FUNNY PHARMA*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1252 * *(*Non-inking headline idea submitted independently by Great Minds Mark Raffman, Chris Doyle and Jesse Frankovich)* The Week 1252 contest to imagine a name for a new drug brought in lots and lots of entries; my rough count was 1,700. And we had a bunch of new entrants, too, including this week’s two First Offenders. But I wouldn’t have wanted to run more than the 40 entries — and that’s a lot! — that got ink this week; the vast majority of entries were wordplays on the names of real drugs without much of a joke attached. I did compile a long list of funny drug names that deserved funnier descriptions, including Bitterpyl, Belladonald, Frolic Acid, Blamitol and Gaffeine. But of course, those 1,660 meh entries are irrelevant (except to my wakefulness; thanks, Mr. Coffee!). And we end up with ink for 27 Losers among the 40 entries. The three runners-up this week, Rob Huffman, Mark Raffman and Kevin Dopart, are all among the Invite’s highest-scoring Losers ever, with 170, 448, and, sheez, 1,336 blots of ink, including four this week for Kevin. But it’s the first win ever — and the first week “above the fold” — for William Verkuilen of suburban Minneapolis. Bill has been getting ink from way back in the Czarist era, Week 497, but at a very sane rate; his drug Mar-a-Lax — a tool softener — is his 17th blot of Invite ink, and particularly deserving of the tool-inspired Lose Cannon trophy. *What Doug Dug:* Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood’s faves this week were all honorable mentions: Larry Flynn’s Head & Armpits & Crotches shampoo (because who has hair on their shoulders?); Rick Haynes’s Disrobetussin; Rob Cohen’s and Steve McClemons’s Etceterin; and Dudley Thompson’s Zipperex. As a longtime grammar corrector, including my 26 years as a copy editor in The Post’s Style section, I very rarely countenance the “singular ‘they’ ”; I like my pronouns to agree in number with their subjects. But I found an excellent example in Larry Flynn’s entry — “Who has hair on their shoulders?” — for an instance when the singular “their” is the best choice. To change “theirs” to “his” or “hers” would seem oddly exclusive, and “his or hers” absurdly awkward. Much better would have been to avoid the has*their disagreement with “Who has shoulder hair?” But we’re making a play on Head & Shoulders, so having the noun “shoulders” makes the joke work better; it’s just the better choice. But oh, it’s still tough for me to admit it. *HAD ENOUGH? * Chronic Losers: I’m truly happy to mail out prizes to you week after week along with my little “Congratulations — you lose” letter; I’ve heard from people who say that it’s the only snail mail they get all week that’s not a mass mailing, and people who are trying to entirely encase their refrigerators with Loser magnets. But listen: IF you’ve gotten enough prize letters or magnets and find yourself just tossing them unopened, let me know: I can instead: — Email you the letter instead (as one person has me do). — Keep sending you the paper letter but not send you any more magnets (as couple of others have requested). — Or you can pass on both letter and magnet. Really, I’m perfectly happy to do any of those, as well as to keep sending them — as long as you least bother to open them, and not just throw out the prize. ====================================================================== WEEK 1257, published December 10, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1257: Mulligan stew The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s do-over contest and fashion fictoids Check out Elden Carnahan’s super-duper Master Contest List to find the contests to use this week, or use links to The Post’s own pages. Directions below. (Image) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 7, 2017 I don’t know how many of us really wish we could live 2017 all over again without major alterations, but let’s do what we can. Obviously this week’s Style Invitational contest and the next favor the Invite Obsessives — how many normal people are going to look up old contests? — but of course we welcome sanesters as well. We’re going back to Nov. 27, 2016 (Week 1203), to start our Week 1257 retrospective contest, since last year’s ended with Week 1202. Last year we also had a two-week retrospective, but both contests covered the whole year; it makes a lot more sense to split them up. And in the unlikely possibility that you’d have anything else to do in December: You can get both contests done this week, if you like; just enter the second set of entries (Weeks 1230-1254) next week. (Don’t send them now!) These first six months’ worth of the past 12 offers lots of variety, as you’ll see from the Master Contest List at NRARS.org , where I refer both print and online readers who’d like to do this week’s contest. Along with the Loser Stats that he’s been keeping back to Week 1, Hall of Fame Loser Elden Carnahan maintains this indispensable list (and sub-lists), featuring a link in some form or other (usually more than one) to every single Style Invitational contest. The links on Elden’s list (an image is above) are not subject to The Post’s paywall, its limit on articles viewed by nonsubscribers. Instead, at least for the ones to use this week, they links go to PDFs — essentially pictures, but with links that still work. If you click on the WP logo on the right side of each listing, you’ll get a PDF of the print version that appears in Sunday’s Arts & Style section; the “E” will get you the online version, which sometimes has more results, but you have to scroll through lots of pages, and sometimes pictures don’t show up. *But if you’re a Post subscriber *— and you certainly should be (there’s a great promotion going on right now for only $100 for the whole year of The Post online) — you can see all the contests by going to washingtonpost.com*styleinvitational , scrolling down to Week 1229, then clicking “Load More” to get the earliest ones. Those are links to actual Washington Post Web pages, so they do count against the paywall. But they’ll be the most complete version. *(And! *If you sign up with an email address ending in edu., mil. or gov., your subscription is free! There are also deals through Amazon Prime.) Or you could just type in one URL at a time into your browser: The format is*bit.ly*invite[week number]*, e.g., bit.ly*invite1208 , except for three for which I had to add a hyphen to get a unique name:*bit.ly*invite-1204 , bit.ly*invite-1218, bit.ly*invite-1229.* Before you go searching one by one, here’s a list of the contests covered this week. But please consult the actual details of the contests before entering. Week 1203: What would you do with one of the six magical powers listed. 1204: Offer some comforting observations about the coming year. 1205 and 1206 were last year’s retrospective contests; don’t go there. 1207: Write funny clues for any of the words in the provided crossword grid. 1208: Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2016 (and make it still 2016; save the 2017s for January) 1209: Fictoids about how a product or invention came to be. 1210: Describe a piece of “joint legislation” produced by humorously combining the names of two or more members of Congress on the provided list. 1211: Write a stupidly disparaging tweet about a laudable current, historical or fictional figure. 1212: From any of the seven-letter ScrabbleGrams racks provided, make up a new word and define it. 1213: Write a haiku that incorporates a pun. 1214: Write a humorous passage that uses only words appearing in the 2017 presidential inaugural address. 1215: Write a humorous exaggeration roughly in the form “x is so y that …” 1216: “Discover” a new word by snaking around the provided word-search grid and define it. 1217: Combine two or more businesses and give the hybrid a clever name. 1218: Reinterpret a headline in this week’s Post or other publication (use something dated Dec. 7-18) by following it with a “bank head,” or subtitle. 1219: Write a “lik the bred” poem. (You’ll just have to check it out.) 1220: Be humorously pedantic about something. 1221: “Marry” any two people from any time or from literature and say what their child would be like. 1222: “Breed” any two of the listed racehorses nominated for the 2017 Triple Crown races, and name the foal to reflect both their names. 1223: Write a humorously sensationalistic, misleading headline on an otherwise mundane article or ad published in The Post or elsewhere (again, Dec. 7-18). 1224: Explain how any two (or more) items in the provided list are similar, different or otherwise connected. 1225: Suggest a march for some group or field, along with one or more slogans. 1226: Breed any two “foals” that got ink in Week 1222 and name the “grandfoal.” 1227: Name and describe a new life form — and no letter in the term may be used twice. 1228: Name someone who was the “secret inspiration” for a certain movie. 1229: In the tradition of Edward Gorey’s “Gashlycrumb Tinies,” supply a rhyming alphabetical couplet (A is for*B is for) for any of the 13 listed letter pairs. None of the contests above require a lot of space in the results, like a cartoon caption (I’d have to run the cartoon) or a song parody. But in general, think short: One of my aims in the retrospective contests is to celebrate the varied ways that the Loser Community can be so cleverlytasteless clever. I have, I think, physically prevented anyone from accidentally using the entry forms for the old contests. But just in case: Your handy-dandy place to submit your entries is wapo.st*enter-invite-1257 . There’s most likely some question to come up about reusing one contest or another; feel free to email me with a question, or post it on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook; tag my name so I’ll get a notification. Yes, feel free to resubmit an entry that didn’t get ink earlier. But how could it possibly be chosen this time around? It’s happened! A. There were so many entries for that contest that many inkworthy ones didn’t fit. B. Another entry that week was similar enough in theme (we’re not talking close to identical, though) that it didn’t make sense to run both worthy entries. C. The Empress is a human life form, if not so much like your own human life form, and her mind can change. *FALSIES*: THE FASHION FICTOIDS OF WEEK 1253* *(*Non-inking headline suggestion by Dave Prevar)* The Loser Community is consistently good at supplying fake trivia, most likely because many of us have been reading lists of factoids since we were wee nerdlets. And so while fashion might not be our passion — I have a form letter warning Facebook users who get a prompt to join the Style Invitational Devotees group that we are NOT STYLISH — we can still write untrue information about it to know and tell. Good thing, though, that I broadened Week 1253 to encompass most anything that can be worn, and so we got to tell fun unfacts about suits of armor, swords, tinfoil hats, and the jerkin — a garment that’s important because it has a funny name, not because it’s a Renaissance-era leather vest. I bounced my short­list off more people than usual this week, and was thrilled that they all especially liked this week’s winner, even though it was less in factoid form than the others in this week’s results ; I’d worried a bit that Warren Tanabe’s report that Republican congressmen have been wearing wool pullovers was too subtle, but they got it instantly, or at least in the second or two of thought that enhances the joy of the joke. It’s the first win for Warren Tanabe after a whopping eighty-two blots of Loser ink since Week 782, thus toppling him from second place on the Cantinkerous list, behind only Now 94 and Still Counting Kyle Hendrickson. Meanwhile, Daniel Galef gets just his seventh — and eighth — and ninth blot of ink this week, including his runner-up, which is his third “above the fold” award, an amazing ratio. And I’m sure that winter in the Ozark mountains will allow second-place finisher Drew Bennett to enjoy the beautiful “Style Ink” cap painstakingly designed an D knitted by Devotee Catharine Mefford. *What Doug Dug:* Aside from Warren’s pullovers, Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood singled out Jesse Frankovich’s muumuu as Hawaiian for “Your Mama’s swimsuit; Kyle Hendrickson’s noting that buttons used to be made of fruitcake; Robert Schechter’s pointer on wearing the tinfoil hat properly; and Bill Spencer — who at least once attended a Loser event dressed in a kilt — on the sporran as a Scots version of the protective cup. What should our next topic of fake trivia be? Send me a suggestion! The fashion idea was offered by longtime Loser Christina Courtney. *RAISE YOUR GLASSES (AND FORKS), LOSERS!* As I mentioned in last week’s Conversational, there are three-count-’em-three Loser events over the next month or so; I have to miss this Sunday’s Loser brunch but I’ll definitely be at the other two. Here’s what I wrote last week: The next *Loser brunch, on Sunday, Dec. 10,* at noon, is at the expansive buffet at Paradiso, an Italian place on Franconia Road, close to the Beltway between the Van Dorn Street and Springfield exits . . . RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ Web page, NRARS.org; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” As with all our get-togethers, you don’t have to have Invite ink to attend; everyone is welcome, even The Merely Curious. Meet the Losers! I will be at a Special *Unofficial Supplementary Loser Brunch on Saturday, Dec. 30.* It was requested by 71-time Loser Edward Gordon, who’ll be visiting from Texas and has to return later that afternoon. He’ll be staying at a hotel near the King Street Metro station in Alexandria, and so we’ll have lunch at noon at Hard Times Cafe (1404 King St.; free parking), a joint that specializes in four kinds of chili. If you’d like to join us during that between-the-holidays lull, let me know so we can get a head count. And!!! Clearly under the influence of some terrible potion, 35-time Loser Steve Langer and Style Invitational Devotee Allison Fultz once again have offered to host the *Loser Post-Holiday Party *at their lovely, close-to-the-Metro house in Chevy Chase, Md., on the evening of *Saturday, Jan. 13. *As always, it’s a potluck and we’ll have some sort of parody singalong amid the general schmoozage. In a few weeks [now sooner] I’ll be sending an Evite and will add details here as we have them. Meanwhile, don’t forget to send in your entries to the Week 1256 cartoon caption contest — deadline Monday, Dec. 11. ====================================================================== WEEK 1258, published December 17, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1258: Click and Save! Links to all the contests for Style Invitational Week 1258, plus unprintable business names We went with Harvey Weinstein, but here’s Bob Staake’s sketch to illustrate another winner I was considering as an example for this week: It was Drew Bennett’s entry on Creating the Pigeon: “GOD: We need to discourage false idols. ANGEL: How about creating a bird that eats statues? GOD: Let’s use the other end.” (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 14, 2017 I was too close to deadline last Thursday, writing about the first of two weeks of Style Invitational retrospective contests, when I realized that I could supply all the links*right here* to the contests we were repeating, rather than explaining how to find them elsewhere. And so for Part 2, Week 1258 , I’m supplying them in the list below. However, as for all Washington Post content, you have to subscribe to read more than a few articles each month, and the links below will indeed count against The Post’s paywall. Of course, I think that everyone who appreciates the important work of journalists — at a time when our government routinely lies to us — should subscribe to The Washington Post, especially with these promotions: *Through midnight tonight!* For The Post online, with unlimited access to articles: $100 a year — that’s less than $2 a week — plus a free “Democracy Dies in Darkness T-shirt! This sign-up link should work. I believe the regular rate is $139. If you read The Style Invitational and Conversational once a week, why shouldn’t you fork over a few cents each for them? (And I am told that there are actually some other useful articles that might be worth a few more cents.) If you have a .mil or .gov email address, you can get a free subscription: https:**subscribe.washingtonpost.com*specialoffer*#*gov-mil If you’re a teacher or a college student, you can get the digital Post for $5 a month: https:**subscribe.washingtonpost.com*acqlite*edu-offer* But for those who’ve had problems with the customer service department, and for those out-of-towners who are already subscribing to other papers, I certainly don’t want to prevent you from contributing to The Style Invitational. So in that case, go ahead and use Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List, as I note in this week’s and last week’s contest. The links on Elden’s page are to plain text files plus PDFs of both the print and Web Invites; they’re sometimes not as pretty as what the actual links will give you, but they’ll be fine to use this week. Again, the links in the list below go to the actual Post pages. The descriptions below aren’t always completely precise; please read the actual directions for each contest. And whichever way you access them, please check the results of that contest — in the contest four weeks later — to make sure you’re not duplicating any of the entries that got ink. And remember to send your entries not to those weeks’ entry forms, but to wapo.st*enter-invite-1258. Note my incredible magnanimity in extending this week’s entry deadline 24 hours to Dec. 26. Week 1230 , a brief monologue or dialogue about a Creator’s plans for a new being Week 1231 , a TankaWanka poem on the news (like haiku, but with 5-7-5-7-7, and two lines must rhyme) Week 1232 , Picture This: cartoon captions (because of space limitations, I wouldn’t run one of these in the print results, but it’s possible for the Web version) (No contests Weeks 1233-34) Week 1235 , song parodies about science and technology Week 1236 , portmanfaux: bogus explanations of how a real word is the combination of two or more others Week 1237 , rewrite a real headline from this week’s papers or websites by using a lot of alliteration Week 1238 , coin a three-­word phrase whose words begin with D, E and F (in any order) and describe it Week 1239 , combine two real movie titles and describe the resulting movie Week 1240, limericks featuring words beginning*gh-* or*gi-* Week 1241 , using the partially filled in crossword grid provided, add your own letters to make a new word and define it Week 1242, then*now jokes Week 1243, neologisms that don’t include a T, R, U, M or P Week 1244 , write a funny review for any of six everyday items that are sold on Amazon.com Week 1245 , complain cluelessly about something that appeared in the paper recently Week 1246 , Questionable Journalism: find any sentence in the paper recently and pair it with a question it might answer. Week 1247 , reinterpret a movie title as a different movie, and write a line from its “script” Week 1248 , “untrue confessions” as in Stephen Colbert’s feature, or a true embarrassing anecdote Week 1249 , Ask Backwards: Choose any of the 15 provided items and follow it with a question that it could humorously answer Week 1250 , poems incorporating three or more terms that were first used in a certain year, according to Merriam-Webster’s Time Traveler tool Week 1251 , things to be thankful for Week 1252 , names for fanciful medical products Week 1253 , bogus trivia about clothing and fashion Week 1254 , change the name of a business by one letter and describe the new company *BUSINESS CARDS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1254* **Non-inking headline by Brad Alexander* **One easy way to start compiling your 25-entry “dance card,” as Hall of Fame Loser Jeff Contompasis calls it, is to resubmit your best non-inking entries from Week 1254, in which you change the name of a business by one letter and describe the result. I went through a two-day judgeathon of an estimated 2,200 entries, eventually selecting a “shortlist” of about 200 worthies. I never checked the names of the authors of the 150 on the list that didn’t get ink, but if you’re one of the 190 Losers who entered but came up dry this week, you’re*surely* on that list, right? Or maybe you wrote one of the dozens of entries that had funny business names but meh descriptions; maybe you’d like to give it a rewrite and try again. I’m headed back to the post office to get another pile of stamps to send out next week with the prizes for*forty* individual winners in Week 1254 — including many new or newish names besides the Usual Suspects: We have three First Offenders, plus two who are now bumped off theOne Hit Wonder list. Last week, as I looked up name after name of the entries I’d chosen in Week 1253, I became increasingly dismayed as each author turned out to be male; only two of the 26 inking Losers were women (and it was a faux-trivia contest on clothes and fashion). So this week I was heartened to discover that three of the top four entries I’d chosen were by women, and many more got honorable mentions. (Yes, I have been accused of being prejudiced against women. Go figure.) It’s the 10th win — but the first of our new Lose Cannon trophies — for Danielle Nowlin, whose In-No-Out Burger cafe for cats gives Danielle her 273rd blot of Invite ink. But the rest of the Losers’ Circle is filled with less familiar names: Ellen Raphaeli (Swearovski crystals as make-up jewelry) is back after some years away for Ink No. 84; Jeff Loren (“uncultured” Bannon Yogurt) in his first ink “above the fold,” and 21st overall; and Beryl Benderly, who’s been Inviting since all the way back in Week 94, but sporadically; Beryl gets her 13th blot of ink, and her second runner-up prize. Jeff and Beryl get their choice of the “I Got a B in Punmanship” tote bag and the “You Gotta Play to Lose” mug. *The Feeney Funny: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood is out of town this week, so Also Ace Mary Feeney, who’s filling in for him, got to read the Invite on the multiplatform desk, as the copy desk is now known. Mary told me she had a grand time reading this week’s results, singling out half a dozen faves among the honorable mentions: Christy Tosatto’s “Five Goys,” Jesse Frankovich’s nerdy “Charles Schwa,” Jesse’s “T.M.I. Friday’s,” Dave Prevar’s “Sorta” mattresses, Gordon Cobb’s “Guber” rural ride service, and First Offender Suvinay Subramanian’s “L’Ordeal” 20-step haircolor process. (See the bottom of the page for a list of unprintable entries, but not if they’re going to bother you; some are pretty crude.) *WATCH FOR YOUR PARTY EVITE! * Again, on behalf of the Loser Community I’ll soon be sending out an Evite to the *Losers’ Post Holiday Party , the evening of Saturday, Jan. 13, * in Metro-walkable Chevy Chase. But if you’re not on last year’s mailing list (and don’t want to email me to get added), I’ll post a link in a future Style Conversational, hopefully next week. More immediately: Longtime Loser Edward Gordon will be in town from Austin at the end of the month, and I hope he’ll be able to meet some Losers andStyle Invitational Devotees at *lunch on Saturday, Dec. 30, * at the chili joint Hard Times Cafe in Alexandria near the King Street Metro station. I’ll be there for sure. Let me know if you can join us. *THE MISSING INC*.: THIS WEEK’S UNPRINTABLES* **Noink by Jon Gearhart* Among —*among*— the no-way stuff this week: Chilf’s: Rated America’s #1 restaurant by NAMBLA — and Roy Moore (Steve McClemons) The Spurts Authority: Las Vegas’ oldest, and still best, “gentleman’s club” (Rob Huffman) Nadsaq: Keeping track of where to invest and protect the family jewels. (Chris Doyle; Steve Bremner) Safewad: 100% guaranteed condom dispensary. (Mark Raffman) Star*ucks: Harvey Weinstein’s new coffee shop (Marni Penning Coleman) Testee Lauder: When you want to look your best... everywhere (Dave Matuskey) . Peterwilt: Purveyors of Really Big Rigs to Those Found Wanting Them (Ivars Kuskevics) Jizza Hut - Tom Witte’s favorite entry this week (not by Prince of the Unprintables Tom Witte, but by Jeff Hazle) The Rump Organization: “[Rhymes with “sittin’] on top of the world...” (David Wolinsky) Kooch Industries: America’s most private company (Jerome Uher) Jack on the Box: Pay per view. (Michael Rolfe) Oy. Happy Hanukkah, y’all — and get retrospecting. ====================================================================== WEEK 1259, published December 24, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1259: How can Losers win so much? One Invitational contestant’s idea: Bar high-scorers for a while so others can get more ink If you read The Style Conversational, you are hereby invited to the Jan. 13 potluck. Details below. (Craig Dykstra) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 21, 2017 People have been complaining about favoritism and inequality in The Style Invitational since it was barely out of the maternity ward: Preceding the results of*Week 6,* in 1993, my predecessor, the anonymous Czar , added this: “But first, a few words about excellence. Although we received more than 500 entries to this contest, and have selected only 15 of them as winners [we’ve grown!], you will note that several people are represented more than once, including the highly mysterious “Oslo of Alexandria,” the first-prize winner of Week 2 who darn near won again this week [The Post no longer allows pseudonyms]. You may reasonably wonder: Is this fair? Answer: Of course it is fair. The Style Invitational is the nation’s last remaining pure meritocracy. The best is chosen, without regard to previous history, demographics, national origin, sexual orientation, dental anomalies, annoying personal habits, or cash inducements you may have included with your letters. In fact, our judging is done completely blindfolded, so we cannot see your name, or your address, or your entry. We hope this clears matters up. Thank you.” Now slide your time-bar thingy up 24.75 years to last Thursday. A week ago, shortly after I posted last week’s results , I got this email from Dinah Rokach of the D.C. area (she was fine with my reprinting it here): *As a relatively new entrant, I find it disconcerting that there are so many repeated mentions of the same individuals in your weekly column.* *Have you thought of a rule whereby prize recipients are limited, as in other periodicals’ contests, to once per set interval — month, every ten contests, for example?* *With all due respect, it looks like you have your favorites (Facebook group, perhaps?) whose submissions you scrutinize carefully and then possibly pay less attention to the others. With so many entries that’s understandable but perhaps spreading the glory should take priority.* *Just a thought, Dinah* For several years now, as I note in the Style Invitational Rules and Guidelines (to which a link appears in each week’s contest), I’ve been able to judge the Invite without seeing the entrants’ names — something that the Czar, in the pre-Internet and even pre-email days, couldn’t do. It takes an hour or so of tedium each week to make a readable list, but it’s worth it when I receive letters like this. And so I was able to respond: *Dear Dinah:* *Thanks for writing. But actually, I have NO IDEA whose entries I am judging until after I choose the winners.* *I get all the entries in one long continuous list, then make my choices. That way, I can’t even unconsciously play favorites – which makes it easier to answer accusations like yours.* *After I choose the winners I search a second, complete list of entries find out who wrote those entries. As you noted, some people get a lot of ink. But it can’t be because I like them personally (or I can’t be denying ink to someone whom I don’t like).* *The reason that some people get so much ink is they are (you might notice) really good at this game. They’re not only naturally funny and clever, but for some of these people, the Invitational is one of their favorite pastimes, and they work on compiling a list of 25 entries all week long; some of them work up longer lists, then polish them, then choose their very best to send to me. Should I tell them that it’s unfair to put in so much effort? Also remember that while the incredibly clever Jesse Frankovich got three entries in today, he also had 22 entries rejected.* *On the other hand, it’s not at all the case that only frequent-inkers appear in the Invitational. Today’s results featured FORTY different entrants. Three of them got their first ink ever. Two more got their second ink. Others have been sending in entries now and again over the past 25 years and have accrued eight or ten or a dozen. More than 5,000 people have gotten ink in The Style Invitational over its history. I’m always thrilled to see new names among the results.* *But each week – and I’ve done this more than 700 times — I choose (as I said, blindly) the entries that I liked the most. I don’t think it would benefit the contest or its readers to run entries that I didn’t find as good as some others, merely because their writers were also good last week.* *Rest assured that I read and consider every entry that I get each week. If you would like me to look yours up and explain why yours didn’t make the top 54 this week among the 2,200 entries, I can explain my thinking. Let me know.* *Thanks for taking the time to write, and I’d be just as delighted as you (well, almost) to see you get ink in a future contest.* *Best, The Empress* Dinah thanked me for my reply, declined my offer of a critique of her half-dozen entries in Week 1254, but continued to press her case for her block-the-winners idea, adding some new angles: *... But might you consider, as other periodicals do, asking winners not to submit for a set period of time after winning? Or just letting them know they will be not be eligible to be chosen as winners during that time frame? ...* *Having announced your new criterion, if the winners whom you choose “blind” turn out to be ineligible for that reason, just continue with an alternate selection.* *The repeat winners may even thank you for giving them back some of their free time. If you ask your colleagues on the health beat, they might concur with the assessment that it’s a good thing to discourage obsessive behavior. It may also broaden your own “constituency” — readers who may have become discouraged — not so much for never themselves winning — but for seeing the same winning names over and over again albeit chosen in an unbiased process.* Well,*I’m* not a Style Invitational entrant or potential entrant, but I know where to find them — not just the Obsessives, as I’ve been calling them lately, but also infrequent entrants (including unsuccessful ones) and even just-fans: And that’s the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, which now numbers more than 1,450 members. So I deleted Dinah’s name from her letter and asked the Devs’ opinions; I thought there was a chance that some of them would like the suggestion. In short,*nobody,* among the 48 commenters plus responders to those comments , said this would be a good idea. Here’s a sampling of the responses: —*From someone with a couple of inks over the years:* “If the ‘constituency’ includes the Post subscribers like me, who read it for humor, but rarely or never enter, then you won’t be able to broaden the constituency by weakening the level of humor.” — “Her concern for our OCD is commendable.” — “I entered, I think, six contests this year. ... I inked zero times. Shock horror. I enter because it’s a fun way to occupy my brain for a bit and force myself to do even a tiny bit of writing. If I ever manage to lose One-Hit Wonder status, it will be a fluke, but that won’t stop me from feeling extra clever and emailing every relative who thinks jokes about testicles are funny, my mother included. (She printed my “Ink of the Day” and put it on her refrigerator.)” *— From someone who has no ink:* “Don’t punish talent. Real ink must be earned.” —*From someone with one ink:* “As far as I know, the purpose of the SI is to generate content to amuse paid subscribers. Your method generates the best content. Once the Patriots tell Tom Brady that he’s already played a game this season and it’s someone else’s turn to be QB, then we can consider the participation ribbon approach over quality.” *— From a frequently Inking Loser:* “Nah, I don’t want to think i won just because the regulars weren’t in the mix.” *— Along the same line, from another regular:* “Imagine how bad the person would feel when she still didn’t get ink with the varsity players sidelined. ... It is the Empress’s job to select the funniest entries for the purpose of bringing the most laughs to the readers. It would be dereliction of duty to do otherwise.” *And another:* “As a Cleveland Browns fan, I find it disconcerting that the Patriots are in the Super Bowl so much. Have you thought of a rule whereby teams can only make the playoffs once every three years? With all due respect, it looks like you favor the ones with better records.” Meanwhile, Biggest Loser Ever Chris Doyle noted that “this year’s distribution of Lose Cannon winners isn’t that unbalanced. So far 33 different Losers have won the 41 contests.” So I guess we’ll be continuing with the Meritocracy Model that we’ve been using since Week 1. And when Dinah finally gets her ink, beating out the regular winners, she’s going to be justifiably proud as all get-out. *DID YOU GET YOUR LOSER POST-HOLIDAY PARTY INVITATION? * I sent an Evite out around 3 a.m. Eastern time today (yeah, I know, not so healthy) for the annual Loser Post-Holiday Party, the evening of Saturday, Jan. 13 — a potluck once again at the right-near-the-Metro home of Loser Steve Langer and Honorary Loser Allison Fultz in Chevy Chase, Md., right over the D.C. line. I used last year’s mailing list and added a few names of locals who I thought might want to come. But YOU are also invited — if you’re interested enough in The Style Invitational to read this column, you’re crazy enough for us. So here’s the link to the Evite , with all the details; if you RSVP to it, that should put you on the list as well. (If you are a total stranger — never sent an entry, etc. — the Empress will chat with you first.) *Also: On Saturday, Dec. 30, * visiting-from-Texas Edward Gordon would like to have lunch with some fellow Losers at Hard Times Cafe near the King Street Metro station in Alexandria, Va. I’ll be there; email me if you’ll be as well. It’s a chili joint. *Winning ANTSers: The results of Week 1255* *(*Non-inking headline by John O’Byrne)* Chris Doyle, of the almost 2,000 blots of ink and Who Should Know, ventured that the S-A-N-T letter block for our 14th annual Tour de Fours neologism contest was the most challenging yet. But that didn’t stop 32 Losers (including Chris) from snarfing up 42 blots of ink in Week 1255, using many of the 24 possible permutations. Because “Natsturtium” — a flower that blossoms in the spring and always withers by early October — turned out to be very similar entries from Jeff Shirley and Duncan Stevens, we have five member of the Losers’ Circle this week, all of them (sorry!) regular entrants. It’s Ann Martin’s fourth win and 90th blot of ink, and runners-up Jeff, Duncan and Mark Raffman are even more heavily stained. But we also have two First Offenders — three if you count both Mark and Emily Schwartz, who sent their “Standex” entry (a fabric so tight you can’t sit down) together. (In the future, I’d rather the Schwartzes — and all of you — enter individually; the Invite isn’t a team contest, except for the rare photo contests, videos, etc. Meanwhile, Mark and Emily can fight over their single FirStink for their first ink.) *What Doug Dug: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood liked all four “above the fold” winners (as did, for once, my predecessor, the Czar) and also singled out Christy Tosatto’s “Tyrantsylvania,” Jon Gearhart’s “Tyrantasaurus Vex” — I’m glad I didn’t worry that two “tyrant” entries were too many — Jesse Frankovich’s “Misspokahontas,” Jeff Hazle’s “rantasaur” and Duncan Stevens’s “satn.” (You haven’t heard of The Weeknd? Then you’re not one of the 293,337,786 people, as of this minute, who have viewed the music video “I Feel It Coming” on YouTube.) *Jest NASTy*: A couple of unprintables * and they’re plays on the same word: Cat Snatch Fever: A feline STD. Snatch: Synonym for “grab.” — D.J.T., Washington (Roy Ashley, Dean Pollock) **Suggestion for this very purpose by Jesse Frankovich* -- So have a fabulous Christmas holiday, everyone — note that you don’t have to send your Week 1258 entries till Dec. 26 — and I hope to see you at the Loser party or at the Ed thing. ====================================================================== WEEK 1260, published December 31, 2017 Style Conversational Week 1260: OBVIOUSLY, the winner should be ... Okay, you tell US which cartoon captions the Empress should have picked By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 28, 2017 I’m in a community chorus, the Maryland Choral Society, and one of my fellow singers reads The Style Invitational religiously, in the print Washington Post every weekend. I know this because every Monday night at rehearsal, he takes me aside to say, “Funny column this week — but you picked the wrong winner,*again.* How could you not have chosen the one about the bris [toilet, hedgehog, etc.]?” This doesn’t bother me in the least — believe me, I’m thrilled whenever people tell me they read the contest at all. And while I think I’m a good judge of humor and don’t think I’ve made many bad picks in the 700-something Invite contests I’ve judged over the past 14 years, I totally accept the idea that some jokes*wordplay*observations*political zingers will resonate more with one perfectly intelligent, funny person than with another. While in such contests as rhyming poetry, there are more objective standards for rhyme and meter, in a contest like one for cartoon captions, people just laugh at different things. Does it make you laugh most when words are used in a double meaning, or do you get more of a kick out of a caption that notes something you hadn’t even noticed in the picture? AdChoices ADVERTISING So, for the first time ever, I used The Post’s poll-writing tool (no, really, he’s a very nice guy) to let you vote for your favorite caption for each of the four Bob Staake cartoons, among the 37 inking entries in the results of Week 1256. Of course, you might have chosen 37 different entries from among the more than 1,000 (a conservative estimate; I can’t easily get an exact count) submitted for Week 1256. But believe me, you wouldn’t want to read that many; you might even think there are too many choices right here, with 7 to 15 for each cartoon. *Click here to access the poll. * If for some reason you can’t see the cartoons in the poll, please look in the Invite itself . And of course read the results both to see which wrong entries I picked — and to see which clever devils in the Loser Community (32 of them, it turns out) got the ink. And to see and enter our new “Year in Preview” contest, Week 1260 (see below). I’ll review the poll results in next week’s column, though you can check the results at any time by clicking on the link; readers can take the poll through next Wednesday. And no doubt there’ll be lively discussion in the Facebook group Style Invitational Devotees — join up and the Devs will anagram your name in so many ways you’ll wish your parents had called you something else. I’ll link to this column from that page, and you can add your comments in the thread under it, which you can find by clicking here, once you join the group. *PRE-CURRENT EVENTS: OUR ‘YEAR IN PREVIEW’ CONTEST* I hope you’ve had the pleasure of reading years’ and years’ worth of Dave Barry’s “Year in Review” pieces, which run at the top of the year in The Washington Post Magazine and many other papers. (The new one should be out any day now; here’s last year’s .) Years back, the timeline format and running jokes inspired San Jose Mercury-News humor columnist (and longtime Loser) Malcolm Fleschner to do a Year in Preview — why wait for actual events to happen before you fictionalize them? Malcolm just yesterday put out his zingerful 2018 version; we’re using a couple of his items as examples. Our compilation in the Invite can’t do one entrant’s running jokes, but on the other hand we’ll have hundreds of writers feeding us material. We’ll be putting dates before all the jokes, even if they’re totally arbitrary. We stole Malcolm’s idea the first time back in 2011; here are the results of Week 898, which of course are full of timely, perhaps now-obscure references, but also ones you might have used for Week 1260: *The Winner of the Inker:* April 11: President Obama begins a Rose Garden news conference by saying he loves spring and April is his favorite month. Bill O’Reilly fumes that Obama’s clear hatred of December is part of the War on Christmas, while Glenn Beck ominously reminds his viewers that Hitler was born in April. (Arthur C. Adams, Laurel) *Second place: * March 15: WikiLeaks posts a classified document revealing that House Speaker John Boehner hides diced onions in his handkerchief. (Roy Ashley, Washington) *Third place:* Feb. 6: At Super Bowl XLV, reporter Ines Sainz announces that she just received Brett Favre’s colonoscopy pictures. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) *Fourth place: * Feb. 27: Julian Assange is avenged in Stockholm in hand-to-hand combat with the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) *Gross prophets: Honorable mentions* Jan. 24: Rep. Michele Bachmann is removed from the Intelligence Committee when a vacancy occurs on the Stupidly Offensive Committee. (Ira Allen, Bethesda) Jan. 25: In his State of the Union address, Obama pledges that by the end of the decade there will be a State of the Union pledge that we will put an American on Mars by the end of the decade. (Danny Bravman, Chicago) Feb. 15: On a visit to New York to meet with Wall Street moguls, House Speaker John Boehner embarrasses House Majority Leader Eric Cantor by ordering corned beef on white with mayonnaise at the Carnegie Deli. (Elliott B. Jaffa, Arlington) March 31: On the Nationals’ opening day, Jayson Werth tears a hamstring in the fifth inning, is out for the season. (Mike Gips, Bethesda) April 1: Despite a slight breeze for most of the afternoon, not a single Pepco customer loses power. (Marty McCullen, Gettysburg, Pa.) May 2: Albert Haynesworth buys a $2 lottery ticket and wins another $30 million. (Craig Dykstra, Centreville) May 27: The Postal Service says it will deliver on Saturdays. Only. (Russell Beland, Fairfax) June 19: Tornado strikes Delaware; house falls on former Senate candidate. (Bob Dalton, Arlington) June 28: The summit of Mount Everest is closed for three days because of a bedbug infestation. (Joel Knanishu, Rock Island, Ill.) July 17: Congress is outraged after learning that the headquarters of the Society for Learned Debate is to be built within sight of Capitol Hill. (Larry Yungk, Arlington) Aug. 7: The refrigeration unit in Lady Gaga’s closet breaks down, spoiling thousands of dollars’ worth of USDA Prime clothing. (Dixon Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.) Aug. 15: Veteran Style Invitational Loser Chris Doyle accidentally employs amphibrachic meter in a limerick that clearly calls for anapestic trimeter. (Jeff Brechlin) Aug. 28: Facebook rolls out a feature that allows you to spy on your “friend” who always answers everything with “LOL,” so you can see if he’s really L-ing OL. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) Sept. 9: Marine biologists express outrage after Michael Vick says he wants to own sea monkeys. (Trevor Kerr, Chesapeake, Va.) Sept. 24: A court decrees that Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc., may no longer be associated with the religiously derived word “holiday”; each will now be called a Federal Happy Day. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) Oct. 13: Blackwater is awarded the Somalis’ piracy contract. (Kevin Dopart) Oct. 30: Seeing no restoration of sanity since last year’s event, Jon Stewart sets a more realistic goal with his Rally to Encourage Good Oral Hygiene. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase) Nov. 12: Victoria’s Secret introduces the Leslie Johnson signature series bra, available in sizes 32¢ to 38€€. (Craig Dykstra) Dec. 24: With the Mayan-forecast end of the world (12-21-2012) now less than a year away, sales of extended warranties at Best Buy drop to zero. (Gary Crockett) Dec. 31: The Style Invitational once again avoids being a subject for its annual obit-poem contest. (Kevin Dopart) *DID YOU GET YOUR LOSER PARTY INVITATION? * If you didn’t get the Evite and you’re interested in coming to the Loser Post-Holiday Party potluck dinner*schmoozefest on Jan. 13, write me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll give you the information. You don’t have to be a Loser to attend, but if we haven’t met before, we’ll chat first so that I can verbally, you know, check the cleanliness of your fingernails. Happy New Year to all, and best wishes for an inky 2018. ====================================================================== WEEK 1261, published January 7, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1261: Everyone’s a winner! To someone, anyway. The results of the readers’ poll of Style Invitational cartoon captions. Bob Staake’s cartoon for Robert Schechter’s winning obit poem about Ferdinand Porsche (2013). See the poem in the bottom section of today’s column. By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Jan. 4, 2018 at 4:12 p.m. EST Last week I accompanied the Style Invitationalcaption contest results with a poll in which readers could vote on their favorite entry for each of the four Bob Staake cartoons, out of the 38 entries I'd printed — between 7 and 15 choices per cartoon. You couldn't choose a runner-up, or more than one winner. EVERY caption received at least two first-place votes. That didn't shock me, because years ago the Invitational did a similar survey, in which the Czar put up his 25 chosen entries, unranked, and asked people to email their choices. I can't remember which contest it was, but I do remember that I'd volunteered to tabulate the results — and that 24 of the entries received at least one first-place vote, and you couldn't vote for your own. And I do believe that humor is largely subjective — what strikes you as hilarious might be meh to the person next to you. And it depends on your own knowledge and experiences; if you go to the National Gallery a lot but never go grocery shopping with 5-year-olds, the caption referring to the weird object in Picture D as a moldy Henry Moore sculpture might appeal to you more than the one joke about riding in "the little seat." Here are the results. (If you voted already, the results should pop right up; if you haven't, scroll to the bottom and click on "View Results.") While each entry was the favorite of someone or other among the 400-some readers who checked out the poll, some favorites stood out, and*some* were the same as my own winner and runners-up. I, of course, liked*all* the inking entries; I'd chosen them from more than 1,000 in Week 1256. My choices of winner and three runners-up encompassed all four cartoons. The voting for Picture A proved a very close call, with my choice of Jon Gearhart's "Today's death metal music goes right over Harvey's head" just edging Rob Huffman's "gramophone" pun, 22.4 to 21.7 percent. I'd received a number of "death metal" entries; it was the "right over his head" that did it for me. A healthy 15 percent liked Mark Raffman's "marijuana in the Stanley Cup"; it's always fun to have captions that note some odd detail of the picture that no else does. Another neck-and-neck vote for Picture B. My choice (for the winner of the whole contest), Mark Raffman's Roy Moore*Sabrina the Teenage Witch, wins by a nose — 26.0 to 25.4 percent — over Frank Osen's devilishly risque wordplay "look up my sister." The 13 other options were all far back in the voting. It was in Picture C that readers totally disagreed with me: I loved how Barbara Turner used "wafted" to describe a giant TV screen that had fallen on the guy's foot. But only 2 percent of the electorate was similarly moved; instead, there was a clear preference, 31 percent, for John O'Byrne's joke about the problem with driverless carpets. And finally, for the Weird Object of Picture D, another disagreement: I'd received several entries mentioning the sculptor Henry Moore, but I cracked up at Warren Tanabe's idea of buying a Moore at Kmart, where of course they'd let it get all moldy. Instead, the voters — who must have been quite familiar with the Invite (some people didn't get down to this last poll question) — opted for the joke about its being an Invite prize, sent similarly by Jesse Frankovich and Duncan Stevens; it was closely followed by John McCooey's "Fukushima avocados." My predecessor, the Czar (as well as his close friend Gene Weingarten), likes to maintain, only partly in jest, that the quality of humor*isn't * subjective, that some jokes are simply better than others — and that he happens to know, better than you do, which ones they are. I don't subscribe heavily to that philosophy, but I do think that I'm a useful judge in selecting skilled, interesting and funny writing from a long, long list that, believe me, you wouldn't want to read. *REVIVAL OF THE WITTEST: RETROSPECTIVE PART 1* I did have a lot of fun reading the entries to Week 1257, which invited readers to enter — including resubmitting entries — any of the contests from 1203 through 1229 (except last year's retrospectives, 1205 and 1206). Just as in earlier contests, a number of this week's inking entries — though not, I don't think, any of the "above-the-fold" winners — had been entered in the original contests, sometimes with a little revision. Why didn't they get ink but scored now? Some weeks I have simply more good material than I can use; or I might have used another, slightly preferred entry on the same subject. For whatever reason, I did think they were nifty this time around. Not surprisingly, there were almost no Invite novices among the Week 1257 entrants, given the research involved to look up old contests. But First Offender Kenny Moore of California — who told theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook group that he'd discovered the Invite only a week earlier by Googling "caption contest" — not only supplied a nice Trump dig to earn his FirStink for his first ink, but sent promising entries for TWELVE different contests. We're really hoping that Kenny has come down with a serious case of The Invite Bug. It's the second win but the first Lose Cannon trophy for Ivars Kuskevics, who scores with a poop allusion in a Mess With Our Heads contest. I'd love to present it to him in person at the *Jan. 13 Loser Post-Holiday Party, *since Ivars lives in the close-in D.C. suburbs but has never been to a Loser event. That's also true for this week's runners-up Dottie Gray and William Kennard — we'd love to meet all of you at the home of Steve Langer and Alison Fultz in Chevy Chase. On the other hand, runner-up Matt Monitto lives way up in Connecticut — but *he's* coming to the party! *Haven't sent your RSVP, or didn't get the Evite?Click right here. * We're currently at a cozy but lively 38 yeses and 14 maybes for the potluck. *What Doug dug: * While Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood tends to agree with my top picks, this week his faves were all honorable mentions: Jesse Frankovich's about Edison inventing the lightbulb joke; Chris Doyle's "Bonaparte's retweet"; Dave Prevar's use of the words from the inaugural address as an ode to bowel movements; and Dave Matuskey's horse breeding of Classic Rock x Sonneteer = Lynryd Cohyn. *BRING OUT YOUR DEAD-POEMS: THIS WEEK'S OBIT CONTEST* I know — just asking people to "write a humorous poem about someone who died last year" can seem tasteless. But look: In the*fourteen* times I've run this contest, I don't think I've gotten a single complaint from a reader — including anyone who personally knew the subject of the poem. And that, I think, is because we stick to a few basic guidelines: 1. Don't rejoice gleefully over the person's death, or predict a trip to Hell, unless the person is universally regarded as evil. Charles Manson? Have at him. Still, that rule doesn't prevent you from bringing up anything negative about someone else; Cardinal Law, I imagine, could invite some pointed humor. But it will be more of a challenge. 2. Don't joke about someone's grisly or painful death — especially of someone whose loved ones might end up reading your poem. 3. The safest — and often the most entertaining — way to avoid causing shock or pain is to pivot the humor away from the people themselves, or their deaths, and onto their claim to fame. This tack works especially well with more obscure people, like this one from 2005: *Answering machine inventor Joseph Zimmerman:* "Hi, this is Saint Peter. I'm out at the moment So leave me your name at the bell." "This is Zimmerman, Joseph. I made this machine, I'm so glad to reach you and not Hell." (Scott Campisi) A few logistical notes: — In last year's results, I preceded each poem with the*subject's name, and birth and death years,* so if you're sure of the birth year, please include it. Note that it means that the person's full name (or any part of his name) doesn't necessarily have to be in the poem itself. Also, I can include a brief identification to set up the poem, as for the answering machine inventor above; if the poem itself makes it clear, I won't add the ID. — As in all Invite poetry contests, I'll be *capitalizing the beginning of each line* unless a line needs to begin lowercase for the sake of the joke. This is because the print paper has very narrow columns, and the lines of a poem often break over a line. So capitals at the beginnings of the lines often clarify the structure. (There's no way in The Post's Methode system to format a "hang" indent of subsequent lines, except by manually inserting white spaces. We did have it in our pre-Methode system, and I hope we also will in the new system they're readying.) — Your poem *can be a short song parody,* but I'm not likely to run more than one or two. — Finally, please *make sure the person actually died last year. * I've gotten some very nice poems about people who'd met their Maker several years earlier. If you're new to Loserland, or just want to read more of the Dead Letters, check out the previous results at to Loser Elden Carnahan's Master Contest List and search on "died." Most of those hits (starting in 2004, after the Empress deposed the Czar) will be for a contest headlined "Dead Letters" or "Post Mortems." Check the week number, then scroll down four rows and click that week number on the right, to see the results of that contest. Meanwhile, here are a few of my favorite obit poems: *The winner of Week 1004, illustrated by Bob Staake at the top of the page:* *Ferdinand A. Porsche (1935-2012), designer of the Porsche 911:* When Porsche first designed his car, he cleverly employed The insights he had garnered from the works of Sigmund Freud. A car, as Porsche understood, was outwardly metallic, But in the heart of man it was organic flesh, and phallic. And so he built it long and strong, he built it fast and loud, To make the rich unmanly man feel powerfully endowed. Though Freud had said that now and then cigars are just cigars, Ferdinand, the businessman, knew cars are not just cars. (Robert Schechter, 2013) *Edward Archbold, who died after winning a roach-eating contest: * Hey, the next time that someone approaches With a contest to eat the most roaches, Though the prize may be nice, I suggest you think twice, 'Cause it might be your big*buenas noches.*(Nan Reiner, 2013, second place to Robert Schechter's Porsche poem above) *4-foot-3 actress Zelda Rubinstein * *and 7-foot-7 Manute Bol: * One can hardly compute that like Zelda, Manute Was seen just for his size at the start. Their success was their pride, but last year, well, they died Just six months and a yardstick apart. (Christopher Lamora, winner in 2011) *Jerry Falwell:* Not for being greatly good -- Not because he knew he would -- Jerry Falwell's gone above, Unto his Creator's love, Spending every night and day With angels black and angels gay. God our Father knows us all well; Knows what's Hell for Jerry Falwell. (David Smith, rather cunningly circumventing the no-Hell rule, in the 2008 contest) ====================================================================== WEEK 1262, published January 14, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1262: Tell us how you really fill The Invitational Empress on this week’s uncrossword and retrospective results Nanu-nanu: Robin Williams as the maniacally endearing Orkan, with Earthling Pam Dawber, in the 1978-82 sitcom "Mork and Mindy." ORKANS is one of this week’s words for Week 1262. (ABC) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Jan. 11, 2018 at 1:57 p.m. EST Before Evan Birnholz got the plum job of replacing the late Merl Reagle a couple of years ago as the creator of The Washington Post's Sunday crossword, Evan regularly created puzzles for his own website, DevilCross.com — which is the source of the this week's Style Invitational reverse crossword, Week 1262, as well as several of our earlier ones. (Did you know that Evan writes a weekly kind of Conversational column for each of his crosswords? Here's a link to the Post crossword itself ; and here's the one to his weekly blog , in which he explains some of the clues and shares news from the crossword world. I'm using Evan's own puzzles (this one is from 2015) rather than his consistently excellent Post puzzles merely because the Sunday puzzle is too big for us to print in the Invite, with 21 squares in each direction and well over 100 clues; one we're using is 15 x 15, with 60-some clues to be written. Evan's DevilCross clues, which I list below, are also quite different from the Sunday puzzle in The Washington Post Magazine: First, because his own crosswords didn't appear in print, Evan wasn't restricted to extremely short wording — and neither are we, because I don't try to include a clue for every last word in the grid, just the funniest ones (and sometimes several clues for the same word). And because Evan's own readership probably ranges more toward his own age (mid-thirties) than that of a large fraction of Post readers, his clues can include a lot more references that the more fogy-centric among us might not get. While Evan uses clever humor and wordplay for some of his clues, he more often adds interest to the "fill," or smaller words, by citing interesting facts, as in his clue for the super-bomb movie "It's Pat." I don't think that tack of just fascinating trivia will work for the Invite, though. A few things to note for this contest: 1. Crossword convention is to signal wordplay in a clue with a question mark. We don't do that in the Invite because*non-*wordplay is the exception. 2. Hey, there aren't any numbers in the grid! That's because we don't need them. This way, the letters can appear in larger print, and it keeps people from sending entries that give only the numbers rather than the words, forcing me to look them up. If you want to combine two words in one clue, just write CLUEONE + CLUETWO. 3. Since I asked repeatedly, I am sure that all of you who enter this contest will not add spaces into the words you cite in your entries, so that if I search through the list for all the entries for a particular word, I'll be sure to see it. But do feel free to explain that ITSPAT is "IT SPAT"*after* your clue, though I probably won't include that in the results. 4. While I never insist that Invite crossword clues be extremely short, this week you can be even more expansive. I mean, don't write a paragraph, but if you can make your entry funnier by using the word in a funny sentence? Go for it. *Evan Birnholz's clues to the puzzle we're using this week:* *ACROSS CLUES* MAMASBOY: He has a special woman in his life, and it's kind of pathetic BASQUE: Navarre tongue ITALIANO: Latina tongue ABOUND: Teem TIRAMISU: 15-across [Italiano] dish whose name means "pick me up" REWARD: Positive reinforcement gesture ETC: Letters written after many examples CLEVER: Sharp LEI: Hawaiian-based chain DIETER: Mike Myers's character in "Sprockets" sketches ASIDE: Device often employed by Ferris Bueller TWEETY: Diminutive "Space Jam" baller GAZETTE: Word on a masthead, at times RATTY: In really awful shape JOSEREYES: Shortstop who won the 2006 Silver Slugger Award ASHE: He beat Crealy to win the 1970 Australian Open FETED: Gave the star treatment to PIMA: Southwest people PHANTASMS: They're in one's head CONES: They're in one's eyes ANTIQUE: Object for a certain dealer SOUNDS: Heard things ASHEN: Evincing terror, in a way ITSPAT: 1994 film that sucked horribly enough to earn a 0% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on only 11 reviews, but still) CHA: Dance segment? OTHERS: Those indicated by 19 Across [etc.] MSG: Additive originally patented by Kikunae Akeda during the early 20th century TOWBAR: Device that can help someone who experienced a breakdown EXITLINE: Dramatic last word ORKANS: Nonviolent alien species of old TV RENEGEON: Break, as a deal NEEDTO: Must ESTRANGE: Turn away *DOWN CLUES* MITE: Subject for an acarologist ATIT: Arguing MARC: NBA star Gasol ALA: Eurodance tune "Vamus ___ Playa" SIMCITY: Popular game in development? BAILEY: "Grey's Anatomy" star nicknamed the Nazi ONSET: First sign YOUVEGOTMETHERE: "I can't argue with that" BARR: Presidential candidate in 2008 or 2012 (note: it was a different person each time) ABE: Protagonist of the "Oddworld" video game series SOW: Spread QUALITYINN: Comfort Suites alternative UNREDEEMED: Not saved EDDIE: _____Brock (Venom's alter ego) ERASES: Draws a blank? DETENTE: Opportunity to resume talks, perhaps AER: ___ Arann Islands (Irish carrier) STEPOUT: Leave briefly TRAP: "Sweet Disposition" band The Temper ____ WASHASHORE: Turn up, as flotsam ETHANHAWKE: "Predestination" star ZED: Bobcat's role in the "Police Academy" movies JESUIT: Like Xavier, say SASS: Take a fresh approach? FAQ: Resource with all the answers, hopefully TIN: Like a certain god COASTER: Cedar Point's Blue Streak or Mean Streak, e.g. SPRINT: Short run? ACTON: Do more than simply talk about SEXES: Groups in an old battle ORSO: Qualifying time phrase? MIEN: Look SNOG: French in London, say GENE: Bob's son in "Bob's Burgers" BAD: Ass front? ANT: Princess Atta of animated film, for one LGA: It was originally called Glenn H. Curtiss Airport: abbr. *THE DEUX-OVER:* THE RESULTS OF PART 2 OF OUR 2017 RETROSPECTIVE* **Non-inking headline by Mark Raffman* This week's results , encompassing Weeks 1230 through 1254, provided a happy complement to last week's (1203-1229); together they make an illustrative guide to What The Style Invitational Is All About. I ended up using entries for 16 of the contests, including, online, two captions for a Bob Staake cartoon from Week 1232. Many of this week's inking entries were resubmissions. I especially remembered the song parodies about science and technology (Week 1235), which I rued not having the room to share back in the summer, and many of which I'm robbing of ink yet again. (I may have room on the page to run one or more parodies next week, since the entries for euphemisms will run only a line or two apiece.) It was indeed a new entry that wins this week's Lose Cannon: "Philip Mortis" earns William Kennard his third win — all in the past year — and his 60th blot of ink. Even though Bill lives right across the river from Washington, I still haven't met him in person. *SPEAKING OF MEETING IN PERSON: * It's still not too late to decide to come to *this Saturday's Loser Post Holiday Party,* a potluck at the Langer-Fultz Abode in Chevy Chase, right near the Friendship Heights Metro station. Bill and even YOU are invited with thishighly personal Evite . We're currently at 53 guests and 13 maybes. Complete with several songs about Loserdom and more by our own Aluminum Pan Alley: Jesse Frankovich, Mae Scanlan, Matt Monitto, Duncan Stevens and (in a crowdsourced "Major General") Mark Raffman, Jon Gearhart, Barbara Sarshik and Brendan Beary. Some of the parodies are set to Christmas songs, so feel free to pretend it's still Christmas and wear ridiculous sweaters. Back to this week's Losers' Circle: While it's the fifth ink "above the fold" for parody specialist Perry Beider, and the umptieth for everything specialist Jesse Frankovich, it's just the second blot of ink for runner-up Thor Rudebeck. The Chicagoan has been a frequent presence on theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook page, but this win really certifies him as a Thor Loser. *What Doug Dug: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood singled out as this week's faves Jesse Frankovich's "medicine" Yomamamine ("Treats extreme ugliness, obesity, stupidity and easiness"); Roy Ashley's "Twelve Angry Men" (too many Redskins on the field); the "untrue confessions" of coffee shop irritation Sean Bender-Prouty, our latest high school student phenom, and of dog park grosser-out Frank Osen, who is*not, *chronologically, an adolescent; and Doug's very favorite, Jesse's runner-up Oxford comma joke. *Deja ewwww* — the retrospective unprintables **(*Non-inking honorable-mentions subhead by Beverley Sharp):* A few entries I deemed Not Safe for Invite: *Week 1254, change a business name by one letter:*Politifuct: An organization dedicated to uncovering which elected officials' lies have left them the public screwed. (Jon Gearhart) *Week 1246, Questionable Journalism: * Sentence in a Post story: It contained 40 photographs and, by my count, about 100 human faces, none of which were smiling. Q: What did you find in Ed Gein's scrapbook? (Jeff Contompasis) And for the Scarlet Letter:*Week 1250, poems featuring words used the first time in a particular year: **1678:* Said the nobleman: "UGH! What's that stink!" "With respect, sir, it's just what you think" — And then, served from the mess, In a BEDPAN, no less — "Your request -- a meal fit for a KINK." (Mark Raffman) ====================================================================== WEEK 1263, published January 21, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1263: Was it the tiny hands? The Style Invitational Empress on the new contest and results — and 2 Invite icons Style Invitational Hall of Fame Loser Brendan Beary, left, one-ups the Google Arts & Culture app by finding his match in a renowned Invite prize. (Family photo* Fred Dawson's paintbrush) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Jan. 18, 2018 at 3:17 p.m. EST Haha! If you've been on social media in the past week, you've probably seen people playing addictively with a new app, Google Arts & Culture, which lets you submit a selfie and then matches it as best it can with a museum painting in its database. (The Empressbest matched an 18th-century portrait of a man in, perhaps, a wig .) This morning, Brendan Beary posted the above diptych on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page: "Okay, thanks Google," he said "No, really, you've done enough." Okay, it's not really from Google. Brendan matched himself with "The Worst Picture Ever Painted," so named by Style Invitational Loser Fred Dawson — who painted it. Back at the 2005 Loser Holiday Party, Fred came up to me and asked conspiratorially: "Would you like to see the worst picture ever painted? It's here in my car." And so Fred's masterpiece (aka "White-Faced Woman With Vestigial Hands") became the runner-up prize for Week 672 — and a Style Invitational icon. Name tags at Loser Brunches bear the woman's visage, and Loser Stephen Dudzik even had them imprinted on a page of custom postage stamps (also donated as a prize). Fred's painting was won four weeks later by longtime Loser Art Grinath, but a few months later Art sent it back to us, reporting that "frankly, it frightened my cats." What to do? Ask the Losers, of course — in a contest. The prize? The painting, duh. And so we ran lots of creative and funny ideas (hilarious results here). And the entry that won the painting? *I should get it because everyone thinks you'll give it to me because that would be funny, but then people will think you would never resort to such a cheap and easy laugh, so they'll be sure you won't give it to me, and that's when you'll fool them.*(Art Grinath, Takoma Park) But Art graciously let me send Fred's painting to a man named Michael Canty — who'd actually painted a mirror image (even uglier ) of Fred's and said he wanted a matched set to hang over his fireplace. And that's where I hope it still hangs today. Back in the day, Googling "the worst picture ever painted" would show you Fred's right at the top of the list , but now it doesn't show up till the bottom of the fourth page. Alas, fame is fleeting. But thanks to Brendan, The Lady shines again. And we finally learned who Fred's model was. *CONTEST BY COMMITTEE: WEEK 1263* As I note in the introduction to this week's contest , this Invite-typey contest also had its gen­esis in the Style Invitational Devotees group. It started when Jules Minton shared a graphic noting that a Sweden-Denmark World Cup game would say SWE-DEN on the scoreboard — and what's more, the*unused* parts of those names combined to DEN-MARK. And Cyprus-Russia, CYP-RUS* RUS-SIA. Very cool, to be sure, but it's not material for a humor contest. But then Duncan Stevens and Chris Doyle started combining team abbreviations with funny descriptions of the game between them — and ding! we have Week 1263, complete with examples. I changed the list of abbreviations to refer to the Olympics rather than the World Cup, and took Duncan's cue to add colleges. (And just in the past hour, at the prompting of Loser Gregory Koch, I created a link to a particular Reddit list for college scoreboard abbreviations.) Even though there are a lot of team names, I predict that I'm going to be receiving many of the same combinations among this week's entries. So it will probably come down to the cleverness and humor of the descriptions. *FOUNTAIN OF EUPH*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1259* **Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich* Even with the sizable pictures of our two new Loser magnets for 2018 (which I'll start sending out after I finish the pile of 50 or so "Magnum Dopus") I had plenty of room on the print page this week to run 41 nifty euphemisms and dysphemisms. It wasn't until late Tuesday night, when I'd copied in my still-uncredited list of winners and then systematically searched my master list, one by one, for their authors, that I learned about the crazy dominance of this week's results by the Balmain-FitzPatrick family of Rochester, N.Y. As regular readers know, Lose Cannon winner Melissa Balmain, who teaches writing at the University of Rochester, is an Invite fixture; this is her 11th contest win, and her 124th (and 125th, 126th and 127th) blot of ink. But this week, Melissa's skill at not-really-tact was supplemented with two inks each from her husband, philosophy professor Bill FitzPatrick, and her son, Princeton freshman Davey (who'd had two inks already). Melissa told me this afternoon that "Bill, Davey and I all worked on our entries during a recent trip from Brooklyn to Rochester. As Bill says, 'The most productive car ride in our family's history.' " The family that euphemizes together ... hm. Oh, spins. Spins* wins. But of course two of them lose. *What Doug Dug: * While Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agrees fairly often with my top choices, this week his faves are all from "below the fold": Jeff Contompasis's "Shameless: Morally liberated" and "Tim Cook's" dysphemism "Optimized: slow" (hmm, maybe it should have run as a euphemism: "Slow: Optimized"? ); Kevin Dopart's "Sociopathy: Indifferently abled"; Steve Honley's "Dating someone underage: Mentoring"; Drew Bennett's "Treason: Situational Patriotism"; and, sent by both Daniel Helming and Randy Lee: "Nuclear button: Micropenis." *POST-PARTY LOSER DOINGS: NEXT BRUNCH, FEB. 18, COLUMBIA, MD. * Thanks to all 60 or so of you who joined us at last Saturday's Loser Post-Holiday party, bringing a sinful array of food and drink, singing along with the song parodies, and just being convivial without knocking over lamps. And special thanks to Steve Langer and Allison Fultz, who offered up their house for the second straight year; to piano accompanist Steve Honley; to Elden and his 60 folding chairs; and to the Loserbards who wrote the several odes to Loserdom (plus a crowdsourced "Major-General's Song" parody about You Know Who). Lyrics are at this post on the Devotees page . The next Loser sighting: That'd be a brunch (No. 205!) at Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia, Md., Sunday, Feb. 18, at noon. We've enjoyed dining there several times; if you live north of the Beltway, this is a great time to commune, face-stuff, etc. I plan to go especially if I can carpool with someone. RSVP to Elden at the Losers' website, NRARS,org ; click on "Our Social Engorgements." ====================================================================== WEEK 1264, published January 28, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1264: The foresight saga of ‘The Year in Preview’ Including Dave Barry’s five favorites among this week’s results By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Jan. 25, 2018 at 2:15 p.m. EST As I often do after reading through the week's Style Invitational entries, I showed a "short"-list of about 90 entries for Week 1260's "Year in Preview" contest to my predecessor, the mysterious Czar of The Style Invitational . As he does*not* often do, the Czar deemed the Empress's list "extraordinarily good results," highlighting 25 of his favorites. He added: "They*really* got what Dave does." "Dave" would be the Czar's longtime bestie Dave Barry, arguably the funniest person in the whole world as well as at least three of the smaller planets. And one of the many things Dave does is his famed "Year in Review," an annual chronicle that mixes hilarious commentary of actual events with obviously made-up items playing off the real ones. (Here's 2017's. ) Then the Czar, whom I will refer to by the randomly chosen name "Gene," sent the list to Dave, without his own annotations, and asked him to choose his own faves — since the Invite contest clearly is modeled on the made-up part of Dave's pieces. Now, "Gene" happens to be on record saying this about himself: "Gene believes that humor is objective, not subjective, and that he himself is the only infallible judge of humor in America. So he believes his picks are not opinions, but statements of fact." A short time later, Dave replied, noting five favorites "in no particular order": John Hutchins’s second-place entry: “Feb. 2: Punxsutawney Phil predicts an early end to winter. The White House immediately accuses him of ‘promoting a fake global-warming agenda’ and cancels Groundhog Day.” (Punxsutawney Grounhog Club) John Hutchins’s second-place entry: “Feb. 2: Punxsutawney Phil predicts an early end to winter. The White House immediately accuses him of ‘promoting a fake global-warming agenda’ and cancels Groundhog Day.” (Punxsutawney Grounhog Club) — April 28: In the seventh round, the Minnesota Vikings draft an end zone choreographer out of Juilliard. (Howard Walderman) — May 5: For the first time, the Kentucky Derby is won by a self-driving horse. (Jesse Frankovich) — Sept. 19: The Cleveland Browns are mathematically eliminated from playoff contention. (Mark Calandra) — Oct. 12: Columbus, Ohio, renames itself Genocidal European, Ohio. (Steve Honley) — Aug. 2: Disney announces 53 more stand-alone films about Star Wars characters that will culminate with "That Blue Elephant-Looking Thing That Plays the Keyboard in Jabba's Palace: A Star Wars Story." (Kurt Stahl) And Gene's infallibility? Well, three of Dave's choices*didn't even make Gene's list of 25.*(I won't say which, so each of those five Losers can think Gene's dis was of three other entries.) I then sent the same list to Malcolm Fleschner, the 67-time Loser from whom I got the "Year in Preview" idea; Malcolm writes one himself in Culture Shlock, his humor column for the San Jose Mercury News (Here's Malcolm's ). As I continued to narrow my short­list on Tuesday afternoon, starting with Gene's and Dave's picks and adding 18 of my own "oh, we*have* to run . . ." choices, Malcolm chose 18 favorites. And once again, three of Dave's picks — but a different three — weren't on Malcolm's list of all. And only eight of Malcolm's choices made Gene's list of 25. And finally, five of his 18 choices were for entries I'd dropped in my last trim. How much influence did these three certifiably "getting it" humorists have on my final 43 picks for Week 1260? A little: I ended up using 21 of Gene's 25, I used all five of Dave's, and I added back three of Malcolm's picks that I'd trimmed in the last cut. And one of my three final choices for first place — Steve Honley's "Genocidal European, Ohio" — was reinforced when I saw that it was the only entry that made Dave's, Gene's*and* Malcolm's lists. It's the second win and 79th blot of ink overall for Steve, who's a Foreign Service alumnus and currently heads up the music at a D.C. area church (he played the piano to accompany the song parodies at this month's Loser Post-Holiday Party). And the three runners-up are also Invite veterans: Frank Osen (the Navajo renaming the White House shrunken Bears Ears Monument as Trumps Hands Park), John Hutchins (the groundhog joke printed in the caption above left) and Howard Walderman (NFL drafting an end zone choreographer) wallow in almost 600 blots of ink among them. And one more party heard from: It's our weekly weigh-in *What Doug Dug, *the faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood. As he worked on the Invite yesterday, Doug saw only the 43 inking entries, not my shortlist. He liked all four winners this week, and also singled out Bill Dorner's entry on opioids replacing religion as the official opiate of the masses; Jesse Frankovich's Your Mama Tuesday; Jeff Contompasis's joke about 70,000 volunteer firefighters at a pot farm blaze; Ward Kay's pay-inequality joke on the "what's in your wallet" commercials; and Mark Calandra's mathematically not*quite* possible Cleveland Browns dig. Doug also shouted out Kevin Dopart's headline for the results, "Divined Comedy." Meanwhile, I'm sure that "Gene" still considers himself the infallible, objective determinant of what is funny. *THE WEEK OF 'REVIEW': OUR NEW YELP CONTEST* This week's contest for Yelp-style reviews, Week 1264, will probably generate the same sort of clueless-person humor that brightened our recent contest forAmazon ratings of everyday household products, but of experiences rather than of objects. I didn't specify a maximum length, but paragraphs over about 50 words tend not to work well in the Invitational; readers see a block of type and will often skip to something pithier, especially in the narrow columns of the print edition. There are always exceptions, but lengthy entries always have to be worth the length. See the link to the Amazon ratings to get a feel for what we tend to run. *IS 'SILVER' JUST A EUPHEMISM FOR GRAY?* Jesse Frankovich's honorable-mention entry (added for the online Invite) about the pathetic prize for the 25th-anniversary Style Invitational contest does cite the real date, the March 4 paper (March 1 online): Indeed, the Czar debuted the Invite on Sunday, March 7, 1993, and so on Week 1269 we'll surely observe the quarter-century in some way. I've received a number of suggestions for a silver-anniversary contest but will happily consider others. Write me at pat.myers@washpost.com with something indicative in the subject line. *"The Foresight Saga" was a non-inking headline entry by Beverley Sharp. ====================================================================== WEEK 1265, published February 4, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1265: Obits and pieces More about the late Godzilla actor, two courageous soldiers, and an entitled cat By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Feb. 1, 2018 at 2:39 p.m. EST The Style Invitational's contest to write humorous poems about people (and the occasional animal) who died in the previous year — variously titled Dead Letters, The Post's Mortems, A Lit Obit of Fun, and A RIP-Roaring Year — has celebrated the Formerly Functioning annually since 2004. And as always, this year's results mix the big headliners with those who were household names in only certain households. Here's some more about four of the subjects of this year's inking Dead-Poems. *HARUO NAKAJIMA (1929-2017)* *The actor who portrayed Godzilla Hence shall act as coffin filla. (Jesse Frankovich)* Haruo Nakajima, the "suit actor" lumbering within the Godzilla costume in a dozen Japanese films beginning in 1954, first made his mark as a serious actor earlier that year in Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai," as a bandit. Released just nine years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "Godzilla" is the heartwarming tale of an irradiated mutant that springs from the ocean in the wake of a hydrogen bomb test and rampages through Tokyo. And inside Big G was Haruo Nakajima. “He hasn’t voted for anything I wouldn’t have voted for,” said one resident of Talkeetna, Alaska, about her town’s honorary executive. “He hasn’t voted for anything I wouldn’t have voted for,” said one resident of Talkeetna, Alaska, about her town’s honorary executive. "Big" is an understatement. As Nakajima remembers in a Great Big Story mini-doc, rubber was hard to come by in postwar Japan, and so "instead, they used ready-mixed concrete, so it weighed about 100 kilograms" — more than 200 pounds. "It was so heavy and hot, and with the lighting, it was even hot just to touch it." He said that the end of a day's shooting, which consisted of him knocking over meticulously constructed scale models with just the right amount of energy, he could fill half a bucket by wringing the sweat out of his undershirt. But Nakajima continued to suit up (presumably with increasing comfort) 11 more times through 1972. He also took a turn as King Kong in 1967. *STANISLAV PETROV (1939-2017)* *In '83, with Cold War tensions high, A Russian, at his button, didn't use it. Though sirens screamed to let the missiles fly, The truly big know when they shouldn't lose it. There wouldn't be a smithereen still left of Our world today, if not for Comrade Petrov. (Frank Osen)* AD From a Washington Post article by Kristine Phillips: "Just past midnight on Sept. 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov was on overnight duty inside Serpukhov-15, a secret bunker southwest of Moscow where the Soviet Union monitored its early-warning satellites positioned over the United States. The 44-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Union's Air Defense Forces was sitting on the commander's chair when sirens began blaring. A red button on the panel in front of him flashed the word "Start." On a computer screen was the word "Launch," in red, bold letters. The message appeared clear: The United States had just launched a nuclear missile attack against the Soviet Union. And Petrov, the officer in charge of Serpukhov-15, had to immediately warn his commanders so that the Soviet government could plan a counterattack. A second missile was launched. Then another, and another, and another. Petrov and his staff were in shock, but they had only minutes, if not seconds, to act. . . . Petrov had two choices: He could follow military protocol and tell his commanders that computer readouts were saying that five intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched by the United States. Or he could go with his gut. Less than five minutes after the alarms began blaring, Petrov, working the intercom with one hand with lights flashing around him, picked up the phone with his other hand. He told his commanders that the computer warnings were false. If he was wrong, his mistake would be catastrophic and irreversible. The government's military would have no time to respond, leaving his country vulnerable in the face of a nuclear attack. … But if Petrov was right, a nuclear holocaust in the middle of the Cold War would be averted. And he was." Petrov wasn't just using his gut; he also used his head: "First, why just five missiles? A country seeking to start a nuclear war would've fired more, he told The Post. Second, the ground-based radar installations, which detected missiles, showed no evidence of an attack." The article goes on to say that while Petrov went on to be hailed as a hero in the West — there's a 2014 documentary titled "The Man Who Saved the World" — the Soviet government didn't even laud him at home, let alone remind the world how frighteningly it had screwed up. The story finally emerged in the late 1990s; Petrov lived his final years on a small pension in a town outside Moscow. *PVT. EMMANUEL MENSAH (died Dec. 28, age 28) * *Emmanuel Mensah never knew His native land was dung. We need more "wretched refuse" just like him And less from Donald's tongue. (Beryl Benderly)* From the New York Times, Dec. 29 : "Emmanuel Mensah was a handsome, strongly built young man in his late 20s who immigrated to the Bronx from Ghana five years ago. He joined the Army National Guard but returned to his apartment on Prospect Avenue in December, after graduating from boot camp with the rank of private first class. And on Thursday night, he lost his life trying to save people from his furiously burning apartment building, one of 12 people to die in the blaze. "He brought four people out," said his uncle, Twum Bredu, who lives next door. "When he went to bring a fifth person out, the fire caught up with him." ... Private Mensah, a decorated soldier who had been awarded a medal for marksmanship and was planning to join the military police, got that family to safety, then pulled out four more people, his uncle said, before returning to the building. He never emerged; the authorities said he died of smoke inhalation." The Army later said that Mensah had rushed back into the burning building at least three times to rescue fellow residents. It awarded him the Medal of Valor and a Soldier's Medal. As The Washington Post summed up aJan. 12 editorial in the wake of the president's comments on which countries' immigrants are more desirable: "Most Americans understand how fortunate we are to attract such heroes to our shores." *STUBBS THE CAT (1997-2017)* *For years, Alaskan tourists made a mandatory beeline To meet Talkeetna's mayor: such a well-connected feline. "Alas!" Alaskans mourn, "he could have gotten votes aplenty If he were in the running for VP in 2020." (Beverley Sharp)* From a2013 Wall Street Journal article by Jim Carlton TALKEETNA, Alaska—The mayor of this tiny village has been shot, fallen into a restaurant fryer, jumped off a moving truck and been mauled by a dog. Now the burning question around these parts is: Has Mayor Stubbs used up his nine lives? Stubbs is a cat—but that didn't stop residents of this unincorporated burg of 876 from naming him their mayor 16 years ago. "It's an honorary position we gave him, and it just stuck," says Lauri Stec, general manager of Nagley's General Store, where Stubbs was adopted by the management as a stray kitten. "We don't own him, he owns us," she added, scratching His Honor under the chin. But townsfolk are being forced to contemplate regime change, after the golden-furred Manx mix was attacked by a dog in late August and left with 12 stitches, a punctured lung and fractured sternum. Stubbs spent nine days in a veterinary hospital before being released to his home in an upstairs room of the general store, where he is said to be recuperating slowly. … There are no formal surveys, but the mayor's approval ratings seem high. "He hasn't voted for anything I wouldn't have voted for," says Peg Vos, 61, a retired schoolteacher. "Anything's better than a human," adds Gil Gunther, 46, owner of the Antler Outpost. Stubbs's run of bad luck began about five years ago when some teenagers opened fire with a BB gun, leaving a pellet lodged in his hindquarters. Not long after, Stubbs hitched a ride on a garbage truck, prompting an all-points-bulletin on the local radio station. He managed to jump off on the outskirts of town and make his way home. Last year, he fell into the fryer of a restaurant—fortunately when the oil was cold—requiring an all-night cleansing with dish soap, Ms. Stec says. Most recently, on the night of Aug. 31, the mayor was out making his rounds when he was attacked by a mixed-breed dog. Ms. Stec says she . .  . .found him bleeding on the ground, she wrapped him up and took him to a local vet. Stubbs survived, and upon his return to Nagley's, was greeted like royalty. Fans from around the world, who knew of the cat mayor from previous news coverage, sent get-well cards and left messages of support on a Facebook page. Like an even more well-known former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin, Stubbs's star power has helped put Talkeetna on the map. But with Stubbs' recovery going slowly, talk inevitably has turned to succession plans. Exactly how—or whether—to replace Stubbs hasn't been determined. Says Sassan Mossaner, owner of the Denali Brewing Co., "Those are difficult paws to fill." --- Duncan Stevens's take on the somewhat better known Hugh Hefner — envisioning his afterlife "dressed as a bunny" — earns Duncan his fourth Style Invitational win and his 211th (and 212th) blot of Invite ink. On the other hand, Beryl Benderly's verse about Pvt. Mensah (and Prsdt. Non-Mensa) brings her just Ink No. 14 — but her third trip to the Losers' Circle — though she's been entering the Invite, very sporadically but successfully, since Week 94. And our other two "above the fold" Loserbards, Melissa Balmain and Beverley Sharp, seem to be up there more often than not whenever I post results of a poetry contest (or any other kind). *What Doug Dug:* The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood this week were Melissa's runner-up about the inventor of Caller ID — "So why, when Death called, did you ever pick up?"; Jesse Frankovich's terse verse about Roger Ailes — "Now the CEO of Fox* Does his lying in a box"; and Duncan's thoughts on Zbigniew Brzezinski: "When you're waiting in line at those ol' Pearly Gates* To enter the kingdom of light,* And they look up your name in the Book of the Fates, Here's hoping they've got it spelled right." *This just in: * Biggest Loser Ever Chris Doyle notes in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, just as I'm writing this column: This week's poetry ink for Duncan, Mark Raffman and Chris Doyle pushes them all over the 100-ink mark for this Loser Year (Feb-Feb) alone, to join Jawdropper Jesse Frankovich, who got there months ago and is pushing 150. It's very rare for anyone to get 100 inks in one year; in the two previous years, only Chris met that mark, and no one did the year before. There was one other time when we had four 100-ink Losers, according to Elden Carnahan's Ridiculously Comprehensive Loser Stats : In 2005, Chris, Russell Beland, Kevin Dopart and Brendan Beary swabbed up that much ink — but that was when you could send in an unlimited number of entries rather than the current 25, and some of these people would send upward of 100 in a single week. The three new inductees to the Century Club, Chris adds, brings the membership only to nine; the other two to score 100 in a year were Jennifer Hart and Craig Dykstra. But while I'm eager to see the work of all of them in this week's song parody contest, Week 1265, I also hope that the rest of Loserdom isn't deterred: This past year, well over*three hundred* different (oh, boy, are they different) Losers have gotten ink in The Style Invitational, and we have a month to go. I'm always delighted to see the work of the seldom-entering, not to mention brand-new Losers. Note that we have a First Offender this week, by the way: Mary Erickson's poem about mystery novelist Sue Grafton was my favorite among at least half a dozen candidates about the alphabetical-titler. *IT'S PARODY TIME! * Due to the length of this column, and just to not reinvent the wheel: If you're thinking of writing a song parody for our new contest, Week 1265, please look at my Style Conversational advice for our previous contest, Week 1235 — which in turn links to even more Wise Words, from Week 1202 . Note once again that you have a full extra week for the parodies; the deadline is Feb. 19. And always check out any discussion on the Devotees' thread about this week's contest (it's pinned to the top of the page; just click on "comments" and you can add your own — and always feel free to email me at pat.myers@washpost.com). *WHO'S HEADING NORTH TO THE LOSER BRUNCH FEB. 18? * The Loser Community, a.k.a. the Not Ready for the Algonquin Round (Table) Society, likes to schedule its monthly Sunday brunches all over the D.C.-Baltimore area, to give everyone a chance not to drive*that* far at least once in a while. This month, as in previous Februaries, we'll be gathering at noon at the Victoria Gastro Pub, just off I-95 in a shopping center in Columbia, Md., midway between Washington and Baltimore. RSVP to Elden at NRARS.org ("Our Social Engorgements") so we'll get a head count for the reservation. And as someone who lives on the opposite side of the metro area, I'll be happy to join a carpool. ====================================================================== WEEK 1267, published February 18, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1267: As (we hope never) seen on TV! The Style Invitational Empress discusses the week’s new contest and results "Lazarus for Bulova Snooze Alarm Clocks: 'Sometimes, you just want to sleep a little longer.'” Kevin Dopart’s example for Week 783, September 2008. We’re doing this contest again, this time insisting on slogans or jingles. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) "Lazarus for Bulova Snooze Alarm Clocks: 'Sometimes, you just want to sleep a little longer.'” Kevin Dopart’s example for Week 783, September 2008. We’re doing this contest again, this time insisting on slogans or jingles. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Feb. 15, 2018 at 3:10 p.m. EST Howdy! Time to try to make fun of bad taste with stuff that’s printable! As I mention in the introduction to Style Invitational Week 1267, this week’s contest was prompted by the jaw-droppingly stupid decision by Ram Trucks — in the guise of a celebration of the American spirit of helpfulness and public service — to play a clip from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Drum Major” sermon to hawk its brand during the Super Bowl. Especially when that sermon, made two months before King’s assassination in 1968, happens also to contain this: “And so we see it everywhere, this quest for recognition. And we join things, overjoin really, that we think that we will find that recognition in. Now the presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers. . . . They have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. . . . “And you know what else it causes to happen? It often causes us to live above our means. . . . Do you ever see people buy cars that they can’t even begin to buy in terms of their income? You’ve seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don’t earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford. But it feeds a repressed ego.” Anyway, we’ve done a contest at least twice before for inappropriate celebrity endorsements. The first was all the way back in Year 1, which my predecessor, the Czar, ran almost exactly 24 years ago. Back then, the Invite’s humor was as topical as it is now, but in 1994 we of course were entirely in print, and so couldn’t include those handy-dandy explanatory links. And since The Post’s print circulation is almost entirely local, there were a lot more D.C.-area references. Here are some highlights with a few reminders; the whole list, which now exists online, possibly via optical scanner, is here. Report from Week 52, in which we asked for inappropriate celebrity endorsements for real products. Yes, yes, of course. Dolly Parton for Bounce; Louis Farrakhan for Wite-Out; Ollie North for Nabisco Shredded Wheat [referring to shredding documents]; Pee-wee Herman for the Pocket Fisherman [masturbation reference]; [madam] Heidi Fleiss for Trix; [harassing Sen.] Bob Packwood for Huggies. Tell us something we don’t know, like: - Fourth Runner-Up: Oksana Baiul for Saab (Randy Wetzel) [especially emotional Olympic skater] - Third Runner-Up: Sens. Claiborne Pell and Strom Thurmond for Congressional Olds (Elden Carnahan) [two ancient senators] - Second Runner-Up: Adm. Bobby Ray Inman for Chicken of the Sea (Roy Highburg) [Weeks earlier, Inman had been nominated by President Clinton as defense secretary, but then asked his nomination to be withdrawn, even though his confirmation was assured, after columnist William Safire criticized him.] - First Runner-Up: The Jackson family for Chock Full O’Nuts (Nick Dierman) - And the winner of the framed poster of Rocky Marciano: John Wayne Bobbitt for Microsoft (Chuck Smith) [Selected] Honorable Mentions: Marla Maples for Gravy Train (Randy Wetzel) [Trump’s second wife] Dr. Cecil Jacobson for Jiffy Pop Popcorn. (Don Buening [The fertility doctor was found to have impregnated at least 15 women — and possibly dozens more — with his own sperm. He served five years in prison and, says Wikipedia, “now lives in Provo, Utah, where he is involved in agricultural research.”] John Gotti for E-Z Off (C. Buffington) Rose Mary Woods for The Gap (Eileen Kirby, Philadelphia) [Nixon’s secretary loyally “explained” the famous 18-minute gap in a key Oval Office recording re Watergate by contorting her body to show how she must have accidentally erased the Dictabelt.] Jack Kevorkian for Curtains Unlimited (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Dexter Manley for ABC (Fred Burton, McLean) [Wow, too offensive for me: The Redskins lineman had recently disclosed that he was illiterate well into adulthood, but had finally learned to read by taking intensive classes at Washington’s Lab School for students with learning disabilities.] Michael Dukakis for General Dynamics (Stephen W. Buchanan, Mount Airy, Md.) [Ha-ha: a sarcastic reference to the tiny, nerdy 1988 presidential candidate looking even dweebier by riding around in a military tank.] I brought back the contest in 2008, but invited accompanying slogans (but didn’t insist on them, as I am this time). Also, unlike this time, I dropped the insistence on “inappropriate” because I was finding it hard to decide, when it’s a joke anyway, what’s appropriate vs. in-. (I will probably be flexible this week on this as well.) (The full results are evidently*not* still online on a Washington Post page, which is why we all should cherish the Master Contest List kept by Loser Elden Carnahan, which for every contest there’s a link to at least a text version like this one. ) Here’s a partial list: Report From Week 783, in which we asked you to choose an appropriate — or comically inappropriate — person, real or fictional, to endorse a particular product. Entries sent by too many people to credit individually include the Marquis de Sade, Torquemada, etc., for Hertz; Cheney hunting buddy Harry Whittington for Target; Monica Lewinsky for Hummer; and Bill Clinton for Merriam-Webster [“It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”]. 4. Lorena Bobbitt for Johnson Wax. (Larry Yungk) 3. Vladimir and Estragon for Verizon Repair Service. (Barbara Turner) 2. Jane Fonda for 20th Century Fox. (Phyllis Reinhard) And the Winner of the Inker: Ralph Nader for Armour Chopped Liver: “Hey, where’s MY press coverage?” (Marty McCullen) Seen Only on 4 a.m. Infomercials: Honorable Mentions The Three Magi for the Old Spice Gift Pack. (Mike Ostapiej) Robert Franklin Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz, for Stayfree With Wings. (Stephen Dudzik) Mike Krzyzewski for Hooked on Phonics. (N.G. Andrews) Joan of Arc for Sears. (Sue Lin Chong) David Duke for Kotex: “Wear white with confidence.” (Jeff Brechlin) Sen. Joseph McCarthy for Visine. (Beverley Sharp; Mike Ostapiej) [“Gets the red out.”] 280 million Americans for Lean Pockets. (Brendan Beary; Chuck Smith) [You may recall the 2008 recession.] Steve Irwin for Ray-Ban. (Stephen Dudzik; Kevin Dopart, Washington) [“Crocodile Hunter” Irwin was killed by a stingray.] Oedipus for Next Day Blinds. (Brendan Beary; Stephen Dudzik) Johnnie Cochran for Trojans: “If the glove don’t fit, you can’t emit.” (Russ Taylor) [Steroid users] Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco and Jason Giambi for Pep Boys (Rick Haynes; Stephen Litterst) Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna for Texas Toast. (Tom Witte) *MATCH MADNESS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1263* **Non-inking headline by Chris Doyle* Lots and lots of entries — somewhere north of 1,900 — for our Week 1263 contest pairing the scoreboard abbreviations for any two international and college sports teams and describing the game. I was helpfully visited by a mild case of the flu or imitation thereof during my two days of judging, but I found lots to laugh about amid some less laughable experiences in the duration. As always when we’re working from a finite list, even a long one, there was a lot of duplication; just a small fraction of this week’s 46 inking entries were unique pairings. I had at least 10 for AHO-LES; there were also many for BAR-FIN, LAM-EST, BUR-GER, SLE-AZE and others. Except in the case of BAR-BER, which I note in the introduction to this week’s results, I compiled the ones I liked on a short­list, then chose the entry that read best to me. Among the unique pairings: Ira Allen’s USU-URI, Duncan Stevens’s ALA-M-OH and MEM-MRI, Jesse Frankovich’s WICH-UNT, Mary McNamara’s INA-BLR, Danielle Nowlin’s GHA-ARG, Jeff Hazle’s YEM-OMA. Not many more. It’s always exciting, after I make my picks each week, to discover who wrote them — and to find that the winner is a First Offender. This time it’s Meg Winters with the best of half a dozen GRAM-MAR pairings, who’d entered the Invite a handful of times but didn’t get ink until today. And presumably she didn’t even know about the Empress’s soft spot for grammar jokes, born from her decades on the Style section copy desk. So now that she’ll be getting a Lose Cannon along with her Firstink air “freshener,” Meg will have to try again to get a Loser magnet. And while Mark Raffman seems to hang out in the Losers’ Circle more often than not, it’s the first visit there — and just the fourth (and fifth) blot of ink overall — for Mary McNamara, who wrote my favorite of several BUR-PNG matchups. Mary gets her choice of the “Gotta Play to Lose” mug or the “I Got a B in Punmanship” tote bag. As does veteran journalist Ira Allen, who gets his 15th ink “above the fold” and Ink No. 141 overall. Not eligibile for ink, but I’ll share it here: And finally, if the Style Invitational (STI) played Nicaragua (NCA), you’d get the same thing you get every week. (Jeff Hazle) *What Doug Dug:* The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood included — duh-- Meg’s winner, plus Gary Crockett’s COD-GER, Warren Tanabe’s SLE-AZE, Jesse Frankovich’s ARM-PITT, Kyle Hendrickson’s EST-RUS, Harold Mantle’s LAM-EST and Larry Levine’s AHO-LES. *Off the field: Unprintables from Week 1263: *Well, I used Seth Tucker’s HUN-GUY only in the online Invite. But I didn’t go with: Due to a BHU-BHU in scheduling, the other team didn’t show up so the boys from Bhutan had to play with themselves. (Jon Gearhart) Peru (PER), Poland (POL) and the Cook Islands (COK)? Hey, it’s the WINTER Olympics! (G. Smith) If Furman (FUR) played Kansas (KU), both teams would get a record number of taunting penalties. (Ira Allen) If Ball State (BALL) played Sacramento State (SAC), things could get downright testy.(Tom Witte) (There were a lot of BALL-SAC entries.) *NOTE FOR WEEK 1262 CROSSWORD CLUE LOSERS: * Because of the aforementioned Mr. Fluish Bug, I had to play catch-up with the Week 1263 judging and got only about half the week’s prizes sent out yesterday. I’ll get the remaining 24 or so in the mail by tomorrow morning. *LAST CALL FOR SUNDAY’S LOSER BRUNCH! * I’ll be there, not spreading any bugs, at Victoria Gastro (erp) Pub in Columbia, Md., this Sunday at noon. It’s not to late to add your name to the list! RSVP on the Loser website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”), so we can get a head count and reserve the right-size table. I’m always especially eager to meet new Losers — come on out. ====================================================================== WEEK 1268, published February 25, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1268: A note on the type Who is Etaoin Shrdlu? The Style Invitational Empress talks about this week’s contest. At right, Bob Woodward in the Post newsroom in 1973. Not a bad-looking guy, but he probably didn’t complain about who played him in the movie. By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Feb. 22, 2018 at 2:41 p.m. EST There’s not a whole lot of guidance to offer forWeek 1268 of The Style Invitational, one in our continuing series of bogus-trivia contests. In general, the idea is to spoof “fun facts” lists with humorously inaccurate unfacts. Over the years, we’ve told your funny lies abouthistory in general (links are to the results), medicine and physiology , sports , cars , the military , movies , music , the city of Washington, D.C. , fashion and more. (More topics are welcome! If you’re in town and have suggested a contest I end up using, I’ll take you out for ice cream. For this week I owe Jeff Contompasis.) Of course, fictoids are funny only if you get the joke; if you’ve never heard of “etaoin shrdlu,” JefCon’s example will cause a brow-knit. It refers to a line of text that sometimes appeared accidentally in old newspapers, discourtesy of the Linotype machine, a once-revolutionary technology that ruled newspaper production for almost a century. The letters — chosen because they were the most commonly used in the English alphabet, in descending order — formed the first two columns of the machine’s large keyboard, and somehow, out of the blue, they’d end up (usually with some other gobbledygook) right in themiddle of an article or even a headline . In 1888, The Washington Post was one of the first newspapers to adopt this transformative technology, which updated the process from what was essentially Gutenberg. According to a Post article , The Post was one of 102 papers (100 of which are now defunct) to purchase the initial issue of Ottmar Mergenthaler’s invention, which allowed an operator to type text on a special keyboard and compose type a whole line at a time, rather than letter by letter. The machines — one of which was painted red and installed decoratively at the entrance of The Post’s old building — were enormous, and enormously noisy; The Post often hired deaf people to operate them. Though The Post was one of the first adopters of this cutting-edge process, it was one of the very last to give it up: The paper used Linotype machines until 1980 ( just two years before I started working there), when it finally switched from “hot type” — keyboarded by the Linotype operators and literally stamped out on pieces of lead — to semi-computerized “cold type,” in which the writers and editors finally put away their typewriters and pencils and switched to proto-computers. In the “composing room” a floor below the newsroom downtown, the text and photos emerged from machines on strips of chemical-saturated paper, to be physically cut and pasted (yes! with wax!) onto a large paper “flat” that then was converted by another machine into a metal plate for printing. (Many of the unionized Linotype operators became the paste-up people.) It wasn’t until the late 1990s that The Post’s news pages were designed and typeset totally electronically, which marked the end of the composing room. Here’s the 1980 story telling readers about the new cold-type production. I started on the Style section copy desk at the end of 1982 (finally retiring at the end of 2008), and one or two nights a week in the ’80s I drew “makeup” duty, which meant that I went downstairs to make sure that the “printers” were pasting up the Style pages correctly, that the stories and headlines fit, etc. The printers were almost all older men, highly skilled Linotype operators (among other things, they had to learn to quickly read the lead “slugs” that printed backward ) who’d been reduced to cutting out pieces of paper in this replacement job. A few of them were bitter at this blow to their pride, and not eager to bend over backward to help out some upstart preppy from the newsroom. I did a lot of smiling and buttering up (and learned a few ASL signs) and expressing gratitude, and was pleased that one day they’d surreptitiously taped some paper spurs on the heels of my boots: I’d “earned my spurs.” And the joke about Robert Redford and Robert Woodward? Okay, no real person looks like Robert Redford. But actually, Bob Woodward, now 74, is pretty studly-looking himself . Oh, and if you’ve seen more than one of the movies “All the President’s Men,” “Spotlight” and “The Post,” along with the journalism-focused season of “The Wire,” you’re going to love Seth Meyers’s six-minute “trailer” for “Newspaper Movie,” a hilarious compendium of cliches, from the shot of stacks of papers tossed off delivery trucks, to the intrepid reporter returning exhausted to a tiny, neglected apartment, complete with that intoning hype-narration. It’s on YouTube . I literally spit out my coffee. And, hey, I’m a copy editor. I use “literally” literally. *RATERS GONNA RATE*: THE YELPISH REVIEWS OF WEEK 1264* **Non-inking headline entry by Jesse Frankovich* Yelp fan and Style Invitational Devotees group co-admin Alex Blackwood came up with a great contest idea; I’ll have to mail a milkshake to her home in Houston. Alex’s example of an actual Yelp review of San Quentin prison prompted an imaginative assortment of venues, from Heaven to Hades and lots of not-usually-reviewed places in between. As opposed to last week, when First Offender Meg Winters won the contest, all four of this week’s top winners are among The Style Invitational’s biggest shots: In fact, each has won the Loser Community’s covetedish Loser of the Year plaque: Chris Doyle in 2003, Kevin Dopart in 2007, Frank Osen in 2015, Mark Raffman in 2016. Together, those four have been responsible for more than 4,000 blots of Invite ink, even though Chris didn’t begin really Inviting till 2000 — seven years after the Invite began Inviting — and Kevin in 2005, Frank in 2011 and Mark in 2012. *Speaking of 2000:* Chris Doyle, the Most Decorated Loser Ever, is just a few dribbles away from Ink No. 2,000 (in second place is Ret. Loser Russell Beland with 1,529). We’ll find a way to “honor” Chris appropriately. *What Doug Dug:* Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood admitted this week that his favorites were exactly those of the Empress’s; he liked the winner and the three runners-up best. *Vincing Argument:* Also Ace Copy Editor Vince Rinehart also singled out Mark Raffman’s winner for Ford’s Theatre — an allusion to the old joke “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” — as well as Duncan Stevens’s pithy pan of the Washington Monument and all three of Frank Osen’s inking entries. *And speaking of Loser of the Year:*This just in! The 2018 (or Year 25) victim will be announced at the *annual Flushies award “banquet,” * and we now have a time and place: Save the date of Saturday afternoon, June 9, at the Firehouse in close-in McLean, Va., just across the river from Georgetown. As always, it’ll be a potluck featuring Loser-penned song parodies, a game or too, and general Meet the Parentheses. If you live out of town and are thinking of visiting D.C., that’s your weekend. Thanks loads of bunches to Style Invitational Devotee Kathleen Delano for securing the site. *Meanwhile:* The next Loser brunch is Sunday, March 18, at Chadwicks, a pub-type place near the Old Town Alexandria waterfront. I’ll be there and it would be a lot of fun to meet you. Especially*you*. RSVP on the Losers’ website at NRARS.org ; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” ====================================================================== WEEK 1269, published March 4, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1269: Taking it to the bank, once again The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s headline contest and song parody results From the Nov. 11, 2004, Style Invitational; illustration by Bob Staake By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow March 1, 2018 at 3:39 p.m. EST Bob Staake’s illustration and the sample headline*bank head above accompanied our first so-named Mess With Our Heads contest, back in November 2004, in my first year as Empress. The original headline was about a developer joining forces with an Indian tribe. We’d actually done the same contest three years earlier, with the odd head “Spinning Out of Control,” (as in turning the story in a new direction?) but our PDFs go back only to 2002. Anyway, we’ve done this contest at least 15 times since then, and we always get hilarious material from mind-warped flexibly thinking Losers who comb the paper — and now their choice of papers and websites — for headlines they could read a different way. And over the years, a set of ground rules for this contest has developed. Since I handy-dandily discussed these in The Style Conversational a year ago, for Week 1218 — and that column tweaked and linked to the discussion from just six months before that. I don’t see any reason to change the Week 1218 rules for this week, Week 1269 , Except for the dates, duh. If you’re not going to click on that previous column, at least read the following condensation. *What counts as a headline? * In a nutshell, anything above the text of an article or ad, as well as, on home pages and such, one-line links to other articles. *Do I have to use every word in the headline?* No, but the part of the hed (journalists use stupid jargo-spellings for everything) you do use can’t mean something hugely different on its own, and you can’t string together unconnect parts of the headline. *Can I change the capitalization or punctuation in the headline?* No on punctuation. For capitalization, yes in this particular case: If the headline, like The Post’s current heds, is “downstyle” (capitalized like a sentence) and there’s a proper name in the hed that you’d like to reinterpret as a plain ol’ common noun (say “Accord” as an agreement rather than a Honda), then you can write the whole hed as upstyle, as in a book title. If the hed is upstyle to begin with — as the in the illustration above, which uses The Post’s old format — then just leave it that way, and you can treat “Ally” either as a partner or as a paper-thin lawyer who finally makes partner. *Can I use headings on other online stuff besides newspapers? *You can if it has a date on it and it falls within the required window, March 1-12. Very helpful to me: *Copy the URL (website address) and put it underneath your entry. DO NOT EMBED IT into the headline itself; I’ll see a bunch of garble. * *One more thing: *Sometimes online headlines are ephemeral, especially on a publication’s home page; if it no longer exists, I’ll rely on your honor. But don’t rewrite headlines to make them work for your joke; remember: honor. I can’t check every last headline. *HA SCHOOL MUSICAL: THE EDUCATION PARODIES OF WEEK 1265* **Headline by Jesse Frankovich that lost out to Dave Matuskey’s “Ha for Teacher”* Eet is with deepest pride and greatest pleasure that we welcome you to Loserland with what has become a running gag in our song parody contests: The song “Be Our Guest” from “Beauty and the Beast,” sung in the 1991 animated movie by Jerry Orbach as a hospitable candlestick, has proved astonishingly successful in blotting up ink for Invite parodists in recent years, most notably for Almost Hall of Famer Mark Raffman. Inthis week’s results of our education-parody contest (coincidentally suggested by Mark himself), Mark gets “Guest” ink, as he usually does, but several other Loserbards did as well. In fact, I received 10 parodies of the song, four of which got ink today and a couple of which deserved it but got robbed. Mark’s, however, turned out to be the only one of them that didn’t use it for “test.” Here’s the (possibly incomplete) Raffman Guest-list: — A review-in-song of the puerile movie “Porky’s”: *“See a chest ...”* — Obama on Netanyahu: *“He’s a pest ...” * — Candidate Trump in 2015: *“He’s obsessed ...”* — For songs about animals, mice living in Trump’s hairdo: *“He’s our nest!” * — For political songs, the Republican establishment lamenting the sure-to-lose Trump (June 2016): *“We’re depressed ...” * — Post-election songs of hope: *“Be not stressed ...” * — For songs about science, drug patent riches: *“We invest ...” * And now, with this week’s runner-up about old Home Ec classes for girls only: *“Make a dress ....” * Mark wasn’t the only person to write parodies that rivaled the cleverness of Howard Ashman’s original lyrics: Back in Week 876, Dion Black wrote about the BP oil spill (*“See our mess”*), and in 2016 Duncan Stevens’s “song of hope” was hopeful only that “*There’ll be mess,”* so much so that “there’ll be no time for plund’ring when there’s so much blund’ring.” But this week we have four Guests at the party, with second place going to Marcus Bales’s excoriation of testing-obsessed schools*(“Beat the test”)* and honorable mentions for Duncan on the Educational Testing Service business (*“ETS! ETS!”)* and for Jesse Frankovich’s method for multiple-choice exams, *“I just guessed ...”* We are beyond delighted to see the return of Nan Reiner to the Invite in such fine form. Nan had moved to South Florida from the D.C. area, and more than a year ago, she started having a series of health woes that kept her from her usual emcee roles at the Losers’ Post-Holiday Party and Flushies awards and, more recently, from entering the Invite at all. Nan’s Lose Cannon-winning take on the recent scandal about pressure to graduate D.C. students who didn’t even show up to class half the year (also addressed by honorably mentioned Dave Airozo) is her 17th Invite win as she — I assume she’s back now — marches toward the 400-ink mark. Marcus Bales’s second-place parody is longer than we usually run “above the fold,” since the narrow columns of the print page don’t lend themselves to lengthy songs; in fact, it wasn’t the whole thing: Marcus also parodied a spoken section of the original: *Tell your future from the I Ching Since a teacher who is teaching To the test is obsessed with school board rules. Ah, those good old days when we were useful - But now we’re Key Performance Index fools. Be a citizen and neighbor? No, the kids are only labor For the future to make money for their boss. No one cares for good, or truth, or beauty, Or even pretty scenery They just learn to work machinery ...* As you see, Marcus’s humor tends to be angry, bitter humor, sometimes too bitter for the Invite. But he’s an amazingly clever, and astonishingly prolific, poet and parodist. I suggest youfollow him on Facebook . And our other runner-up, Chris Doyle, heads ever closer to that 2,000th blot of Invite ink (unless it’s right now; the Loser stats aren’t quite up to date, Great Statistician Elden Carnahan having been on vacation from retirement). Next week is The Style Invitational’s 25th anniversary, and gee, we have to note that in*some* way, but Chris’s achievement will be duly celebrated soon. I always feel sad not to award inkworthy work that involved a lot of effort, but there’s only so many songs I can run in one list and expect any sane person to reach the end. So as usual, I’ll be posting some of the non-inking parodies (and maybe some that did ink) in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook. Sign up now and the Devs will anagram your name in many inappropriate permutations. Next week: Bring your party hats to wish the Invite a happy 25th birthday. The Post won’t be doing anything special for the occasion; its advice to me was to “tell your people about it, so they can share it on social media.” So there you go! ====================================================================== WEEK 1270, published March 11, 2018 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) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow 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) ====================================================================== WEEK 1271, published March 18, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1271: 2K of touché A Q&A with Chris Doyle, The Style Invitational’s 2,000-Ink Man (NRARS.org) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow March 15, 2018 at 3:11 p.m. EDT This week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1271, celebrates the crrrraaaaazy achievement by Chris Doyle of (after many other places) Denton, Tex. So that Loserdom could get to know this incomparable wordsmith, the Empress asked him a few questions by email. *So what was it in your upbringing or youthful life that made you the future Man With Two Thousand Blots of Ink in The Style Invitational? More prosaically, were you always interested in wordplay? * My earliest exposure to wordplay was as a kid in Providence, R.I., when my dad, an ironworker by trade, would toss off the occasional spoonerism at dinner. My mother taught high school English for two years before leaving to rear five kids; I recall her liking puns. I didn’t read a lot when I was young: math was my favorite subject, English my hardest. Late in high school my brother gave me math*logic puzzle books by Sam Lloyd and Henry Dudeney. I devoured them. Puzzles and wordplay took a back seat during the ’60s, when I spent five years in and out of Brown University before flunking out in ’66 and getting drafted. Two years later, I got married, had a son and transferred to the University of Rhode Island. While in grad school, I bought Willard Espy’s “The Game of Words,” his “Almanac of Words at Play” books, James Lipton’s “An Exaltation of Larks” and Hecht and Hollander’s “Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls.” I was developing a real interest in wordplay, but had no outlet for it. *You had a few blots of Invitational ink in the contest’s early years (you lived in the D.C. area at the time), but it wasn’t until 2000 -- Year 8 of the Invite -- that you began to devote your energies to us. That’s because you were involved with some Empress-like lady in New York, yes?* While working at the federal General Accounting Office in ’77, I came across a cryptic-crossword puzzle on the last page of New York Magazine. And on the pages before it was Mary Ann Madden’s New York Magazine Competition. I was intrigued but hesitated to enter because I was intimidated by the cleverness and literary knowledge on display. But some months later, I decided to give it a go: Competition No. 304 called for answers to the question “Did you read that book on ______?” I mailed in two dozen entries — and because the contest had a one-entry-per-person rule, I mailed in 24 postcards and used aliases in all but one. I got a single ink — first prize (in a co-worker’s name) for this: “Did you read that book on snappy comebacks, you jerk?” “Yes . . . Make that no.” [I had used “schmuck” in the question, but Ms. Madden changed it.] Over the next 20 years I had a lot of success using family and co-workers’ names, getting more ink, in fact, than in my Style Invitational career. In ’89 I moved from GAO to the Department of Defense. When the Invite began in The Post in 1993, Mary Ann griped to me that it was a rip-off of her competition. So out of loyalty I didn’t enter, except Week 79’s irresistible double-dactyl contest, which got me my first Invite ink, a runner-up. Then in 1999, at a meeting of GAO and DoD bigwigs, I happened to be sitting next to future Invite Hall of Famer Russ Beland, a sometime co-worker, and I was taking notes while jotting down ideas for that week’s NY Mag Comp (or maybe it was the other way around), and I noticed Russ doing something similar for the Style Invitational. As we chatted afterward, Russ declared – as only Russ could – that the NY Mag Comp was the “bush league” of word contests. So I entered a few Invites after that, liked it, and dove in the next year. [Madden retired her contest soon afterward; she died last year.] *Your career, while shining in itself -- you were the Chief Actuary for the entire DoD, in charge of determining the financial soundness of various military retirement programs -- might not be the one your Invite-fans would think you had. Was being an actuary a total flip side to your humor-writing avocation — like, say, a defensive tackle who becomes a wizard at petit-point embroidery -- or are there some qualities that you call upon in both fields?* Yes to “flip-side.” And no to qualities in common. Actuaries are like accountants, but without the sense of humor. Okay, that’s a joke. The people in my office were a funny, witty bunch of nerds. Some of them even enjoyed their first-prize New York Magazine subscriptions. *I’d imagine that you’ve developed a pretty systematic approach to entering the Invitational every week through the years. Can you tell about your weekly Invite routine, and about how it’s changed over the years with changes in the contest, the advent of the Internet, and other developments between 2000 and 2018? Which are your favorite and least favorite types of contests?* Since these days the new contest comes out online on Thursday, five days before the deadline for the previous contest, I don’t always get to it right away. When I do, I first work on revised titles. If it’s a repeated contest, I read the earlier results and look back at my entries that didn’t ink, to see if I can improve on them. From there, it depends on the contest type. Some take a lot of grinding and digging, like the Tile Invitationals and Mess With Our Heads . Others, like puns, allow you to think of entries on the fly. The Internet has streamlined my routine. I used to rely solely on my collection of reference books to get ideas, but Wikipedia, thesaurus.com, onelook, rhymezone, IMDB, etc., are now instantly accessible. During the contest period, I jot down potential ideas, puns, line of poetry, what-have-you when I’m not at my laptop. Pencils and paper sit on my nightstand, in the bathroom, in our car, and in our office. Someone mentioned that I*could* untether myself from my laptop if I had a smartphone. But I can’t even figure out how to text on my flip-phone. Favorite contests? The two annual foal-naming contests! I used to love limericks but tired of them after writing 5,000+ for OEDILF.com and hundreds for the Invite’s own 14 Limerixicons. The same goes for song parodies and obit poems; it’s increasingly harder for me to get up the energy to write them. Neologisms are still fun, though, because they’re easy to think up. *Dedicated fans of the Invite know that you are perhaps the most peripatetic of Losers: (Chris Doyle, Burke, Va.) became (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.), then (Kihei, Hawaii), (The Villages, Fla.), (Ponder, Tex.), and now (Denton, Tex.). And most endearingly, you’ve traveled around the world more than once, entering the Invite at every port: I remember when you spent a ferry ride between the two halves of New Zealand working on a contest in which you researched the local phone books. Have you settled down some?* I’ve settled down*a lot*— right into my La-Z-Boy every day, to get relief for my lower back. Yikes, that sounds depressing! I’m doing much better on my new meds. Most of my free time goes to reading, following political blogs, and watching soccer, Netflix movies, and TV. Karen and I are on a temporary break from 30 years of ballroom dancing. Oh, and I play around with the Invite from time to time (8 a.m. to midnight) but that’s not really “free” time for an obsessed Loser, is it? *Before you moved away from the D.C. area, I met you in person at the Losers’ Flushies awards in, I think, 2002, and once or twice at a weekly trivia game. When are you going to visit Washington? This year’s Flushies are on Saturday, June 9, but of course the Losers would happily gather to meet you whenever you could come. Is there a chance?* I doubt it. Our main connection to the D.C. area ended last year when our youngest son moved from Chantilly, Va. to St. Augustine, Fla. And he just ordered a recliner for me. I can’t pass that up. *AND THE D-O-Y-L-E CONTEST? ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY ABOUT IT? * Just a couple of things: In our last neologism contest, for words “discovered” in various letters sets from the ScrabbleGrams word game, I neglected to specify that you could also use real, existing words as well as ones that you thought up — which was immediately noticed when a zingy definition for “layaway” won the whole Week 1266 contest . This time, though: *It has to be a neologism or a new phrase, * not just a funny definition for an existing one. I decided this on the hunch that there would be too many existing words to use, given that you can add as many letters as you like, and whichever ones you like, to the required five. One quality that makes an impressive neologism is to show how it can be used in a broader context — one we could use in real life — than just what you’re punning on. I’m reminded of one of last week’s runners-up, “umply,” which Sarah Jay defined as “smugly adhering to the rules.” But instead of a sample sentence like “ ‘You were two inches too far from the base path — you’re out!’ he declared umply,” Sarah offered the funnier and more interesting “ ‘No, I’m afraid you can’t build a hotel on Water Works,’ Joe declared umply.” And a more universal neologism usually will beat out one that is too specific for real use, such as “Llumppy: Description of growths on a llama.” *LOOK WHO’S HAWKING*: THE WINNINGLY BAD SPOKESMEN OF WEEK 1267* *Non-inking headline by Beverley Sharp, whose “Shill Shock” got ink instead because it fit on the print page* “Truly offensive. Well done,” pronounced Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood yesterday upon reading the results of Week 1267. You might have thought it difficult to top the outrageousness of using a sermon by Martin Luther King to sell trucks during the Super Bowl, but you might not be well acquainted with the talents of the Style Invitational Loser Community. I’d warned Week 1267 contestants in this column: “Time to try to make fun of bad taste with stuff that’s printable!” And while I did reject a number of entries that were simply too obviously a no-go (along with one that I dropped at the last minute), this week’s inking bad ideas for celebrity spokespeople certainly reflect a feel for exactly what bad taste is. Our Losers’ Circle of the winner and runners-up isn’t filled this time with the Obsessives who’ve amassed Doylish vats of ink. Well, okay, third-placer Gary Crockett, 341 blots, that’s pretty much insane. But John McCooey gets his second Invite win, and 58th blot of ink, with his shoe-pun dig at a hopefully soon forgotten white-supremacist anti-Semitic slogan. Jeff Hazle gets the steak socks — or were they supposed to be bacon? —for Ink No. 86, and Dave Airozo his 14th (and 15th), just his second ink “above the fold.” And while we had no First Offenders this week, we did have some rare visitors: Darren Timothy reappeared after 13 years to finally jump off the One Hit Wonders chart and onto the regular stats list, as did George Wright — after a full two decades. *What Doug Dug:* The Norwoodian faves this week were Gary’s runner-up of Steve Bannon for Neutrogena (“I don’t use it”); John McCooey’s winner; Bill Dorner’s Satan for Prada; Will Stutzman (last ink: Week 1016) playing on the Folgers slogan; David Peckarsky, with a Dolly Parton joke that went beyond just ‘Tata”; Jesse Frankovich’s George W. Bush cutely mangling the Washington Post motto (this was also copy editor Vince Rinehart’s fave); and John Kupiec’s “And last” entry, Gene Weingarten for Men’s Wearhouse. (I had dinner with Gene last week at a nice restaurant, and in his defense, his sweatshirt had no visible tears or stains.) *Not even for the Super Bowl: The Unprintables :* To be fair, some of these weren’t in bad taste so much as being too graphic. But they’re all pretty funny, if you’re not easily offended. (If you are, STOP HERE.) Anthony Scaramucci promotes Hot Yoga: “Become so limber you can suck your own…’ (Drew Bennett) Kanye West for Trojan Extended Climax Control condoms: “…Imma let you finish.” (Danielle Nowlin) Heidi Fleiss for Ford: “We’ll put you in an Escort today!” (Mark Raffman, who didn’t want this in the actual Invite and suggested a blander version; it didn’t get ink) Harvey Weinstein for Preparation H....”Take it from a perfect a-hole, this stuff is great.” (Jon Ketzner) Jackie Kennedy Onassis for Tide to Go: “Wear pink again.” (Kevin Dopart) Lance Armstrong for Fisher Nuts. “You can’t have just one.” (Bird Waring) Monica Lewinsky for the Catholic Church: “You won’t regret the time you spend on your knees!” (Duncan Stevens) As I mentioned before, I cut one entry at the last minute, because Doug was worried about the ethnic slur and wanted me to ask a higher-ranking editor. And if I did that, I’d risk that the editor would want to cut a whole bunch of this week’s entries — and so Warren Tanabe is robbed of ink in the service of the Greater Bad with: Archie Bunker for Rosetta Stone: “Learno el languagio of el spicko in solo uno momento.” At least Warren gets ink for his hilariously breathless soft-porn Danielle Steel parody featuring the cable repairman. *LAST CALL FOR BRUNCH IN OLD TOWN! * Join me and various Losers this Sunday at noon at Chadwick’s, near the river in Old Town Alexandria, Va.. (Jeff Shirley, Richmond) will be in town, and since (Hildy Zampella, Falls Church) has just become (Hildy Zampella, Alexandria), she’ll be there too. And the Royal Consort will even show, if his tennis match doesn’t happen. For info and to RSVP, go to NRARS.org and click on “Our Social Engorgements.” ====================================================================== WEEK 1272, published March 25, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1272: DO NOT CONGRATULATE The Style Invitational discusses this week’s curse contest and media fictoid results. Bob Staake's sketch for another of today's sample curses: May your cookie always be slightly too large to fit inside your glass of milk. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow March 22, 2018 at 1:46 p.m. EDT This week’s contest for curses, Week 1272, was probably suggested by readers numerous times in the past 15 years, only to be rebuffed with the Empress’s haughty “We did that contest. Twice.” But there’s gold in them thar archives, and I’ve realized that even contests with a long set of great answers might well yield yet another long set of great answers, especially when they can play on current events. So when Style Invitational Devotee Kathy Hughes recently shared a set of 18 cards , each featuring a modern curse, posted on Facebook by the Toronto comedy duo Thunder Dungeon (or “ ‘Roy and Phil’ is fine,” one or the other of them told me), I figured we could give it another go. I was especially encouraged when I took a look back at Weeks 75 (1994) and 464 (2002) and saw all the topical references; the second contest asked for them explicitly. They were both from the Czar, before I deposed him in December 2003. Here they are, with an annotations to a few of the references. *Week 75, Sept. 11, 1994: * “You should grow like an onion, with your head in the ground.” “May you lose all your teeth except one, so you can still get a toothache.” “May you become famous, so famous they name a fatal disease after you.” “You should live like a chandelier, hanging by day and burning by night.” ** This week’s contest was prompted by the fact that Yiddish, the language of this Czar’s sainted grandma, is a dying tongue. With it will disappear some of the most colorful curses ever devised, such as all those above. We must not let this happen. Your challenge: Come up with modern maledictions in the wise and entertaining Yiddish tradition. Printable ones only, please. *And the results:* Report from Week 75, in which we asked you to come up with colorful curses in the great Yiddish tradition. *Fourth Runner-Up:* May your hair never turn gray, so everyone thinks you dye it. (Stephen Mather, College Park) *Third Runner-Up:* May you be caught shoplifting by a security camera, which adds 10 pounds to you in court. (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) *Second Runner-Up:* May the ladies on 14th Street call out your name as you drive by with your wife. And may your wife call back to them by theirs. (Paul A. Alter, Hyattsville) *First Runner-Up:*May you be a contestant on “Jeopardy!” playing against my 7-year-old son and the only categories are Power Rangers, X-Men and fart noises. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) *And the Winner of the dorky Star Trek Pen:* May your children be so clever they are acquitted of murdering you. (Joseph Romm, Washington) [This was an allusion to brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who murdered their super-rich parents in 1989 and then spent their money lavishly before becoming suspects. In January 1994 — a few months before this contest — the trials for both brothers ended in hung juries. It wasn’t till 1996 that the brothers were convicted in a retrial and given life sentences.] *Honorable Mentions:* May your final sight be buzzards fighting over your best parts. (Chuck Hawkins, Oakton) May your yeast infection grow so large it will yield enough bread to feed all the starving of the world. (Erica Hughes, McLean) May your teenage daughter’s grades show radical improvement, but only in the classes in which she has a male teacher. (Earl Gilbert, La Plata) May you be 72 hours away from being executed for a murder you didn’t commit when the real killer confesses to authorities in a letter he mails from the District of Columbia. (Bernie Harris, Woodbridge) [I’m not going to research this, but it sounds like an allusion to some news item about bad D.C. postal service.] May your ex-spouse’s new lover work for the IRS. (Starr Mayer, Hayes, Va.) May you own a mansion with 10 bedrooms, and on each bed may there lounge an unemployed son watching MTV. (John Cushing, Washington) May your toenails grow into your shoes. (David L. Howison, Lexington, Va.) May your rock album be declared obscene and create a vast parental outcry across America, and still not sell. (Paul Kondis, Alexandria) May you fall on your tuchus into a vat of Rogaine. (Janet Millenson, Potomac) May you be so handsome your cell mates fight over you. (Joseph Romm, Washington) May you die in a fiery crash with Jim Carrey and entry into Heaven depends on who can make the best faces. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) May you become wealthy when your wife writes a bestseller. May it be titled: “Size Isn’t Everything: The Unlucky Married Woman’s Guide to Somehow Finding Satisfaction.” (Jack Bross, Chevy Chase) May you get a call from Blockbuster because you returned a tape of you and your spouse instead of “The Firm.” (Steve Kent, Crofton) May your life be like a fairy tale. May you be eaten by a wolf. (Jack Bross, Chevy Chase) May you become a poster child for Spontaneous Human Combustion. (J. Calvin Smith, Laurel) May you grow old gracefully, just like Howard Metzenbaum. (Jessie Gietl, Washington) [I’m not sure why the Ohio liberal, then in his 20th year in the Senate (and retiring), was singled out for ungraceful aging in 1994; he looks like an okay 74-year-old to me. Explanations welcome.] May the O.J. Simpson verdict come in at the moment your news conference is scheduled. (Karen Lubienicki, Laurel) You should live to be 120 years old. Beginning in 1875. (Bernie Harris, Woodbridge) May you see the dawning of an era of peace in which all men and women, of every nation, race and creed, come together, united by their hatred of you. (Jacob Weinstein, McLean) May you become a serial killer, hoping for a cool nickname like “Zodiac Killer” or “Midnight Maniac,” but instead be labeled something stupid like “The Noogie Murderer.” (Kevin Cuddihy, Fairfax) May you be so beautiful and famous that Michael Jackson marries you just to prove he isn’t an antisocial virgin or pervert-pedophile. (Joseph Romm, Washington) [Jackson had married Lisa Marie Presley three months earlier.] May the parents of the Jackson 5 get to name your children. (Russ Beland, Tel Aviv and Queens, N.Y.) [What, Beland wrote this entry at the beginning and end of his flight?] May your contact lens pop out into the urinal at the bus station. (Woody Franke, Canberra, Australia) May you live long enough to see a movie starring the offspring of Michael and Lisa Marie. (Woody Franke, Canberra, Australia) [They never had children together, though each had children in another marriage.] May you become an insult comedian in Medellin, Colombia. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) May you be drafted by the Baltimore Orioles as their backup shortstop. (Greg Arnold, Herndon) [Cal Ripken’s streak of starting games, begun in May 1982, would not end until September 1998, 2,632 games later.] And Last: May all your bat mitzvah gifts be the envy of the guy who shops for Style Invitational prizes. (Mike Thring, Leesburg) ----------- *And then, Week 464, August 2002:* May your name and phone number turn up in Osama’s black book. May you discover that the torrid online correspondence you’ve been having is with your daughter. May you be stranded in Central Pennsylvania and be given an emergency root canal by an Amish dentist whose drill is powered by a goat. This Week’s Contest reprises a contest we ran eight years ago. It needs updating. Come up with a new curse for this new millennium, as in the examples above. *The results, which, I see, are only mostly specific to “the new millennium”; then again, the third example wasn’t, either. The winner, which is great, also is not. This is one reason I didn’t insist on a “modern” angle.* Report From Week CXXXI [silly numbering system that the Czar decided to use from 2000 (Week I) to 2003], in which you were asked to invent a modern curse. *Third Runner-Up:* May you be named Ben Ladden, be 6 feet 4 and weigh 145 pounds, and be paged over the PA system at the Army-Navy Game. (Jonathan Alen Marks, Alexandria) *Second Runner-Up:* May you have seven daughters and may each major in philosophy at a separate Seven Sisters college on no scholarship and each simultaneously discover that God is a womyn and . . . (Kristina Ogilvie, Alexandria) *First Runner-Up:* May you answer the doorbell and find Ed McMahon on your doorstep -- alone, on foot, because his car broke down and he wants to use your phone. (Jim Cranford, Spokane, Wash.) *And the winner of the vintage 1953 framed copy of “The Eisenhower Prayer”:* May you create the perfect lawn, moments before the world mistakenly believes you have created a better mousetrap. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) *Honorable Mentions:* May the bird of paradise fly up your nose, and an elephant caress you with its toes, and it be discovered that your most celebrated work is plagiarized. (Donna Lear, Jefferson, Md.) May your doctors say, “Well, the good news is that you have a fatal disease . . .” (Dot Yufer, Newton, W.Va.) May you spend eternity in an elevator with the Wazzup guys . (Brian Barrett, Bethesda) May you never see your eye doctor again, after your laser surgery. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) May Fox TV devote a half-hour show to you called “When Colonoscopies Go Bad.” (Bird Waring, New York) May you be forced to eat worms, run naked in front of your friends, be humiliated by a stern Englishwoman, and not become famous on a reality TV show. (Joseph Romm, Washington) May your airline pilots be armed and drunk. (Marc Leibert, New York) May you die, go to Hell, and find that Howard Cosell’s Heaven is having a guy just like you to talk to. (Roger and Pam Dalrymple, Gettysburg, Pa.) May you be the Secret Service agent in charge of Jenna and Barbara. (Joseph Romm, Washington) [President George W. Bush’s daughters were both arrested for underage drinking in bars.] May you have a terrible disease named after you, and you are not a doctor or research scientist. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) May it be that wherever you are, whatever you do, you can’t get the song “Seasons in the Sun” out of your head. Not the Jacques Brel original, the one by that idiot Terry Jacks. You know the one. (Rosemary Walsh, Rockville) [Jacks’s degradation of the original, little-known “Seasons in the Sun” into the insipid, maudlin Top 40 hit was one of the Czar’s pet peeves.] May your elderly billionaire father marry a young woman with huge breasts. (Helene Haduch, Washington) [Probably an allusion to the marriage of Howard Marshall, 89, to strip club performer Anna Nicole Smith, 26; Marshall died 13 months later. Smith died of a drug overdose in 2007.] May the first name on your nominating petition be Homer Simpson. (Stephen Dudzik, Silver Spring) May your therapist name his yacht after you. (Jonathan Alen Marks, Alexandria) May your mother be the only respondent to your personals ad. (Roy Highberg, Bentonville) May you die a rock star’s death, without a rock star’s life. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) May that ridiculous Internet urban legend about the stolen organs actually happen to you in Guatemala. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney) May you be Saddam’s food taster. (Joseph Romm, Washington) May you have to eat crow, and it’s carrying West Nile. (Fred S. Souk, Reston) [There had been a major outbreak of West Nile virus, often spread by birds to mosquitoes to people, in 2003.] *And Last:* May your sole source of income be the Style Invitational. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) --- In addition to the curse contests, we’ve also run a similar contest, at least a couple of times, to describe a “hell” for a particular person. (In fact, the first curse contest ran the same week as the results of the hell contest.) The results of Week 72, 1994 : The results of Week 395, 2001 . [I must have been the judge of this contest, since it took place when I filled in for a couple of months as Auxiliary Czar.] -- So prove me right: See if you can come up with good cursy material that isn’t any of the above. *AND THAT’S THE WAY IT ISN’T *: THE MEDIA FICTOIDS OF WEEK 1268 ***A too-long non-inking headline by Jeff Contompasis, who suggested this contest* I’m taking suggestions right now for our next fake-trivia category, since our latest in our long string of fictoid contests yields lots of laughs once again. Readers who see only the print version of the Invite might be confused at some more arcane references in the Week 1268 results — “inverted ziggurat”? wha? — but online I’ve given some links, and hey, so I indulge myself a little with the journo-jokes. Humor me. (That’s what you’re here for, right?) If Jeffrey P. Bezos ever reads The Style Invitational, I think he’d enjoy Robert Schechter’s winner this week. It’s Robert’s seventh Invite win, but his first chance to get our latest trophy, the Lose Cannon. And it pushes the former Loser of the Year past the 200-ink mark as well. While runners-up Frank Osen and Duncan Stevens are in the Losers’ Circle so often that they’ve set up La-Z-Boys, it’s the second trip for Margaret Welsh, with 18 blots to her name dating all the way back to Week 397. And we have two First Offenders this week: Andy Gefen, with his Andy Rooney eyebrow joke, and Joshua Rokach, who referenced the jaw-dropping arrogance of NBC in refusing to pronounce PyeongChang correctly during the Winter Olympics. Joshua, by the way, is the second in his family to get ink recently; Dinah Rokach got her Fir Stink for First Ink just a few weeks after she’d written me to suggest that more successful Losers be prevented from winning for a while so other Losers could get a chance. See? Not necessary. (I don’t see entrants’ names when I judge the contests.) *What Doug Dug: * The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood pretty much aligned with mine: Doug voted for Robert’s winning Money Bags Bezos joke and Margaret ’s “Baboon Blitzer,” and also Duncan Stevens’s language lesson that the German word for breaking wind is *Blog,* Mike Gips’s “inverted ziggurat” — it’s a play on “inverted pyramid,” the way of structuring a news story so the most important material is at the top and the less important or background material at the bottom, where it can be easily trimmed for space — and Kevin Dopart’s joke about Reuters not being able to work in Germany in the 1800s because it couldn’t telegraph umlauts. *TWO DATES TO SAVE: THE CHARGE ON GETTYSBURG, and THE FLUSHIES* The Losers’ annual*day trip north to Gettysburg, Pa.* — for lunch and then a tour of the Civil War battlefields led by Loser Roger Dalrymple — will be *Sunday, April 22;* carpools can be arranged on the Devotees page, or by contacting Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, where you’d also RSVP (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). We used to do this in the heat of summer — heck, at least we didn’t have to wear wool uniforms as the Yanks and Rebs did — but it’s now at a much more sensible time to visit. And we have a convenient venue for this year’s Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual award awards lunch: the Old Firehouse community center in close-in McLean, Va. *The Flushies will be on Saturday afternoon, June 9,* and a potluck as usual. We get the place to ourselves, so we can sing it up with the song parodies already in the works for the occasion. Invitations (yes — even*you* will get one) will go out in early May. Have an uncursed day! ====================================================================== WEEK 1273, published April 1, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1273: Join the nominating committee The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s new contest and results Previously Worst President Ever James Buchanan; Krusty the Clown of “The Simpsons”; and Gilda Radner as the confused Emily Litella in the early “Saturday Night Live.” All were among the presidential candidates we suggested in a 2008 contest. By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow March 29, 2018 at 12:39 p.m. EDT I have a really nice doctor . He’s even a veteran. Where’s his Cabinet post? Twelve-time Loser (and one-time winner) Chris Damm — whom I met a couple years ago when he drove all the way from West Virginia to attend a Loser party — was inspired to suggest this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1273, by last week’s appointment of John Bolton as national security adviser. But that was so last week. Less than 24 hours ago we got the news that the president had chosen his personal doctor to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, overseeing 380,000 employees and a $180 billion budget. Moments after I posted the Invitational this morning, I got a Facebook message from a Loser who enters the Invite every single week, with lots of success: “I think Week 1273 is going to get very ugly and too screedy. See you next week for the foals contest.” “Screedy” is the word I use to describe Invitational entries that are so angry and bitter that their humor and wit are left struggling to escape the bile. Screedy entries, by definition, do not get ink. But I’m hopeful, even optimistic that we’ll be able to avoid the screediness, given the unscreedy success of this contest’s predecessor, which was posted after the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign. In that contest, everyone had to work from the same list of “candidates”; this time, part of the wit will be your creativity in thinking of the people and things, and even maybe the federal posts themselves. Here was Week 782, September 2008: ** *What voters want above all else is consistency, and no one else on the ballot can match tapioca pudding in that regard . . .* *Sure, a lot of historians say he was bad, but if you look at Buchanan’s performance over the last 140 years, he’s been quite steady . . .* This week, a twist on a perennial Invitational contest, the ol’ List of Random Items: Play Partisan Pundit and explain why any of the items on the list below is qualified to be the president of the United States, as in the examples above by Loser Brendan Beary, who suggested this contest. Alternatively, pair any two of the items and explain why they would form an effective ticket for the general election. Or both. No limit on the number of entries as long as they are brilliantly clever. [Looking back, I’m not sure why I dropped the entry limit — concern that I wouldn’t get enough good stuff otherwise?] *· A moss-covered rock* *· Krusty the Clown* *· A dish of tapioca pudding* *· Ex-president James Buchanan* *· Bert from “Sesame Street”* *· The Orange Line train from New Carrollton* *· Vinko Bogataj, the “agony of defeat” ski jumper from “Wide World of Sports”* *· Benedict Arnold* *· Emily Litella* *· Sweeney Todd* *· The Firefox browser* *· Chuck Smith of Woodbridge* *· Britney Spears’s hairstylist* *· Cartman* *· A 49-cent goldfish from Wal-Mart* *· Zerbina the Pinhead* *And the results four weeks later: * ** *Report From Week 782,* in which we gave a list of people and other things and asked you to explain why any of them would be qualified to be president of the United States, or why any two of them would make a good ticket. As you’ll see, a lot of the explanations are frankly an absurd stretch. Well . . . Frequently noted: The rock doesn’t change its position every time the wind changes, and that Sweeney Todd and Britney Spears’s hairstylist would both be good at making drastic cuts. 4. Vinko Bogataj, the “agony of defeat” ski jumper from “Wide World of Sports”: People won’t mind watching him screw up the same way, over and over again. (Mary Ellen Webb, Fairfax, Va., a First Offender) 3. Benedict Arnold: Hey, he’s really only flip-flopped on one issue. (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.) 2.*the winner of the McCain and Obama gargoyle statuettes:*The Firefox browser: If the stock market ever crashed, we could simply restore the previous session. (Bryan Crain, Modesto, Calif.) *And the Winner of the Inker:* Benedict Arnold: Now here’s a candidate who has really fought for change in American government! (Rick Wood, Falls Church) *Dork Horses: Honorable Mentions* *A moss-covered rock:* — Though he presents a tough exterior, time has smoothed his rough edges. And he’s a firm supporter of the environment (or firmly supported by the environment). (Alli Peterson, Newark, Del., a First Offender) — At least we’ll know which direction we’re headed. (Mary Ellen Webb, Fairfax; Meredith Brown, Wilmington, Del. -- a First Offender) — Moss Rock is solid in times of crisis, he’s clearly the true environmental candidate, and his campaign anthem is one of the best songs ever written. -- B. Seger (Brad Alexander, Wanneroo, Australia) *A dish of tapioca pudding:* With the coming depression, who better to serve on America’s bread lines? (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) *Ex-president James Buchanan:* — You’re not going to find any skeletons in Buchanan’s closet. Aside from Buchanan, that is. (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis) — Not only does he not get involved in other countries’ imminent civil wars, he doesn’t get involved in our own. (Bryan Crain) — He won’t be having any sordid affairs with nubile young women! (Christopher Lamora, Arlington) *Krusty the Clown:* Who better to follow eight years of Bozo? (Mike Ostapiej, Tracy, Calif.) *Bert from “Sesame Street”:* — Orientation aside, his monogamy is impressive -- 39 years with the same partner. (Tristan Axelrod, Brescia, Italy) — It’s time, after all these years, to have a man of letters in the White House. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney; Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) — Although he is from outside the Beltway, he somewhat resembles the Washington Monument. (Dan Colilla, Washington, Pa.) *The Orange Line train from New Carrollton:* It’ll repeat the same messages to the same audience every day and they’ll still come back for more! (Rick Haynes, Potomac) *Vinko Bogataj, the “agony of defeat” ski jumper from “Wide World of Sports”:* — He’s arguably the world’s greatest roll model. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) --- He’s a down-to-earth kind of guy. (Ed Conti, Raleigh, N.C.) *Benedict Arnold:* He’s shown great flexibility in adjusting his views to reflect changing political realities — and he’s provided useful assistance to our oldest and staunchest ally in the Global War on Terror. (M.C. Dornan, Scottsdale, Ariz.) *Emily Litella: * — Because, deep down, most of us would be kind of curious to see flea erections. (Russell Beland, Springfield) — Because she asks the questions we need to hear, like: “What’s all this we hear about parasailin’ being good for vice president? Sure, hanging from a kite and being dragged by a boat may be fun, but is it prudent?” (Bruce Alter, Fairfax Station) — She’s opposed to the whore in Iraq and our young soldiers being maimed by exploding IUDs. Why are we sending our troops to an Iraqi whore anyway? What’s wrong with American whores? (Bird Waring, Larchmont, N.Y.) *Sweeney Todd:* No rubber chicken at*his* fundraising banquets! (Peter Metrinko) *Britney Spears’s hairstylist: * — Sure, he blows a lot of hot air, but I’ll bet he’s pretty knowledgeable about domestic affairs. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) — Managing the budget of a country with a huge deficit will be no problem for this candidate: He’s used to doing a lot with nothing. (Beth Baniszewski, Somerville, Mass.) — A true populist: He’ll give the top half and the bottom half the same treatment. (Jay Shuck) *Cartman:* When mortgages fail and countless families declare bankruptcy, we will want a leader capable of jumping at least three homeless people at once. (Sean Dolan, Wilmington, Del., a First Offender) *A 49-cent goldfish from Wal-Mart:* — Because it’s time for a new bag of carp in the White House. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) — Vote Goldfish: You know he’s in the tank for you. (Bruce Alter) *Chuck Smith of Woodbridge * [for many years, and perhaps still today, The Style Invitational’s most famous entrant; he dominated the contest in its early years and the Style section even did a big, sort of satirical story about him ]: — Look at his success in foreign policy: He’s already had a Czar and an Empress wrapped around his finger. (Marc Boysworth, Burke) — I can see Dale City from my house. As for foreign relations, I’ve traveled to Mexico, specifically Cancun, and experienced a bad hangover on the plane ride back. I’ve often been quoted in The Washington Post. I am an expert on natural gas, as I am lactose-intolerant. I have been drug-free for many years, more if you don’t count stool softeners. I am no stranger to torture, as I have attended a Celine Dion concert. Court records of my teenage years are sealed. And I once sold something on eBay. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) *TICKETS* *Tapioca pudding*goldfish: *One is old-fashioned, plain, lumpy, pasty and white, the other new and unknown, with limited experience swimming in a small pond, suddenly thrust out in the world in a goldfish bowl, unable to hide. Just right for the GOP. (John Bunyan, Cincinnati) *Moss-covered rock*Benedict Arnold:* Both the rock -- it’s no rolling stone -- and Benedict Arnold take a firm anti-revolution stance. (Pam Sweeney, St. Paul, Minn.) *Goldfish*Bert:* As Sarah Palin reminds us, “We must not blink.” Here are two candidates who never will! (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park; Steve Offutt, Arlington; Dan Ramish, Vienna) *Benedict Arnold*James Buchanan: *Our counterintelligence efforts will vastly improve under two people who know what it’s like to play for the other team. (N.G. Andrews, Portsmouth, Va.) *Goldfish*Chuck Smith:* The 49-cent goldfish, you have to wonder if there’s a lot a life left in it, and Smith constantly gets his name in the paper for saying silly things. Not the most endearing “qualities” per se, but that doesn’t seem to matter. (Christopher Lamora; Brian Cohen, Potomac) *BREAKING THE BANK: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1269* This contest just never gets old! I laughed repeatedly this week while judging this year’s Mess With Our Heads contest, in which you choose a real headline from The Post (most entries) or another publication and reinterpreted it through the addition of a bank head, or subtitle. The Czar, who indulged me by reading over my very long “shortlist,” also “singled” out more entries than I could reasonably run. (I ended up with 40 online, had to trim four or five in print.) What a happy discovery when I looked up the winners’ names after the judging and saw that this week’s Lose Cannon winner was Elden Carnahan of Laurel, Md. — or Nether Scaggsville, he likes to call it, after a nearby tiny town. Elden, one of a very few Losers to have gotten ink in every one of the Invitational’s 25 years (and we’re now begun Year 26) , is really the father of Loserdom as a social community: It’s Elden who called people out of the phone book after seeing their names in the Invite in Year 1, and asked if they’d like to meet for breakfast, and coordinates the monthly Loser brunches to this day (No. 207 is approaching , in Gettysburg); Elden who headed the snail-mailed newsletter Depravda in the pre-Internet days, then took over the Losers’ website, now NRARS.org ; and of course Elden who keeps the Loser Stats, into which every inking Loser’s name and entry since Week 1 is recorded and analyzed in myriad ways. Which is how I know that this is Ink No. 563 for Elden, and his 21st win of the whole contest. Second-place Loser David Kleinbard is also a way-back Invite veteran, blotting up 106 inks since Week 196, including 16 “above the fold” (winner or runner-up); that’s an impressive ratio. Our other two runners-up this week are more recent conscripts but, happily, significant Invite time-squanderers: Frank Mann just got Ink No. 80 and Bill Dorner No. 28. Even though the contest spanned 12 days of headline-searching online and in print, and allowed any publication dated in those days, the headlines in the print Post generated a lot of duplication; “Trump’s turnover breaks White House records” brought many similar entries about “the biggest pastry ever” as well as getting apple filling on the Cabinet minutes, shattering old LPs, and also one about him breaking his bed when he flopped onto his back. None ended up getting ink; there were so many good heads that were robbed this week. (So if this week’s contest indeed doesn’t pan out, I know what I can fill the page with four weeks from now.) This funny entry definitely violated the rule that you couldn’t shorten the original headline to change its meaning: The 7 most interesting parts of Stormy Daniels *It’s her smile, her hair, her chin, her nose, her navel, and two [redacted] like you’ve never seen before — D.T. , Washington* (Dave Zarrow) The real headline: The 7 most interesting parts of Stormy Daniels’s lawsuit against Trump *What Doug Dug: * Copy Editing Ace Doug Norwood, who is just about the only other person who gets paid for reading The Style Invitational, was especially partial to David Kleinbard’s “wet snowflakes” runner-up; he also singled out Amy Harris’s snarky “Title hopes dashed* Redskins hold first preseason practice”; Danielle Nowlin’s “What’s new in hip and knee replacement?* Mostly hip and knee”; and Ivars Kuskevics’s observational humor that in a heavy Baltimore accent, the name of the city sounds an awful lot like “bomber.” (I share some unprintable entries from Week 1269 at the bottom of this column. If you don’t want to read tasteless humor, please don’t scroll down that far. Thanks.) *Happy holidays *— Easter, Passover, April Fool’s, whatever you celebrate. And if you want to have fun at your Passover seder, I strongly recommend the (free!) booklet of “Seder Songs,” a marvelously clever and funny (but not too irreverent) set of dozens of song parodies by Loser Barbara Sarshik. Download it at barbarasarshik.com — we’ll be singing “Everything’s Coming Up Moses” and several more at our seder tomorrow. ---- --- *Headed off: Unprintable bank heads *There were many. Danielle Nowlin’s “Tangled, Timeless Visions of the South” to refer to Brazilian waxes passed the threshold, but I wan’t going to try these (some of them were submitted specifically as “Convo-only”): :Trouble swallowing? See a specialist. *Professional fluffer offers advice* (Chris Doyle) Blender Dutch Babies [a pancake*crepe dish] *In Europe, critics charge graphic antiabortion ad ‘crossed the line’* (Mark Raffman) Woman wins conch-blowing contest -- and a marriage proposal *From a VERY satisfied conch*(Brendan Beary; similar one by Frank Osen) Breakthrough in Maryland on Metro funding, as Hogan and legislature come together *High hopes for dedicated revenue source following historic simultaneous orgasm in statehouse* (Jesse Frankovich) How a porn star’s secret spilled into public view *“Wardrobe malfunction at AVN Awards reveals stud’s ‘sextension’* (Jeff Contompasis) Bigger questions than ‘Who are you wearing?’ *Cadaver-skin fashions are so 2017* (Paul Burnham) And for the first time, Mae Scanlan — the grande dame of The Style Invitational — makes the Unprintables: Witness recounts 1995 sex assaults *Woman seems to be in remarkably good shape, considering she was attacked almost 2000 times* ====================================================================== WEEK 1274, published April 8, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1274: Give us this week our yearly bred Another sure-to-be-happy time around the track for the Style Invitational horse contest The Empress said she wanted a cartoon depicting either "horse romance" or "horse parenting" to illustrate this year's "foal" contest. Bob offered this as Option A. She titles this one "Fire Me Now." (Bob Staake for The Washington Post (maybe not really)) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow April 5, 2018 at 2:34 p.m. EDT Horse racing’s Triple Crown — a trio of especially long and grueling races spread over five weeks — is open only to 3-year-old horses (racehorse birthdays are arbitrarily set at Jan. 1). Which means that we have a different field of 100 nominated horses every April for The Style Invitational’s “breeding” contest, as in this year’s Week 1274 . But the rules, the strategy and the humor in general have remained virtually the same, at least in recent years of the Invite’s 24 times around the track, not counting the “grandfoal” contest you’ll see four weeks from now. So why reinvent the horseshoe? Especially if you’re new to this contest, please read my Style Conversational column from last April, bit.ly*conv1222 , which in turn links to previous columns. They’re full of clarifications and ruminations and various other -ations, along with classic examples from past horse contests. Also, last year’s column mentions a hilarious story about a South African racehorse named (before 2016) President Trump. If you’ve come to the Conversational directly from the print Invite in The Post’s Arts & Style section, you’ll have missed the extra directions I included in the online version. I’ll post them right here as well, along with some extra commentary: Do the Empress — and yourself — a favor and . . . ●*Don’t “breed” two names and use a third name from the list for the “foal.”* People do this every year and never get ink because it’s just too easy to do. And just two horses at a time, please. (We’re just romantic that way.) ●*Don’t number your list of entries. *Numbers at the beginning of a line will give fits to our name-sorting system. You’ll have to count to 25 on your 25 fingers. I trust you not to give me 26 names. ●*Type each entry on a single line.* This is essential. If you have the parents’ name on one line and the foal on another, little Junior is going to get lost from Mom and Dad when we do The Big Sort. Remember, use this format: *Horse A x Horse B = Foal Name. * For several years running, I’ve been aided immeasurably by Loser Jonathan Hardis, a scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, who volunteered to take my gigantic file of amalgamated anonymous entries — along with the other material that ends up in the file when the entries are lifted from the submission website and combined (The Post’s Sub Platform, which was intended for letters to the editor, signing up for events, etc., just isn’t designed for the Invite’s more complex needs) — and sort out just the entries, grouped handily as Horse 1 x Horse 2, Horse 1 x Horse 3 ... Horse 1 x Horse 99, etc. Before Jonathan began doing this huge favor, I would use my computer’s search and look first for all the entries with Horse 1, then select the ones I liked; then with Horse 2. Sometimes there are 100 or more entries for a particular horse. And because it took too long to mark the ones I *didn’t* want to save, I ended up looking at most of the Horse 1 entries a second time when I was checking Horse 2, 3, 4, etc. But the sorting is by single line. So if you do this: Horse 1 x Horse 2 = Foal you will get an orphaned foal. And that will be very sad. It will remind me of “Lonesome Little Colt” by C.W. Anderson, an easy-reader book that I read approximately 8,427 times when I was 5 years old. Even worse: Horse 1 x Horse 2 = Foal x Horse 3 = Foal If we can easily figure out an entry in the wrong format, I won’t throw it out, but I’m not going to go to heroic measures to track it down. ●*Observe the 18-character limit, including spaces and punctuation marks.* In other Invite contests, the Empress has occasionally given ink to an entry that didn’t technically fit the rules, if it was especially clever or funny. But there’s no give on the letter limit on horse names — it’s part of the challenge. -- Last year I provided a link to a Word document that I’d posted on Scribd.com that had the list in a handy one-page, three-column format, and I did the same this year. But for some reason I can’t figure out, when anyone but me clicked on it today, it says, “This document has been removed.” I set the privacy settings to totally public, so I’m just mystified. So I’m afraid you’ll have to copy the online list to your own computer if you want a multi-column printout. When I saw the print list last night — and that one*is*in three columns — I realized that the bold sans serif font made it hard to tell whether the first horse on the list was Ali or All. So this year’s print list will be in our serif body type. I also replaced an especially long name on the list with a shorter one because it wouldn’t fit on a single line. (To emphasize: Each line contains one full name.) Here are last year’s winner and runners-up: 4. MarchToTheMusic x It’s Your Nickel = The Half-Dime Show (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) 3. Irap x Rapid Dial = I Like Big Buttons (Laurie Brink, Cleveland, Mo.) 2. Confederate x Factorial = Jeb! Stuart (Jonathan Hardis, Gaithersburg, Md.) 1. Midnight Pleasure x Archimedes = Lover & Lever (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines) (The rest of the results are here. ) Usually, 300 to 400 people enter the foal contest, and perhaps 10 percent of those people get ink. That’s a higher percentage than in most Invitational contests, because I can fit so many entries onto the page. And it’s not unusual to have a half-dozen First Offenders among the horse breeders. So even if you’ve never entered the Invitational before, go for it — you could very well Lose. *HARPY AnniVERSEry*: THE 5x5 POEMS OF WEEK 1270* **A non-inking headline by Jon Gearhart* Kevin Dopart’s contest suggestion for the Invitational’s 25th anniversary last month provided a rewarding showcase for our resident Loserbards — entrants who tend to ink up the joint in our various poetry contests — as well as a First Offender. The choice of three five-line formats — five syllables, five words or five iambs — provided a range of terse to leisurely, with lots of zing throughout. Some people ignored the rules and wrote limericks of any number of words or syllables — unlike Jesse Frankovich’s excellent 5x5-worder. Someone else wrote a sweet ode about the Invitational itself, but it was in iambic tetrameter, with just four ba-BUMPs per line. It was the full iambic pentameter that won the Lose Cannon , plus two honorable mentions, for Frank Osen, who gets his*sixteenth* Invite win, but his first cannon, since he hadn’t won since we started giving away our newest trophy. Frank has more than 300 blots of ink in all, from practically every type of Invitational contest, but his poetry is consistently outstanding, even when he slums in non-Invitational verse, including an award-winning collection (yeah, but did it get him a cannon with a BNAG flag sticking out of the barrel?). Runners-up Chris Doyle, Beverley Sharp (who’s currently touring Uzbekistan but already checked this morning to see if she got ink) and Nan Reiner offered their trademark wit, and Beverley showed that you*can* succeed in the Invite without discussing*that* person (and she wrote about dogs without mentioning poop!). *What Doug Dug:* Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood enjoyed all four of the “above-the-fold” entries, and also singled out Dave Airozo’s jab at those who gripe about “overpaid teachers,” Frank Osen’s “you’re Trump’s attorney” rejoinder, and First Offender Connie Dobbins Akers’s “Mid-Atlantic” Redskins — which reminded me of winner of Style Invitational Week 1, to come up with a new name for the team: “The Baltimore Redskins: Don’t move the team, just change the name. Let Baltimore worry about it.” Connie, though, got in a last-line twist-dig at our city in the space of 25 words. *NOT IF WE WANT TO FINISH YEAR 26: THE UNPRINTABLES * I think we have to award this week’s Scarlet Letter to Bob Staake, who offered me the sketch at the top of this page when I asked for a cartoon featuring either horse romance or horse parenting. Good thing nobody at The Post reads this column. But we also have these Loser-generated gems: What’s lurking in that dossier That Donald keeps hidden away? Is it simply general meanness, His currency’s fresh-laundered greenness, Or photos of his micropenis? (Nan Reiner) President Trump is A floater that keeps Bobbing up despite Flushing again and Again and again. (Kate Turney) ====================================================================== WEEK 1275, published April 15, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1275: What a piece of work Forsooth, the Style Invitational Empress doth ruminate on this week’s contest & results Bob Staake's first draft for today's illustration. I asked him to draw the players in Elizabethan uniforms to reinforce the contest's Shakespearean angle; Bob, despite finding doublets and jerkins “nauseating,” relented. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow April 12, 2018 at 2:08 p.m. EDT I welcome contest suggestions eagerly, all the time, I really do, even if I reject most of them immediately, and am noncommittal on most of the rest. But just last week, when Incorrigibly Recidivist Loser Duncan Stevens suggested this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1275 — complete with a long list of examples — I immediately deemed it “definitely great.” (Hey, if you know an English teacher who might want to use this contest as a class project, or anyone else who might enjoy doing this contest and might not yet know the Invite, pass the word.) My only question: Really, we haven’t done this one already? Nope, Duncan reassured me; he’d of course scrutinized the 1,274-item Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, nrars.org, and there really wasn’t anything like it. Of course, there’s*something* like it — a number of somethings. Most obviously there’s our recurring Questionable Journalism contest, in which you find a sentence in the paper and write a question that it could answer. And other variations on Q. Journalism, as when you use a line in a movie title, in a song, in a comic strip — always leading to a set of clever, funny results. It’s one reason I leaped at Duncan’s idea: a proven format with a source that’s easy to access, even without a Post subscription. (You’re not required to use the versions in OpenSourceShakespeare.org, but that’s where I’ll first check your entry.) But also, true to our Haughty*Potty tradition, we’ve featured Shakespeare in various contests over our 25 years. There’s just one, I think, that was*about*Shakespeare: That was Week 683, a very challenging, labor-intensive contest I did in 2006: You had to pluck words out of one or two scenes in “Hamlet” — in order — and write something new and funny. The results no longer seem to be online except in this plain-text version on that indispensable Master Contest List; here are some highlights: *Fourth place: * Act 4, Scene 7, and Act 5, Scene 1: “What a long speech! (Dull ass! Has this fellow no feeling?) The tongue of a politician is full of equivocation. (Every fool can tell!) How long will a man lie, ere we have his hide? (Alas, a thousand times!) (Beverley Sharp) *Third place: * Act 1, Scene 5: Mark: Lend the secrets of thy young flesh! Youth: His shameful lust holds a seat! Touching my sword. Indeed, upon my sword, indeed. Ah, ha, boy! Come hither, and lay your hands on. (Ira Allen) [Ira’s entry referenced Rep. Mark Foley of Florida, an anti-gay-rights conservative who, just weeks earlier, had been caught sexting teenage boys who were congressional pages. Foley resigned almost instantly.] *Second place: *Act 5, Scenes 1 and 2: My sweet lord. Him, my lord. My, my, my lord. A really wanton ho, you. (Kevin Dopart) [Kevin, in his first year in the Invite,*owned* this contest, with eight blots of ink. He went on to become the year’s highest-scoring Loser, a feat he continued for the next six years.] *And the Winner of the Inker: *Act 2, Scenes 1 and 2: He’s addicted to tennis and it hath made him mad. His service and return, a set down, were nothing but waste, play’d like an old man on his ass. Striking too wide, he has tears in his eyes and speech like a whore a-cursing! (Dennis Lindsay) *Finite Jest: The Minor Plays* Act 1, Scenes 1-2: In our state, marriage of gentlemen to gentlemen might not be tenable. (Elwood Fitzner, Valley City, N.D.) [And in fact, North Dakota never sanctioned same-sex marriage until it was made federal law in 2015.] Act 1, Scenes 1-2: Get thee relief. Sit down in the privy upon the throne. That duty done, leave not the flushing before it vanish’d from our sight -- or your foul deeds will rise. (Kevin Dopart) Act 2, Scene 1: Wanton, wild gaming! Drinking! Swearing! Scandal! Incontinency! Savageness! A party! A brothel! Hell! Horrors! Fear! Ecstasy! Love! Passion! Sorry. Denied access. (Ron Stanley) Act 2, Scene 2: O dear Ophelia, I love thee — but take this “Be-No,” I do beseech you! For yet is the air a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours from your wind. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) From Act 5, Scene 2: This election mess in the fall leaves both sides damned unsatisfied and gives this sight to the world: unnatural acts, accidental judgments, mischance, plots and errors. (Dennis Lindsay, Seabrook) Epilogue 1: Act 4, Scenes 5 and 6: If you desire to know the Loser, know pelican brains! They bore on Sundays. They be slow and dumb. They bore thee much. Knowest, I direct them.” -- The Empress, Washington (Kevin Dopart) -- But there are lots of references to the Bard in various contests over the years. Here are a few: *From Week 108, bad first drafts of famous lines:*Brevity is without doubt considered by many to be the soul of that attribute commonly considered `wit.’” (Elliot Greene) *From Week 389, overkill solutions:*Problem: Not enough students signing up for English 472: Shakespearean Themes and Motifs. Solution: Call the course English 472: Lust, Greed and Stabbings. (Mike Genz) *Example for Week 442, change a movie title by one letter:*All’s Well That Ends Swell: The classic Shakespearean comedy about generational collision and the nature of love. Mickey Rooney plays Bertram. ***From Week 460, the beginning of a pretentious book review:* Having penned a few plays myself, I understand how difficult it is to be both original and entertaining. Nonetheless, the extent of Mr. Shakespeare’s plagiarism is shocking . . . (Joseph Romm) *From Week 484, if a company ran a different business:*If Larry David’s production company published Shakespeare, his plays would be renamed “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Much More Ado About Nothing” and “Nothing — What’s That All About, Anyway?” (Jonathan Paul) *From Week 537, misleadingly lurid headlines:* IV BRINGS DEAD ROYAL BACK TO LIFE! (Several exciting new productions of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” have been staged.) (Bill Spencer) *From Week 648, stupid questions to consumer product hotlines:* Riverside Press: “About your big book with the Shakespeare plays? Well, in that ‘Julius Caesar’ one, some guy says, “The clock struck three,” and that’s stupid because they didn’t have striking clocks back then. And so I was wondering if you could fix that.” (Ken Rosenau, Washington) *Runner-up from Week 702, our first fictoid contest:* The plays of Shakespeare were actually written by a different person with the same name. (Ronald Semone) *From Week 772, adapting literature so it could be “understood by L.A. residents under 40,” as a letter-writer asked the Los Angeles Times:* *Shakespeare:* Who is Silvia? what is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admirèd be. *Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.:* Who is Sylvia? What is she, That all the dudes now dig her? Holy cow, she’s hot! I see The doctor’s made her bigger, And she’s about a double-D. Holy cow, I have to stop — but anyway, I’m sure this week’s ink will be worthy of inclusion in the Riverside Invite. *THE DOYLE-IT BOWL*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1271* *Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich* Our contest in honor of Chris Doyle’s 2,000th blot of Invite ink — for new terms containing a D, an O, a Y, an L and an E — seemed to pose more of a challenge than some of our neologism challenges; maybe it was the Y. But we still ended up with 36 nice additions to the Loser Lexicon, by 20 people. While this week’s three runners-up are longtime, inkin’-up-the-joint Losers, the Lose Cannon goes to a rare visitor. Brian Collins has only three previous blots of Invite ink, but they’re rich ones: The first was an honorable mention from way back in Week 668, a one-off contest that played off the justice-is-done wrap-ups by ex-sheriff John Bunnell on “World’s Wildest Police Videos”: They disregarded the zoning laws when they tried to put up that 10,000-square-foot mansion in Chevy Chase -- now they’ll finally get their wish for the Big House. A full decade later, Brian found himself “above the fold” with second place in Week 1115, a variation on our bank headline contest in which you first put a “typo” in the headline: * *Netanyahu: No Go Palestinian State Surprising upset pick in Bibi’s NCAA bracket And most recent was the ink in Week 1195, in which you had to alter a movie title without changing or moving any of the letters: “Fat Al Attraction”: Being a weatherman on national TV has its perks, even if you’re not quite studly. Brian’s “doodeyful” — such a fitting word for certain press flunkies — demands wide and constant use, don’t you think? Frank Osen’s “condoylences” represented the many entries that referenced Chris himself. Here are a few more: Doyled: Won the Lose Cannon, as in: “Hey, look at that! She finally Doyled!” (Beverley Sharp) Gardoyle: A legendary creature that swoops down to grab Invite prizes with its razor-sharp talents. (Melissa Balmain) Doyledrums: Listless despondency suffered by Losers when comparing their efforts to the “gold standard.” (Brad Alexander) . Doylate: To expand a trophy room to accommodate the results of wordplay brilliance. (Steve Honley) Doyley-Carte: Troupe performing Gilbert & Sullivan operettas rewritten entirely in limerick form. (Nan Reiner) Le Doyen*and* Ye Olde Loser: Chris Doyle (Michael Rolfe) *What Doug Dug: * The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood all came this week from the HMs: Duncan Stevens’s “Beige Floyd” and “lay-bored,” Gary Crockett’s “formaldejekyll,” and Jesse Frankovich’s “Supercalifragilisticexpialidociously.” *My weekend plans: getting cursed at. * More than 200 Losers entered the Week 1272 contest for creative and funny curses, and many of them wished ill will 25 times over. So I’m looking at easily a couple thousand nasties. The ones about the Bluebird of Happiness might all cancel one another out, unless I see one that’s clearly better than the rest, but there’s sure to be*lots* of great ink next week. And welcome to the new Losers who’ve entered the Week 1274 horse name “breeding” contest; I’ve seen at least 39 new email addresses in the past week (usually I get about a half-dozen), and we have four more days left to enter. Saddle up those ponies! ====================================================================== WEEK 1277, published April 29, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1277: Tapping the hive mind The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s Spelling Bee-inspired contest Another of Alex Blackwood's sample neologisms, "truebut," was supposed to be "True, but ..." But Bob Staake sees "but" and thinks: A true butt. So we went with the more illustratable "burbitate," to feel an urge to move out of the city. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow April 26, 2018 at 3:04 p.m. EDT One of my very slightly guilty pleasures is my digital subscription to the New York Times’s crosswords and other puzzles; even though The Post runs perfectly good daily puzzles from the L.A. Times — plus Evan Birnholz’s superior Sunday crossword, constructed expressly for The Post — I especially enjoy the NYT’s Thursday-Saturday puzzles, which are progressively challenging and have lots of ingenious wordplay in the clues. And crossword subscribers also get to play all the “variety” puzzles, such as the biweekly acrostic and, every week, the simply designed but compellingly challenging Spelling Bee, the contest whose letter sets we use this week for an entirely different challenge in Week 1277 of The Style Invitational. Spelling Bee goes up online every Thursday at 10 p.m., and by 10:02 I’m usually logged on with my pen and paper nearby, eager to see how many words I can form from that week’s seven letters, all of them including one designated letter among the seven. It’s even more fun to compare my word list the next morning with those of my predecessor,the Czar, as well as with Alex Blackwood, the Houston resident who’s become my co-admin in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, sharing the duties of introducing the new members and checking with applicants to make sure they weren’t looking for something about styles and fashion (because boyoboy would they be at the wrong place). I usually but not always think of a couple more words than the Czar, but Alex(andra) is *in­cred­ible* at this game: The “genius” level the puzzle offers might be 20 points in a given week (words using all seven letters get three points; the others get one) and I’ll be all jazzed about getting 23, and then Alex clocks in with 47 points. In fact, she was generating words so fast on the letter set UBATRIE a few weeks ago that she started listing Spanish words as well, and then started making up words and definitions — some of which I promptly lifted for this contest. When I got in touch with the Times to make sure it was okay with our using its letter sets, product director Eric von Coelln told me that as early as next week, Spelling Bee will become a daily feature, with the minimum word length shortened to four letters. I’m gonna have to call in the self-discipline . . . Anyway, Week 1277 is*not* the Spelling Bee game; I’m just using some of its letters sets and, more significantly, the option of using letters repeatedly while not needing to use all or even most of the seven letters. These concepts tripped me up the first time or two that I played the game. But they should allow for a huge variety of words. (This is why I listed only 15 sets this week, instead of the 40 I’d offered for the ScrabbleGrams contests .) Please fill out your entries in the requested way! *CABINET REFACING*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1273* *Non-inking headline submitted by both William Kennard and Jeff Contompasis* Whooeee, will we have a challenge a few years hence in figuring out what the heck these inking entries from Week 1273 were about. Mrs. Ben Carson? Scott Pruitt’s “low-cost housing”? April the Giraffe? Fears that all the entries would be too screedy — bitterly unhumorous — didn’t materialize, but there was a whole lot of duplication of some general ideas. If someone else got ink with an entry that’s along the same line as yours, please let me know as soon as possible and I’ll send you a Kleenex. Duncan Stevens really inked up the joint this week, winning the Invite (for the fifth time) with his you-have-to-say-it-out-loud “pee score” Emily Litella joke, plus scoring a runner-up and two honorable mentions that bump him up to 246 blots of ink all-time. The other two entrants who managed to squeeze into the Losers’ Circle between Duncan and More Duncan are also Invite veterans: It’s the 20th appearance “above the fold” for Rob Huffman, the 16th for Ira Allen. Still, there was ink for First Offender Alison Thompson (who was lured to the Invitational by the fabulous prizes won by her husband, nine-time Loser Mark Calandra), as well as for William Pifer-Foote, whose one previous ink dates back to 2000 (contest to combine two TV shows: “The Fugitive Survivor”: The fat naked gay guy runs all over the country trying to find anyone who cares anymore”). *What Doug Dug: * The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood this week were the dig about (soon-to-resign?) Scott Pruitt and his $50-a-night condo rental from a lobbyist, very similar entries from both Frank Mann and John Glenn; Superman as an undocumented immigrant, by Ward Kay; and the Yosemite Sam*John Bolton joke at the end by William Pifer-Foote, who’s been on the Losers’ One Hit Wonder list since Week 375, November 2000. *FURLONG LONG TIME * Welp, now it’s time to dig back into the 4,300-ish “foal” names entered for Week 1274 (results next week). In response to some recent questions about my judging method: 1. No, not all in one sitting. I’ll do a few hundred, then take a break and do something else for a while. I do hate to waste paper, but like working from a printout for this particular contest, since I can look at entries here and there when I’m in line at the post office, during that exasperating interval when they put you in the doctor’s exam room and then just leave you there, etc. This year’s printout runs 229 single-spaced pages; I do use both sides of the paper, at least. 2. A whole lot of entries make the first cut. A whole lot of entries are good! Even if 90 percent of the submissions totally stink (which isn’t the case), we’re talking about 400 good ones. Every year, I try to be more discriminating in that first pass, but I usually end up with a “shortlist” of 200 names. Then I have to toss about 75 percent of those. 3. I have been known to use performance-enhancing drugs. I break one of these guys into halves or thirds. That and coffee. If I get sleepy, I’ll stop judging. Except for yours; I sleep right through yours. I will never stop thanking Loser Jonathan Hardis for sorting the entries so that judging on a printout is even possible, and for saving me hours and hours and hours of searching on each of the 100 names, twice over. I always hope that Jonathan enters and gets ink, something I won’t know until after I’ve made my final picks next Monday or Tuesday. *LOSER PARENTING FAIL? * Last week Danielle Nowlin won the Invitational for the 11th time, and her second Lose Cannon. The only problem was that the Imperial Provider of Ordnance, the Royal Consort, still needed to put together more trophies. So I asked Danielle whether she’d rather instead have the poop emoji slippers-and-pillow set that Chris Doyle had declined after winning second place in Week 1270. After all, Danielle is the mother of three winsome tykes, none of them close to adolescence. She reported back: “My LoserKinder have rejected the emoji items too. I’ll have to work on their sense of lowbrow. “I’ll take the Lose Cannon after all!” So I guess the Emoji Ensemble is destined as some sort of award to be given out at the Flushies, the Losers’ annual awards (potluck) banquet, on Saturday afternoon, June 9. Contact me if you want to be added to the Evite list. ====================================================================== WEEK 1278, published May 6, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1278: Our stable geniuses The Style Invitational Empress surveys the crowded field of the Pun for the Roses Certainly fitting, but not inking: Some of the entries for Week 1274; if the same entry was sent by four or more people, it was scratched. (Screen image) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow May 3, 2018 at 2:56 p.m. EDT [“Stable Geniuses” was submitted by half a dozen people as a headline for this week’s results.] *First thing*:*For those who are going to try our Week 1278 “grandfoals” contest — and I hope that’s all of you; what do you have to lose? — you’ll want the handy-dandy list of all 68 of this week’s inking foal names at the bottom of this page. It’s courtesy of Loser Jesse Frankovich, who, minutes after this week’s results went up online, had compiled it and posted it on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page.* Our annual foal name contest always draws a much bigger pool of entries than most Style Invitationals, but the pool for Week 1274, whose results run today, was about 10 percent larger than last year’s. That’s something that delights me in an age when being 25 years old (the Invitational, not me; I’m 12) is not exactly considered a virtue. The final count by Loser Jonathan Hardis, who sorts them alphabetically for me every year (since Word won’t do what I need) was 4,213 entries, whittled from an initial count of 4,350 after Jonathan discovered groups of entries that some people had submitted multiple times. And so the bar was very high as I judged the foal names; my first cut consisted of a punoramic list of 317 entries, which I had to pare to 68. I*easily* could have printed a list of 68 more names from that list and would have been happy with the results. ABSOLUTELY, if you entered and didn’t get ink this week, one of your entries would have been in that group. (I don’t publish my “shortlist” because it would put a lot of joke possibilities out of commission for this week’s grandfoal contest and future contests.) As you can see from the little sliver of printout pictured above, there was (as always) lots of duplication among the entries, even with 100 horses to combine (that’s 4,950 possible pairings of two of the horses) and, of course, an infinite number of punning possibilities. Here are *some* of the names that were entered too frequently: Mr. President x World of Trouble (or Gotta Go) = It’s Mueller Time Ali x B On Time = Sting like a B Big Brown Bear x Gotta Go = In The Woods Explorer x Alpha to Omega = Vasco da Gamma Audible x Clever Mind = Heard Mentality Ax Man x Mr. President = You’re Fired Big Brown Bear x Mr. President = Grizzly Adams Nero x Blame the Rider (or Pony Up) = FiddlerOnTheHoof Talon x Blame the Rider (or Pony Up) = Clawed Reins Catholic Boy x Hollywood Star (or Machismo) = Altar Ego Catholic Boy x Mississippi = Altared State Silver Hammer x Clever Mind = Maxwell Smart Mendelssohn x Family Kitten = Felix the Cat Family Kitten x Mr. President = Fake Mews Private Eye x Family Kitten = Sam Spayed Replicator x Family Kitten = Copy Cat Most Amusing x Nero = Fiddle Shticks Private Eye x Numero Thirteen = Dick Trece Big Brown Bear x Bolt d’Oro (or Gold Town) = Ursa Miner In some cases, I got the same name multiple times, but one cross of parents seemed to work better than others. For example, I got at least four entries for Kodiak Moment, but I felt that the cross of Big Brown Bear with Beautiful Shot was better than with Personal Time, since a “Kodak moment” refers to a photo opportunity. If the crosses were different but seemed equally effective, I’d choose one and credit both people. *Note: *If you weren’t credited for the*same*cross that got ink with someone else’s name, let me know as soon as possible and I’ll credit you at least online. (This already happened with Bon Bon Voyage, which is why is has the otherwise disqualifying four credits.) I basically ran out of time to do that last entry-by-entry double-check for duplication. It’s been a pretty busy week. As I scanned 229 pages of printouts — I conveniently found myself in doctors’ waiting rooms over the past week — I found myself noticing the funny puns among the foal names before checking the crosses. While many of this week’s inking entries don’t have a self-contained pun — the wordplay comes from clever playing on the crosses — the pun names probably had an advantage (unless they were old puns — pleez, people, no more Putin On the Ritz). I’m hoping, but can’t guarantee, that*none* of these 68 horse names appeared as a cross between two of the thousands and thousands of previous inking names since 2004. (I did catch a couple of funny names we’d already done, like We the Peephole.) As usual, we had more than the usual number of First Offenders getting ink — eight of them this week — and as unusual, one of them wins the whole contest. Congratulations to Luke Baker of Columbia, Md., who rose above literally hundreds of Mr. President foals to mate B on Time with Mr. President to make F on Policy. Luke will be getting his Fir Stink air “freshener” along with his Lose Cannon trophy — so he’ll have to keep entering the Invite to win a magnet like everyone else. Looking forward to it! Our three runners-up, the other occupants of this week’s Losers’ Circle, are all Invite veterans; Beth Morgan (33 blots of ink) and Laurie Brink (55) pretty much restrict themselves to the horse contests, where they both have impressive records over the years, while Rob Wolf has sopped up his 46 blots of ink from a variety of contests. *What Doug Dug: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood enjoyed the whole field this week, but he especially liked the work of all the First Offenders. I hope all of them become recidivists. *HUH? YOURS AND MINE* Since I published this week’s results in the past few hours, I’ve heard from some Losers who didn’t get some of the entries. Here are a few explainers: remember that one’s person’s “duh” is another’s “oh, I’d never have gotten that in a million years.” Nero x Demolition = Rex (Beth Morgan) “Rex” is Latin for king; Rex*wrecks Alpha to Omega x Ax Man = LambdaTheSlaughter (Laurie Brink) Fun with Greek letters. Mt. Rushmore x Private Eye = Secret Dakota Ring (Rob Wolf) Mount Rushmore is in South Dakota; the “secret decoder ring” was often given out as a cheap prize a kid could get by sending in cereal box tops, etc. B on Time x Mr. President = F on Policy (Luke Baker) A nifty switch from “B” as a verb to “F” as a letter grade. Mr. President x Walk in the Sun = Jirque du Soleil (Jon Gearhart) Cirque du Soleil translates to “Circus of the Sun.” Alpha to Omega x Arrival = Eta (First Offender Dave Wyman) More Greek letter fun; I think it worked better as “Eta,” the name of the letter, than as ETA — just one more little thing to figure out and then get that much more of a smile Numero Thirteen x Zing Zang = I Speak Foreign (Mike Gips) may have confused people because it’s not a pun; it’s playing on the fact that both names sound like bad attempts to speak a foreign language. Retirement Fund x Ali = The Roth of Khan (Matthew Sheren) The Roth IRA, a retirement plan; Khan and Ali as common Muslim names; Ali Khan is the host of “Cheap Eats.” “The Wrath of Khan” is the second Star Trek movie. Still Having Fun x One More Tom = One More, Tom (Ellen Raphaeli, Tom Witte) I love little changes like commas that change the meaning of a whole sentence. I’m tempted to do a contest for this but worry it will fail. Pony Up x Bail Out = Too Big to Foal (David Peckarsky) “Too big to fail” was the rationale for government bailouts of America’s largest banks in the 2008 recession. Biblical x Noble Indy = Miracle Whip (Pamela Love) Referencing Indiana Jones and his bullwhip. Bolt d’Oro x Replicator = Usain Clone Posse (Mary McNamara) Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world; Insane Clown Posse, the hip-hop duo whose cult following has sometimes been called a gang. Bugle Notes x Gotta Go = Nope, Bone Spurs (Wilson Varga, J. Larry Schott) A foot ailment that seemed to affect only young men who were eligible for the Vietnam era draft. The Healthiest President Ever had a very bad case. Dream Friend x Call a Cop = Incubusted (Kevin Dopart) An incubus, according to myth, is a male demon believed to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women. I also got an entry (with a different cross) for Succubusted, alluding to the female equivalent. Exclamation Point x Mr. President = Punked You Asians (Harvey Smith) Punctuation. Family Kitten x Walk in the Sun = Hot Tin Roof (Elliott Gilberg) The Tennessee Williams play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ” Good Magic x World of Trouble = David Cop a Feel (Steve Fahey) Magician David Copperfield. Gronkowski x Exclamation Point = Worst.Musical.Ever (David Smith, Stockton, Calif.) Joking on the tendency of Broadway musical titles to contain exclamation points. Like “Oklahoma!” and “Oliver!” and “Hello, Dolly!” Hollywood Star x Justify = They Let You (Connie Schott) “And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” — Abraham Lincoln Lone Sailor x Chaps = Village Person (Bill Smith) Playing on “lone” and the iconically gay group the Village People, whose members dressed in stereotypical macho costumes such as cowboy, and who recorded a song called “In the Navy.” Mendelssohn x Hollywood Star = Felix and Oscar (Malcolm Fleschner, Kathy Hardis Fraeman) Composer Felix Mendelssohn; the “Odd Couple” characters of Felix and Oscar; Hollywood’s Oscars. Mr. President x Arrival = The Ego Has Landed (Pam Sweeney) “The Eagle has landed” — first report from the moon. Mr. President x Firenze Fire = Donnie’s Inferno (Elizabeth Kline) Firenze is the Italian name for the city of Florence, home to Dante, author of “The Inferno” and its sequel, “Inferno II: Burn, Baby, Burn.” Mr. President x Replicator = So Much Twinning (Chris Doyle) “We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with the winning.” — Dante Nero x Bravazo = Fiddle DD (Jeff Shirley) Emperor Nero legendarily “fiddled while Rome burned.” DD is for the “bra” of Bravazo. Quip x Yee Haw = Yuk Owens (J.D. Berry) Buck Owens was the host of the down-home variety show “Hee Haw.” Retirement Fund x Firenze Fire = Roth to a Flame (Bill Dorner) See Roth of Khan above. Retirement Fund x Numero Thirteen = 401 Que? (Ben Aronin) The federal 401(k) retirement program; “Que?” is Spanish. Rucksack x Mr. President = Sack (Jonathan Hardis) “Sack” as in “fire him.” Runaway Ghost x Yee Haw = PhantomOfTheOpry (Jerome Uher) As in the Grand Ole Opry, a mecca for old-time country music. Silver Hammer x Bolt d’Oro = Maxweld (Roger Dalrymple) “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is a jaunty Beatles song about a serial killer; “d’oro” is “of gold.” Strike Power x Walk in the Sun = Norma Ray-Ban (Chuck Helwig) “Norma Rae,” the movie about a labor activist; Ray-Ban sunglasses Tough Times x Gold Town = Hard Knox (Rick Haynes) as in Fort Knox, the U.S. government’s gold repository Tres Equis x Justify = X~~~~~~~X~~~~~~~X (Jeff Contompasis) Tres Equis translates to “three X’s” (not three horses, as some people seemed to guess); justified type is text that is spaced out to line up on both left and right. Another nifty touch: Instead of hyphens or dashes to justify the X’s, Jeff used a row of tildes, the Spanish accent mark. So you get the idea about what to do for the grandfoals, right? Not every element has to be incorporated, especially when a parent’s name already includes a pun. But it helps if you play at least on the most conspicuous component of a name; for Norma Ray-Ban, for example, you might get away with ignoring “Norma,” but not “Ray-Ban.” If history predicts the coming week and a half, I’ll get about half the entries for Week 1278 as for Week 1274, so your odds will be better. And you still get 2,278 combinations to work with. *THEY SHOOT EMPRESSES, DON’T THEY? I DIDN’T GET THESE. SO...* I couldn’t figure these out. Replicator x Telekinesis = Sci-Fi Horses Ways Most Amusing x Mr. President = Bi-sinistrous Sips My Dream x Seven Trumpets = Bik and Six (Maybe Bix as in Beiderbecke?) Slot x Quip = Slot Har Write to me and I’ll explain them next week. ** *DQ: The Unprintables:* A few of the horse names that wouldn’t make it past the taste police (looking up the authors as I write): ** Family Kitten x My Boy Jack = Cat-e-jism (Edward Gordon) Zing Zang x Slot = Ben Wa Balls (Jon Ketzner) Personal Time x For Him = A Sticky Sock (Matthew Zimmer; “...maybe convo only?” he correctly guessed) Clever Mind x Good Magic = Cunning Stunt (Chris Doyle “[Convo only]” he insisted. Yeah, no prob.) Most Amusing x Dawood = Funny Boner (Mark Raffman — even when we quote the leader of the free world saying "pussy” and “shithole,” I don’t think I can say “boner) Gronkowski x Tres Equis = Tight Ends (Beth Morgan) XXX as in porn *WATCH FOR YOUR FLUSHIES INVITATION!* Here’s the Facebook link for the invitation to the 23rd annual Flushies, the Losers’ own awards (potluck) banquet and songfest. I’ll be sending out an Evite as well; write me to get your name added, though I’ll link here to it next week as well. It’s on Saturday, June 9, noon to 4, in McLean, Va. Please rearrange your wedding plans, jail time, etc., to make this important event. Michelle Wolf isn’t expected, but I’m hoping for Rob Wolf. His voice is more pleasant, anywayy Here’s the list for Week 1278, all nice and alphabetized. Thanks again to Jesse Frankovich. Absorba the Greek Big Brown Bare Bon Bon Voyage Cashless Clay Cassius Claymore David Cop a Feel Donnie’s Inferno Eta F on Policy Felix and Oscar Fiddle DD Fighter Pilate For Her 401 Que? Gaseous Clay Genital Ben GhoulsOutForSummer Hard Knox HeFollowedMeHome Hock Finn Hot Tin Roof How I Met Yo Mama Hurt Dateeth I Got Ink! I Speak Foreign Incubusted Invisible Ink It’s Still a Sin Jacob’s Bladder Jirque du Soleil Kodiak Moment LambdaTheSlaughter Laugh Savings Magna Cum Loud Maxweld Mind Over Martyr Miracle Whip MLK and Cookies Noah Veil Nope, Bone Spurs Norma Ray-Ban Ol’ Man Ripper One More, Tom Penn and Yeller PhantomOfTheOpry Punked You Asians Questosterone Rex Roamin’ Emperor Roth to a Flame Ruckus in the Sack Sack Secret Dakota Ring Smart Ash Sneezy Listening So Much Twinning Splitting Heirs The Ego Has Landed The Roth of Khan They Let You Too Big to Foal Twain Usain Clone Posse Village Person Wit Man’s Sampler Worst.Musical.Ever X~~~~~~~X~~~~~~~X Yuk Owens ====================================================================== WEEK 1279, published May 13, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1279: The method in the madness How the Losers tackled the Style Invitational Shakespeare contest If it were a musical, he could sing “Knew Yorick, Knew Yorick”: Laurence Olivier (left) in the film “Hamlet.” By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow May 10, 2018 at 3:02 p.m. EDT *Before we start:* YOU!!! — as one of the very select few who read this column — are PERSONALLY invited to the 23rd annual Flushies, the Loser Community’s awards and (potluck) banquet, the afternoon of Saturday, June 9, in McLean, Va. When I come up for air (I’m still sending out prizes for last week’s foal-name winners), I’ll tweak last year’s Evite mailing list to add some names of recent local Losers, and send it by email. But for now, here is your express invitation with all the deets. I’ve already heard from people who are coming in from as far as Connecticut and Florida. Along with the nifty plaques for Loser of the Year, Rookie of the Year and more, Founder of the Not Ready for the Algonquin Round Table Society Elden Carnahan will award personalized prizes (in the form of hand-inscribed rolls of TP) to those who’ve reached certain ink milestones inthe past Loser Year (March-March was Year 25) — your 50th ink, your 100th ink, etc. Surely you want to be present for such an honor; if not, someone else will be designated to catch your award when Elden lobs it across the room, and what will you have to adorn your mantelpiece? But that’s not all: There will also be other prizes for reasons still to be thought of. For one, there’s the fabulous set of Poop Emoji Pillow and Fuzzy Slippers , which Chris Doyle declined after placing second in Week 1270. I’ve been to at least 15 Flushies lunches and always enjoy having people suck up to me meeting new Invite entrants and just-readers and Style Invitational Devotees as well as reconnecting with the veteran Losers, including those who’ve pretty much retired from entering. Even if your name isn’t currently on my list, you should be able to RSVP from the link above. (If you’ve already responded yes or maybe to the similar invite in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, please also answer the Evite so that you’ll get any updates.) *Q-AND-AVON*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1275* *(*Non-inking headline suggested by both Jesse Frankovich and Tom Witte)* “From the haughty to the potty”: It’s a line I use to describe the humor of The Style Invitational, its mix of high and low comedy, of literary allusions and poop jokes. And there can’t be a better example than the results of Week 1275, in which the Losers were sent hunting through the Shakespeare canon for quotes to pair with a question. As soon as Loser Duncan Stevens suggested this contest — a variation on our “Questionable Journalism” contests using sentences from the newspaper — I couldn’t wait to run it and read the entries. My only problem was that, much as with last week’s foal names, I had lots more clever and funny entries than I could reasonably run. So if your fabulous joke got no respect this week, you might want to try again in our retrospective contest at the end of the year. Just after posting this week’s results, I asked the Devotees how they went about working on this contest. Here are some of their strategies: Some people searched for certain words, then found a suitable quote. Robert Schechter: “I went to an online concordance, OpenSourceShakespeare.org [the website we recommended when announcing the contest] and searched for lines that used words like ‘impeach’ and ‘pardon.’” Robert got two blots of ink this week, including: “I crave your highness’ pardon.* What’s the best-selling Hallmark card in Washington these days?” Thor Rudebeck took the same tack, searching for “words I think are funny, like ‘weasel’ and ‘erection.’” But it was Thor’s “rotten orange” joke, alluding to You Know Who, that won him a Loser Mug or Grossery Bag — which means that, of a total of three blots of ink so far in Thor’s entire Invite career, two of them were runners-up. Chris Doyle and Brendan Beary both used Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Neal Starkman used a more random method: “I have the complete works of Shakespeare in a paperback, and I just flipped through pages. The first time through, I focused on, say, the bottom left; the next time the bottom right; and so on. And I guess I tried to find quotations that I could do something with.” If that last sentence sounds a bit wistful, it’s because Neal was one of many Losers robbed of ink this week. Mark Raffman did the same, but fortunately must have landed on a line featuring the word “tush,” which in Shakespeare means roughly “tsk-tsk.” (“Trump,” by the way, which was used in many entries though none got ink — e.g., “What means that trump?” — is in Shakespeare a trumpet or trumpet blare.) And then we have the Enlighten Yourself route, courtesy of Losin’ Machine Duncan Stevens: “I reread several plays (eight, I think) and came up with entries for lines that jumped out at me as good candidates. “ And finally from Gil Glass: “I assembled an infinite number of monkeys in a room with an infinite number of typewriters and...” — and the monkeys delivered for Gil; he got ink by moving that fishing-for-compliments scene with King Lear and his daughters, “Which of you shall we say doth love us most?” to a 2018 Cabinet meeting. (You many continue the Lear*Trump metaphors on your own.) Regular readers of the Invitational know that we often have an “And Last” entry referencing the Invitational itself. This week it’s Jon Gearhart’s about the “inky blots and rotten parchment bonds” as the Empress’s awards for her children. But this week I had to choose from so many funny Invite-themed entries that I wanted to share a whole list — many of which turned out to be by 2017 Loser of the Year Jesse Frankovich, who ended going inkless (a rare occurrence indeed) in this week’s actual results. *These are all Jesse’s: *The neighing steed and the shrill trump. (“Othello” ) Aside from Your Mama, what are the two favorite subjects of The Style Invitational? Ugly and slanderous to thy mother’s womb, full of unpleasing blots... lame, foolish. (“King John”) How would Shakespeare describe the Style Invitational? Well, sir, be it as the Style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness.” (“Love’s Labour’s Lost”) What is the point of this ridiculous contest? Our empress, with her sacred wit. (“Titus Andronicus”) Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest judge of all? Say that upon the altar of her beauty you sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart: Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears moist it again, and frame some feeling line that may discover such integrity. (“The Two Gentlemen of Verona” How can I convince the Empress that my Invite entry is worthy? A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse! (“Richard III”) What did the desperate Loser say in a fit of madness while trying to think of funny foal names? Beauteous as ink; a good conclusion. (“Love’s Labour’s Lost”) What makes for a successful “And Last”? *But it wasn’t just Jesse: * Let there be gall enough in thy ink. (“Twelfth Night”) What is the traditional Loser toast? (Kevin Dopart) Got any advice for writing winning entries this week? (Jeff Contompasis) Come, come, our Empress, with her sacred wit, To villainy and vengeance consecrate.” (“Titus Andronicus”) What is the invocation before every Loser brunch? (Bill Dorner) O, she is lame! (“Romeo and Juliet”) Say, why doesn’t she ever get ink? (Beverley Sharp) Here come more. (“Troilus and Cressida”) O Siri, how many Trump entries must I endure?!? –The Empress (Dave Prevar) Ay, that’s a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of his horse (“The Merchant of Venice”) Is it just me, or does everyone find Luke Baker insufferable since he won the Week 1274 foal contest? (Elliott Shevin) *The Feeney Funny: * Ace Copy Editor is off this week, but fortunately his fill-in Mary Feeney is a longtime Invite fan and was eager to share a list of her faves: Gil Glass’s: “Which of you shall we say doth love us most?”; Claire Walsh’s “tongues in trees” (for her second blot of ink); Jeff Shirley’s “your waste is great” toilet joke; Duncan Stevens’s “To boot! To boot!” jab at Microsoft; Chris Doyle’s “cancels all bands”; Jeff Contompasis’s “As many farewells as be stars in heaven” to describe the White House staff, and the same for Frank Osen’s “some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany”; and Duncan’s Peter Dinklage joke, “I’ll not be juggled with.” *As(s:) You Like It: The Week 1275 Unprintables* Shakespeare could be bawdy enough himself, but misinterpret his words and we get (among numerous other unprintables) ... Give me another horse: bind up my wounds. (“Richard III”) Don’t you think it’s dangerous to keep experimenting with bestiality? (Jeff Contompasis) Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. (“Richard III”) So, what is it that you like best about outdoor Siberian brothels, Mr. President? (Jon Gearhart) What, with my tongue in your tail? (“The Taming of the Shrew”) Can we get this screen test over with, Mr. Weinstein? (Anne Salzberg) I will not answer thee with words, but blows. (“Henry VI, Part 1”) What was Stormy’s reply to Donald’s proposition? “I must go up and down like a cock that nobody can match.” (“Cymbeline”) How did Wilt Chamberlain answer when asked what he would need to do to win the 37th Annual World Sex Championship? (Thor Rudebeck) *SPEAKING OF METHOD IN THE MADNESS: THIS WEEK’S CONTEST* I trust that the examples at the top of Week 1279 — especially the tweet about cooking a can of soup — give you an idea for this week’s contest for “accurate” directions. Part of the challenge will be to find creative subjects as well as funny observational humor. And it’s already clear that at least some in the Loser Community are already on the case. When this morning I asked the Devotees how they went about entering Week 1275, Matthew Zimmer immediately posted this: 1. I went on the Shakespeare website. 2. Started searching terms I thought of that were funny. Like “cheese,” “fairy” and “butter” 3. Found the best quotes that included those words 4. Built up a funny question that the quote would answer 5. Submitted the quotes and questions 6. Waited about 4 weeks 7. Crushing disappointment. No worries, I’ll crush the next one. 8. Lather, rinse, repeat. -- RSVP me! ====================================================================== WEEK 1280, published May 20, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1280: The d‘eep’est well? Yikes, can we really do the ‘air quotes’ contest six times over and succeed? " 'Aw'ard: The trophy the team gives to the schlumpy kids just for participating. Roger Dalrymple's inking entry from 2013. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow May 17, 2018 at 2:11 p.m. EDT As countless Losers who find me annoying and exasperating know, I’m apt to reply to a contest suggestion, “We did that.” or “We did that TWICE.” But here we are in Week 1280 of The Style Invitational with the*sixth* running of our “air quotes” contest, using the very same pool of words and names as in the previous contests. Good thing that that pool consists of every word and name in the English language — and who knows, maybe some foreign ones as well. I do try, however, not to repeat jokes we’ve used in previous contests, though many have gotten through over the years, sometimes virtually identical to their predecessors. So please take a look at the sets of results I link to below. The first “air quotes” contest was posted in 2000, two weeks after the Invite returned from a six-month hiatus. (The Czar, my predecessor, decided at the time to number all further Invites in Roman numerals, beginning with Week I for what was really Week 334; this silliness went on for three years, past such weeks as CXLVIII all the way to CLXII, when we resumed with Week 495 as if Rome had never existed.) The Czar noted that the idea occurred to him when a story jumped from Page 1 from “arse-” to “nal.” Here’s a link to the *Week 336 results * of “The ‘Sty’le Invitational,” which Loser Elden Carnahan stores conveniently on his Master Contest List (not restricted by The Post’s paywall). As with all these links, scroll down past the week’s new contest to see the air-quotes results. And here are a few choice entries from each contest, selected at whim among so many classic entries: Winner of the Hirsute Hair Shirt: *G“angst”er:* Someone torn by inner conflict, and bullets. (Tom Witte) [Fourteen years later, Tom regifted me the Hair Shirt; it went to the second-place Loser in Week 1064.] Second Runner-Up: *T “hick”en:* Just mix in a passel of pig-fat drippins. (Jean Sorensen) *H“air”cut:* The futile, pathetic trip to the barber taken by balding men. (Will Cramer) *From 2001, Week LXXII (or 405) :* Fifth Runner-Up: *M“ick” Jagger:* A 60-year-old in spandex. (Russell Beland) And the winner of the genuine hair shirt [Yes! Another of the very same prize — and this had to be a total coincidence.] *Di“agnostic”ian: *This doctor is just not sure what you’ve got. (Steve Fahey) And just so you don’t bother sending this for Week 1280: *Donald T“rump”: Donald Trump.* (Elden Carnahan) *From 2009, Week 826 : * The Winner of the Inker: *Che‘mother’apy:* When I was a kid, it was cod liver oil and Vicks VapoRub. (Mike Ostapiej) Second place: *Misc‘once’ption:* The myth that you can’t knock up your girlfriend the first time you have sex. (Lois Douthitt) *Ab‘dome’n:* The six-pack 20 years later. (Wayne Rodgers; Mae Scanlan) *From 2013, Week 1031: * *Compe“nsa”tion:* Fringe benefit entitling one to a multiweek stay at the Moscow airport. (Yuki Henninger) *Se“cret in”gredient:* A common marketing ploy targeting the pathologically gullible. (David Garratt) *Maybe this one is finally outdated?* *Ini“quit”y:* The Capitals’ playoff performances. (Jim Stiles) *And from 2015, Week 1134 :* In addition to the examples atop this week’s contest: Third place: *The“irs”:* That which, after April 15, no longer belongs to us. (Chris Doyle) *Ce“meter”y:* Tick. . . tick. . . tick. . . — G. Reaper (Brendan Beary) *“Can”dor: * “Well, yes, it does look big in that dress.” (Dion Black) *“Ass”uage:* “Oh, no, it doesn’t look big at all.” (Danielle Nowlin) So you see what to do — there are still a lot of words and names out there for the mining. *FOUR BETTER OR WORSE*: THE LIMERICKS OF WEEK 1276* *(*Non-inking headline by Chris Doyle)* The next time I do a limerick contest like the one in this week’s results, I’ll make one big change: Instead of asking you to use one of the given lines as the last line, I’d let you put it anywhere, and it would be a much vaguer line: Requiring it to be Line 5 pretty much stole your chance to make your own punchline. And there was way too much duplication of ideas among the entries for each of the lines. But of course, our Loserbards rose to the occasion by playing on that Line 5 in imaginative ways. And Frank Osen does it four times over in this week’s results — including his Lose Cannon-winning prediction of Kanye West as Trump’s choice for President Fifty-One (after Ivanka, Jared, Don Jr., Eric and Barron serve as 46 through 50). Frank also sneaked a verb into “They never saw xxxxxx again” by using a name with a verby surname, Nic Cage. He tried this in a number of non-inking entries as well: Sean Penn, Sal(ly) Field, Glenn Ford, Sheryl Crow, George Raft, David Frost, and even Stan Laurel and Chuck Berry. (Even without seeing the writers’ names when I judged, I kind of guessed that all of these were all from the same Loser.) This week Frank scores his*seventeenth* Invite win, for 348 blots of ink in all, and he didn’t even start Inviting since December 2012. Second-place finisher Dudley Thompson played on “saw” for Ink 149 and his 19th ink “above the fold,” but we have a total newbie and a relative newbie as our other two runners-up: Kevin Tingley gets his eighth ink since Week 512, and his first trip to the Losers’ Circle, with the puppy eschewing the front page and Metro to “do it in Style,” and First Offender Sharon Neeman checks in from the northern tip of Israel (ooh, I’ve been to Kiryat Shmona) with her Oxford comma limerick, my choice of many limericks inevitably making essentially the same joke. In fact, there were similarly themed and almost as good limericks for all three runners-up. Some of the Oxford comma jokes I received, however, didn’t reflect what an Oxford comma is: Also called the series comma or serial comma, it’s the one that most publications, but not all, use in a sentence before “and,” “but” and the final element in the series. In Sharon’s limerick, the Oxford comma is the one after “Bush” in “my papa and mama, George Bush, and Michelle R. Obama. This one, on the other hand — an otherwise great job from Kathy El-Assal, is not about an Oxford comma, but the no-special-name comma earlier in the series: Some vegans who favored no drama Liked cooking their cat and their llama. They saw things looked bad So they hastened to add A strategically placed Oxford comma. Then we have the amusing rule breakers, like Brendan Beary, who conjured up That Super-Long Welsh Place Name for at least its fifth use in a Style Invitational entry, and Harold Walderman’s “And Last,” which I especially liked because it was*about*someone who doesn’t give a crap about breaking whatever rule he finds inconvenient. *What Doug Dug: * This week’s results didn’t exactly slay Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood either; he diplomatically raved instead about Kevin Dopart’s “Se‘dated’ ” among the Week 1280 examples. But he did enjoy Brendan’s and Howard’s twists, and the “Fraulein” limerick from John “Ed” Edwards, who suggested this contest in the first place. *Just a bit too unprintable: * Some people chose a president other than the current one for “That’s what the president said.” Like this one from the irrepressible Brian Allgar: “We never had sex in a bed, Although Monica gave me great head. But that’s not immoral – Ain’t sex if it’s oral.” Well, that’s what the president said. I just can’t say “gave me great head.” It might not seem logical these days, but I can’t. *FLUSHING OUT THOSE RSVPs* Thanks to those who’ve responded (especially, of course, with Yes) to the Losers’ invitation to this year’s *Flushies, * the annual awards (potluck) banquet luncheon, this year on Saturday afternoon, June 9, at the Old Firehouse in McLean. If you didn’t get your emailed invitation, you can use this one right here. (If you have read this far down in this column, consider yourself and your handler personally invited.) And this very Sunday, at noon, is the May Loser brunch, at the Coastal Flats restaurant in Tysons Corner (RSVP here). I can’t be there this time because I’m singing in a choral concert later that afternoon (rare plug: It’s going to be really exciting, with a brand-new work by crazy-phenomenal composer*conductor Douglas Buchanan). But that just means nobody will stare at your plate and ask you, “You finished with that?” *THE LONGEST LIMERICK EVER* Speaking of rule-breakers, I sure hope I see more entries from Ken Gosse of Mesa, Ariz., who sent this for Week 1276: *A Grand Finale: Seven for One and One for All! * As a contest, it’s rather absurd, Finding rhymes that must match the right word, Yet we wind through the mazes Of disparate phrases Like know nobody read What the president said; I could write with aplomb If I’d listened to Mom; One-card solitaire’s fun, Then I found fifty-one; It embarrassed Obama, That missed Oxford comma; The lost garden gnome— Someone please take him home; Though it pains me a while, I must do things in style; Didn’t pay and those men Never saw him again. Dueling couplets like these May cause rhyming unease . . . But a limerick’s that kind of a bird. ====================================================================== WEEK 1281, published May 27, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1281: Cast your eyes upon ... almost anything Except a picture like this. The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s googly contest. Bob Staake’s first idea for this week’s art, immediately rejected by the Empress. He followed it up with something worse, just to be funny, before making his Cyclops. (Made on makemegoogly.com) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow May 24, 2018 at 3:30 p.m. EDT How ’bout that nifty cartoon from Bob Staake atop this week’s Style Invitational? “It only took us 25 years to realize that we could animate one of mycartoons for the online edition of The Style Invitational — further proof of what slow learners we are,” Bob notes. (That would, of course, include the years beginning in 1993 when the Invite wasn’t online yet, and however long after that before we had the capability. Still, though, we’re a little late to the party.) “That said,” continues Bob, “the single eye of a Cyclops is always funny in and of itself, so swapping it out with a static googly eye wouldn’t be quite right. There’s only one Cyclops I could channel: Ray Harryhausen’s infamous, jerky, stop-motion one from the 1958 classic ‘The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad’ — and thanks to the miracle of circa-1994 gif animation, we were able to properly ‘googlify’ the eyeball.” The Cyclops wasn’t the*first* thing that sprang to Bob’s mind, though. First, he emailed me a link to the GIF version of the Stevie Wonder joke above, correctly predicting, “You’ll probably nix it, but . . .” But that just got Bob rolling. Before settling down with the single googly Cyclopean eye, he sent me one more idea, one that I didn’t even want to include visibly in The Style Conversational. So don’t complain to me if you click on this link and don’t like what you see. As often happens with contests that we do for the first time, some questions and issues may well arise as the Loser Community — including, I’m hoping, lots of people who have just discovered the Invite — begins to work on the Week 1281 contest. I’ve tried to anticipate various issues, but I might have to rule on some questions during this extended entry period: I’ve extended the window a full week, to June 11. If you have a question that’s not addressed in this week’s instructions: — Best would be to post it in the comments thread of my post of the Invite at the top of the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. (Sign up here, and I or co-admin Alex Blackwood will wave you in, and the Devotees will anagram your name in more ways that you can shake an eyeball at.) This will let everyone see my response. — If you won’t join the Devotees, you can email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. Put something like “Question about Week 1281” in the subject line. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Okay, here’s one thing I’ll clarify: Bob created the googly eyes on his cartoon by using the tools on the website MakeMeGoogly.com . Do*not*create your Week 1281 entry with such tools. Also, don’t turn your entry into a GIF; an all-photo set of results will be challenging enough to produce online, and of course a GIF won’t work in our June 24 print edition (which should be in color). In addition to the link to Buzzfeed’s compilation that I share in this week’s introduction, here’s another good collection of googly-eyes photos , from a guy in Sweden who eyed up various things in his neighborhood.. *BUZZ WORDS*: THE ‘SPELLING BEE’ NEOLOGISMS OF WEEK 1277 * **Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich* I have a feeling that a lot of entrants toWeek 1277 didn’t get the special parameters of this contest, inspired by the New York Times’s weekly (and since then, now daily) word game Spelling Bee: Unlike in our ScrabbleGrams neologism contests, in this one you could reuse letters from the given seven-letter set as often as you liked, or not at all. But many, many of the 1,000-plus entries used all seven letters of one or another of the 15 sets offered. That was certainly permitted — and indeed, the inking “styfine” (Kathleen DeBold, Ward Kay) did just that. But such a self-restriction made this contest much harder than it needed to be. But of course, our readers see only the week’s published entries, not the “noinks,” as the Losers call them. And those came out just fine, expanding once again the Invite’s Dictionary of Super-Great Additions to the English Language if Only People Would Use Them. This week they’re topped by Jeff Hazle’s “Krapatoa” to mean a presidential Twitter eruption, which works even better this week while everyone’s talking about volcanoes. It’s the fourth win and the 92nd blot of ink overall for Jeff, whose transposition of letters from the norm in “Haz*le”* is balanced by the ending of his first name: Jeffery Hazle, Bane of Copy Editors. Duncan Stevens wins that cute crab beanie for his two adorable little kids with “FU-ton,” the uncomfortable couch. Whether he wants to explain to them the joke that won it, well, that’s Duncan’s call. Kathleen DeBold had a three-ink day, catapulting her ink total to 30, topped by her runner-up of “Oxanne” as someone who might not want to turn on the red light, or any light. Kathleen gets her choice of runner-up Loser Mug or Grossery Bag. And given that she’s a local who’s never been to a Loser brunch or other event, it’d be great if we could meet her at the June 9 Flushies award potluck* schmoozefest. *(Didn’t get the Evite to the Flushies? Got it and forgot to tell us? Here’s a link to it again. *) It’d also be nice to see Tom Witte, who has been getting Invite ink ever since Week 7 in 1993, but who hasn’t (dis)graced us with his presence in more than a decade. With his runner-up this Week plus his joint credit on the headline “Beelogisms,” Tom hits Ink Blot No. 1,488 — 134 of them “above the fold.” Almost getting ink until Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood made the save: *“Googlgoof:* Mistakenly searching for dicks.com instead of dickssportinggoods.com.” (Bill Dorner). It turns out that typing “dicks.com” takes you to ... dickssportinggoods.com. So Doug might not be getting called into the HR office after all for his fact-checking. Among the entries that didn’t get ink: The humor of many of them would have been enhanced by funny examples of their use; a list of three-word definitions gets pretty tedious. For example, someone sent in “crudo” as “a statement of inappropriate beliefs”; that’s a great word and idea that might have gotten ink had it cited some humorously uninspirational principle to live by. Maybe “When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything,” or, better, something we’ve quoted less. *What Doug Dug: * Once again, Doug also favored us with his own picks of the week. While he fortunately denied ink to the Googlegoof entry, Doug did single out Bill Dorner’s “were-ewe,” with its definition of “sheep in wolf’s clothing”; “yentanet,” by First Offender Sue Tanbenkibel; Rob Cohen’s “sinfinity”; Frank Osen’s “gall gene”; and Jon Gearhart’s risque “erectricity.” (That one and Michael Rolfe’s “balge” would never have made it into print just a few years ago, but I can almost guarantee you that no one will write to complain about our crudity.) Have a happy and googly holiday weekend! Come to the Flushies on June 9! ====================================================================== WEEK 1282, published June 3, 2018 The Laffman There’s a lot more to new Style Invitational Hall of Famer Mark Raffman than ‘Be Our Guest’ parodies Not all of Mark Raffman's 500 blots of ink have been "Be Our Guest" parodies. Just eight of them. (Claudia Raffman) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow May 31, 2018 at 3:27 p.m. EDT This week it’s time to celebrate the astonishingly zippy trip of Loser Mark Raffman from his first ink in 2012 to become the 12th member of the Style Invitational Hall of Fame, sprinting past the 500-ink mark with his five “grandfoals” today in Week 1278 . Mark, who in his well-it-pays-the-bills rest of his life is a big-shot corporate attorney in Washington — and often gets ink with lawyer jokes — has won the whole contest 14 times and has been a runner-up 43 times over. In another of Mark’s after-hours pursuits, he plays harmonica with a recently formed outfit called the Bristow Blues Band. When the Royal Consort and I went to hear them at a local gig recently, we found out that Mark had an idolatrous superfan who raved about him like a star-struck teen. Fortunately for all concerned, that fan was Mark’s wife, Claudia, a five-time Loser herself. As the band tuned up, Claudia whispered to me (or maybe yelled; it was a noisy room), “Did you know that Mark. . .” — followed by some amazing Raffmanic achievement, and another and another. And so, after I share with you a few of Mark’s 500 hilarious blots of ink — including a couple of examples of what became a stock in trade, *eight* brilliant parodies of the “Beauty and the Beast” song “Be Our Guest” — I’m going to turn the column over to Claudia Raffman, who eagerly wrote up an adoring tribute to her favorite Loser. *Mark’s first ink, Week 979: Ways to tick people off (Aug. 5, 2012):* When you’re on jury duty, bring a daisy into the deliberation room and start to pull out each petal while saying “Guilty . . . not guilty . .  .” (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va., a First Offender) *Week 989: Two jobs one person could do: *.A lawyer*prostitute: Get people off for money. Repeat. *Week 1029, use a song from a musical to write about a different show or movie:* The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: *”Porky’s”to “Be Our Guest”* See a chest! See a chest! Tops are coming off with zest! We’re awaiting an R-rating When we show another breast! Lots of girls! Lots of pranks! We’ll accept your humble thanks, We are loading up the sleaze Because we only aim to please! There’s not much plot to enjoy But for every teenage boy We deliver what you need to be impressed, So bring your fake ID, You’ll holler out with glee And see a chest! See a chest! See a chest!* *Week 1041, answer a question that’s part of a song lyric:* Q. Why don’t we do it in the road? A. I would not do it in the road, Nor would I within your abode, I would not do it in your car, Nor with you out behind a bar, I’m not a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, So let me be, please, Sam-I-Am! *Week 1059: Add something in parentheses to a song title:* The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: (Ad)just the Way You Are *Song parody from Week 1139, 2015, to “Be Our Guest”:* He’s obsessed! He’s obsessed! “Build a wall,” he says. “No jest! There’s disorder at the border And I know what’s for the best!” “They do rapes! They do crimes! They drink beer with sliced-up limes! And their culture’s undesired! Don’t believe me? Then you’re fired!” “It’s a sport to deport The burrito-eating sort; If they’re born here, send them back with all the rest!” Do people think he’s vile? (Dems cast a knowing smile) ‘Cause he’s obsessed! He’s obsessed! He’s obsessed! *Week 1114, postive-spin headlines:* Milk Cartons Are Beautified With Youthful Portraits *Week 1146, lines from obituaries:* The conjoined triplets led a long and cheerful life, but now they are six feet under. *Week 1181, poems using words from the National Spelling Bee (in this case, “strepitous,” or noisy): ***It was placid on my street in Boise, Till new neighbors moved in — wow, they’re noisy! With this strepitous crew, There’s not much I can do — Who would shush “the Sopranos, from Joisey”? *Week 1187, make a new word by dropping the last letter of an existing word:* Ketchu: A sneeze with a bloody nose. *And this week’s five grandfoals, from Week 1278:* GhoulsOutForSummer x Invisible Ink = The Ghost Is Clear David Cop a Feel x Penn and Yeller = Lecherdemain Rex x Fiddle DD = Rax Village Person x Jacob’s Bladder = Peon 401 Que? x Kodiak Moment = Dunno, Alaska I’ll share some more Raffmanalia on Saturday afternoon, June 9, at the Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual awards and potluck, this year at the Old Firehouse community center in McLean, Va. (Did you RSVP to the Evite? If you didn’t get one, you are hereby invited anyway by virtue of reading this page. Fill it out at wapo.st*flushies2018 .) *AND HEEEERE’S CLAUDIA*! This week, my favorite Loser reached 500 inks, and I’d like to share a few things that even the regular Losers might not know about Mark. ● *He’s one of the smartest guys you will ever meet*, and one of the most unassuming. He was co-valedictorian of his class at Williams College, then also worked on the Harvard Law Review along with the future Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. They bonded over cigarettes. (He has since quit.) ● *He clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy *when he was a 9th Circuit appellate judge in California. This was before cellphones. One weekend I called Mark at the judge’s chambers. I thought he was alone. As the phone was picked up, I cheerfully said, “Hi Sweetie! The Justice answered, “I think you have the wrong Sweetie!” Mark also helped Justice Kennedy with his confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill while he was a first-year associate at his law firm — what a “Welcome to Washington” experience. ● *He can be completely oblivious*. During the Clinton years, Justice Kagan worked at the White House as U.S. solicitor general, and once invited Mark for lunch. Walking from the Old Executive Office Building to the White House Mess, Mark opened the door for a gentleman. Elena nudged him and said, “Did you see who that was?!” Mark said no — not noticing that he’d just opened the door for Vice President Gore. Mark just opens doors for people, whether it’s a president or a plumber. ● *He has had dirtier work than corporate law.* During college, Mark and a friend came up with a plan to travel out West, live in a pup tent, and work at a sewage plant to make lots of money. Not only did Mark fail for weeks to get a good night’s sleep — his roommate in the cramped little tent turned out to be a noisy snorer — but there was also his job working in the plant’s methane digester, where the raw sewage is processed. It was of course disgusting, but Mark stuck it out — until the day when Mark realized that his heavy rubber hip waders had sprung a leak: He was literally flooded with crap. (What better preparation for The Style Invitational?) As the sludge flowed into his pants legs, Mark beat it to the showers and out the plant’s door for good. ● *He works really hard on his Style Invitational entries. *The Invite is one of his great passions — and a way to let his humor and wit shine in ways he can’t exactly do at work. When I first met Mark, I told my mom, “I like him, he makes me laugh.” And more than 30 years later ... well, I like him. He makes me laugh. I bet he makes you laugh, too. *TOONING UP FOR WEEK 1282* There’s not a lot to say about Week 1282, one of semiannual-ish caption contests featuring cartoons by Bob Staake. If you’re new to The Style Invitational and want a feel for what I tend to give ink to, there’s plenty of material to research. Go to the Master Contest List at NRARS.org and search “Picture This.” You’ll see dozens of old Invite contests. To see the results, scroll down four weeks from the week the contest was announced, and click on the “WP” icon , which will show you a PDF of the Invitational’s print edition. You can do this for untold hours; do remember to take regular potty breaks. As funny as the individual captions often are, I especially like to show several captions that interpret the picture vastly differently. And to that end, I encourage Bob to make the cartoons as ambiguous as possible. The skin tones are often a neutral tan (or even green), so that the person in the picture could be some famous white person or some famous PoC. Sometimes readers will see a boy rather than a girl, or a bear rather than a dog. But it has to be remotely plausible; I don’t think you can interpret the bald guy in Picture A, being lectured to by a bird, as Donald Trump, given that Donald Trump is famous for his big head of stubbornness and refusal to listen to anyone. *PUNNING MATES*: THE GRANDFOALS OF WEEK 1278* **Non-inking headline by Chris Doyle* Our annual “grandfoals” contest, a spinoff from our most popular contest of the year — to “breed” any two names from a list of the year’s Triple Crown nominees — usually draws about half the entries that the first one does four weeks earlier, and this year that was almost right on the money, with 2,003 names (I once again thank Loser Jonathan Hardis, whose program not only sorted them alphabetically, but also flagged those that exceeded the 18-character limit). Most of the inking “foals” in Week 1278 were puns. And puns are more problematic to use for the grandfoals because there are usually two or more elements alluded to in a single name, including the word or expression that was being punned on in the first place; breed that to another pun name and you just*can’t*take note of all those elements in your entry; you have to ignore something, preferably not the most conspicuous or accented part of the name. So it wasn’t surprising that some non-pun names turned out to be especially fertile parents this time around: Worst.Musical.Ever (Gronkowski x Exclamation Point) ended up siring (or damming) eight of this week’s 52 grandfoals — a result that also comes from my desire to show several takes on a single name. But in many other instances, the grandfoal doesn’t reflect one or more parts of the parent name; “Absorba the Greek” brought many fun references to sponges (or the QuickerPickerUpper in Gary Crockett’s cross with How I Met Yo Mama), as well as to things Greek, but not to Greek sponges. Fortunately. All 54 of this week’s inking entries fit on the print page, even with Bob’s four cartoons. And they were topped by an almost total newbie: Six weeks ago, David Young scored his first two blots of ink, in our contest for modern curses: May you be coming out of the strip club just as the Google Street View car goes by. And: On that special first date, may the waiter return and ask if you have a different credit card. And now he wins the Lose Cannon — with a horse pair that could be read as a dialogue: Ruckus in the Sack x Nope, Bone Spurs = Not Funny, Melania . Funny, David — keep entering! Our three runners-up — Gary Crockett, Hildy Zampella and Kathy El-Assal — are well-known Invite names. And it just happens to be Kathy’s birthday today. I ran out of time and space to provide explanations to the entries. If you go to theStyle Invitational Devotees group on Facebook — this week’s column will be “pinned” to the top of the page — and ask about an entry, someone will explain it to you without mockery. The Losers can be zingy, but they’re not mean to one another; it’s a very friendly and supportive group. *What Doug Dug:* Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood found a lot to like this week. More than he could single out: “Loved 2nd place [Gary Crockett’s “QuickerPickerUpper’] and winner. plus Amtwack [Marilyn Pifer], She Took PayPal [Steve Honley] and Ali Bubba [Kathy El-Assal], Lecherdemain [Mark Raffman], The Book of Moron [Jon Gearhart], Reex [Tom Witte], No Intermission. [Matt Monitto] There are so many good ones, i’m just gonna stop.” And yes, there were plenty of clever and funny entries that didn’t get ink this week. They no doubt included yours. Whoa, speaking of too much stuff — congratulations on reaching this far down the page. Now go out and get some fresh air. See you in McLean, maybe. ====================================================================== WEEK 1283, published June 10, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1283: Lowfalutin’ verse The Style Invitational Empress talks about this week’s new contest and results This guy was looking at me wistfully at the edge of a parking garage driveway in downtown Washington. I call him a Pareidolia Retriever. “Pareidolia” is one of this week’s spelling bee words to be used in Loser poems. (Pat Myers*The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow June 7, 2018 at 3:50 p.m. EDT Yeah, I know, this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1283 , isn’t going to bring in thousands of entries; it’s not likely to prompt readers to look at the list of spelling bee words in the paper, jump off the throne, and dash off a series of rhyming verses about a thymiaterion and an ecchymosis. But we’re on the heels of (a)a cartoon caption contest and (b)a contest to paste googly eyes on something and take a picture, so I think it’s okay to scratch our eggheads for a week. We’ve done this contest three times before, in 2007, 2015 and 2016, for words from those years’ Scripps National Spelling Bees. And all three contests yielded gems, especially in that signature Invite highbrow*lowbrow, haughty*potty combo. A selection for your inspiration: The winner of Week 716, by Brendan Beary: *Acariasis,**a mite infestation:* I’m sad to say my grandpa Zacharias is, Alas, no more. The doctor has suggested The cause of death was likely acariasis; With tiny parasites he was infested. The wee arachnids he indulged with bonhomie, For piety was one of his delights; Remembering the book of Deuteronomy, He loved the Lord his God with all his mites. Two from Week 716 about the *strigil,* a tool used by ancient Romans to scrape sweat off their skin: *By Mae Scanlan: *He comes, he sees, he takes a bath, For he is dirty. Crud he hath. He’s pulled another all-night vigil. Caesar takes his trusty strigil, Scrapes away all grimy matter, Then goes after Cleopatter. *By Brendan Beary:* For cleaning off, the Romans scraped themselves with iron strigils — But folks back then, you understand, were tougher indivijuls. The winner of Week 1129, a double dactyl by Chris Doyle *Epithalamium**(EP-i-tha-LAME-ium),**a song composed for a wedding:* Higgledy piggledy Iggy Azalea Rocks out her wedding to Nick in July, Rapping her vows in an Epithalamium: “Beg for it, baby, from I-G-G-Y.” The winner of Week 1181, by Chris Doyle: *Mischsprache* (mish-SHPRA-cha[throad-clearing sound]), a language combining two or more languages: In Paris, Rhett Butler knew well not to mock a Young lady who spoke in a form of mischsprache. *“Mon English eez mal, sir; how stupide I am!”* “Franglais, my dear? Ah just don’t give a damn.” Runner-up in Week 1181, by Melissa Balmain: *Hippocrepiform, **horseshoe-shaped:* Dear John: While stuff that’s hippocrepiform is sometimes known to take the world by storm— the playground swing, the basic yoga pose, the seam that joins the legs of pantyhose, the handle of the hanging kitchen spoon, the “C,” the horseshoe (duh!), the crescent moon— the truth, my darling, is that your appendage was better when it had a lot less ... bendage. Anticipating questions: — Do the poems have to rhyme? Nope, as long as they’re clever and funny. In my experience, though, a lot of the clever and funny in poems comes from rhyming. There’s a difference, though, between poems that don’t try to rhyme and poems that*fail* to rhyme. Appendage*bendage: haha, great. Appendage*bandage: nope. — Can I use more than one word from the list in a single poem? Yes. Will I get ink for merely contriving to stuff a dozen of them into my poem, much as in those third-grade homework assignments to incorporate the week’s spelling words into a story? Nuh-uh. Zzzzz. — Can I decide that the word ought to mean something else, then base the poem on my own meaning? You may not, as I said repeatedly in the instructions, which you did not read. (Just venting here: I’m utterly amazed at how people will spend hours working up Invite entries, but will not take 10 seconds to read the contest directions.) *BLATHER, RINSE, REPEAT,* or BLATHER, MINCE, DEFEAT*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1279: * **Non-inking headlines by Chris Doyle and Ivars Kuskevics, respectively* At times, reading the “real” directions to do some task in Week 1279 felt like reading a month of 50-year-old comic strips: joke tropes that you’ve not only read a million times before, but you’re reading over and over the same day. Good news: No one expressed frustration programming a VCR. But someone did advise how to avoid the incredible embarrassment of buying tampons for his wife — ??? Was he worried that the clerk would think he planned to use them himself? But as I’d predicted, the most creative minds of Loserdom overcame the threat of triteness with creative subject matter in this week’s inking entries, like Duncan Stevens’s observational humor about movie-wizard plots, Kevin Dopart’s directions on how to combat rising sea levels, and Randy Lee’s second-place entry that, I’m pretty sure, qualifies as Shortest Invite Entry Ever. And Mark Raffman’s oh-so-Washington guide to meditation, which earns our newest Hall of Famer (seelast week’s Style Conversational ) his 16th first-place win. Randy Lee hasn’t been Inviting much lately, but his Groovy Foam Hat winner is his eighth ink “above the fold,” and his 107th blot of ink. Our other two runners-up this week are regulars in the Losers’ Circle: Beverley Sharp’s 649th ink ties her this week with the long-retired great Jennifer Hart for No. 7 Loser of All Time, while Duncan — a virtual newcomer in Invite time (he’s been Losing for six years) — is at Ink 259. I’m happy to see that Mark, Randy and Duncan are all coming to the Flushies on Saturday (see below). Beverley sent her regrets: She’d have liked to come up from Alabama for the occasion (she’s done it before!) but she just got off a boat from Peru (her advice: don’t try the alpacaburger). *FLUSHIES UPDATE* As of this writing, 54 Losers, Style Invitational Devotees and various orderlies have sent in a Yes to the Evite for this Saturday afternoon’s Flushies, the annual awards*potluck*songfest*schmoozathon put on by the Loser Community (official name: Not Ready for the Algonquin Roundtable Society). If you are not one of those 54? You can still join us — corporeally or in-. *Corporeally:* It’s definitely not too late to RSVP; the Old Firehouse community center in McLean, Va., can hold you, even after you’ve sampled all the potluck desserts (I am personally bringing a strawberry pie). Here’s a link to the invitation: wapo.st*flushies2018 . We have the room from noon to 4 and will immediately tear into the various foodstuffs before starting the presentations around 2. We even have shuttle service from the McLean Metrorail station: Sam Delano, son of Style Invitational Devotee and Flushies sponsor Kathleen Delano, has been volunteered to hold up a LOSERS sign and will drive guests the two miles to and from the venue. *In-:*The Flushies Planning Committee (what’s a good name for them, guys?), specifically emcee Kyle Hendrickson, hopes to stream the “structured” part of the afternoon — the custom-written song parodies, the slide show, the presentations of plaques for Loser of the Year, Rookie of the Year, etc. — via Facebook Live on the Style Invitational Devotees page. (I’ve seen some of the song lyrics, contributed by various master parodists from near and far, and they are inspired.) As I understand it, the video will stay up on the page afterward, so you don’t have to be logged on at 2:00:00 p.m. EDT. However, you’re not going to get any of the food. *AND IN AUGUST: LOSERFEST FREDERICK* In addition to being Flushies emcee — and continuing to hold theCantinkerous trophy for the most ink earned (101) while never winning first place — Kyle Hendrickson also serves as Loserfest Pope, organizing an out-of-town trip for the Loser Community and Anyone Else Who Wants to Come. Two summers ago about a dozen of us had a four-day blast in Pittsburgh, but this year it’ll be closer to home and on a smaller scale: It’ll be the weekend of Aug. 11-12 in the historic town of Frederick, Md., 50 miles north of Washington. Frederick has for many years been a destination for antiques buffs, but these days it’s becoming downright chichi. And it just happens to be Kyle’s current hometown. I’ll share details as they’re firmed up. For now, I’ll see 50 of you on Saturday. And thanks, by the way, for your well-wishes and advice re my back after I mentioned last Thursday that I’d gotten a steroid shot that morning: I think I’m doing better already. ====================================================================== WEEK 1285, published June 24, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1285: Eye LOLs Jocularity in ocularity — or is it the other way around? Whatever. Jesse Frankovich was one of several Losers who sent in photos of their Style Invitational first-prize trophies all googlied up. (The Inker, at left, is missing, for obvious reasons, its Head Bag of Shame.) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow June 21, 2018 at 2:45 p.m. EDT *“Eye LOLs” was a non-inking headline suggestion by Chris Doyle.* Writing poetry featuring arcane spelling-bee words has its place — and that place would be The Style Invitational. But as the results of Week 1281 show this week, the Invite also has room for the more directly funny — especially since the Loser Community inevitably works wordplay into the mix. We hadn’t done a photo contest since 2011, when the Invite lived in the tabloid-size Sunday Style section. And our last one on a broadsheet (full-size) page was all the way back in 2007 . But I did want to do a visual contest that didn’t require major craft skills, significant cost or huge amounts of time, and when someone shared a photo of, I think, a googly-eyed mailbox in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, I jumped at the idea. Well, I didn’t exactly jump, because I then had to petition the Powers That Be to be given a whole page — a color page — in the Arts & Style section, rather than our usual left half of a black-and-white page. This required months of scheduling. I think the PTB will get more than a few laughs. I got about 400 entries overall, patiently sent in one at a time to ensure that The Post’s online submission system would cooperate. (I also accepted photos sent by email; those took longer to go through, but only about 10 people emailed me and so it wasn't a major problem.) Most people used the commercial googly eyes available in packs at dollar stores, etc., but some people made paper versions. (Jeff Shirley’s giant eyes on the street , with leaf-lips, worked especially well.) After I chose the winners — 20 online, 14 in print — I added the title or caption, plus the Loser’s credit, to the photo for the online version; in print the text appears as captions outside the photos. Since I don’t see the entrants’ names while I judge contests, I had*no * idea who’d sent which inking entry — except for the “Eyes of the Bee-Holder” photo, which featured an adorable little girl who — even with googly eyes instead of her own — was obviously the Mini-Me of 297-time Loser Danielle Nowlin. And I guessed correctly that it was Chris Doyle who did the “Ears Looking at Euclid” pun, perhaps because Chris got ink long ago with “Here’s looking at Euclid” in a very different contest. Hildy Zampella’s photo of the spooning sporks, with its hilariously sly, make-you-figure-it-out-for-a -second “dialogue,” was this week’s clear winner. Which makes it the sixth win for Hildy, even though she didn’t start playing the Invite till Week 1140. But it’s the very first ink for this week’s second-place finisher, Nancy Summers. Nancy’s sated onion was just the funniest of several entries she submitted, and so I’m hoping to see lots more from her. Nancy gets a Fir Stink for her first ink, as well as the pack of headbands from which spring writable word balloons. Kevin Dopart, who blotted up lots of ink in our previous photo contests (as well as every other kind), gets a runner-up and multiple ink today; he let me know just this afternoon that he actually collaborated with his daughter Alethea, as he did with his winning entry in our edible-news contest (an ocean of purple burritos for the burial-at-sea of Osama bin Laden). And the peripatetic David Friedman, whom we’ve credited over the years as being from Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts and California, now resurfaces in the Losers’ Circle from Indianapolis. (Fortunately, David doesn’t keep changing his email address.) Haven’t had enough of these? The Losers have already begun posting their “noinks” on the Devotees page. And I’ll surely feature a photo each day for a while as a Style Invitational Ink of the Day . *DO US WRONG: THIS WEEK’S CONTEST, WEEK 1285* This week’s contest should appeal to trivia buffs, much as our numerous false-facts contests do. (Hmm, who has a good fictoid topic we haven’t done yet? See the Week 1268 Convo for links to earlier ones.) It’ll be a bit of a challenge to turn a trivia question and a wrong answer into a clever joke, but suggester Duncan Stevens’s examples show it can be done. ( I’m optimistic that the Loser Community is trivial enough to enjoy this one. Since you get to make up the question as well as the answer, you’ll be able to tailor the wording to produce the best punchline, but: If your question sounds odd and contrived, not like a real trivia question, it’s not going to work for this contest. (I owe Duncan at least two ice cream cones for recent contest suggestions.) *LOSERLY SUMMER EVENTS: A BRUNCH AND AN AUGUST LOSERFEST* The next Loser brunch is at noon on Sunday, July 15, at the practically historic Mrs. K’s Toll House (est. 1930) in close-in Silver Spring, Md. At $38, the brunch buffet is certainly at the high end of the Loser-outing continuum, but it’s said to be very good. I had dinner there once many years ago and it was delicious. And just off his gig as Flushies emcee Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson is working up a lively slate of activities to choose from in his home base of truly historic Frederick, Md., over the weekend of Aug. 12-13. It’s close to most of us for a day trip, but it’s also fun to stay the weekend. Check out Loserfest.org to see what Kyle’s thinking about. Well, not*that* thing he’s thinking about, but about Loserfest. I’m not sure I can make the July brunch — I may be becoming a grandmother around that time — but the Royal Consort and I do plan to Loserfester at least one of the days. ====================================================================== WEEK 1286, published July 1, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1286: A site for more eyes Some of the ‘noink’ googly-eyes photos from Style Invitational Week 1281 By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow June 28, 2018 at 2:02 p.m. EDT I don’t know about y’all, but even though it’s a spectacularly gorgeous morning in the shade here at Mount Vermin, the Empress’s mildly decaying estate, I feel the same pit in my stomach that I felt the morning of November 9, 2016. So hey, how about some more silly photos of things with googly eyes pasted on them? The photo gallery above contains seven more entries from Style Invitational Week 1281, the photo contest whose results ran last week. (See those 20 photos here. ) *YOU BET YOUR B*P: ANOTHER NEOLOGISM CONTEST* The “name change” from IHOP to IHOB last month did its job, I suppose, to remind the world for a few days that the pancake chain also sells burgers. But what’s more important to Western Civilization is that the stunt gave us yet one more angle for a neologism contest (thanks to the suggestion of 12-time Loser Loser John Folse). There’s one eensy mini-hitch: The Invite actually*did* this contest, sorta: In Week 1165, in celebration of Brendan Beary’s 1,000th ink, Brendan got the chance to judge — and choose — a Style Invitational contest: Mr. B.B. asked the Loser Community to to add one or more B’s to an existing word, or substitute one or more B’s for another letter. It’s that second part that creates a mite of overlap this week; there were indeed some entriesin the results that replaced a B with a P, like: Borsche: A souped-up Eastern European sports car. (Christopher Lamora; Lela Martin) Philanthrobby: Giving till it hurts. (Rick Haynes) Bumpkin pie: A popular backwoods dish consisting of . . . um, don’t ask. (Kimberly Baer) And though I’m not going to search methodically through the literally thousands of neologisms we’ve printed over the last 25-plus years, surely there are a few in which a P was replaced with another letter (note that this week’s contest lets you use letters other than B as well, so that we won’t get so much duplication). But on the other hand, it’s now — courtesy of Grandpa of All Losers Elden Carnahan — super-easy to check whether a particular neologism has appeared in the Invite before: You just search on the New and Imporved All Invitational Text file that Elden has compiled on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, and continues to refine. Because it’s plain text, it loads quickly and searches instantly. Has your name ever appeared in the Invite? Go find it! (If it’s spelled correctly, that is. I keep discovering names that aren’t.) *ART DEPRECIATION*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1282* **Honorable-mentions subhead from some earlier contest by Chris Doyle; I don’t want to use a new one here, because then you couldn’t use it for the next caption contest* As I write this, this week’s Style Invitational results have been posted for almost two hours, and I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t been barraged with emails saying, “Hey,*I* wrote a caption about Scott Pruitt*high-diving into the bathtub*tofu*bird looks like watermelon*open windshield*airbags, too!” Inevitably, when you have 200 people writing captions for any (or often all) of four pictures, there’s going to be a lot of duplication. But actually, a sizable fraction of this week’s cartoon captions were unique ideas among the 1,000-plus entries for Week 1282. I got lots of entries like “You’re right, the iPhone X*doesn’t* float,” for the cartoon with the kids looking down into the bathtub, as bubbles waft upward. But Rick Haynes took a more imaginative, funnier tack with his self-centered child, scoring his fifth Invite win and his 148th blot of ink. Second-place finisher Kevin Dopart wins his umpteen-zillionth piece of crap with an entry that beat out a very similar one that was just a smidge more wordy (I never looked up who wrote the bad-luck one). And J. Larry Schott gets his ninth ink “above the fold,” out of 67 inks in all, with his “tweet” joke, one of the few inking entries this week that aren’t worded as quotes. And then there’s the amazing record of our No. 3 guy, Frank Bruno: This week Frank scores just his fifth blot of Invite ink — but three of those have been runners-up. Freakily impressive. *What Doug Dug: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choice for the winner, and also singled out Kenny Moore’s “Mom fell off again” for the car*mattress picture, as well as Warren Tanabe’s “I thought you were taking a*mistress”* (by the way, the “your mistress sent me” captions for the “stork” in Picture A pretty much canceled one another out); the doubly credited “Breaking Bad” allusion to the famously grisly bathtub scene; Dave Zarrow’s man saying to the dog, “I followed you home. Can you keep me?” and Hildy Zampella’s about the dog and the Ferragamo shoes. And Doug also gave shout-outs to Jesse Frankovich’s headline for this week’s results, “Maim That Toon” — “classic” — as well as Jesse’s honorable-mentions subhead, “The Weak in Pictures.” --- So have a happy Fourth of July, folks, while you still can. And hey, there’s a good chance that by next Thursday, I’ll be a grandma! Must go polish that super-soft Infant Tiara. ====================================================================== WEEK 1287, published July 8, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1287: Start singing the news ... The Invite has verse coming and going this week. Plus a note about last week’s tragedy. Triple Crown winner Justify declines a White House invitation: “If I want to see a horse’s arse, I would have come in second.” Nan Reiner turned the popular joke into a poem to place second in Week 1283. (Frank Franklin II*AP) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow July 5, 2018 at 3:47 p.m. EDT Just yesterday afternoon, Invite Obsessive Jeff Contompasis emailed me with a contest idea: “I was listening to the Armed Forces medley during the Macy’s Fourth of July show and realized we need a new song for the United States Space Force. Could be set to a familiar tune.” Hold on for a few hours, I responded. If we’re going to do song parody contests — and why wouldn’t we, given the skill of our parodists? — it seems almost imperative these days that we focus on current events; the news just cries out to be sung about. And that’s what we’re after, once again, in Style Invitational Week 1287 . Those who enter Invite parody contests regularly recognize that our focus is on lyrics, that what often works great in a sung performance — almost-rhymes, repeated choruses — don’t tend to work well when it’s *read.* So I place a premium on strong meter and rhyming — sometimes it needs to be better than the original song’s — and on strong endings that serve as a “punchline” for the song, rather than one that fades out. I’ve included a longer than usual set of guidelines right at the top ofthis week’s entry form . Here they are again: “Write some song lyrics about something in the news these days, set to a familiar tune, as announced in this week’s Style Invitational contest at wapo.st*invite1287 . They should comprise at least one full verse. “The songs the Empress will run in the print paper (including the top four winners) are likely to be very well known, and short. Online, however, she’ll include links to video clips of the original tunes; that way we can include some deeper cuts so readers can follow along with the melodies (it’s helpful, though not required, to include a YouTube link to the version of the melody you are parodying). Also, feel free to make your own video of your parody (submit a link along with your lyrics), but it’s the quality of the lyrics, not video production, that gets the ink. Please don’t embed links in text; just copy and paste the URL above or below your song; otherwise the E ends up with garble. “Your parody may not have been already published elsewhere, with the exception of online sharing or posting for a small audience; if you’re not sure if your song qualifies, go ahead and submit it along with a note, and the Empress will make a ruling. “You get an extra week! Entry deadline is midnight Monday, July 23, 2018, wherever you are. Results will be posted online on Thursday, Aug. 2, and in The Post’s Arts & Style section on Sunday, Aug. 5.” This is a fabulous age for song parodies! Witness the rise of the brilliant and utterly adorable Randy Rainbow (his real given name), whose self-produced parodies — often accompanied with fake interviews — reach hundreds of thousands of YouTube viewers, and who’s selling out halls on a national tour. Randy probably doesn’t know us, but California-based Sandy Riccardi is a member of the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group. Sandy and her husband, Richard — she sings, he plays the piano — have shared dozens of videos on YouTube, like this “Stormy Weather” parody , and just last month performed at a Baltimore nightclub as part of an Eastern tour — unfortunately the same day as the Losers’ Flushies awards. (Next time, Sandy, I’m definitely coming to see you!) But don’t be intimidated: We’re not looking for big productions, just some clever lyrics. They do need to match the tune of the song well enough so that someone can easily figure out how to sing them. (How to know? Ask someone, someone who is not*you,* to give it a try, without hints.) For inspiration, and to give you an idea of what we run, look at these two recent sets of results: Week 1202, November 2016, post-elections songs expressing “hope” Week 1177, mid-2016 political parodies Have fun over the next two weeks. And I have a great idea for a topic: How about an anthem for the new U.S. Space Force? *A SPELL OF HAR LUCK*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1283* **Non-inking headline by Chris Doyle* I’m absolutely floored-not that almost all the ink in Week 1283 went to our regular Loserbards: Sure, a casual reader might see a weird-looking cartoon in the paper and be inspired to caption it with a line of dialogue. Or scan a list of 100 horse names and match two of them up and name the “foal.” But writing a poem using a totally obscure word — correctly — and, on top of that, making it funny and clever: Well, that’s a challenge that your occasional throne-reader doesn’t tend to jump at (or at least succeed at). So the ink is a bit more concentrated than in most weeks, and it requires a little mental investment to read — which is fine for a contest that comes two weeks after one to paste googly eyes on something and take its picture. But we have all kinds of clever in this week’s results, from couplets to elaborate song parodies, with political humor, bathroom humor, and of course wordplay on wordplay. Mark Raffman, our latest Loser of the Year, scores yet another Lose Cannon with his “one-knight stand” limerick. And Nan Reiner parlays a joke that’s been all over Facebook into a complex, perfectly scanning funny poem: While it’s better to make up your own joke, using an existing joke can sometimes work, as it does here, as long as there’s significant craft involved that adds its own humor — just make it clear that the joke’s not your own. And Chris Doyle and Frank Osen stake out their familiar places in the Losers’ Circle. True Stat: Those four people have had ink “above the fold” — wins and runners-up — a total of *four hundred seven*times. Or thereabouts. *What Doug Dug: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood especially enjoyed Nan’s “amadelphous” poem on Justify, and also singled out Rob Cohen’s play on “comes before” for “fourrier” (precursor) as well as the And Last, Duncan Stevens’s “Empress With a Halo” example of bondieuserie, or schlocky religious art. (Honestly, how would I balance a halo on a tiara?) *A FINAL NOTE* ** Seven days ago, at 3:32 p.m., I was at my laptop here at home, working at the picnic table on my back deck, in a rush as usual, hurrying past my deadline to write up the weekly email that notifies readers of the just-posted Style Invitational and Conversational. And an email bulletin came over from The Post: “Local Alert: Active shooter reported at Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis,” the subject line said. I don’t remember, but I must have stopped immediately to click on it and read this: “Federal officials said they are responding to a shooting at the newsroom of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland’s capital city. The Baltimore Sun reports that Gazette reporter Phil Davis said multiple people had been shot. There are reports of heavy police activity in the area.” I managed to get the email out a few minutes later, then began to search, in vain, for more specific news, for I had gone to school with someone who worked at the Capital. And as I often do when I’m troubled and feeling powerless, I went outside and started walking around my neighborhood, up and down each street, walking and walking. Every few minutes I’d check my phone for news. Around 5:30, still on the street, I got a text from my longtime colleague Vince Rinehart: “Pat, I am hearing that Gerald Fischman may be among the Capital Gazette victims.” Gerald had worked with both Vince and me, in different years, at The Diamondback, the independent student newspaper at the University of Maryland. We were not close friends, but Gerald was unforgettable: a 20-year-old who looked 40, with dress clothes, shirt buttoned at the top, horn-rimmed glasses, hair cropped close amid the newsroom of late-’70s long hair and T-shirts and jeans — and toting an old-fashioned leather briefcase, which would weigh down one shoulder of his slight frame as he walked along the edge of the hallway. “Hey, Gerald,” someone asked, “what’s in that briefcase?” And although it perfectly sums up Gerald’s ultra-dry wit, I didn’t tell this anecdote to the reporters asking for reminiscences: He answered, totally deadpan: “The severed head of my mother.” Of course, the shootings hit close to home in other ways as well: Journalists work in a profession in which, inevitably, some people will be angry at what is printed about them. And when very angry people bear personal grudges and have easy access to guns, well. Until recently, my own son had for years been a reporter and editor at a community newspaper. The tragedy turned out to have a Style Invitational connection as well: Our hearts go out to seven-time Style Invitational Loser Mary McNamara, whose brother John, a news and sports reporter, was also among the five victims. John McNamara also worked for the Diamondback, but he was there a few years after I was, and I didn’t know him. But late that night, past midnight, Mary posted this on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page: “All I ask is that you call the siblings you have, tell them that you love them, and go to the nearest minor league baseball game. It’s the purest thing there is, and we all need a little purity right now.” At 2:33 this afternoon — exactly one week after the shootings — everyone at The Post, as well as at many other newspapers across the country, observed a moment of silence in memory of the Annapolis journalists. I did the same here at home. *SUNDAY, JULY 15: LOSER BRUNCH AT MRS. K’s* We’re going a bit upscale for the July Loser brunch: It’s the rich buffet at the venerable Mrs. K’s Toll House in close-in Silver Spring, Md. I’m not sure if I can make it myself, but do RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” But I definitely plan on heading up to Frederick, Md., for at least one day of Loserfest, a weekend of activities and fooood Aug. 11-12. See Loserfest.org and click to see Kyle Hendrickson’s tentative “Fungenda.” ====================================================================== WEEK 1288, published July 15, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1288: Smile! The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new column and results Alex Ovechkin’s smile. At first I was going to use a photo of a Roach Motel. You’re welcome. (John McDonnell*The Washington Post) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow July 12, 2018 at 3:28 p.m. EDT I wish I knew who wrote the wickedly good wine bottle product disclaimer that I used as the example for Style Invitational Week 1288 . For one thing, I’d credit the person. For another, I’d invite the writer to send more of the same for this week’s contest for disclaimers or warnings. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be a Soggy Bottom Boys wine label, let alone an SBB sauvignon blanc. There’s a Soggy Bottom Boys musical group, but even that was originally fictional; it was the name given to the musicians featured, unseen, on the super-great Americana score of the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou”; one of them, Dan Tyminski, dubbed George Clooney’s singing voice. (Sixteen years later, a group of renowned roots musicians — at least several of whom performed in the movie — toured under this name .) Anyway, they can enter, too! You know the product warnings. You may have seen the Happy Fun Ball “commercial.” Your challenge is to be funny but not just like Happy Fun Ball, and not exactly like Soggy Bottom Boys Wine. I’m confident about this contest. My own product warning — not to say untrue bad things about specific people or businesses — is intended to keep people from saying that McDonald’s chicken actually contains rotting dog meat. If you actually found a way to make such a warning funny, you could always use a fictional name for a fast-food restaurant. And for the president of the United States and other publicly mockable figures, you’re free to wildly exaggerate but not just-a-little exaggerate; in other words, your joke has to be obviously a joke. I know, I know: in the former case, that means wildly wild. *Note that the deadline for this week’s contest — Monday night, July 23 — is the same as for last week’s song parodies;* I’ve already received parodies from 42 people, but there’s absolutely no advantage in sending them earlier; for one thing, you don’t want the lyrics to be eclipsed by later events. *One special case: *If you are that rare Loser who is making a video of your parody*and*including lyrics right on the video — a great way to do it , in my viewing experience — you might want to email me at pat.myers@washpost.com and let me know, so that I can look at it with enough time for you to tweak it, if necessary for taste or just a little improvement. (While I do judge the Invite blindly, when it comes to videos as well as complex entries that might benefit from consultation, I do sometimes end up finding out before publication who’s written some entry. Believe me, I’m just as cavalier and callous toward the big-time Losers as I am with the newbies.) *I’M LIKENING IT:* THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1284* **Not anyone’s non-inking entry; we do this contest once a year or so, and so I don’t want to put any good ideas out of the running for next time* After all these years of doing our contests to compare*contrast items on a list we supply — by my count in Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List , I have judged this contest*twenty* times — I’m still amazed by the clever and imaginative links the Loser Community draws between two randomly chosen items. Even considering the number of possible combinations of two (not to mention three) among 18 items, there’s always some duplication of ideas; this week’s 37 inking entries are either unique ideas (e.g., Frank Osen’s “cooked before breakfast” for scrapple and Florida Man) or my favorite wording among similar entries (like David Smith’s noting that the difference between Justify’s tail and Kim Jong Un’s Porta-Potty was that only one is*above* the horse’s ass). This week’s three runners-up — Frank Osen, Rob Huffman and Danielle Nowlin — have a combined 122 trips to the Losers’ Circle, but it’s the first ink “above the fold” for this week’s Lose Cannon winner. In fact, it’s just the sixth blot of ink of any kind for Jerome Uher, whose Invite debut was back in the Czarist era, Week 481, in a neologism contest to create homophones of existing words and define them: “Suepersize: To expand the boundaries of your class action lawsuit. (Jerome Uher, New York).” But Jerome suddenly reappeared 15 years later, having evidently relocated to the D.C. area, surely just to be closer to the Style Invitational Headquarters and Newsroom on K Street. Last December, in Week 1254’s contest to change a business by one letter, Jerome scored twice: Capital Gone: What used to be in your wallet? Accidental Petroleum: “And then one day, Jed was shooting at some food, and up from the ground . . .” Then five months later, two more inks with foal names: Runaway Ghost x Yee Haw = PhantomOfTheOpry Big Brown Bear x Magnum Moon = Big Brown Bare This time around, Jerome sent a grand total of one entry: Looking back at it now, I see that he added a note at the bottom of the form: “If I only come up with a few, I generally don’t enter. This time I’ll bother to send you the one I have.” Good call, Jer. And if I were you, I’d reconsider that strategy. I was tickled this week to discover that some big-deal Losers of years past gave Week 1284 a shot — and got ink: Russell Beland was for many, many years the Invitational’s all-time top-scoring Loser, blotting up more than 1,500 inks before finally finding a life five or six years ago; still, he’s in second place,at least until Tom Witte overtakes him . (Russell has been known to be somewhat competitive, so, hmm, maybe he’ll want to keep that lead alive . . .) It was Russell, in fact, who first suggested the compare*contrast contest, in 1996. He got ink, too, inWeek 155: The difference between the Washington Wizards and a Ford Bronco? The Bronco has had a superstar athlete on board in the past decade. Also reappearing: Jon Reiser of Way Upstate New York, with 73 inks but not for many years; and also drive-by inkings by the previously more obsessive Mike Gips, Michelle Stupak and Cathy Lamaze. Nice to see you, all — don’t be a stranger. *What Doug Dug: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood particularly liked this week’s winner and Frank Osen’s “cooked before breakfast” runner-up; he also singled out Russell’s comparison of number of teeth between the peacock and Ovechkin’s smile; Dave Prevar’s joke about The Post being a more efficient roach dispatcher; Jesse Frankovich’s Messy*Messi*Methy; and Duncan Stevens’s comparison between Kim Jong Un’s Porta-John and armpit hair: No one has to pretend that armpit hair smells wonderful. Cut on grounds of taste and unfairness even to this administration: A Roach Motel and dust bunnies: What are the administration’s latest terms for its “tender age” immigrant prisons and their inmates? (Frank Osen) *GET YOUR NOSES READY!* My latest stack of postage stamps for prize letters is smellacious! I got a bunch of the Postal Service’s new (no-need-to-)scratch-and-sniff stamps celebrating popsicles . and started sending them out with last week’s magnets. Yet one more reason to dedicate all your nonworking hours to The Style Invitational. *EXCITING UPCOMING LOSER SIGHTINGS!* First, this Sunday. July 15, is the*Loser Brunch at the venerable Mrs. K’s Toll House *in Silver Spring, Md.; note that the time has been moved up to *10:30 a.m.* I’ll be there, especially because Loser Tag Team Dudley and Susan Thompson will be up from North Carolina. I’m told thatthe buffet is splurgey but memorable. If you’d like to attend but haven’t yet sent Elden Carnahan your RSVP, please do so soon at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”); seating might be problematic if you just show up. And on Saturday afternoon, July 21, the Royal Consort and I also plan to catch a Double-Loser Production: *Ward Kay is directing “Romantic Comradery,” a play by Chuck Smith,* in the NVTA One-Act Festival, from 1 to 3 at the James Lee Community Center, 2855 Annandale Rd, Falls Church, Va. We’ve seen several plays by both Ward and Chuck, and it’s especially fun to have a Loser contingent in the audience. Let’s coordinate that on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page. *LITTLE PRINCE*PRINCESS: NOT YET* The Empress and the rest of the royals — not the least, the Royal Scion and his fair bride — are eagerly awaiting The Next Generation, now a week past the due date. If I can’t make the brunch, I’ll have had something more pressing to attend to. ====================================================================== WEEK 1289, published July 22, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1289: Delaware & other points West Trivia coming and going in this week’s Style Invitational Thomas West, Baron De La Warr, lent his name not only a state, but to an Indian tribe. (Wikipedia) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow July 19, 2018 at 3:34 p.m. EDT I hate overexplaining jokes, or jokes that overexplain themselves. And so I vacillated a bit when it came down to figuring out how best to present thebad guesses to trivia questions in Week 1285 of The Style Invitational. Should the correct answer go first, before the joke? Would it be in the way there, like some clod who positioned himself right in front of the good view? Should it go afterward? Should it maybe not even be there? But after trying out various formats — and using one for one joke, another for another — I decided that almost all of this week’s inking entries worked in the one that Obsessive Loser Duncan Stevens had used in his examples when he suggested this contest, inspired by the awards for best wrong answer in the LearnedLeague online trivia challenges. The only exception: Ward Kay “guessing” that the state named for Thomas West was West Virginia. Maybe I felt that the actual explanation was so interesting (I didn’t know this factoid, though the Royal Consort did) that I feared that Ward’s dumb guess would lose its punch. I was somewhat flexible about the “guesses”; some read like actual stupid guesses (Tom Witte’s that Pb denoted the element of peanut butter made me laugh out loud), while others were too clever to be guesses, like Chris Doyle’s “Children of a Lhasa God” (“Sorry, too clever” is not something I’m apt to say). Jeff Contompasis’s entry of various anagrams for the band name Imagine Dragons didn’t have facts at all, except that it’s indeed true that the band did cryptically credit its name to an unspecified anagram. Still, these don’t compare with a lot of entries that weren’t remotely trivia questions but just setups for a joke: “What makes someone look cool?” “Where can certain soaps trace their origin?” “What do Democrats now regret?” “What is the president’s hairstyling routine?” I judged the entries this week from a printout, and there was page after page where my pen did its big “Nope — nothing here” slash from top to bottom. But as always, it doesn’t matter how many entries aren’t inkworthy, or how lame those entries are. It’s only about the entries that get ink, and this week I was pleased with at least 28 of them, from 24 different people. It’s the fifth win for Howard Walderman but his first Lose Cannon; Howard has been blotting up ink since Week 212, 177 inks in all. Howard is not what you’d call an early adopter; until not that many years ago, Howard (official Loser Stats anagram: Raw and Mad Howler) didn’t even own a computer, and I guess not even a typewriter: Almost every week, he would meticulously*handwrite*a pageful of entries to that week’s contest, with straight-edge underlining in contrasting pen. Perhaps my, er, less than wholehearted embrace of this system finally propelled Howard into the late 20th century; in any case, he uses the online entry form like everyone else, and probably gets more ink than through his old method. This week’s three runners-up — Matt Monitto, Art Grinath and Jeff Shirley — are old hands at the Invite, though seven-year veteran Matt’s hands are old only because he started getting ink during his freshman year of college. In fact, even all the honorably mentioned Losers this week have ample ink supplies — except for First Offender Lisbeth McCarty, aka No, You Misspelled Both My First Name and Last Name (Loser Jeffery Hazle, here’s some competition for you). *What Doug Dug: * The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood included Howard Walderman’s winner and also Todd DeLap’s Rumpelstiltskin*Sessions; Chris Doyle’s “Children of a Lhasa God”; William Kennard’s Second Amendment; Lawrence McGuire’s dig at alien theorists; and Jon Gearhart’s “urmama” joke. *LIES AND MORE LIES: THIS WEEK’S ANIMAL FICTOID CONTEST* We tour Trivia World on two well-worn paths this week: the Q&A quiz and the just-plain-factoid. Not surprisingly, the Loser Community is rife with people who memorized the Guinness Book of World Records back when it had actual world records and not just stunts, as well as several “Jeopardy!” winners. So many of you know what your typical trivia fact reads like, and how to play off it. If you’re not sure what we’re looking for, here are links to a few of our many previous Invite fictoid contests. (Scroll down past the new contest to the results.) Week 924, false facts about history Sample ink: “Susan B. Anthony’s middle name was Barbie.” (Judy Blanchard) Week 1075, fictoids about cars and related facts: The name of Erik Prndl, inventor of the automatic transmission, is displayed on most cars’ dashboards. (Edward Gordon; Jeff Shirley) Week 1132, fake trivia about the military: In response to reports of “Potemkin villages” in Stalinist Russia, the U.S. Army developed a plywood-seeking missile. (Larry McClemons) *THIS SATURDAY: LOSER STAGE EXTRAVAGANZA!!!!!* Okay, it’s a 45-minute one-act play, the first of three presented Saturday, July 21, as part of the NVTA One-Act Festival, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the James Lee Community Center, 2855 Annandale Rd., Falls Church, Va. But “Romantic Comradery” is by Hall of Fame Loser Chuck Smith and directed by Hall of Not as Much Fame Loser Ward Kay, who reports that it’s full of one-liners. The Royal Consort and I will be there; let’s have a nice Loser contingent to represent. Hope to see you there. *YES, WE HAVE A LITTLE GRANDPRINCESS* The Royal Scion and his Scioness have brought forth the most beautiful li’l baby in the world. All is well. Thanks to all for your well-wishes — we’re over the moon and honing our spoiling technique. ====================================================================== WEEK 1290, published July 29, 2018 We explain Style Conversational Week 1290 And honor the two decades of Bob Levey’s neologism contest (and one of its winners) Bob Levey, the beloved, avuncular metro columnist who ran a neologism contest each mont h for more than 20 years. This week’s Style Invitational honors one of the Invite’s — and Bob’s — biggest winners. (Julia Ewan*The Washington Post) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow July 26, 2018 at 2:46 p.m. EDT With this week’s contest we celebrate the inevitable summiting of Style Invitational Peak 1500 by Tom Witte, who first appeared in the Invite in the final entry of the results of Week 7 — May 9, 1993 — with a name for a rock band: And last: Give Me The Damned T-Shirt (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Tom eventually got his Loser T-shirt, many of them, along with hundreds of sundry other Loser crappieces over the next 25-plus years, as he entered a long list of entries for virtually every one of the next 1,282 weeks. And while he declined my generous offer to have him do my job for free and judge a contest, Tom didn’t object to having some contest in his honor — one that he might or might not know about right now, because just yesterday he took off on one of his three-week solo mountain-climbing trips of a series of peaks in California. And Tom, who recently retired from a career in mapping things for the government, doesn’t even have GPS — or a cellphone. Which is why he didn’t get a chance this week to compile a list of his favorite Style Invitational entries — especially the racy ones — in time for this column. So sometime after he gets back in mid-August, we’ll have some Risqué Business here at the Convo. For now, let’s turn to this week’s contest, which I’m repeating for the first time since my first weeks as Empress. Once a month from 1983 to his retirement in January 2004 — 250 times over a span almost as long as the Invitational — the writer of the daily, family-friendly column “Bob Levey’s Washington” would describe some situation or phenomenon and ask for a good word for it. Then he’d run a long list of submissions from his huge readership, choosing a winner whom he’d then take out to lunch. (Everyone else just got ink.) And each week, Bob would painstakingly explain the winning entry, which was often a portmanteau of two words. His first winner was “troublem,” which, he noted, combined “trouble” and “problem.” So Levey’s column and the Invitational both ran in The Post for a decade, with utterly no coordination between the two contests. Even the lists of winners hardly overlapped, except for a Trump-size handful of various Invite Losers among Bob’s neologists — and, month after month, Tom Witte. Meanwhile, my predecessor, the anonymous Czar of The Style Invitational, ran lots of neologism contests that were decidedly not family-friendly, and eventually featured an “Uncle of The Style Invitational” who would choose a favorite entry each week — and explain it. I deposed the Czar in December 2003; a few weeks later, the Empress introduced Week 542 like this: Week 542: Discombobulate Us *Jan. 25, 2004* **A buffet table where the food is doled out so sloppily that it ends up mished into an oleaginous mess resembling the contents of someone’s stomach: Smeargasbord (a neat pairing of “smear” and “smorgasbord”).** *Friday marked the retirement of a Washington Post institution: nice-guy columnist Bob Levey, who for more than 20 years, five days a week, represented The Post’s public-spirited, helpful, friendly, avuncular side with his fundraising drives for Children’s Hospital and Send a Kid to Camp; his action-line phone calls on behalf of readers who’d been given the runaround; and his monthly neologism contest, in which Bob would come up with some familiar, funny object or situation that didn’t yet have a name. For example, here’s an actual winner from November 2001, by Susan Eaton of Taos, N.M.: The reluctance of ketchup to come out of the bottle: Redicence. As Bob noted: “What a tangy merger of ‘red’ and ‘reticence’!”* *As a salute to that last aspect of his job — not to mention a blatant ploy to draw his regular contestants over to The Style Invitational — we offer This Week’s Contest: Come up with both an object*situation and a neologism for it. But here is the catch: Bob, in addition to being a nice guy, is a tasteful guy. A grown-up guy. Your neologism should be something that Bob would never have stooped to print in his column, though it also cannot be something The Washington Post won’t print at all. Be sure to explain your entry.* *First-prize winner receives the Inker, the official Style Invitational Trophy. First runner-up wins an exceptionally rare, vintage “The Uncle Loves Me” Style Invitational T-shirt in an unlovely lime green.* ---- In 2018, in Week 1290, when the week’s results include “dudenda,” “tizza” and “Russy-whipped” — all in the print paper, no less — I didn’t see a need to remind the Loser community that we welcome edgy humor. So back in 2004: Four weeks later, I reported this: --- *Report from Week 542*, in which we pay homage to newly retired Post columnist Bob Levey by corrupting his monthly neologism contest into our own All Tasteless Edition. In tribute and with a certain curiosity, The Empress, after choosing her winners, sent Bob a list of all the entries below and asked if he’d make his own choice. He responded quickly with his picks, enthusing, “These entries are so good that it makes a newly-retired neologism guy wanna come ba-a-a-a-ack.” And his winner? It was — we swear to you — the same entry that The Empress had chosen. Which goes to show that if Bob hadn’t had to be so goshdarn honorable over there on the comics pages, his own contest might have been just a bit spicier. *Fourth runner-up:* While some kids are having sex at younger and younger ages, others are actually waiting longer. Someone who waits a really long time is called a cherryatric. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) *Third runner-up:* What do you call it when you explain your well-timed indecent exposure as a “wardrobe malfunction”? How about niplomacy? Or siliconniving. (Steve Fahey, Kensington; Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls) *Second runner-up:* The little serenade your stomach performs after a midnight refrigerator raid: It’s eine schweine Nachtmusik. (Peter Metrinko, Plymouth, Minn.) *First runner-up, the winner of a genuine “The Uncle Loves Me” T-shirt*: Too much plastic surgery on a woman past a certain age produces an unintended, sort of cadaverous effect: Call it sepulchritude. (Tom Kreitzberg, Silver Spring) *And the winner of the Inker: *It’s sad to say that there are some guys around who’d ogle a breastfeeding mother. You’d call a somebody like this a La Lecher. (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) Bob also singled out for special mention this one by Tom Witte, who wins only his admiration, since The Style Invitational has no budget for fancy lunches: Some guys believe that a woman’s most important side is behind her. These guys could be called cannoisseurs. *Honorable Mentions:* When you put the plastic top on your morning cup of takeout, and coffee spurts out of the little hole in the lid, it’s called premature ecafulation. (Michelle Harvey, Takoma Park) People who are on fire jump about and twitch so! This frenzied, comical movement might be called the inflammenco. (Tom Witte) A newspaper’s economizing by chopping dozens of veteran journalists off its payroll: costration. (That, of course, is a mix of “cost” and “ration.”) (John O’Byrne, Dublin) You consider terrorists to be evil, of course, yet one of them catches your eye in the newspaper, because, well, he’s a great looker. You’d call this man a jihottie. (Tom Witte) You realize you’ve been spending many of your working hours mulling over how best to stick it to your golden-boy co-worker. You might call this scruminating. (Tom Kreitzberg) You’re a down-on-your-luck student in 19th-century Russia. Your planned murder of the landlady was going swimmingly. But then her sister walked in on you at just the wrong moment, and darn it, you had to take her out, too. This pesky frustration is called D’oh! svidanya. (Mary Ann Henningsen, Hayward, Calif.) You step on the elevator and push the fourth-floor button. Before the doors close, an incredibly attractive woman rushes in and presses Floor 20. Your unfortunate early departure could be called Otis interruptus. (Chris Doyle) The look on a guy’s face when he learns how his girlfriend has been managing to buy up that closetful of Manolos: whorror. (Virginia Fairchild, Alpharetta, Ga.) Phone sex is phone sex, but cell phone sex is Nookia. (Chris Doyle) Your husband brought home a copy of the Kama Sutra and is determined to try all 153 positions over the next five months: Get ready for the shtup du jour. (Chris Doyle) That line of rubberneckers driving slowly by the scene of a traffic accident hoping to see some gore? It’s an abattour. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) You have been doing so well at hiding your disgusting habits from the new sweetie, until inevitably, you horrify her by hawking up half a lung right onto the sidewalk. This unfortunate but decisive way to end a promising relationship is a Waterloogie. (Milo Sauer, Fairfax) The first time you use Viagra and your libido is, well, raised from the dead, you experience tombescence. (Chris Doyle) Someone who has money up the wazoo could be said to suffer from Hummerhoids. (Deb Parrish, Fairfax Station) If you’re really sharp at predicting when that special woman in your life will be in a bad mood, you could be said to be acumenstrual. (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) You’re on your tiptoes, eyeing the cover of Hustler on the top row of the magazine rack, when a woman from church walks up. You quickly grab a copy of the Economist. This maneuver is called highbrowsing. (Chris Doyle) Surely you’ve experienced that common feeling that the Earth will be destroyed by eucalyptus-devouring pseudo-ursine demons. Well, now there’s a name for it: apokoalypse. (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) Submitting a huge, stinking mess of entries to The Style Invitational and claiming them as your own when, in fact, you copied and pasted them en masse from Web sites like unwords.com is plagiarrhea, a totally original combo of “plagiarism” and “huge, stinking mess.” (Mark Hagenau, Derry, N.H.) Some guys care only about one trait in a woman, and they’re very upfront about it. These guys could be called aficionudders. Or chesthetes. (Tom Witte) That irritation caused by envy of other Style Invitational entries, leaving the victim scratching his head and lamenting, “Why didn’t I think of that?” That’s what we call a case of joke itch. (Jeff Brechlin) Nobody, but nobody is more boring than a preachy ex-alcoholic. This kind of person is called an AA-hol[ic]. (Tom Witte) You know how people throw around terms from Eastern religion and pop psych to sound smarter than they are? The term for that is Upanischadenfreude. It’s a mix of “Upanishad,” a foreign word that probably means something, and “schadenfreude,” which is another one. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) *And last: *The Czar is gone and the Empress, being a lady, won’t accept the gross vulgarities that have been submitted in the past. Her intellectual level could be termed: non compost mentis (as in not allowing poop jokes). (Marleen May, Rockville) [As you can see, we are indeed in a new era.] *DISTURBING THE P’S*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1286* **Non-inking headline submitted by both Chris Doyle and Jesse Frankovich* I clearly went overboard with the ink in this neologism contest to replace one or more P’s in a word or term with any other letter — but there was just so much good stuff. I’m glad, though, that I broadened the initial idea of changing P’s to B’s, because there was a ton of repetition. Many, many entries with “bro-” to replace a word beginning “pro-” — First Offender Jessica Garber tops the list of them with her good example of “broductivity” — and “par” to “bar-,” for which I ran three varied entries. Even this broadly, the contest did*not* allow for other letters to be changed*to* P’s. Which blew the funny entry from the envious (but also inking) David Young: “Jesse Prankovich: 20 people in Michigan who collaborate on the Style Invitational.” I did compile an especially long list of entries I labeled “BD,” as in “needs a better definition.” For example, “slabstick” was defined as “morbid humor used by coroners, funeral directors et al.” A definition of something as a joke cries out, to be a joke, to have a sample ... joke. Like “Party like a mortician and grab a cold one.” At least once I’ve compiled a list of such high-potential words and put them out to the collective mind of Loserdom for a contest in itself; maybe I’ll do that again. This time, I had dozens. Another thing that wasn’t going to work was basing your joke on a misspelling of the original, e.g., “Architelego: Designer of buildings using Danish plastic bricks”; changing “archipelAgo” to “architelago” wouldn’t work so well, I’m afraid. Also, leaving the wrong letters for a homonym messed up the joke, at least for me: I couldn’t go for “beanut butter” to mean “honey,” for example, though it works well when spoken. It’s the eighth win but the first Lose Cannon trophy for Robert Schechter, with his unique and almost believable “tee-tee tape” that brings him to 207 blots of ink all time. I might have to ship out that big Poo Pinata out to Pasadena for Frank Osen’s second prize, or maybe he’d rather have a vintage, pre-Osen magnet from 2010 or earlier. And runners-up Larry Gray and Dave Silberstein may opt for the Grossery Bag, the Loser Mug ... or one of the numerous mint-condition Ancient Loser T-shirts regifted by Recidivist Loser Elden Carnahan. *What Doug Dug:* Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood tells me that he liked lots of this week’s entries, but especially Frank’s runner-up “Muerto Rico”; Beverley Sharp’s “costpartum”; Brendan Beary’s “dudenda” and “zenultimate”; Mark Raffman’s “Hater Noster” and “Tennsylvania”; and Roy Ashley’s “holygraph.” Aaah, I’m just out of control this week on both the Invite length and right here. I’ll just add a big fat note of congratulations to Losers Chuck Smith and Ward Kay: Chuck’s “Romantic Comradery,” which drew an ample Loser contingent through a rainstorm to the NVTA One-Act Play Festival last Saturday, won for Best Production of an Original Play as well as for Best Original Script. Guess what: It was funny. ====================================================================== WEEK 1291, published August 5, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1291: Putin On the Parodies The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s new contest and results What a pistol: Russian pro-gun activist Maria Butina in 2013. The alleged spy and her amorous contacts among NRA members inspired numerous Losers to commemorate her in song. (Associated Press*AP) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow August 2, 2018 at 2:24 p.m. EDT Honestly, I’d rather you spend your self-allotted Style Invitational hours reading this week’s song parody results than my yakking about them. But look at this. I published 21 songs, by 15 people. Three of them, including the winner, were by Nan Reiner. Here’s one of her 12 other Week 1287 songs, written in a two-week span, that*didn’t* get ink: To “Copacabana” by Barry Manilow (Nan sings it here ) Her name was Stormy; she was a showgirl. She had Ivanka’s boobs and hair, and a dress just barely there. She met with “Spanky” for hanky-panky: He told her she would be a hit; she knew he was full of it, But still she played along, tweaking the dingbat’s dong, Till he schlorted her on their bargain, and she sang her song… His name was Michael; he was a fixer. And every bimbo Trump would boff, he was sent to pay her off. He’d buy their silence with threats of violence And laundered money he’d obtain from “connections” in Ukraine. He swam in legal murk. A shady sort of jerk, And though he went to the world’s worst law school, he could still get work. With the Groper, the crude piranha, with hair colored like a banana. Interloper Americana! Pinchin’ and pattin’, L.A. to Manhattan And Europa… Give him a shove! Its name is RICO; it is a statute. Designed to neutralize the Mob; now it’s gonna do its job On Trumps deceiving, grifting and thieving. They’ll feel their nether regions squeezed as their assets all get seized, And they’ll be sent away to digs with bars of gray; Board and bed at the ol’ Club Fed, ’twill be a long, long stay! For the Groper, the crude piranha; an ego the size of Montana. Misanthroper! We’ll shout “Hosanna!” When they go slumming, ’cause they’ve got it coming. Like L-dopa, we’ll feel the love… from Up Above… My point being: There are only so many sets of song lyrics that a reader can be asked to read through, line by line, preferably at a singing pace. And we have far more material, from lots of talented, hard-working Losers, than that limited quantity. Soooo: As I write this just after the online posting of the results Thursday morning, I’m already being asked — couldn’t I skip the next contest and then run another week of parodies instead of those results? I’ll give it a day or two of thought, but I’m concerned that so much of the material is so specifically topical that five weeks from now, it’ll feel old. Another possibility is to run them next week, and instead delay the results of Week 1288 product disclaimers; Week 1289, animal fictoids; Week 1290, neologisms; and this week’s movie*play anagrams. More likely is that, as I often do, I’ll showcase various “noinks” from Week 1287 each day in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook (it’s a closed group; the Russians won’t bother you). And I may well include even some inking entries that appear lower on the Web page. *A few great, great lines: * Including from some entries that didn’t get ink. — This rhyme to “Gary Indiana” by Nan: Rudy Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani,*fruity tool, He hon*estly believes we’ll buy his guff? — Danielle Nowlin’s *“Let’s Haul the Troll King Off” * — Phil Frankenfeld’s using “Come Fly With Me” for *“Comply With Me”* — Barbara Sarshik’s *“The Facts and Our Fears,”* on “The Tracks of My Tears,” starring Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan:*“Take a good look at my base...”* — Also from Nan: “So I installed the Keebler Elf* To be loyal, not recuse himself And eschew my *cagey coup* ...” Only when I sang along did I notice the subtle but surely intentional echo of “KGB.” — Speaking of “say it out loud and ...”: Did you see this line in Nan’s Maria Butina song: “Not a man said to me, “Nix!”*I squeezed some GOP-niks”?* — And from Mark Raffman: “He loves Assad? I give a nod* ’Cause*my heart belongs to Vladdy.”* All four of this week’s top winners have tons of Invitational ink among them, especially in parodies. As I looked up the names of my choices (except for people who’d attached videos, I didn’t know during the judging), I wasn’t surprised to see the Raffman*Stevens*Doyle*Reiner slate. But I was most excited to see that I’d chosen four brand-new Losers among the 15 inking entrants: Thomas Vincent, who recently joined the Devotees and immediately became an active poster; Jonathan Jensen, another new Devotee, who plays string bass with the Baltimore Symphony and — like a number of other Loserbards — is the go-to parody-writer for office retirement parties and whatnot (Jonathan, save the non-date-yet in January for the Loser party right now); Jackie Beals, with her clever “Goldfinger” parody (and other songs); and Sandy Riccardi, who’s an actual professional parody writer and performer, with hub Richard. Sandy joined the SI Devotees some time ago, and we’d seen lots of her political parodies on YouTube, but we were so sorry to miss the Riccardis’ appearance at a Baltimore nightclub in June — on the same day as the Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual awards, in Virginia. Next time you’re in town, Sandy, we’ll be there. And we do have Loser bureaux in other cities ... *What Doug dug: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, who read the print version of the Invite — the four top winners, plus Brian Allgar’s “Eleanor Rigby,” Gary Crockett’s “Space Force Hymn,” Barbara Sarshik’s “Into the Woulds” and First Offender Thomas Vincent’s “Donald’s Favorite Things” — liked every single song. Wouldn’t rank them. (I can seriously relate.) *WHAT-EVERRRR* ** *Note: I just discovered that the deadline and publishing dates listed on the Week 1290 entry form — for the contest for the Bob Levey-style neologisms — were a week off. * They now correctly give the deadline as Monday night, Aug. 6, and the publishing dates as Aug. 23 (online) and Aug. 26 (print). *NO, DON’T CALL IT ‘MILF’: THIS WEEK’S MOVIE ANAGRAM CONTEST* It’s hard to believe that we’d never combined our perennial contest themes of anagrams and movie title wordplay, but Loser Duncan Stevens is known to be an avid scholar of the Style Invitational Master Contest List, and he didn’t see anything in the past 1,290 contests that was just like his suggestion for Week 1291. As I mentioned in this week’s introduction, there’s an excellent chance that someone else out there will come up with the very same anagram you did — so it’s likely to come down to who writes the funniest description. It should go without saying — but it won’t*: Please include the name of the original movie! It must be spelled correctly. It does*not* need to include a subtitle if any, but it may; for example, I’ll take anagrams of either “Dr. Strangelove” or “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” For convention, let’s use the spelling in the movie or play’s Wikipedia entry (contact me if that proves problematic for some reason). *(*Because of the numerous song parodies I received for Week 1287 that did not cite the original song. Most I figured out; some I didn’t.)* As in most such contests, entries that allude to the original movies are more likely to be clever, though I’m not forbidding those that don’t. Using totally obscure works tends not to make as funny a joke as a work that a reader will have heard of, or can at least understand from the title. Now go sing along with those parodies. Watch for more on the Devs page each day; I’ll post them as “Files” so that you can click on that category and see the whole, growing set. ====================================================================== WEEK 1292, published August 12, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1292: Go for a glorious glut of limericks The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results Glenn Close, cigarless, with chin held proudly. See Bob Staake’s caricature in this week’s Style Invitational at wapo.st*invite1292. (Presley Ann*Getty Images) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow August 9, 2018 at 3:19 p.m. EDT Yay, Week 1292 is Limerixicon Week, a.k.a. Week When I Don’t Have to Come Up With a New Contest Idea Week. Style Invitational limerick contests always draw lots of entries, usually from quite a few newbies as well as the confirmed Loserbards. And since our “Get Your ’Rick Rolling ” guidelines are already out there, I’ll instead just share some limericks from early Invite contests that I found when searching for an example for this week’s, which have to prominently feature a word beginning with gl- to go-. I’m delighted to give an annual shout-out toOEDILF.com, Chris Strolin’s herculean project to make a whole dictionary in which each entry is in the form of a limerick, often multiple limericks. On the other hand,*my* herculean project is to put up funny*clever stuff each week from y’all that readers will enjoy. And so I don’t really care if the limerick defines the word, or uses someone’s first name as the word, etc. I do, however, want to keep closely enough to the spirit of the contest that the word in question doesn’t appear merely in passing. In the first limerick below, for instance, which was written to feature “daughter,” “glance” is a strongly accented word at the end of a line, and I’d call that valid for this week (were it not already published, that is; entries need to be new material). What I hope I don’t get is the limerick that, say, has the line “I’m going to pull out my hair!” and then is labeled as an entry for “going.” Like a lamb being led to the slaughter Or a clam in the hands of an otter, I haven’t a chance When she gives me that*glance:* Yes, alas, I’m a dad with a daughter. (Mike Dailey, Week 777, “da-” words) There was a young lady of Tottenham Whose blouses contained quite a lottenham, So the men on her street Prayed to *God* for more heat, Since she stripped off those blouses when hottenham. (David Alan Brooks, Week 624, be-*bl) At Oxford, Bill Clinton dug classes, The campus, the culture, the lasses. When he told us a tale (”Ah didn’t inhale”), He was looking through Rhodes-scholared *glasses. *(A classic from Chris Doyle, winner of Week 674, ca-) Since*God* is all-knowing, He can See beforehand what destiny man In the end must fulfill, So I had no free will When I slept with your sister Joanne. (Chris Doyle, Week 678, Limerick Smackdown: explain a philosophical concept — free will), If complacency strikes, you may find That you’re not the industrious kind. Though your life could be better, You’re not a *go-getter.* But so what? It’s okay, you don’t mind. (John Shea, Week 726, cl-*co-) At the precinct, I stopped up the flow on All the urinals, toilets and so on. But they’ve none to accuse. As I left them no clues — And the cops have got nothing to*go* on. (Scott Campisi, Week 726) The competition may be easier this time around because it probably won’t include any entries from the incomparable limericist and 333-time Loser Mae Scanlan, author of the “Close but no cigar” verse that I ended up choosing for this week’s example. Mae has to go in for a nasty medical procedure this weekend, one that her doctors probably will not reschedule even though this week*is the limerick contest,*for Pete’s sake. We’ll be thinking of you, Mae. *FOR IMMATURE AUDIENCES ONLY*: THE PRODUCT WARNINGS OF WEEK 1288:* **Non-inking headline (didn’t fit in the space, even for honorable mentions) by Tom Witte* “For The Style Invitational: ‘The Washington Post is not responsible for entrants suffering other people’s envy, their fearful stares, or their curious looks. Sometimes, the head-wagging of acquaintances may occur. Audible sighs from puzzled readers have been reported. In extreme cases, readers may mistake published bits as the writer’s autobiography in installments. Should an entrant suffer such an episode, he or she should immediately consult the Empress. She will document it in the Style Conversational, further embarrassing said humorist. Now, do you still want to enter?’ ” The above entry for Week 1288 gets no Invite ink for (Lawrence McGuire, Waldorf, Md.), but at least he gets a chance to share the woes of his personal life in this column, as he so often does in the 246 blots of ink that surely constitute a confessional memoir. Even though he lives in the greater Washington area, Lawrence remains the highest-scoring Loser never to have shown up at an Invitational event, so I’m glad that he’s getting all that Invite-attention elsewhere. I received plenty of good entries for the contest for disclaimers and product warnings in this week’s contest, most of them spoofing the tone of the real ones that we see on so many labels and ads, and all 35 inking entries (from 22 people) fit on the print page this week. While this week’s top three Losers are all swimming in Invite ink over the years — Lose Cannoneer Danielle Nowlin wins the contest for the 12th time, and Gary Crockett and Dudley Thompson are perennial denizens of the Losers’ Circle — their combined ink of 813 blots is barely half that of this week’s fourth-place finisher: Russell Beland scores his 1,531st (and 1,532nd) ink, what I think is his first “above the fold” since June 2011. So his new Grossery Bag or Loser Mug can join his 126 other runner-up prizes, not to mention the swag for his 32 wins (his first was in Week 121, 1995). *What Doug Dug: * The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood came from the honorable mentions: “My paycheck: ‘Warning: Contains peanuts.’ ” (Jesse Frankovich) Camping toilet: “Do NOT void where prohibited” (Kevin Dopart; Chris Doyle) On an infant: “Do not refrigerate; however, product may be spoiled while in care of grandparents.” (Dudley Thompson) Pen: “May not necessarily prevail in a swordfight.” (Tom Witte) When reading the Invite yesterday, Doug reminded me of something we do need to keep in mind: Suppose, he said, there were a terrible plane crash between now and Sunday . . . And so while I thought we could risk running Russell Beland’s aircraft disclaimer, I did tame Russell’s “spreading debris and charred body remains over multiple acres” to “spreading its contents . . .” But still, let’s keep our fingers crossed. (I did*not,*however, run this one, by Kevin Dopart: “Paper clip: ‘Not recommended for use in Overturned Roe v. Wade dioramas.’ ”) Even though he said it*wasn’t* recommended. Some people sent in actual silly warnings they’ve seen on products; “Caution: Contains nuts” on a bag of nuts; “Side effects include drowsiness” in a commercial for sleeping medicine (but really, a*side* effect?). *’FESTERING IN FREDERICK THIS WEEKEND * This weekend, Friday through Sunday, a dozen or so Losers and various auxiliaries will be infesting various historic sites, restaurants and other town spaces in this year’s Loserfest in Frederick, Md., about 50 miles north of Washington — close enough for most D.C. area folks to make a day trip of it, as the Royal Consort and I will be doing on Saturday (some people are staying in hotels). If you’d like to join us for some of the many activities scheduled by Loserfest Pope (and Frederick resident) Kyle Hendrickson, first go to Loserfest.org and click on the “fungenda”; Kyle has tweaked the schedule since posting on the website, but it’ll give you an idea, and then you should contact Kyle at loserfestpope [at] gmail [dot] com to find the real details. The restaurant reservations are probably set, but there are lots of other activities that don’t need rezzes. So I hope to see some of you at perhaps the Monocacy National Battlefield, the promised-to-be-fascinating Civil War Medicine Museum, lunch at JoJo’s, shopping at the “Boutique & Crap Prize Shops” in the historic downtown area; watching the old-fashioned giant-wheel bicycles race down the street; strolling along the Carroll Creek park with itsnifty trompe l’oeil paintings in the underpass; and an early dinner at White Rabbit Gastropub. And those are just some of the options; there’s also an escape room on Saturday, a wine festival on Sunday, and more. Pope Kyle does not rest. And now it’s time to start talking in Hickory-Dickory-Dock rhythm ... ====================================================================== WEEK 1293, published August 19, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1293: Our adaptable Constitution The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest and results Four ideas sketched up by Style Invitational cartoonist Bob Staake as possibilities for this week's contest illustration. I had suggested the paper airplane, but I didn't hesitate to choose Bob's own idea of the paper dolls. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) Four ideas sketched up by Style Invitational cartoonist Bob Staake as possibilities for this week's contest illustration. I had suggested the paper airplane, but I didn't hesitate to choose Bob's own idea of the paper dolls. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow August 16, 2018 at 3:23 p.m. EDT Welcome toEnemy of the People Day ! And given that this very morning, the president chose to celebrate the freedom of the press thus: THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS THE OPPOSITION PARTY. It is very bad for our Great Country....BUT WE ARE WINNING! ... what better time to try to help him understand what the First Amendment — not to mention the rest of the Constitution — is all about? This week’s Style Invitational, Week 1293, is a wide-open contest as to format (as long as it’s something that we can fairly easily put in the print paper or share online). I think it’d be fun to include several approaches, everything from knock-knock jokes to song parodies to graphics. Of course, your work has to be original — and please remember that we’re a humor*wordplay contest: Bitterly impassioned plaints don’t tend to work in the Invite; I call them “screedy.” The humor can be sharp, but — especially in something lengthy, like a poem or a song — it shouldn’t convey deep anger without some balance of levity. Frederick Loserfesters gather under a head named variously Lawrence Elk and Elk Capitan at the White Rabbit gastropub. (Someone on the wait staff) As far as I can tell, we haven’t done such a contest before in our 25-plus-year history. We’ve had, of course, the occasional entry about the Constitution, like this cynical definition from 2002 by Chris Doyle: “Strict constructionist: One who interprets the Constitution as he believes the document’s slaveholding, misogynistic, elitist authors would have.” But our big tribute to the National Blueprint was one of my favorite contests ever, one that I remember judging during a beach vacation. It hardly relates to this week’s, but it does give me an occasion to share the amazing results. (And speaking of Chris Doyle ...) *The contest announcement, August 7, 2005* “Week 622: Our Sunday Constitutional *For any offense whatever, members of Congress shall receive punishment on their large seats, delivered with a branch by a common criminal.* “This week’s contest, suggested by Peter Metrinko of Chantilly, was inspired by the new law, hustled through Congress by Founding Father Sen. Robert Byrd, that all 1.8 million federal employees, plus students at all schools receiving federal funds, must receive “educational and training materials” about the U.S. Constitution. Since so many Washingtonians will soon be perusing this foundation of our society for at least a whole minute, there ought to be at least a magnet in it for them: Write a new article or amendment to the Constitution, using only the words contained in the existing document (including amendments). Remember, this is a humor contest, so don’t get all passionate and screedy on us.” *And four weeks later:* Report from Week 622: in which we [zub zub zub]... It seems as if half the entrants suggested “Congress shall make no law.” Some enterprising Losers noted that the Constitution includes the names and states of the 39 signers (beginning with “Go Washington”). *Third runner-up:*No person of excessive tonnage shall remove his jersey at a public event. (Pam Sweeney, Germantown) *Second runner-up:* Congress shall make no laws that direct people to work out with weights and engage in regular body training. We the People are no longer into the exercise thing. (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) *First runner-up, the winner of the Snake Wine containing a whole snake:* No persons shall in all cases be given what they do desire but, upon trial, at times may be informed that they shall receive that for which they be needful. -- M. Jagger (Russell Beland, Springfield) *And the winner of the Inker:* Those persons resident in the District are second-class, inferior citizens. But they have the right to death, taxes and post offices.(Marty McCullen, Gettysburg, Pa.) *Honorable Mentions: (I’m posting a partial list; you can see the whole set on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List here .)* When a male and his date are to go to a party or other event, particularly one with an appointed time, if his date should redress more than three times, he is within his rights in going alone. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) No president shall be subject to impeachment for exercise of a disorderly member. -- W.J. Clinton, New York (Fred S. Souk, Reston) Congress shall have the power to void the laws of the state of Georgia (under the section entitled “crimes against nature”) that deny the right of any citizen, and particularly a citizen by the name of Rufus Dobbs, to engage in sex with a bear, notwithstanding the fact that one such bear has granted consent, is of age, and has not been given any intoxicating liquors for at least a few days. -- R. Dobbs, Stone Mountain, Ga. (Chris Doyle) Congress shall make no law abridging the right of people to have sex whenever they desire and with a hundred persons at the same time if they care to at, like, a private party or whatever. -- P. Hilton, New York (Chris Doyle) A person being considered for Supreme Court justice will be required to have no preference in regard to most things. In fact, each judge shall, on at least six cases, declare his sole opinion to be: “Whatever.” (Brendan Beary) After this date, no one ever engaged in the work of acting shall be president. One was sufficient. (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) Both houses of Congress shall open each session with the following declaration: “The Lord has delivered His blessings on the United States of America and on the Republican Party.” Members who think this unreasonable are hereby directed to go have sex with themselves. -- Ann Coulter, Washington (Chris Doyle) The president and members of Congress shall remove their heads from their business end. (Kyle Hendrickson, Frederick) Until such time as our party is not in power, Representative DeLay has a free pass for all crimes, misdemeanors and felonies but treason. He will also define what may or may not constitute treason. We trust him. Actually, we have no choice. (Brendan Beary) If any person should be required to answer the call of nature without the proper papers, particularly when sitting for number two, that person shall be granted the right to subject the previous person to cruel and unusual punishment. (Mark Hagenau, Derry, N.H.) When engaged in sex, neither party shall raise the issue of who will pay the water bill. (Kyle Hendrickson) Underage sex is hereby prohibited, given that we are way older now. (Russell Beland) *Anti-Invitational (using only words not found in the Constitution):* Privacy? Abortion? Church separation? Equality? Sexual orientation? Hah! Look again. -- New Supreme Court, Washington (Russell Beland) *And Last:*In that we in Congress are concerned for the people who continue to enter this Washington Post thing just to have their name published in the papers, we hereby direct that they do themselves a favor and try to have an actual life from now on. (Chris Doyle) *And Also Last:*No title of nobility, such as King, Prince or the like, shall be granted -- except by the Post on Sundays in one section. (Marty McCullen) *ZOO AND FALSE*: THE ANIMAL FICTOIDS OF WEEK 1289* *(*Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich)* Typically clever fake trivia in this new chapter of The Big Invite Book of Total Bunk. As usual, many of this week’s inking entries were plays on well-known bits of trivia, such as Russell Beland’s (he’s baaa-aaack) take on Van Halen’s famous contract rider demanding bowls of only non-brown M&M’s in the band’s dressing rooms. (I’ve added links to a few of these.) Many of the entries seemed a little windy this week (or did I have stronger coffee than usual?); if I pared your entry a bit, you’re not alone. I’m always excited to discover a First Offender among the week’s inking entries — especially at the very top of the list. David Schwartz’s Shar-Pei joke makes him the third newbie to win the Invite this year; Luke Baker won with his horse name in May, and Meg Winters with her scoreboard abbreviation in February. It’s an aberration, though, to have that many rookie winners; they were the first in ages. And Week 1289 might even have been Dave’s first time even entering. Hope to see you again soon, Dave — you do want to win a Loser Magnet, right? Meanwhile, last week’s winner, Danielle Nowlin, had to settle for second place with her joke on the “Jaws” theme; on the other hand, there are lots of kiddie fingers in her household that can wear those cuteanimal-extremity finger caps. Danielle has more than 300 blots of Invite ink, but it’s the first trip to the Losers’ Circle for Susanne Pierce Dyer, who nabs Ink No. 3 along with her choice of Loser Mug or Grossery Bag — and then Nos. 4 and 5 as well with honorable mentions. What a week — do we have a new Obsessive here? *What Pleases Ponch: *Our usual Ace Copy Editor, Doug Norwood, had to work on a big Page 1 story yesterday (feh), so he turned the Invite over to Panfilo “Ponch” Garcia, who noticed that I had the spelling “savanna” in one entry and “savannah” in the other. (The Post’s style — i.e., the spelling that’s listed first in in Webster’s New World Dictionary — is “savanna” for the African grassland; the Georgia city does remain aitched.) As for his faves, Ponch proved himself a big fan of Loser Jeff Shirley: Of his four favorite entries, all from the honorable mentions, three were by Jeff: the trumpeter swan with the spit valve on its neck; Nostradamus’s prediction of Bigfoot porn (well, I guess we can call Bigfoot part of the “nonhuman animal kingdom,” the parameters I supplied in the contest announcement); and that “the Puritans referred to marital relations as ‘playing possum,’ since they moved as little as possible.” *HAPPY FESTERING IN FREDERICK* Thanks again to Loser Kyle Hendrickson for arranging last weekend’s Loserfest gathering in Frederick, Md. The Royal Consort and I spent all day Saturday visiting the Monocacy Battlefield, where the Union’s loss to the Confederates in 1864 at least bought time for the army to reinforce Fort Stevens in Washington and repel the Rebels from the capital; the National Museum of Civil War Medicine (takeaway: Thanks, Obamacare); a race of those old-fashioned giant-wheeled pennyfarthing bicycles through the city streets; a walk through the town’s lovely parks, and untold thousands of calories of restaurant food. It was the first Loser event for Frederick resident Lennie Magida, who joined us for lunch on Saturday, as did Chris Damm, who drove over from West Virginia. *NEXT LOSER SIGHTING: SEPT. 16 IN VIRGINIA* Loser Brunch #211 will be at noon on Sunday, Sept. 16, at one of my favorite restaurants: It’s Aditi, an Indian restaurant (with buffet) in the Kingstowne complex across from the movie theaters, off Van Dorn Street a couple of miles outside the Beltway. It’s a smallish but surprisingly elegant place, and a great value. I will make every effort to be there; RSVP to elden.carnahan [at] gmail [dot] com. Details at the Losers’ website, NRARS.com (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). Don’t forget about the gl-*go- limericks from Week 1292; you still have till Monday. Then you can settle down and draft your Constitution. ====================================================================== WEEK 1294, published August 26, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1294: (Wind-) breaking news The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest and results From this week’s second prize. But wouldn’t those little gas-bottles be nice prizes, too? (From “The Gas We Pass” by Shinta Cho, Usborne Books) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow August 23, 2018 at 3:47 p.m. EDT Style Invitational Week 1294 is our fourth go-round for a neologism contest centered on a word search grid. Unlike our Clue Us In backward-crossword contests, in which we print a filled-in grid and you come up with novel clues, you can’t turn the grid into a word list to work from: Because your chosen letters can progress along any path from one letter to the next — as long as you don’t skip letters or land on the same spot twice — and there’s no length limit, there’s almost an infinite number of possibilities for new words (or even real words) to discover. So you’ll have to use the grid. If for some reason you can’t print it out from the contest page, email me and I’ll send you a copy. Whew, I’d almost neglected to include that key direction to*begin every entry with the coordinates of the first letter. * Yeow, that would have sent me directly to Invite Judging Hell. Not only do I need the opening letter and number to check the path of your entry, but having the coordinates at the beginning of each line will let me (or, if possible, the ever-obliging techno-Loser Jonathan Hardis, who can get around some other problems) sort the entries so that I can see all the D-9s and N-5s at once. I made the grid the same way as before: I clicked repeatedly on a random word generator, compiled a list of about 20 words, then typed that list into the puzzle constructor at Puzzle-Maker.com, whose main business seems to be for teachers putting together units for the week’s vocabulary words. Two seconds and $4 later, I had a PDF of this week’s grid (the letter and number coordinates are my own adds, which explains why they’re not quite evenly spaced). Okay, it’s not quiiiiiite as pretty as a Bob Staake illustration, but Bob appreciated the week off, since he’s on yet another book deadline. Not that it really matters, but here are the definitions for the more obscure words that the generator gave me, in addition to*sedative, flat, unfraught, almsgiving, decode.* I drew them both from the generator and other online sites. All these words appear in the grid in straight lines either forward or backward, as in your typical word search. Fumarole: An opening in or near a volcano, through which hot sulfurous gases emerge. Desport (variant of “disport”): To amuse oneself divertingly or playfully; to cavort or gambol. Verbarmahoohoo: Well, I’m not sure. The word generator supplied some definition when this word popped up, but I forgot to write it down before clicking for the next word ... and then I couldn’t find a definitive answer online. One source said “article writer” and another referred to a white rhino, but neither site looked anything near authoritative. I’d like to think it’s the rhino, but for all I know it’s not really a word. It’s not in any of the major online dictionaries. But you could, I suppose, use it as a neologism. Agnus: A Christian emblem depicting a lamb bearing a cross or banner, as in Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God. Puddler: A foundry worker who runs a furnace that converts weak pig iron into useful wrought iron. Here’s the dish at a handy site called Steelopedia. Sarcel: An outer feather of a hawk’s wing. Azidothymidine: Better known as AZT, a treatment for AIDS. Innubilous: Cloudless. Panderly: “Having the character of a pander,” Merriam-Webster informs us helpfully. And “a pander,” a noun, turns out to be, according to its entry that you then have to go and look up, either a go-between in love intrigues, or a pimp. So a panderly person is? Someone who’s like one of those. Paise: In India and Nepal, one-hundredth of a rupee. Anapest: As our Loserbards, especially our limericists, probably all know, an anapest is a metrical foot that has two short, unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one: ba-da-BA. While Style Invitational limericks don’t have to begin with an anapest, some people try to do all their limericks this way. For example, here’s a runner-up from our very first Limerixicon contest (2004), on “apterous,” or wingless. It’s anapestic from beginning to end. Now these beetles are marvelous things, In the kingdom of bugs, they’re the kings. This is true of them all Except ex-Beatle Paul, Who is apterous now — without Wings. (Scott Campisi, Wake Village, Tex.) Misdo: To act wrongly, to transgress. As in mis-do. Anisomerous: Describing a plant that has different numbers of floral parts, such as four petals and six stamens. *JUST DO WITTE*, OR BE LEVEY OR NOT**: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1290* *****Non-inking headlines by Nan Reiner and Chris Doyle, respectively* This week’s results, from our Week 1290 neologism contest, are a twin tribute: first to Loser Tom Witte, who just became the third Invite contestant to score 1,500 blots of Loser ink; and to Tom’s other, erstwhile Post Passion, the monthly contest from Bob Levey, who preceded John Kelly for 23 years as The Post’s daily metro columnist. If you’re familiar with Style Invitational neologism contests, you might have noticed that this week’s entries are far less concise than usual. It’s because they’re somewhat reflective of Levey’s contest, which had a different format: Bob would describe some phenomenon or situation in a conversational style and all the contestants would send in a (they hoped) clever word to sum up that one thing. This week’s inking entries, based on the examples given in Week 1290, and from our first go-round of this contest in 2004 — whose results I quoted that week in this column — first spell out the situation Levey-style, then supply the neologism. (I didn’t, however, want to echo Bob’s practice of explaining the wordplay of each winning entry; we’ve mocked it enough over the years.) It would have been fun had Tom Witte won this contest — he did that trick back in 2009 with a contest for his 1,000th ink (word with W, I, T, T, E: Wattleship: A seniors cruise) — but he did turn out to be one of the runners-up. Which makes it 106 runner-up blots since Tom’s debut in Week 7. Plus 29 wins. Pretty good. Instead, the win goes to Future Hall of Famer (assuming that neither he nor the Invitational gives up) Jesse Frankovich as he nears 400 blots of ink with blinding speed. Jesse’s “cahootzpah” — as Bob would say, “a fetching force-fit of two cute concepts,” “cahoots” and “chutzpah” — is his eighth Invite win. And the other two members of this week’s Losers’ Circle are Hall of Famers as well; Beverley Sharp is No. 7 on the all-time list, Chris Doyle securely atop it. *What pleased Ponch:* For the second week in a row, Panfilo “Ponch” Garcia did the copy editing duties for the Invite in lieu of Regular Ace Doug Norwood. Ponch’s faves were all from the ranks of the honorable mentions: Dave Silberstein’s “philaundering,” Jeff Hazle’s “stalkward,” Warren Tanabe’s “bratuity” and John O’Byrne’s “quotus interruptus.” *NO-LOGISMS: Unprintable entries from Week 1290* Some funny entries that wouldn’t pass the language or taste standards even for the Invitational: You’re a horny morgue worker and your boss just discovered that you’re into necrophilia. The resulting shame is known as . . . amourtification. (Stephen Dudzik) An ornament for a lady’s pubic area might be referred to as a twatchamcallit. (Jeff Contompasis) Groping is just a game to some men in power. They even call it Poké Mons Go. (Kevin Dopart) Imagine yourself being stuck in a country where the Capitol has been taken over by a bunch of pricks. Their new government would be called a cockistocracy. (Let’s hope*that* never happens ...) (Jon Gearhart) Movie director Michael Moore is noted for his f--- -ucumentaries. (Charlotte Mathews, daughter of Loser Warren Tanabe) When you patiently explain to your new boyfriend the best ways to pleasure you, that is monsplaining. (Jeff Shirley) While it is sad to see a loved one descend into dementia, a kind of rueful comedy can occasionally arise. For example, the afflicted individual may forget to fully dress before leaving his room. When the clothing forgotten tends to be pants, this particular disorder is know as Balzheimers. (Rob Huffman) You’re wearing tight leggings to show off your curves but don’t wish to reveal other items of interest to prying eyes. A female undergarment for hiding “toes” is called camelflage. (Jon Gearhart) *IN TWO WEEKS: M-WAH! * Meghan Lunghi of Merriam-Webster emailed me a few days ago to let me know that M-W would soon be announcing a list of words it would be adding to its dictionary in early September, in case I wanted to do a contest in conjunction with it. Yahhhhh. So in a few days Meghan will be sending me the Secret List, which I plan to share in the Sept. 6*9 contest. Meghan also tells me that there’s soon going to be a revised Scrabble dictionary as well! (It had better have “pho.”) ====================================================================== WEEK 1295, published September 2, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1295: Just the bad and the ugly The Style Invitational Empress ruminates blubberingly on this week’s contest and results Bob Staake's alternative sketch for this week's sample joke. This one: Sign you're oversexed: Your wife pretends to be asleep when you enter the bedroom. Sign you're really oversexed: Your wife pretends to be asleep when you enter the delivery room. (Chuck Smith from Week 401) (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) Bob Staake's alternative sketch for this week's sample joke. This one: Sign you're oversexed: Your wife pretends to be asleep when you enter the bedroom. Sign you're really oversexed: Your wife pretends to be asleep when you enter the delivery room. (Chuck Smith from Week 401) (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow August 30, 2018 at 3:01 p.m. EDT “We did that” has been my abrupt response to many a reader’s suggestion for a future Style Invitational contest. But more and more lately, I’ve looked back atthe archive of our almost 1,300 contests since 1993 and said, “Hah, those were good results. Let’s do it again.” Which brings us to Week 401 Revisited, or Week 1295. The “bad”*”really bad” joke format, suggested by Loser Russell Beland to the Czar in 2001, is basically two-thirds of the “good*bad*ugly” format, which the Czar had done just a year earlier (results from 2000 here ) and I repeated in 2014 (results here ). So you should try not to tread on the ground of those contests this week as well as the very funny results below. Given that Russell has gotten ink in the past few weeks after years of absence, maybe he’ll want to contribute once again to the contest he came up with. *Report from Week 401 [June 2001], *in which you were asked to come up with a sign of a dire condition, and then a sign of further deterioration thereof. *Fourth runner-up:* Sign your career might be in jeopardy: You fracture a leg while running in the Super Bowl. Sign your career might be in real jeopardy: You fracture a leg while running in the Kentucky Derby. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) *Third runner-up:* Sign it might be time to stop breast-feeding: Your son is starting to talk. Sign it really might be time to stop breast-feeding: Your son is starting to talk about your “bodacious bazooms.” (Russell Beland, Springfield) *Second runner-up: * Sign a horse trainer might not know what he is doing: The jockeys on his horses are too big. Sign a horse trainer really might not know what he is doing: . . . and they’re made by Fruit of the Loom. (Niels Hoven, Camperdown, Australia) *First runner-up: * Sign you are getting old: You forget to zip. Sign you are really getting old: You forget to unzip. (Chris Doyle, Burke; Alan Rubin, Delaplane, Va.) *And the winner of the cloven-hoofed wine bottle holder: * Sign you’re oversexed: Your wife pretends to be asleep when you enter the bedroom. Sign you’re really oversexed: Your wife pretends to be asleep when you enter the delivery room. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) *Honorable Mentions:* Sign your finances are in trouble: Your stocks are plummeting off the charts. Sign your finances are really in trouble: Your stockbroker is plummeting off his building. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington; Niels Hoven, Camperdown, Australia) Sign the California energy crisis is getting serious: L.A. residents can only cool their houses to 75 degrees. Sign the California energy crisis is really getting serious: L.A. residents can only cool their wine to 75 degrees. (Ervin Stembol, Alexandria) Sign your marriage is in trouble: You have to get advice from a marriage counselor. Sign your marriage is really in trouble: You have to get advice from O.J. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) Sign you are overweight: You cause floorboards to bend. Sign you are really overweight: You cause light rays to bend. (Bob Sorensen, Herndon) Sign you’ve lost your sense of humor: You no longer get in the Style Invitational. Sign you’ve really lost your sense of humor: You no longer get the Style Invitational. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) Sign you’re dating a loser: He pulls up in a clunker car. Sign you’re really dating a loser: He pulls up in a clunker car that is being towed. (Kenny Burrow, Great Mills, Md.) Sign you may need therapy: You talk to yourself. Sign you may really need therapy: You talk to yourselves. (Cindi Rae Caron, Lenoir, N.C.) Sign you’re getting forgetful: You forget to send in your entry. Sign you’re really getting forgetful: You send in your entry twice. (Diane Graft, Centreville) Sign you’re poor: You fantasize about tax cuts. Sign you’re really poor: You fantasize about cold cuts. (Howard Walderman, Columbia) Sign you are a jerk: You are sleeping with your girlfriend’s mother. Sign you are really a jerk: . . . and your girlfriend’s mother is Mia Farrow. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Sign you might be in trouble: Your mother uses your middle name when she calls for you. Sign you might really be in trouble: The newspaper uses your middle name when it writes about you. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Sign your dot-com employer isn’t doing well: Stock options are provided in lieu of salary. Sign your dot-com employer really isn’t doing well: Stock options are provided in lieu of toilet paper. (Mike Berman, South Riding, Va.) Sign your stockbroker is incompetent: Last year, he recommended Pets.com. Sign your stockbroker is really incompetent: Last week, he recommended Pets.com. (Bruce W. Alter, Fairfax Station) [Pets.com had failed spectacularly six months earlier] Sign your political future may be in trouble: You are caught having lied under oath about your affair with one of your interns. Sign your political future might really be in trouble: You are caught not having filled out all the required paperwork for the nanny you once employed. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Sign it is hot out: You see a dog chasing a cat, and they’re both walking. Sign it is really hot out: You see a dog e-mailing a threat to a cat. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Sign you’re a loser: You’re reading this. Sign you’re really a loser: You wrote this. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Sign you’re getting forgetful: You forget to send in your entry. Sign you’re really getting forgetful: You send in your entry twice. (Diane Graft, Centreville) *CINEMIX: THE MOVIE TITLE ANAGRAMS OF WEEK 1291* Aw, this was a fun contest to judge — there were literally hundreds of hilarious permutations of movie titles among the more than 1,500 entries in Week 1291, from about 200 Losers. Fewer of them carried the joke through to a funny*clever description of the resulting film, but my short list still ran quite a bit longer than the 42 entries that get ink this week . Thanks, y’all, by the way, for checking your anagrams; I ran each of the inking entries through an online validator and every last one panned out. I like to show how a single source can generate a wide variety of results. The five inking anagrams of “Gone With the Wind” were only a few of those entered — others among the 17 entries, some of which used the same anagrams, included Woe, the Night Wind; Wet Hog in the Wind; Whiter, God! Whiter!’ I Wed the Thing Now (something with zombies); Thin Town Weighed; Owning the Whited; and the whaaa Dow Hit Nigh Tween, along with the inking White-Owned Thing; Done With the Wing; Nothing but Weed; I Won the Dew Thing; and Tonight We Whined. (Dow Hit Nigh Tween was just one of many anagrams that were hard to read; if I really had to struggle to make sense of a title, I didn’t even bother reading the description in that entry.) It’s the first win — indeed, the first “above the fold” ink — for Chuck Helwig, a Style Invitational rookie. His anagram of “All the President’s Men” to “The Ill-Mannered Pests” — along with its metaphorical description — out-inked the honorably mentioned All the Dern Inept Mess (Chris Doyle) and Tend the Smaller Penis (Kevin Dopart), as well as the also-ran “Press Lamented NHL Tie.” Chuck’s Lose Cannon winner is just fifth ink overall, but I’m sure that his name — complete with his name anagram Hug, Chew, Lick — will be soon skipping up the Loser Stats chart. Meanwhile, it’s all Recidivists in the rest of the Losers’ Circle: Tom Witte and Beverley Sharp are Hall of Famers, while the runner-up this week give Rick Haynes Ink No. 150. And Rick’s description of “Forrest Gump” turned “Trumpers’ Fog” nailed the analogy so well that his entry was *What Doug Dug *— the hands-down fave this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood. Doug also singled out the first four honorable mentions: Jon Gearhart’s On Can: Barbarian; Danielle Nowlin’s and Duncan Stevens’s twists on “Les Miserables” to Less Miserable and Aimless Rebels; and Matt Monitto’s tour de force anagram of that long-titled Hillary Clinton documentary. *BAREST NIL PUN: Unprintables from Week 1291* Kevin Dopart’s “Tend the Small Penis” got ink online, if not in print, but these wouldn’t make the Invite in any format: Aladdin --> Did Anal: An adult film of a lad in a lad. (Jeff Contompasis, up to no good on an ocean cruise) Sleeping Beauty --> Bent, I Please Guy: A fulfilled fantasy all comes to a head with one little prick. (Jeff Contompasis — see what I mean) Boogie Nights -> Biggest! Ooh! In! An aspiring screenwriter is asked to write dialogue for adult films. (Duncan Stevens) Actually, this one was arguably printable, especially since it’s what the movie’s*about.*But Duncan, the father of two reading-age children, had marked it as “Conversational only.” *Happy Labor Day! * ** Note that you get an extra day to enter the Week 1294 word search neologism contest; deadline is Tuesday night, Sept. 4. Meanwhile, I’d never call it labor to be judging all those limericks from Week 1292. ====================================================================== WEEK 1296, published September 9, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1296: Use your zoodle The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results Zoodles: a pile of shredded zuke. (Goran Kosanovic*For The Washington Post) Image without a caption By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Style Invitational editor September 6, 2018 at 3:19 p.m. EDT We first did a Style Invitational contest linked to M-W.com, Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, last October, after I’d discovered a tool on the website that let you see a list of words and phrases first used in any given year. In that contest, Week 1250, you chose a year and wrote a poem using some of those “first known use” words. Great results. And so when M-W’s Meghan Lunghi wrote me again a couple of weeks ago, asking if I’d want to run a contest coinciding with the announcement of new terms being added, I figured: Sure. Poems. The 35 terms I list this in Week 1296 are just some of the new words newly added to M-W.com; more than 800 entries have been either added or modified, according to Meghan, who told me, “We never disclose the full list of words.” The ones she linked to for me — first a list of 35, then another list from which I substituted a few words for some in that first group — clearly reflect the millennial world, along with the restaurant trend of truncating words into cutesy abbrevs: marg[arita], avo[cado], guac[amole]. “App” wasn’t on the list Meghan gave me, but I see that the listing was updated on Aug. 25 — maybe to mean “appetizer” as well as “application”? Then there are portmanteau words that could have been plucked from an Invite neologism contest: “hangry” (hungry*angry), “zoodle” (zucchini noodle), “hacktivism,” ‘mocktail.” Anyway, here’s a list of definitions for this week’s terms. You may use plurals and different parts of speech in your poems. Click on the links for fuller definitions as well as sample sentences. I’m seeing this as an annual contest, no? Adorbs: (adorable) extremely charming or appealing : adorable Airplane mode (British: aeroplane mode): an operating mode for an electronic device (such as a mobile phone) in which the device does not connect to wireless networks and cannot send or receive communications (such as calls or text messages) or access the Internet but remains usable for other functions Avo: avocado Bougie: from *bourgeois;*informal, usually disparaging: marked by a concern for wealth, possessions, and respectability CBD: cannabidiol, a nonintoxicating cannabinoid found in cannabis and hemp Cybercrime: criminal activity (such as fraud, theft, or distribution of child pornography) committed using a computer especially to illegally access, transmit, or manipulate data fav: favorite. (Just a new alternative spelling for “fave.” fintech : products and companies that employ newly developed digital and online technologies in the banking and financial services industries flight (definition 4c): a selection of alcoholic drinks (such as wines, beers, or whiskeys) for tasting as a group force quit , transitive verb: to force (an unresponsive computer program) to shut down (as by using a series of preset keystrokes) Generation Z: the generation of people born in the late 1990s and early 2000s GOAT: the greatest of all time : the most accomplished and successful individual in the history of a particular sport or category of performance or activity gochujang: a spicy paste used in Korean cuisine that is made from red chili peppers, glutinous rice, and fermented soybeans guac: guacamole hacktivism: computer hacking (as by infiltration and disruption of a network or website) done to further the goals of political or social activism hangry: informal; irritable or angry because of hunger haptics: 1. the use of electronically or mechanically generated movement that a user experiences through the sense of touch as part of an interface (such as on a gaming console or smartphone) 2. medical: a science concerned with the sense of touch hophead: a beer enthusiast Instagram, Instagramming: both a transitive and intransitive verb: to post (a picture) to the Instagram photo-sharing service Latinx: pronounced either “LA-tinks” or “la-TEE-nex”; of, relating to, or marked by Latin American heritage —used as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino or Latina marg: margarita medical marijuana: marijuana that is available only by prescription and is used to treat a variety of medical conditions (such as pain, anxiety, nausea, and glaucoma) — suprising that this term is being added just now, no? mise en place: pronounced “mee zahn plahss”: a culinary process in which ingredients are prepared and organized (as in a restaurant kitchen) before cooking mocktail: a usually iced drink made with any of various ingredients (such as juice, herbs, and soda water) but without alcohol : a nonalcoholic cocktail nanobot: a microscopically small robot: a robot built on the scale of nanometers rando: slang, often disparaging; a random person: a person who is not known or recognizable or whose appearance (as in a conversation or narrative) seems unprompted or unwelcome ribbie: the baseball abbreviation RBI (run or runs batted in) turned into an acronym salty (Meaning 4: informal: feeling or showing resentment towards a person or situation: bitter. “I completely forgot about our date and left my girlfriend waiting at the restaurant for over an hour. Now she’s all salty.” —Nicole Lane. “They made me shave my beard and cover up my tattoos, which I was a little salty about.” —Jon Niccum self-harm: the act of purposely hurting oneself (as by cutting or burning the skin) as an emotional coping mechanism shy bladder: paruresis: an inability to urinate in the presence of others (as in a public restroom); the fear of being unable to initiate or sustain urination when other people are nearby tent city: a collection of many tents set up in an area to provide usually temporary shelter (as for displaced or homeless people) time suck informal: an activity to which one devotes a lot of time that might be better or more productively spent doing other things [I CAN THINK OF NO EXAMPLES OF THIS PHENOMENON.] TL;DR: texting jargon for “too long; didn’t read” —used to say that something would require too much time to read zoodle: a long, thin strip of zucchini that resembles a string or narrow ribbon of pasta zuke: zucchini Nice GOing*: The results of Week 1292 **Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich* The home page at OEDILF.com now tallies 99,801 approved limericks. While the 25 entries in this week’s Limerixicon results wouldn’t turn over the odometer, I’m pretty certain that Chris J. Strolin and his team of volunteer editors would heartily approve at least 199 entries to Week 1292 for their Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form: I had far more well-crafted limericks to choose from among the almost 1,000 entries. To submit your inking or non-inking limericks to OEDILF, check out the site’s FAQ page. (We wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to send them to Chris ourselves.) If the poem you’re submitting got ink in the Invite today, please note that, as humblebraggedy as possible, to OEDILF; if it didn’t, you don’t have to say. The usual protocol there is for one or more editors to work with you to fine-tune your submission; “workshopping” is a great way to get advice from some really skilled limericists. And unlike with the Invite, you can use a pseudonym. No jaws dropped at the news that this week’s Lose Cannon winner was Brendan Beary: This is at least the fifth time Brendan has finished first in limerick contests alone — that includes a 2006 two-man Limerick Smackdown with Chris Doyle. This is just Brendan’s second cannon (I’ve been giving them out for about a year), but it’s his 39th Invite win and, with his four blots today, his 1,062th ink. Runners-up Gary Crockett and Chris Doyle are both also frequent hangers-out in the Losers’ Circle, but it’s exciting to see the return of Paul VerNooy, whom we hadn’t seen in about five years. Paul gets his 17th blot of ink and just his second appearance “above the fold” with his surprise-narrator-in-the-punchline joke. (Brendan’s “Godot” winner is of the same genre.) *Limerisque: Unprintables from Week 1292* Some people argue that*all* limericks should be risque. I don’t subscribe to that philosophy, but there’s certainly a strong tradition of bawdiness. The last few entries in this week’s results ran only online, since I’ve never had a taste complaint from Web readers, and that’s where I put Jesse Frankovich’s “glans” limerick, and Brendan’s “bugger me,” and Warren Tanabe’s “gl fo.” But then there were these, some of which were designated “Convo only” by their writers: When you’re cuddling your lover in bed, Here’s a tip that will stand in good stead: Have her tend to your glans Using one or both hands— You’re certain to come out ahead. (Duncan Stevens) Cried Melania, “No, Donald! Ew! What the hell did you just go and do?” “It’s the Golden Rule: Pee Onto others,” said he, “As you’d have them pee onto you.” (Jesse Frankovich) Happy Hannah the Hooker turns tricks. Got a chest cold and needed a fix. She gleaned rubbing her chest With Vick’s worked the best After rubbing Tom’s, Harry’s and Dick’s (Jon Gearhart) For gossipers, Stormy’s a treat, Dishing dirt about Trump that’s replete With salacious details Of a tryst where he fails To pass muster. His boner? Petite. (Chris Doyle) Father Fein teaches art and design At St. Joseph’s and likes to give wine To the lads that he blesses, Then gladly undresses. Oh, yes, every good boy does Fein. (Chris Doyle) *MASTERS OF NAAN: LOSER BRUNCH, SEPT. 16 AT NOON* Come join me and other Loserly fans of Indian food for this month’s Loser brunch: It’s at Aditi, a surprisingly nice restaurant in the strip mall across from the Kingstowne cineplex, a few short miles outside the Beltway at theVan Dorn Road exit in Northern Virginia. It’s one of my favorite buffets, and a great value. RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ Web page . And Happy New Year to my Jewish landsmen — and anyone else who wants to party like it’s 5779. ====================================================================== WEEK 1297, published September 16, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1297: Such a character The Empress discusses this week’s ‘typo’ contest and our handy guide to the Constitution Kevin Dopart's non-inking rebus for the Week 1293 contest to explain the Constitution: That'd be Ewe Can Bee Hymn-peach'd. By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow September 13, 2018 at 3:04 p.m. EDT The Royal Consort has always been astonishingly supportive of the Empress of The Style Invitational, accompanying her to all those Loser parties and Flushies and brunches, dutifully toting prizes, modeling stupid prizes for photos, even constructing the Lose Cannons that go to first-prize winners. (We won’t even address the matter of how much time I take away from other activities.) And quite regularly, he’ll excitedly alert me: “Ooh, how about this for a contest?” Bless his heart. BUT once in a while, the RC, a.k.a. Mark Holt, comes up with something that even ol’ pooh-poohing wifey has to admit is a great idea. And so this week’s Style Invitational, Week 1297, is our fourth running of the contest to change one little thing in a headline and write the resulting bank head. Mark came up with the gas*gab example, as well as one that changes “moon” to “moron” for which we couldn’t get the bank head to work. We came up with several of these headlines within a few minutes of paging through the print Post, but I readily admit that The Post’s (and some other papers’) heds have become more like summary sentences and less suited for this contest. That’s one of the reasons I’m not going to object to significantly truncated sentences, though the cut should be from one end or the other; don’t just string words together — I’d like to keep to the “typo” conceit of the contest: that one little omission or accidental change could cause a big and hilarious change in meaning. When I told our cartoonist Bob Staake about this week’s contest, Bob replied: “As the typo victim of Saturday’s Ithaca Times, I wholly endorse this contest.” The paper had noted that an illustration by Bob had been “sued” for a New Yorker cover. It was supposed to be “used.” In our first hed-typo contest, Week 804 in 2009, I warned that “we’ll probably prefer entries in which it’s obvious what the original word was.” I was clearly concerned that including the original word in brackets would be heavy-handed and would kill the joke. But I don’t think that’s turned out to be true. Here are the top winners and a few honorable mentions our three earlier contests, with links to the rest of the results posted on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List, which isn’t subject to The Post’s paywall. See what you think: *Week 804, February 2009: * I probably was favoring entries that didn’t need the brackets, but gave above-the-fold ink to one that did. (But I warily tucked it*after* the headline.) 4. Once More, With Feeding Kate Moss Launches New Career as Plus Model (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis) 3. What Could Have Been Horse? Travelers Ponder the Mysteries of Foreign Menus (Beverley Sharp, Washington) 2. the winner of the book “Boring Postcards USA” Rwanda’s Move Into Condo Fuels Suspicion [Congo] 8 Million Residents in Single Apartment May Be Code Violation (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) And the Winner of the Inker: In Steep and Swift Fall, Bow Lands at 6-Year Low Aretha’s Hat Now Covers Entire Face (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis ) [I hope everyone figured out that the original was “Dow”] President of Oblivia Stirs Fierce Debate People Still Undecided as to Whether Nation Even Exists (Jeffrey Contompasis, Ashburn) New Teat, Old Position [Team] Reconstructive Surgery Not Intended to Restore ‘Perkiness’ (Russell Beland, Fairfax) (Full set of Week 804 results here .) *Week 940, October 2011:* The winner of the Inker: Just ice for a terrorist Gitmo cooler diet gets colder (Kevin Dopart, Washington) 2. Winner of the two-foot-long Gummi snake: Hangers headed to World Series Texas team’s uniforms stolen en route to St. Louis (Jim Reagan, Herndon, Va.) 3. Tebow gets God as Denver’s QB Born-again athlete persuades Almighty to sub for him in critical third-down situations [“gets nod”] (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.; Roy Ashley, Washington) 4. A smorgasmbord of oddities The epicure’s guide to unusual aphrodisiacs (Roger Hammons, North Potomac, Md.) Police investigate shooting dearth in Pr. George’s County No gunfire reported for last two days (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) New airport scanners to identify phony IUDs Privacy activists outraged as TSA counters novel tactic to hide explosives [“phony IDs”] (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) (The full set of Week 940 results .) *Week 1115, March 2015:* 4th place: [Top] Pot-seeded Terps are all smiles U-Md. drops ban on grow-boxes in dorms (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) 3rd place: [Metro] Retro leader search on hold Nation decides Clinton vs. Bush will be retro enough (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) 2nd place and the pink velveteen squid hat: Netanyahu:[No] Go Palestinian State Surprising upset pick in Bibi’s NCAA bracket (Brian Collins, Olney, Md.) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Royal Couple Checks Out the [Mall] Malt Charles chugs Colt 45s while Camilla crushes cans against royal forehead (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) I found my [soul] foul mate, my best friend BO leads wife to husband’s hiding place (Richard Lempert, Arlington, Va.) If I can do just a few more reps, a few more [miles] males Congressional groupie testifies (Chris Doyle) (The full set of Week 1115 results .) *CRUDE AND UNUSUAL*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1293** Non-inking headline by William Kennard* **My call inWeek 1293 for novel ways to explain various sections of the U.S. Constitution was awfully wide open, because I didn’t want to rule out any approaches that might turn out to be really funny. And sowe ended up with everything from epigrams to epic song parodies, including explanations to a certain chief executive who tends not to read, and some interpretations “by” the Current Occupant himself. By the way, did you see that letter to the editor that The Post ran after the contest was announced? *“The new Style Invitational contest demonstrates how far the nation’s respect for the office of the presidency and for the Constitution has sunk.* *“Referring to the knowledge of the ‘current president’ of the Constitution and to his reading habits, the contest announcement invited participants to enter humorous translations or explanations of some part of the Constitution, illustrated by a proverb, slogan, poem, parody or graphic. The announcement stated that the submissions may be ‘aimed at the president’s particular attention span or interests.’* *Have we ever had a president who has invited such a public demonstration of ridicule and disrespect for the office and for the Constitution?” — Steven J. Fenves, Rockville* At first I thought Mr. F was outraged that the Empress would be so disrespectful of the president of the United States, so willing to mock this lofty gentleman. But then ... look at that last line. The president, he said, has*invited*** the disrespect. And that’s why, perhaps, we’re**the Invitational. Two of the Invite’s perennial tour-de-force genres — anagrams and song parodies — dominated this week’s results. Jon Gearhart gets his fifth win with an amazingly readable translation of the Preamble as a totally valid anagram, while Jesse Frankovich anagrammed the same passage to explain not the Constitutional itself, but this very contest — “not the contest,” one might carp, but I had highly diminished carpacity when it came to that entry. (By the way, both anagrams work if the modern American spelling “defense,” rather than “defence,” is used.) Nan Reiner went to town this week, as she almost always does at the drop of a song parody or poem contest, scoring a useful pair of four-leg-holed bikini briefs. Usually I ask second-place Losers to send in a photo of themselves wearing their silly prize hat or whatever, but I hereby suspend that request this week. Duncan Stevens also inked with a crafty take on the Invite’s favorite parody song, “Be Our Guest,” but finished “above the fold” with one of several zings this week at the electoral college. (I’m actually not convinced that we should throw out that system, but I try not to let my opinions on the issues determine who gets ink.) Duncan is an almost nonstop ink-blotter, but this week’s third-place finisher, Jon Ketzner, almost doubled his lifetime ink with his runner-up and two honorable mentions. Until this week, Jon was much more visible in this very column, in my selections of unprintable entries (e.g., things to be thankful for: “I’m thankful that my vegan wife’s refusal to put anything in her mouth that had a mother extends only to her dietary requirements”). *LOSER BRUNCH THIS SUNDAY: IT MIGHT NOT EVEN RAIN* ** Now that Hurricane Florence seems not to be heading northward, it seems as if we in the D.C. area will get off easy this weekend after all. So Sunday’s Loser brunch at the Indian restaurant Aditi is on (at noon, in the Kingstowne area a couple of miles outside the Beltway in Virginia). More info and a link to RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). I live for a good buffet, which this is. Aditi is a fairly small storefront restaurant (though as surprisingly elegant one), so it’d be especially helpful if we know how many places we need at the table. --- To those in the Loser Community who’ll be dancing with Florence in the coming days, I wish you a safe and dry week (come on up here and brunch!). ====================================================================== WEEK 1298, published September 23, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1298: Oh, G’s The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results. (Eww.) The alleged video genre of CAB -- Cute Animals Barfing -- was Bob Staake's cartoon for the ABC-phrase contest, Week 1179. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow September 20, 2018 at 3:05 p.m. EDT Given that I continue to have the fortunate task to post a new Style Invitational contest every seven days, I’m particularly drawn to contests that I can repeat, either with updated material (e.g., a contest using that week’s headlines) or by breaking up the possible source material into different groups. So I was pretty excited in 2016 to introduce a contest for three-letter abbreviations using just three letters of the alphabet — hey, I can check off eight spots in the Future Contests calendar. It was the idea of Loser Jeff Shirley (who, I see, just scored his 200th blot of ink — mazel tov, Jeff!) and is a variation on another recurring contest, one that asks readers to compare two real entities that have the same abbreviation. Jeff reminded me recently that we did the ABCs in June 2016 and the DEFs in July 2017, and ahem ... But I didn’t jump on the suggestion, because I wasn’t all that overwhelmed with the two previous contests; they just seemed arbitrary and a little strained. But do tend to be susceptible to the one-two punch, and when 177-time Loser Jon Gearhart wrote me to ask for the very same thing (and I wasn’t exactly brimming with new contests), I acquiesced and posted Week 1298 . I’ve come to the conclusion — we’ll see if it was right — that the humor would have more of a point if the three-letter combination worked as a plausible abbreviation — not just matching any old phrase — for something that might be referred to by just the letters: an agency, an organization, someone’s initials, government*corporate*academic bureaucratese, a medical condition, or some phenomenon that people might abbreviate as a sort of slang, like “TMI,” “PDA,” “NSFW.” So it’s not all that limiting. And this time I’m also allowing repeated letters in the abbreviation. Here are some of the winners from our two previous contests. I see that most, but certainly not all, of the inking entries describe something that would take an abbreviation; I might have become more focused on that idea by the time of he DEF contest. Also notice how using the abbreviation in a sentence could both make it more convincing and make the entry funnier. (See “Before Advent of Cellphones,” “ ‘Don’t Even’ face” and “Failed Entry Dumpster” below, among others) *ABC’ing You: Report from Week 1179 * (see the full results at bit.ly*invite1183 ) In Week 1179 we asked for some fanciful ABC (or BAC, CBA, etc.) phrases. “Maniacal Noxious Orange: trending color in spray-on tans,” by 155-time Loser Bird Waring, was certainly fanciful, but a tad alphabetically challenged. Loser. *4th place:* Business Class Alternative: Leg-shortening surgery so you can fly comfortably in coach. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) [who is about 6-6] *3rd place:* Carolina Bathroom Attendants: “Our business is watching yours.” (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines) *2nd place:* Aryan Battle Cry: “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists . . . ” (Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.) *And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:* Cot And Bagel: A low-budget bed and breakfast. (Chris Damm, Charles Town, W.Va.) *A Cut Below: honorable mentions* Concealing By Acronym: A way of hiding one’s true message, as in “*MAKE AMERICA G*et *R*eally*E*xclusive *A*nd *T*errifying *AGAIN.*” (Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.) Assured Commercial Bankruptcy: What was stamped on the business loan application for Leakies brand diapers. (David Kleinbard, Mamaroneck, N.Y.) Anesthesia by Clinton: Box set of the candidate’s favorite policy speeches. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) Before Advent of Cellphones: Term denoting ancient times. “Your mom’s hairstyle is, like, BAC.” (Edward Gordon, Austin) Aging-Brain Cramp: Also known as a senior moment. (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) Census Approximation Bureau: The government’s plan to save billions by hiring one guy to browse Google Maps on an iPhone. (Jeff Shirley, Richmond, Va.) Certified Business Abomination: The creep in accounting who wants to go over your travel claim with you in person. (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.) Boneless Chicken Association: Raising rubbery, nugget-shaped birds since 1983. (Gordon Cobb, Marietta, Ga.) “A Bear!” (Crunch.): The final line in Quentin Tarantino’s new Goldilocks film. (Amanda Yanovitch, Midlothian, Va.) Angry Birds Champion: What you should not list under “Awards” on your résumé. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) *DEFinitions: Report from Week 1238 (full results atwapo.st*invite1242 )* In Week 1238 we continued three-letter abbreviating through the alphabet with some DEF, FED, EDF, etc., phrases. Some of the inking entries below are a bit of a stretch, but the Empress put on her YJPs — her Yoga Judging Pants — and flexed a little. Not surprisingly, many of the entries contained various forms of the f-word. They canceled one another out. 4th place: EDF: Electoral District Freshening: Oh, “gerrymandering” sounds so unsavory. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) 3rd place: EDF: Elf Defies Fate: Jeff Sessions’s tagline on memos as he keeps his job for one more week. (As of press time.) (Ellen Ryan, Rockville, Md.) 2nd place and the pink rubber octopus fingers: DEF: “Don’t Even” Face: “I was just about to float the idea of having the guys over for poker night, but I got the DEF.” (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: FED: Flagrantly Elementary Deduction: Printable euphemism for “No @#$#, Sherlock.” (Peter Shawhan, Silver Spring, Md.) Lo-DEF: Honorable mentions Defenders of Flat Earth: “Our members are fighting for truth around the globe.” (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines) Domestic Fish Eggs: Low-rent caviar — a.k.a. “skid roe.” (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) Extraterrestrial Defense Fund: Established in Roswell, N.M., to assist illegal aliens. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) Expressive Digit Fluency: Sign-language requirement for cabbies. (Jon Gearhart) Ego-Feeding Department: One federal agency that’d be sure to be fully funded. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) EFD: “What do you mean I’m a BFD? I’m ENORMOUS.” (Ivars Kuskevics, Takoma Park, Md.) Fatal Dating Error: “So, I’ve asked my mother to join us for dinner.” (Hildy Zampella, Falls Church, Va.) Franklin Delano Eisenhower: “Probably the third-greatest president after Abe and me.” — D.J.T. (Dave Zarrow, Reston, Va.) Females for Erectile Dysfunction: Women of a certain age who, quite frankly, have had enough already. (Nan Reiner) Firing Every Day: “Mr. President, what will be your main focus for the remainder of your term?” “I’m gonna keep going with the FED.” (Stephen Gold, London) Executive Daily Flattery: That folder presented to the president twice a day with only positive articles about him. (Lynne Ann Larkin, Vero Beach, Fla.) Emergency Fruitcake Delivery: A post-Christmas service provided by regifting centers. (Chris Doyle) And Last: Failed-Entry Dumpster: The Empress’s trash can. “Welp, another whole page for the FED.” (Chris Doyle) *GRIDIOCY*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1294** *A headline submitted by a couple of people but was used in a previous contest* The very day after I posted the Week 1294 word-search grid four weeks ago, King of the Losers Chris Doyle posted this on theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook page: “Week 1216’s 16x19 grid had 68 non-Y vowels, and I thought that was too few. Week 1294’s18x19 grid has just 58 — 17% of the 342 letters. In comparison, 38% of the letters in English words are the vowels A, E, I, O, and U. This week’s gonna be tough. (I haven’t begun yet.)” Frank Osen added: “And what’s this mysterious aversion to the letter C?” The general conclusion was that the algorithm that Puzzle-Maker.com uses to fill in word search grids would work better for us if I fed it more words to it, so that there’d be less fill, including all those Z’s and X’s. (Next time I’ll just keep adding words until the grid won’t fit on its spot on the print page in The Post’s Arts & Style section.) But of course, Chris ended up with two blots of ink this week, as well as several more on my short­list. And Frank nabbed four, including his hands-down winner this week: Frank traced through the grid, and two Z’s, to assemble DJ DIZZY G — and designate that as the secret rap handle of Rudy Giuliani, complete with sample rap. (Who needs C’s?) In fact, this week’s grid proved multiply fruitful; my short­list far exceeded the 39 entries — from 30 different people — that saw ink this week; your “noinks” this week may well be useful in the retrospective contest I run every December. In addition to Frank’s — whew — 18th Invite win and Inks 365-368, the Losers’ Circle is all Usual Suspects this week: Dudley Thompson also made the best of the Z’s with “Zitsen,” the other red-nosed reindeer; Mark Raffman with the hashtag “MaToo”; and Jesse Frankovich’s ultra-worrywart, “Alarmopath.” On the other hand, we welcome two First Offenders: Annie Westover with Gropy the Small-Handed Dwarf, and Paul White with “fourarm” as whatVishnu does when forewarned. And we have to welcome back Don Juran, who blotted up six inks in 1997 and 1998 and then disappeared for 20 years. But one of those six blots was first place — in one of the hardest contests ever, one we never repeated: You had to make a relevant and funny cryptogram of some noun or noun phrase: i.e., you replace each letter with another letter of your choice, and if the person’s name has, say, two T’s, then the cryptogram would have to have the same letter to replace both T’s. (Hmm, should I court disaster again?) Anyway, Don’s was: Rush Limbaugh = Paid Blowhard. He also had the first honorable mention: Watergate = Dicktrick. We hope to see lots more from Don, as well as from Paul and Annie. *AND TWO WEEKS FROM NOW, YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED ... * Will be Week 1300. I’ve gotten a couple of suggestions for a contest pegged to that number; I’d welcome others, especially with persuasive examples. Email me soon! *NEXT LOSER EVENT: INVASION OF GETTYSBURG, OCT. 21* After last Sunday’s highly enjoyable (I swear, I had no more than six buffet plates) Loser brunch at the Indian restaurant Aditi, the next Loser brunch will be its annual visit to Gettysburg, Pa., home of Loser and Genuine Tour Guide Roger Dalrymple, who’ll give our group a driving*walking tour of the various Civil War battle sites and town landmarks. The Royal Consort and I have gone up several times and enjoyed the lunch and touring, and the weather is much more likely to be hospitable in October than in the heat of summer. Anyone can be part of the group; carpools are often formed. RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). *IT’S (ALMOST) IN THE MAIL!* My apologies to those whogot ink last week, for the contest to interpret part of the Constitution: Your prizes will be as much as a week late, because I was off repenting for Yom Kippur. Magnets will go out tonight, bigger swag next Tuesday. ====================================================================== WEEK 1299, published September 30, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1299: The wordie’s feast The Empress dishes about the 50 new Scrabble words in this week’s Style Invitational Chyron fail. “Chyron,” a video caption, is one of 50 new Scrabble words we’ll be using in this week’s Style Invitational (Screen image) Chyron fail. “Chyron,” a video caption, is one of 50 new Scrabble words we’ll be using in this week’s Style Invitational (Screen image) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow September 27, 2018 at 3:32 p.m. EDT We were delighted that Merriam-Webster gave the Empress a list of 40 (and upon request, 10 more) of the new words in the Scrabble dictionary, which I know you’ll all put to good use this week in our Week 1299 word chain contest. Less so that the MWers — let’s call them Emwers — didn’t tell us how to find the hundreds of other new entries, even though they’ve all been lurking in the listings at scrabble.merriam.com for some time. Even Loser Edward Gordon, who regularly plays tournament Scrabble, couldn’t get his hands on a list. (He says the new words are not yet acceptable for tournaments, which use a different word list.) For the purposes of our Week 1299 word chain contest, here’s a glossary of the 50 words we’re using. Definitions are lifted from the m-w.com, dictionary, occasional other Internet sources, and my own wildly edifying commentary. *Aquafaba: *The liquid that results when beans are cooked in water. Aquafaba is used especially in vegan cooking as an egg white substitute. Arancini: An appetizer of deep-fried rice balls stuffed with savory fillings. Yum. Beatdown: A literal violent beating, or an overwhelming defeat. Bestie: Best friend. Bibimbap: A Korean dish of rice with cooked vegetables, usually meat, and often a raw or fried egg. It’s often served in aspecial stone bowl . Delicious. Bitcoin: What cool*foolhardy people use for money. Bizjet: A small plane used by corporate executives. Bokeh : Coming from the Japanese word for “blur,” it’s the aesthetic quality of the blurry background in some photos that contrasts with the sharp focus on the subject. Like this gorgeous one . Botnet: A network of computers that have been linked together by malware, hacking, etc. First used in 2003, according to Merriam-Webster; we’ve been bedeviled for quite a while now. Cankle : Cankles are thick ankles; it’s a portmanteau of calves + ankles. Mean. Captcha: The computer security technology requiring Web page visitors to look at one or more pictures and answer a question to prove that they’re human and not computer bots. When you fill out The Style Invitational’s entry form, such asthis week’s, you’re likely to be asked to check off which of nine photos contain a picture of a vehicle, etc. And yes, of course,the bots are figuring it out. Capcom: Capsule communicator, the person responsible for communicating via radio with the crew of a space mission. The government luvvvs portmanteaux. Chyron: Pronounced “ky-ron,” it’s the caption that runs under video clips, as on the news, and named for a 1970s manufacturer. Conlang: Constructed + language, a language that’s purposely invented, such as Esperanto or Klingon, rather than one that develops organically. My guess is that conlangs tend to have a lot of portmanteau words, like*conlang.* Cotija: A hard, white, crumbly Mexican cheese, described as resembling a cross between feta and parmesan. It doesn’t melt. Emoji: Well, you know what that is. But did you know that the name doesn’t come from “emotion,” as “emoticon” does? According to M-W, it’s a Japanese portmanteau: “e” for “picture”; “moji” for “letter” or “character.” Also, it says, the plural may be either*emoji* or*emojis.* Ew: Non-tournament Scrabble players are surely not turning up their noses at this immensely helpful addition to the two-letter-word list. Exome: Pronounced EX-ome, it’s another portmanteau,*exon + genome.* The exome is the portion of the genome known to encode proteins; sequencing the exome rather than the entire genome is less costly but still yields useful data. Facepalm: A noun or a verb referring to covering your face in dismay . Farro: Alarge-grained kind of wheat that is nutritious and delicious. (You may notice that I seem to find every kind of food delicious. This is not quite true: I can’t learn to like Asian bitter melon, and, well, Peeps and candy corn aren’t food, so they don’t count.) Frowny: M-W lists it as a noun as well as an adjective. So: Does it really take more muscles to frown than to smile, as your aunt’s favorite chain email insists? Snopes determines it “unproven,” but does supply an amusing variety of muscle counts. Gamify: It does*not* mean to make something smell like roadkill; it’s adding games to training programs to make them more interesting and understandable. *Gamification* is the noun. Hivemind: The one-word variant of*hive mind,* “the collective thoughts, ideas, and opinions of a group of people (such as Internet users) regarded as functioning together as a single mind,” as a hive of bees does. I wouldn’t say the Loser Community is “a single mind,” opinion-wise, but it’s a heck of a collective repository of knowledge and source of wit. Judgy: Pejorative for the already-by-now pejorative*judgmental.* Listicle : *List + article,* an “information” format popular with those who tend not to read two paragraphs in a row. Macaron: A little French meringue sandwich cookie . It is, needless to say, delicious. Not the same as*macaroon* or Macron . Mulloway: “A large, silvery fish*(Argyrosomus japonicus synonym A. hololepidotus)* of chiefly coastal waters from Africa to Australia that is valued as a food and sport fish. I have never had this fish, but I am sure that it is delicious. Nutjob: Choose your own example. Nubber: In baseball, a weakly hit grounder. OK: Added for the two-letter spelling. M-W dates it back to 1839, and says it was a joke-spelling abbreviation for “all correct.” Onboard: As an adjective, describing what’s carried in a vehicle, etc. Huh, I see that M-W does not yet acknowledge its corporate-speak use as a verb: to introduce and integrate a new employee into the workforce. Nor does it say it’s an adverb, as in “the new passengers came onboard.” I guess*aboard* still lives. Papasan: A bowl-shaped chair on a cylindrical base, usually wicker or rattan. What you get at Pier 1 . Pizzazz: That fourth Z adds that much more ... flair and panache! Puggle: Pug x beagle , yet another portmanteau crossbreed. Rootkit : A malicious piece of software that grants a remote operator complete access to a computer system. Santoku: A Japanese chef’s knife whose top curves downward at the tip. Schneid: A losing streak. It derives in some complicated way from a German idiom for*tailor* that was used in card games. Sheeple: “People who are docile, compliant, or easily influenced : people likened to sheep.” Sho: An archaic monetary unit once used in Tibet — and surely included now only to provide a strategically useful three-letter Scrabble word. Sriracha: Now-ubiquitous red hot sauce (not a trademark!). It is delicious but not my favorite red hot sauce, which is this. Substorm: A localized disturbance of the earth’s magnetic field in high latitudes, typically manifested as an aurora. Truther: M-W defines it as “one who believes that the truth about an important subject or event is being concealed from the public by a powerful conspiracy.” In actual use, it’s a disparaging term to describe someone who’s taken in by crackpot claims and theories. Twerk: Twerking: Sexually suggestive dancing characterized by rapid, repeated hip thrusts and shaking of the buttocks especially while squatting. First known use: 2001. So think of all the years when the word existed but you*didn’t* have to read about it. But have you tried doing it ? Upcycle: To recycle into a product more valuable than the original, as to make expensive shoes from plastic bags. Vape: To inhale an electronic cigarette. Wayback: The area in the very back of a van or SUV, the equivalent of the trunk of a sedan. Wordie: Someone who’s fascinated by words and language. I don’t know anyone like that. Yowza: Interjection “used to express surprise or amazement.” Zen: A Buddhist sect, or, lowercase, “a state of calm attentiveness in which one’s actions are guided by intuition rather than by conscious effort.” Another long-overdue and direly needed addition to the three-letter Scrabble list. Not to mention the list of Z-words. Zomboid The adjectival form of*zombie.* While the zomboid form of*adjective* would be *aaaaaad-jehhhhhhhc-tivvvvvvvve.* So how about the word chain part of the Week 1299 contest? The idea is to be funny and witty and entertaining to a reader —*not* to force people to solve a puzzle at every step. To be sure, getting a subtle joke is rewarding to a reader, but it shouldn’t become work. Over the years, we’ve had several name-chain contests, in which someone’s name was the beginning and end of the chain, with up to 25 “links” of other names. Several times over, as I struggled to figure out what entry after entry was getting at, I swore never to judge another one. But this time, the chains will be smaller — 6 to 14 links total — and won’t be all names. Use the example I provide at the top of the column as guidance for the various types of links you can use — content, synonyms, wordplay. Any phrases you use you should be very brief. *Please don’t submit your chains as a vertical list. * I’ll be running the chains as in the example, with arrows between the links. It turns out that the arrow symbol I used online in a recent contest ( → ), and use in today’s online example, does not work in the print version of our publishing system — the arrow just turns into white space. So in print we’ll have something that looks like a fat greater-than sign. So you can use anything that makes it clear when one link ends and the next begins, and that I can easily replace with the symbol we’ll be using. *REALLY, WHATS TO SAY ABOUT WEEK 1295?* Well, that the bad-news*worse news jokes were fun and zingy, and that the 31 entries (eight appear only online, since the Week 1299 word list took up space) are spread out among 24 Losers; no one got more than two blots of ink this week. I should find lots of material to use as Style Invitational Ink of the Day graphics. Meanwhile! My computer crashed, and it’s too long a column anyway! So that’s all we’re saying about Week 1295! Congrats to expat Brit Parisian Brian Allgar on his second Invite win, and his fifth ink “above the fold” in only 31 blots, and to all the other Losers. ====================================================================== WEEK 1300, published October 7, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1300: Write some wrongs The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s contest and results The sequel “National Velvet II”: Bob Staake’s cartoon example for Week 693 in 2006. By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Oct. 4, 2018 at 3:17 p.m. EDT We’re celebrating Style Invitational Week 1300 with yet another movie-themed contest; Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List puts the “MOV” label on 43 of them. But the vast majority of them focus on wordplay on the titles of the movies, rather than their plots. This week, however, you (and the reader) need to have some familiarity with the plot: At the suggestion of Loser Duncan Stevens, the Empress asks you to create a “13” version of a movie in which something goes terribly (but humorously) wrong. There*have*been several plot-based Invites over the years, though not one just like Week 1300. The closest might be Week 136, to update the end of a classic book or film for modern movie audiences; Week 324, movie prequels; and Week 693, sequels. Here’s some ink from those contests. Note that wordplay still manages to get lots of blots. **From Week 136, 1995:***Most of these create “Hollywood endings” for heretofore tragic or at least nuanced stories.* New end for Kafka’s *“Metamorphosis”:* Giant bug runs amok, terrifying community. Lovestruck gal scientist tries to save it, but Air Force blows it to smithereens. (Jonathan Paul) New end for *“Oedipus Rex”:* Oedipus comes back to town, kills his father, marries his mother and then blinds himself. However, it turns out he was adopted! He finds his birth mother, who is a brilliant eye surgeon and who restores his sight after a 16-hour operation featuring tight closeups of knitted brows over surgical masks. (Steven King) New end for *“Thelma & Louise”:* As the getaway convertible sails through the air off the cliff, Thelma pushes a button releasing a giant parachute over the car, letting it drift safely down. Suddenly, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid land in the back seat, having leapt off the other side of the cliff! A mid-air make-out session ensues . . . (Honus Thuermer) *And the winner of the Pop-Out-Your-Eye-With-a-Soup-Spoon magician’s illusion:*New end for*“Citizen Kane” -*- The reporter discovers that Rosebud was Kane’s sled. He rescues it from the furnace and uses it to enter the Olympic luge event, winning a gold medal. (Jerry Podlesak) *“Rear Window”: *Raymond Burr, acting as his own attorney, successfully defends himself against the murder charges by impeaching the eyewitness testimony of Jimmy Stewart, who’d seen an invisible rabbit before, too. (Tommy Litz) *“The Grapes of Wrath”:* The Joads move back to Oklahoma, where one day, shootin’ for some food, they discover some bubblin’ crude . . . (Joseph Romm, Washington) *“2001”:* Right after they disable HAL, something comprehensible happens. (Russell Beland, Springfield) *“La Boheme”:* Instead of dying of consumption, Mimi dies of a new drug-resistant strain of consumption. (Jonathan Paul) **Week 324, 1999, prequels:* * *“It’s a Terrible Life”: * After losing the use of his legs, young Mr. Potter wishes he had never been born. But after an angel shows him just how unbearably chipper the town of Bedford Falls would be without him, he changes his mind for the good of mankind. (Art Grinath) *“James Bond, 006”: * A man with a learner’s permit to kill. (Brian Broadus; Bob Sorensen) *“Star Wars, Episode 0”:* Ninety minutes of Mrs. Skywalker’s ultrasound of little Anakin. On the first weekend, it grosses $100 million. (Aaron Kravitz) [The first real “Star Wars” prequel, “The Phantom Menace,” had come out a month earlier.] *“Tuesday Night Fever”: *The dancing is intense, but stops at 11 because, hey, it’s a school night. (Russell Beland) *“Paleozoic Park”:* Trilobytes are cloned from fossilized DNA, and a theme park is created around them. No one comes. Then someone gets a better idea (Beth Baniszewski) *“The Undergraduate”:* Benjamin is a little worried about his acne. Score by Chad and Jeremy. (Jonathan Paul) *“Go Ask Dorothy”: * Fed up with her addiction to hallucinogens, a young girl’s parents send her to live with her aunt and uncle on a farm where, unfortunately, mushrooms grow wild. (Sarah and Amy Splitt) *** ***From Week 693, 2006, movie sequels: ** *“Bonnie and Clyde II”: *The troopers just keep shooting into the car for another 127 minutes. (Russell Beland) *“Snakes on a Blimp”: *Hey, what’s that hissing noise . . . hey, what’s that BIG hissing noise? (Beth Baniszewski) *“Gandhi II”: *No more Mister Nice Guy! (Andy Bassett) *“Upper West Side Story”: *The remaining Jets grow up and become bond traders, taking ballet classes in their off-hours. (Ira Allen) *“Brokeback Molehill”:* Even in the rural West, some traditional attitudes are softening, so Ennis’s new love interest is just no big deal. (Russell Beland) *“The Other 603 Commandments”*: Moses sits up there on Mount Sinai taking notes about such topics as pigeon sacrifice and whether bats are kosher. Except for the slightly racy Commandments 82 through 105, which cover forbidden sexual relations, the tale is a bit short of epic. (Andrew Schneider) *“The Great Escape 2”:* Capt. Hilts, in another daring escape attempt, makes it out of the camp but wrecks his motorcycle trying to avoid a governess and her seven children. (Tom Galgano) *“Rocky 13”:* Rocky Balboa, now 92, winds up in the same nursing home as his nemesis Clubber Lang, 87. The rivalry is reignited after their wheelchairs bump on the way to bingo. They throw some Jell-O at each other, then take a nap. (Michael Levy) *“You’ve Got Spam”: *Kathleen breaks up with Joe and fears she’ll never love again, until she starts a new e-mail relationship with a Ni­ger­ian banker. (Brendan Beary) *“Pay Per Moon”: *Addie gives up the grift and settles down to an honest life as a stripper. (Steve Langer) *“Ferris Bueller’s Flex Day”:* Our hero, all grown up, spends a day away from the office waiting for the cable guy to arrive, paying bills, mowing his lawn and finally sneaking in that trip to the bank he’s been needing to make. (Russell Beland) *“King Kong: The Next Generation”: *After her mother pretty much explodes in childbirth, Fay Darrow Kong tries to adjust to life in New York as a 20 foot human-ape hybrid. Kids learn to stop teasing pretty quickly, but she is isolated and lonely until World War II, where she single-handedly captures Okinawa in 27 minutes. (Jeff Brechlin) *“The Passion of the Christ 2, 3 and 4”: * [The real one was made by notoriously anti-Semitic Mel Gibson] The Jews go on to cause more trouble in the world in 476, as Rome falls to the Jewish barbarians; 1431, as Joan of Arc is burned at the stake by Jewish mobs; and 1941, when Jews of the Imperial Navy send their Zeros to attack Pearl Harbor. (Arthur Litoff) *GAD-ZUKES*! IT’S WEEK 1296: THE INKING NEW-WORD POEMS** Non-inking headline by Chris Doyle; Jeff Contompasis used the same pun in a non-inking poem.* **Our Week 1296 list of 35 terms recently added to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary naturally generated a boatload of zingy poems in which our resident Loserbards did a good impression of not being permanently stuck in the 20th century. Matt Monitto, who at age 26 is just a few years older than Generation Z, even included*shawty, * a word that M-W has not yet acknowledged, in his Romeo rap. Matt also got ink with a song parody (“Guac on the Mild Side”), as did Nan Reiner with “O Donny Boy.” Our usual rule in the Invite is not to run previously published material, but the Empress bent the rules ever so slightly in this case: Nan sent her parody to us on Sept. 17, three days after Paul Manafort copped his plea (“Oh, Donny Boy, the perps, the perps are singing,* From Flynn to Cohen, and now ’tis Manafort ...”). A day or two later, professional parody singer (andrecent Loser ) Sandy Riccardi was looking for timely material, and I gave my blessing for Sandy and her husband Richard to immediately record “Donny Boy,” which they posted on Sept. 20. (This very day, Meanwhile, the Riccardis just put out an original Kavanaugh song called “Boys Will Be ...” ) Our Losers’ Circle this week — in fact, the whole list of entries — consists of veteran Style Invitational Losers, virtually all of them known for extensive poetry ink. With his Lose Cannon this week, Mark Raffman nabs his 17th Invite win and 524th ink overall; Nan Reiner marks her 61st appearance “above the fold, for 408 inks in all; Robert Schechter, a regularly published poet and translator, gets his 209th ink. And ding! This week Duncan Stevens passes the 300 mark, with a runner-up plus two honorable mentions — as well as his milkshake-winning contest idea and all those examples. Duncan didn’t start Inviting till Week 970, in 2012; the only Losers with more ink and (barely) later debuts are Mark (Week 979) and Danielle Nowlin (Week 995, 305 blots). Wow, pretty good herd of Invite foals back in 2012. *What Doug Dug: * The favs this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood were Jesse Frankovich’s couplet calling zoodles (zucchini noodles) “impasta’: and Mark Raffman’s and Robert Schechter’s “TL;DR” winners. As I predicted, I got numerous Invitational-themed entries for both “time suck” and “TL;DR.” Hmph. *A Going Concern: A real “shy bladder” story: * Loser Chuck Helwig entered this poem featuring the new-to-M-W term “shy bladder,” noting that “it’s true. In the late ’90s this happened at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, during a random drug test”: While in the Air Force, a few years ago I knew of a colonel who just couldn’t go. For once in a while, no matter your rank, One made a donation to the porcelain tank. Each month they drew names (always at random) And you needed a “witness,” to watch you in tandem. In line we all stood, each waiting our turn, Drinking coffee until the point of no return. But as he stepped up, the colonel got madder. Quoting his “witness”: he’s got a shy bladder! Uncomfortable he was (we thought he’d explode) Till a doc grabbed a catheter, and – yup – then he flowed. ====================================================================== WEEK 1301, published October 14, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1301: Fibs as footnotes Looking back at the current-events poems of our 2006 contest Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan had plenty to smile about in 2006: She’d signed a two-book deal plus movie rights, and her first novel was coming out. Her smile faded days later, after all the plagiarism was revealed. (Chitose Suzuki*AP) Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan had plenty to smile about in 2006: She’d signed a two-book deal plus movie rights, and her first novel was coming out. Her smile faded days later, after all the plagiarism was revealed. (Chitose Suzuki*AP) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Oct. 11, 2018 at 3:52 p.m. EDT This week’s Style Invitational contest —Week 1301, for Fib poems — is one we’ve done only once before, back in the spring of 2006. That year, all the poems were supposed to be about current events, a requirement I’ve dropped this time. And indeed, looking back at the results of Week 659 (here, without the Post paywall ), I needed to do a little research to jog my memory on some of the references. Below are some explainers. I don’t have any concern that an Invite entry will be so topical that readers a dozen years from now won’t know what the heck it was about. I like topical! The Fibs this week just have to still be understandable by Nov. 11, 2018. Since syllable counting is the whole point of the Fib — based on the mathematical Fibonacci sequence — we obviously have to strictly observe the 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 rule. But what counts as a syllable does allow for some flexibility; “aren’t,” for example, could be one syllable or two. A dictionary listing will of course count as valid. So here’s some annotated ink from May 2006. *4th place: Where’s That Receipt, Claude Allen? We clerks get nervous When you’re near Customer Service. (*Jay Shuck, Minneapolis) Claude Allen was a top adviser to President George W. Bush when he suddenly resigned in early 2006 to, what else, spend more time with the fam. It turned out that he was about to be arrested on charges of fraudulently obtaining thousands of dollars’ worth of refunds and credits from department stores: According to the police quoted in a Post story, “Allen would purchase an item, take it to his car, return to the store, select the same item, take it to the counter and get a refund based on the receipt for the merchandise in his car.” He pleaded guilty in county court and got probation, a fine and community service. *3rd place:* *Duke* * LAX* * Scandal* * Has the whole* * Campus in a fix,* * Because boys can’t control their sticks. *(Andrew Hoenig, Rockville) LAX is lacrosse, and this runner-up entry was written prematurely, as it turned out.In a case that no doubt fuels the anti-#MeToo forces to this day, several members of the Duke University lacrosse team were charged with raping a stripper who had been hired for a party in March 2006. In addition, the team’s coach was forced to resign, and the school canceled the rest of the team’s season. But in the ensuing months, the stripper’s very graphic account fell apart and misconduct by the prosecution was alleged — eventually leading to all charges being dropped against the players. *2nd place: * *White House Shows us: Tony’s in, John may take a hike: Proves no two Snow flacks are alike. * (Ira Allen, Bethesda) Tony Snow, a well-known commentator on conservative media, had replaced Scott McClellan as White House press secretary. Snow served only a year, having developed colon cancer; he died cancer in 2008, at age 53. Meanwhile, John W. Snow, the former CEO of CSX, had been George W. Bush’s treasury secretary for three years when on May 30, 2006, he was replaced with another Wall Street exec, Hank Paulson. Turns out that Snow hadn’t paid income taxes on $24 million of loan forgiveness from his CSX days. (Oops! Maybe TurboTax didn’t have that line.) *And the Winner of the Inker:* *When* * The* * Chinese* * PM comes,* * You meekly kowtow.* * ’Cause Dubya, Hu’s your daddy now.* (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) In April 2006 President Bush brought out the 21-gun salute for the visit of by Presiden Hu Jintao (I’m not sure how we figured that “PM” was an acceptable alternative title). And — tell me if you’ve heard this lately — Hu “offered vague assurances that he will address U.S. economic concerns while resisting tougher action on Iran and North Korea,” as a Post story reported. A carefully staged photo op that day was upstaged protesting China’s persecution oppression of practitioners of the Falun Gong sect. Bush apologized to Hu for the embarrassment, but don’t say he didn't stand up for American principles: Instead of a black-tie state dinner, Bush offered his counterpart merely a halibut luncheon. Honorable Mentions: *To Joe Lieberman:* * It* * Ain’t* * Brave, your* * Behavior.* * Please kiss a tiny* * Bit less presidential hiney. *(David Smith, Santa Cruz, Calif.) Among the most hawkish of Democrats, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut was often criticized over his embrace of the Iraq War and support for the president. *Whenn* * That* * Aprill* * Wyth showres* * Hath made hys drizzle,* * Thenn wander pilgryms, fo’ shizzle. * * -- K. Viswanathan, Cambridge, Mass. *(Mark Eckenwiler, Washington) In a fairy tale story, Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan, as part of a rich two-book deal, released the young-adult novel “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.” It didn’t take long — less than two weeks — for the Harvard Crimson to note a number of passages in the book that clearly had been lifted from two novels by Megan McCafferty.as well as other sources. Viswanathan called the copying unconscious, but the publisher recalled all copies of the book from stores. She went on to get a law degree from Georgetown. *Oh Keith, Now please: Climbing trees? Why don’t you grow up? You aren’t 55 anymore.* (Eric Murphy, Ann Arbor, Mich.) Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, then 62, “has been hospitalised after falling out of a palm tree at an exclusive Fiji resort,” according to an April 2006 article in The Guardian. It turned out that the immortal had fractured his skull and suffered bleeding inside. He’s still playing. *Yes, Bonds Will be Inducted. But still, by and by, I bet they’ll change that “u” to “i.”* (Roy Ashley, Washington) Roy turned out to be right on one prediction, wrong (so far) on the other. Baseball legend Barry Bonds, caught up in the BALCO steroid scandal, would be indicted in 2007, and convicted in 2011, on charges of lying and impeding the federal investigation into the case. But though his conviction was overturned in 2015, Bonds is still not in the Hall of Fame. He has four more years of eligibility. *Poor* * Tom* * DeLay* * Once held sway,* * The fearsome Hammer.* * Will his next House be the slammer? *(Mark Eckenwiler) Caught up in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, onetime House majority leader Tom “The Hammer” DeLay had just announced that he would be giving up his seat. And sure enough, DeLay was convicted of election fraud in 2010 and sentenced to three years in prison — but he stayed out on appeal, and was eventually acquitted. He eventually became a lobbyist. *Off* * * *Drives* * * *Britney* * * *With her kid.* * * *Folks want to shoot her:* * * *She has a laptop commuter.* (Jay Shuck) In addition to driving a car while her baby was on her lap, Britney Spears wasn’t wearing a seat belt. *Why John Can’t add Or subtract: Is it because we Gave him a TI-83? *(Janet O’Donnell Lacey, Arlington) This wasn’t exactly “current events” by 2006; the Texas Instruments graphing calculator was introduced 10 years earlier — and is still sold today. Also, of course, it wasn’t about adding and subtracting; the humor would have worked better in the early 1970s. *In ’08 If it’s “Frist” Or “Hillary” to check, I’ll vote for Sharpton from Quebec. *(Elden Carnahan) Senate Majority Leader Frist announced in late 2006 that he would not run for president in 2008. I won’t ask Elden if he voted for Clinton. *No Ink. I stink. Humor gone Since last election: It’s your fault, Mr. President. *(Michelle Stupak, Ellicott City) Ah, Michelle. Remember the good old days? *FLIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES*: THE ‘TYPO’ HEADS OF WEEK 1297* **Non-inking headline by Chris Doyle* Always so much fun, these bank-head contests: both the ones to reinterpret a real headline or, as in Week 1297 , to change a character with a “typo” and then describing the “news.” This week’sresults — 38 entries, including a graphic, by 28 people — left plenty of inkworthy entries robbed. (Word to the wise: Historically, headline entries tend to get a lot of ink in our December retrospectives, in which you can enter or reenter any of the past year’s contests.) I just noticed that our Losers’ Circle this week — the winner and runners-up — are entirely T-free; maybe nonpolitical entries felt refreshing. In fact, there turned out to be quite a bit less political zingery than in most Invites lately, though it pops up now and then. Frank Osen wins the contest for the Oh Come On Now 19th time, while second-placer John Hutchins scores his 100th (and 101st) Invite ink blots. Jeff Contompasis gets his 42nd runner-up prize, but he’s already told me that his imminent “You Gotta Play to Lose” mug will be only his second in that style. And J. Larry Schott — along with Drew Bennett and John’s wife, Connie, one of the three members of our West Plains, Mo. (population 12,000), Loser Bureau — scores either a mug or a bag for his 10th ink “above the fold” and 72nd in all. *What Doug Dug: *The faves (or, as we now also can say, favs ) of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood this week were John Hutchins’s second-place ticking - tickling; Howard Walderman’s “folding pattern” about D.C. sports teams (not the Capitals!), and Tom Witte’s “What’s Old Is Ew.” *The Scarlet Letter** *for most unprintable entry: “Friction at the C&O Canal Anal Park: Vaseline shortage shuts down sex club.” By John Hutchins, who might hope that his kids don’t read this far in The Style Invitational. *Paper, Plastic or Grossery? * By popular demand (and because I love it), after we run out of “I Got a B in Punmanship” Grossery Bags, I’m ordering another set of cloth “Whole Fools” bags, with Bob Staake’s clever parody . ====================================================================== WEEK 1302, published October 21, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1302: GHI — Going Half Ink It’s not you, it’s not me, it’s the contest. Some just don’t pan out. ’Sokay. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s hearing room tirade attacking those who would question the past of Judge Brett Kavanaugh inspired Frank Osen’s “Graham Hysteria Index.” (Pool photo by Tom Williams*CQ Roll Call) Sen. Lindsey Graham’s hearing room tirade attacking those who would question the past of Judge Brett Kavanaugh inspired Frank Osen’s “Graham Hysteria Index.” (Pool photo by Tom Williams*CQ Roll Call) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Oct. 18, 2018 at 2:48 p.m. EDT Yeah, we’ve been through a week that’sdone its best , and then some, to keep us from laughing. But Lord knows that we’re able to do it anyway. Heck, we ran a contest — and no doubt the Czar judged one — the week of 9*11 . Nah, the contest just didn’t pan out. No biggie. We got a million of ’em. To be honest, the two predecessors of Week 1298 — names of things, or other phrases, that could be abbreviated ABC, CBA, etc ., or DEF, etc. — won’t go down as Style Invitational classics either, though both Weeks 1179 and 1238 had some perfectly zingy entries. And this week I’m happy with all 15 entries that I ran in this week’s results for GHI and its permutations On top of that, I had a chance to share nine more “typo” headlines from Week 1297, and even a couple of new-word poems from Week 1296. It’s just the 13th blot of ink for Kevin Mettinger of semirural Warrenton, Va., but it’s his second Invite win. And his first — from way back in the Empress’s first year, 2004 — was a classic: Week 551 asked readers to feed some passage into Google’s translation tool (then in its clunky toddlerdom), translate it into another language, then translate that result back into English. Kevin must have figured out that Le Google had trouble with French words that take opposite meanings, like *jamais.* The top of the 36-item list of Ask Backwards contests, from the Losers' own website (Screen image from NRARS.org) The top of the 36-item list of Ask Backwards contests, from the Losers' own website (Screen image from NRARS.org) And so, thinking of the still-raw 2000 election, Kevin fed the translator “George W. Bush is the best president ever elected,” asked for French, and got*George W. Bush est le meilleur président jamais élu*. Which then — but not now! — translated back as “George W. Bush is the best president never elected.” This week’s second-place winner, Ed Gordon, reports that he’ll be visiting the D.C. area from Austin over Christmas week, as he did last year. Last December we got together for a fun Loser Brunch at a chili place in Alexandria; maybe we can do that again. *What Doug Doug: * The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood were Jeff Shirley’s IHG: Intestinal Hijinx Group (“Don’t Talk About Fart Club”); IGH: Instant Growth Hormone as a code name for Viagra, sent by both Jeff Contompasis and Warren Tanabe; IGI: International Gathering of Introverts (“Sparsely Attended Since 1962”) by Diane Lucitt. *ATTENTION NON-HOARDER RECIDIVIST LOSERS!* Has your unfortunate addiction to The Style Invitational resulted in so many fabulous prizes at your domicile that your domicile-mate has suggested that you skip this winter’s delivery of firewood and intstead . . . Listen, I’m delighted to send you every Lose Cannon or second-place gag prize or mug or bag or magnet you win. But I’m at least equally delighted not to. Several of the Losers have asked me to stop sending any more items that they’ve already won; some have asked only for the prize letter; some have asked me to send them the letter by email. At least one has asked for Utterly Nada. If you’re getting prizes you don’t really want — or you’re not opening the snail mail letter — please let me know and I promise that I won’t fix your problem merely by not giving you any more ink. If you indulge me this week with a request that I seem to have forgotten, this time I promise to actually write it down. Meanwhile, I have just a couple more “I Got a B in Punmanship” Grossery Bags for third- and fourth-place winners. After that, we’ll be getting an encore run of Bob Staake’s“Whole Fools” parody logo, on a natural-color cotton bag whose handles are part of the bag, rather than being attached. If you have a big pile of Invite swag that you haven’t torched yet, feel free to regift it to me. I’m especially eager for vintage prizes that I could give to Latter-Day Losers who never had the chance to win, say, a Loser T-shirt. Old magnets, bring ’em on. Right now I have very few early-years prizes left, now that I’ve given out almost all the bagfuls of Elden Carnahan’s decluttering, not to mention all six of Christopher Lamora’s Inkers. If you’re in the D.C. area, I should be able to come and fetch them from you, or preferably take them off your hands at a Loser Brunch or other event. If you want to send a few old magnets to me, my home address is the best destination; email me and I’ll give it to you. *ASK ME ANYTHING (FUNNY & CLEVER): THE WEEK 1302 CONTEST * The title ofthis week’s contest, “Ask Backwards 37,” sounds more definitive than it is. I used it because I used”Ask Backwards 36” last October, and I got that by counting down the “JEO” (for “Jeopardy”) chart in Elden’s Loser Stats, and I don’t think anyone pointed out some very similar contest that we did that had a different headline and didn’t make it on the chart — so 37 it is. If Ask Backwards is new to you, take a few minutes to check out a few of the previous At Least 36 contests. The best way — which isn’t affected by The Post’s paywall for nonsubscribers — is to go to Elden’s Master Contest List, on NRARS.org, the Losers’ own website, and search on “backward.” Then scroll four weeks down to see the results of that contest. In recent years, I’ve been using categories that function as miniature Invitational contests — ones that might bring a half-dozen great answers, but not three dozen. “This week’s least-watched podcast” and “Grace at the Trumps’ Thanksgiving dinner” are examples this week, although I can also envision some other creative interpretations as questions for these “answers.” Remember that I’ll be running the answer first, followed by the question, so make sure your joke works in that order. *THE GREAT BRUNCH REMAINING BEFORE US: GETTYSBURG, THIS SUNDAY * I’m going to be taking a 20-mile walk in the D.C. area this Sunday, so I can’t go, but I heartily recommend the annual Loser Brunch and Battlefield Tour in Gettysburg, Pa., with the tour led by Loser and G’burgian Roger Dalrymple. The weather is supposed to be perfect. and it’s not too late to join the Onion Army. Details and RSVP here . ====================================================================== WEEK 1303, published October 28, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1303: Ai-ai-ai! Phoneme business The Style Invitational Empress dishes on this week’s new contest and results "Puggle" -- a pug-beagle mix -- figured in four of this week's inking word chains. (Wikipedia) "Puggle" -- a pug-beagle mix -- figured in four of this week's inking word chains. (Wikipedia) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Oct. 25, 2018 at 3:16 p.m. EDT When Jeff Contompasis suggested this week’s Style Invitational contest to me a few months ago, complete with several good examples, I mused to him, “I wonder how much time we’d spend dickering over what is and isn’t a digraph.” I’m not an expert on phonetics — though I did get an A in Linguistics 101 in the summer of 1976, which I recall very clearly as lacking air conditioning — and so I’m likely oversimplifying, but I hope we’ll avoid getting bogged down in the h[ai]rspli[tt]i[ng]. (But not [spl], which by my count has three letters.) You know, we’re a humor contest, and fans of the Invite seem to enjoy both making up new words and reading the ones that others make up. And it’s always fun to ask for these new words with some new challenge. So when someone coins a funny word that might not be an actual digraph-for-digraph switch, but it’s at least arguable, I’m likely to risk the quibbles that might appear on The Post’s Free for All letters page (suggested motto: Nitworthy Correspondence). But here’s a nice chart of phonemes — individual sounds — along with graphemes, which are how phonemes are *spelled.* So look at the graphemes and look for the two-letter ones. As I said in the instructions, we’re ignoring the ones in which the digraph is of unconnected letters, like a long vowel sound and a silent E. One thing I can rule out is a set of two letters that are split across syllables. In our “hairsplitting” example, you can’t use “rs.” But otherwise I’ll keep the hairs pretty thick and healthy; don’t sweat the technicalities. If there are two digraphs you’d like to replace in the same word, that’s okay — but remember that risks making the original word impossible to guess. (Already, a certain Style Invitational artist thought that Jeff’s example of “crone fruit” had something to do with Crohn’s disease. It’s actually a play on “stone fruit.”) Deadline is, as usual, the second Monday night after the contest is posted: in this case, Nov. 5. But unless there’s some new schedule I don’t know about, I’ll be posting the results a day earlier than usual — on Wednesday, Nov. 21, the day before Thanksgiving. Watch for the email notification! *CHAIN > CHAIN > CHAIN >>> CHAIN > CHAIN > CHAIN: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1299* There are your gut-laugh Style Invitational contests and there are your, well, head-laughs: the ones where your reaction (we hope) is more like “Hah! Clever!” Our word*name-chain contests, like Week 1299 , tend to be the latter. I’d think that they’re more fun to do, like a puzzle, than to read, but they do have their fans: A concert violinist from San Francisco wrote to me some years back to tell me how he loved to read all the name chains, and we had a nice chat when his ensemble came to Washington to play at the National Gallery. I hope that someone besides Rick Shinozaki of the Del Sol Quartet (terrific, exciting performances of contemporary music, by the way) shares that opinion. Judging each entry in a name chain contest is like judging a bunch of entries at once: You think it out one word at a time and look for something funny or clever in as many links as possible — and often puzzle out what the connection is. In general, the funniest links come from words used in different meanings as they link to the next word. My short­list was much longer than the 32 entries that get ink this week; there were a lot of entries full of clever links. I felt a bit arbitrary picking the final ones, but I did look for chains that had at least some links that were*funny.*I searched through all the entries for each of the new Scrabble words — the basis of our Week 1299 word list — one at a time, so I didn’t realize until after picking the winners that so many of them — five each — were by Mark Raffman and Chris Doyle. I’m not shocked, though. Nor am I surprised that the Lose Cannon went to Kevin Dopart, who wins the Invite for the 27th time as he leaves the 1,400-ink mark behind and trots briskly toward the Triple Hall of Fame. Meanwhile, second-placer Jesse Frankovich is veritably galloping: Jesse’s three inking entries this week plus the “Word Series MVPs” headline brings him to 400 blots — all but 45 of them in the past three years. *NEXT LOSER SIGHTING: SHOULD IT BE TRIVIAL? * **Newbie Loser Jesse Rifkin saw that the Nov. 11 Loser Brunch would be at theHeavy Seas Alehouse in the Rosslyn area of Arlington, Va. — and pointed out that the pub would be hosting a trivia night that same evening, and would dinner-and-trivia be better? I’m afraid that a conflict has come up and I wouldn’t be able to make it either way, but if you’d favor one slot or the other, contact Elden Carnahan at the “Our Social Engorgements” page at the Losers’ website,NRARS.org . For now, though, assume that the gathering will be at noon as usual. *PUNKINED* Happy Halloween, all. Here’s a PDF of the results of Week 682 , in which the Losers did some funny stuff with pumpkins and other vegetables. ====================================================================== WEEK 1312, published December 30, 2018 Style Conversational Week 1312: A mess of fun from a messy year The Style Invitational Empress looks here and there back at 2018 The Style Invitational Ink of the Day, a Facebook page, features individual entries as graphics. Dailyish. Sign up at bit.ly*inkofday. The Style Invitational Ink of the Day, a Facebook page, features individual entries as graphics. Dailyish. Sign up at bit.ly*inkofday. By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Dec. 27, 2018 at 3:19 p.m. EST The Style Invitational has made it to the end of yet another year, outlasting by now five editors of The Post’s Style section and two editors of The Post itself. And 2018 was a ripe a year for Invite zing as most any of the preceding 25. Though like so much current humor, ours has become quite a bit more political in the past couple of years, we’ve also been able to find irony and absurdity even outside the White House. (Today’s inking cartoon captions from Week 1308 are almost devoid of political allusions.) Here’s a brief, almost random sampling of prime 2018 ink. (By the way: If you like your Invitational humor one joke at a time, sign up for the Style Invitational Ink of the Day on Facebook and see an entry from the current or past Invite turned into a graphic. I’ve been making them for almost six years, and they’re all still available on that page. It’s at bit.ly*inkofday. ) *Week 1259, euphemisms: * 3rd place: For “starving”: In the faminy way. (Jesse Frankovich) 2nd place: Serial groper: Outreach engineer. (Ivars Kuskevics) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Excrement: Gross domestic product. (Melissa Balmain) With “holiday" updated to “post-post-holiday,” the art for the Evite to this year’s Loser party, Jan. 26. Need one? Write to the Empress to get on the list. With “holiday" updated to “post-post-holiday,” the art for the Evite to this year’s Loser party, Jan. 26. Need one? Write to the Empress to get on the list. *Week 1265, song parodies about education: * “D.C. schools increasingly graduating chronically absent students, report finds” (To “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”) I was raised in the D.C. public schools, Where the suits make their own achievement rules. But it’s all right now, this slacker’s morass. Yeah, it’s all right — I’m never in class, still I pass pass pass! Turn in junk, get the teachers’ dirty looks. Still don’t flunk, cause they’re cooking all the books. And it’s all right now — to college for me. Yeah, it’s all right . . . accepted I’ll be into UDC! (Nan Reiner) *Week 1266, words from ScrabbleGrams letter sets: *2nd place: ADEILRV —> LIARED: Hired a press secretary. “Trump immediately liared up after the election.” (Kevin Dopart) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: AAALWYY —> LAYAWAY: A payment plan that reportedly costs $130,000. (Jesse Frankovich) *Week 1269, bank heads for real headlines: * 4th place: Has someone hacked your webcam? Because you look pretty funny reading this in your underwear right now (Bill Dorner) 3rd place: Mueller evidence appears to contradict Prince statement Investigators found at least 1 thing that compares 2 U (Frank Mann) 2nd place: D.C.-area forecast: Some wet snowflakes possible today *Pipe bursts in Washington Post newsroom (David Kleinbard) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Luckily for world, Trump’s no Xi Miss Rome says he is “at most a VII” (Elden Carnahan) *Week 1275, write a question that a line from Shakespeare could answer: * 4th place: A. “Give not this rotten orange to your friend.” (“Much Ado About Nothing”) Q: “Shall I introduce Donald to my pal Melania?” (Thor Rudebeck) 3rd place: A. “Dog!” (“Troilus and Cressida”) Q: Mr. President, for your last question on your cognitive assessment: Is this a dog, or a dog? (Dave Prevar) 2nd place: A. “By my soul I swear, there is no power in the tongue of man to alter me.” (“The Merchant of Venice”) Q. What were the sadly inaccurate last words of the Tootsie Pop? (Danielle Nowlin) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: A. “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.” (“Romeo and Juliet”) Q, “Why does McCain care about my bone spurs, anyway?”(Brendan Beary) *Week 1280, “air quotes”: * 4th place: Pr“ogress”ive: Hillary. — D.T., Washington (Jeff Contompasis) 3rd place: Per“ha”ps: Yeah, we should definitely do lunch sometime! (Danielle Nowlin) 2nd place: “Colon”alism: Exploiting another country till you’ve rectum. (Kathy El-Assal) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Be“lie”ve me: When a speech begins with this phrase, you know what to expect. (Brian Allgar) AD *Week 1287, fake trivia about animals: * 4th place: Despite their reputation, clams have a surprisingly high rate of depression. (Drew Bennett) 3rd place: The world’s most expensive bacon comes from the guinea pig. (Susanne Pierce Dyer) 2nd place: John Williams drew inspiration for the “Jaws” theme after hearing about a shark attack survivor who continued to play piano with his remaining two fingers. (Danielle Nowlin) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: When fully inflated, an adult Shar-Pei can reach up to seven feet in circumference. (David Schwartz) Bring it on in 2019! And regular contestants will know what our first contest of the New Year will be. (Irregular ones can figure it out by looking at recent years of the Master Contest List, kept up by Loser Elden Carnahan. I’m sure you’re dying to find out.) *DID YOU GET THE EVITE? AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS SUNDAY? * I sent out an Evite on Wednesday morning to the Losers’ Post-Post-Holiday Party*Potluck*Songfest, Saturday evening, Jan. 26, at Le Chateau Langerfultz (as I’ve just decided to call it), the home of Losers Steve Langer and Allison Fultz in Chevy Chase, Md. It’s mostly standing around and eating and drinking all the good stuff and getting to Meet the Parentheses, but we’ll also have a parody singalong, featuring, among a few others, some of the songs that got ink two weeks ago in our Week 1306 contest for songs about the news, set to holiday tunes . Note: Those songs are mostly political, and not very complimentary to the current president. In our January 2017 party, in the wake of the election, I was concerned that any Trump voters we had among us would feel uncomfortable, and we kept away from the political parodies. By 2018, I didn’t care. By 2019, I really don’t care. The parodies aren’t calling for harm to befall him, and they don’t disparage him with inaccuracy. Of course, you don’t have to sing along. I sent out invitations to regular Losers, people who’ve been on the list for earlier Loser parties, plus a lot of local people who’ve entered the Invitational in the last three months or so. But if you’re reading this, you and your handler are hereby invited even if you’re just a weird fan who reads The Style Conversational. Write to me at pat.myers@washpost.com to get the invitation and to be notified with any updates. This is one of my favorite nights of the year. Last year I walked around wrapped in a string of purple lights (and also in clothing) but my neck started to burn. *And this coming Sunday at 11 a.m.: * If you like to do your eating while sitting at a table: Loser Edward Gordon is in town from Austin for the week, and just as he did last year, he’s made a reservation at an Alexandria restaurant — this year, Theismann’s , near the King Street Metro station — and would like any interested Losers etc. to join him before he leaves for the airport that afternoon. I’ll try to make it over there; if you haven’t already given an RSVP to Ed, you can write to me and I’ll pass it on to him. The the restaurant will validate parking: “Enter garage driveway to right of restaurant and to left of Embassy Hotel on Diagonal Road and go to left to park near restaurant. Parking team can help you to park close to restaurant.” *DORKS OF ART*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1308* *An old honorable-mentions subhead by Kevin Dopart; why waste fresh material you can use in the next caption contest?* I’m very glad I decided not to make Week 1308 merely a contest for “what’s wrong with this picture”; while I did allow for that approach, and we got some very funny explanations (mostly noting some tiny detail in a scene of chaos), the large majority of the funniest entries were conventional captions . Um, I mean that they were in our usual format — interpreting a big red ball as a “heavy period” (as did Hildy Zampella) or as Paul Manafort’s Pinocchio-style ankle monitor (Jesse Frankovich) shouldn’t accompany the word “conventional.” Many of today’s inking entries were unique ideas among the other entries — including Jesse’s winning four-way anagram, Susanne Pierce Dyer’s “glass ceiling,” Gary Crockett’s fake sunset, John Hutchins’s dig at United Airlines, and First Offender Dave Conger comparing the red ball with the red circle designating Picture B. But a number of others were my choice among several with the same approach, including some with quite similar (but not the same) wording. Elon Musk jokes, Target jokes, bunion jokes, jokes about the magician’s saw-trick assistant being the person in the levitating box. And more. It’s clearly Jesse Frankovich Day at The Style Invitational. Well, that’s practically every Thursday for the past couple of years, but this time it’s really out of control: the suggestion (with examples) for this week’s Tour de Fours neologism contest, plus five inking entries — including, for the second straight week, this week’s winner., which earns Jesse his seventh Lose Cannon, to join his earlier Invite trophies of three Inkin’ Memorials and an Inker. He’s going to have to get a telescoping mantel. Second-place finisher Mike Gips is also a familiar name in Loserdom, though not so much lately; this is his 244th blot of Invite ink and 24th "above the fold." But the Losers' Circle is almost — but not quite — new territory for third- and fourth-placers this week: it's the sixth (and seventh) blot of ink for newbie Susanne Pierce Dyer, and the 13th for Nancy Della Rovere, but each already won a Loser Mug or Grossery bag with an earlier runner-up. Susanne and Nancy, let me know what you'd like me to send you this time. *Picture X: The Unprintable:* I only marked one unprintable entry for Week 1306 to save for this section, but it’s a doozy; I’m editing it even to run it here. It’s for the cartoon of the granny sitting on a seesaw while lifting an anvil: “Picture A: Myrtle enjoys the feeling of hard wood between her legs as something big hovers above her.” Yeah, it’s by Tom Witte. Sigh. Happy New Year, everyone, and I hope to hear from you soon. ====================================================================== WEEK 1339, published July 7, 2019 Style Conversational Week 1339: Parody like it’s 2019 The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest and results Flushies emcee Kyle Hendrickson — who has 102 blots of ink but never a win, once again earning the Cantinkerous plaque — with the Empress at last weekend’s festive but steamy awards*potluck*songfest. (Mark Holt) Flushies emcee Kyle Hendrickson — who has 102 blots of ink but never a win, once again earning the Cantinkerous plaque — with the Empress at last weekend’s festive but steamy awards*potluck*songfest. (Mark Holt) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow July 3, 2019 at 3:45 p.m. EDT Because of the July 4 holiday, The Post is printing the print version of The Style Invitational this week on Wednesday rather than the usual Thursday evening — all the preparations had to be finished early. And so I said in last week’s Conversational that I’d likely skip this one. But then I decided to run a song parody contest for Week 1339 , which requires some more guidance about what we’re looking for. So instant solution: Run a Conversational after all, but just copy old stuff into it! Gyaddh, I am soooo resourceful. So the following guidelines are essentially lifted right out of Style Conversational Week 1306, which was a contest for parodies of holiday songs. For Week 1339 you may use any music at all, even your own, but the lyrics should refer to “some modern woe.” But yeez, that’s pretty broad. AD AD ● As with all Style Invitational song parody contests, *we value flawless rhyming,* even if the original rhymes loosely. And we’re a humor contest; witty wordplay (including, but not requiring, clever playing off the words of the original), a zingy ending and the avoidance of bitter anger — our word for this is “screediness” — are the paths to Invite ink. ● Because the Invitational is a contest that is read rather than listened to — especially, duh, in the print version — *a reader has to easily figure out how your lyrics match the tune*. The best way to know this is to show someone the lyrics and see if the person — without your help or cues — can figure out how to sing them. For the print page (which includes the four top winners), I’ll be choosing what I hope are very well known songs. Online, I’ll include links to video or audio versions to the originals, and so less well known songs are welcome there. In either case, feel free to include the URL of a clip on YouTube or elsewhere whose music matches your lyrics. (Handy hint: To make a YouTube clip start playing at a certain point: Play it, pause it at your starting point, then add to the end of the URL, with no spaces: #T=0m25s, or how many minutes and seconds it really is. Don’t worry about it if this task is confusing.) AD AD ● In our Golden Era of Political Parody Videos,*I’d love it if I could share your fabulously inkworthy parody as a performance,* particularly if the lyrics are right there on the video — like this one by Sandy Riccardi in our Week 1287 parody contest (results here ). But it’s your lyrics, not the performance, that I’m judging. If you send a link to a video, please also send the text of the lyrics. ● Our general rule with the Invitational is to run *humor that hasn’t been published elsewhere.* But I’ve made exceptions in cases where it hasn’t yet been distributed widely, or by another publication. Write me at pat.myers@washpost.com. about specific cases and I’ll make a ruling. ● Also, while I normally consider the Invite not to be a team sport, *I don’t mind crediting two people for a single parody.* AD AD ● Note that once again,*I’m extending the usual deadline by a week* — so you’ll have till July 22 to submit your parodies. If you’ve done a video and it’s ready for me to see earlier, drop me a line and I’ll have a look at it, in case I’d like you to tweak your lyrics. (My normally strict blind judging, in which I don’t see the writers’ names until I’ve chosen the winners, has to involve a little peeking in cases like this; don’t worry — even if I know and adore you personally, I won’t have any trouble at all denying you ink.) *BEE — OUR JEST*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1335 * **That headline got ink for Tom Witte in Week 1287, last year’s spelling-bee poetry contest. He entered it again this year.* I’m glad I decided to let our Loserbards base their poems and short jokes on any of the dozens and dozens of late-round words in this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee, not just the ones on the list I included with Week 1335 . That allowed the Obsessives a chance to dig up more material on the spelling bee website, while letting those with Lives to enter the contest without extensive research. So while most of the entries were for words on my list, such as “badderlocks,” “mondegreen,” “Cytherian,” “rhyathymic” and “taurokathapsis,” most of this week’s inking entries featured such non-listees as “fucus,” “apophysitis,” “seitan,” “haustellum” and “poas.” Next time we do this contest, I’ll offer the same alternatives. AD AD It wasn’t the slightest surprise that this week’s winners’ circle, as well as the results in toto, was heavily salted with Invite veterans — topped by Jesse Frankovich, who, I was just told, has now gotten ink for 60 straight weeks, thereby breaking the record long held by Brendan Beary. It’s Jesse’s 13th win and 45th ink “above the fold,” and his 518th blot of ink in all (along with the excellent online-only double dactyl about grabbing a bull “by the nuts”). Another Hall of Famer, Beverley Sharp, takes second place with a decorous way to muse on the pronunciation of “fucus” (rhymes with “mucus,” FYI); Cruising Toward the Hall of Fame Duncan Stevens nabs yet another bag or mug with one of four inking entries this week, and Chris Doyle, whose vast sea of Invite ink makes the others’ vats seem like thimbles, gets another one with his poem about how Cain and Abel were the proud first generation in their families to have bellybuttons. *What Doug Dug:* The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood were Beverley’s “fucus,” Ann Martin’s “rhathymia* goodbye, Mia” couplet that the Czar didn’t think was a valid rhyme but I thought hilarious, and Duncan’s “psoas,” or loin muscles, in the context of Yo Mama. AD AD *HOTTEST TICKET EVER: THIS YEAR’S FLUSHIES* The beer was cold and the atmosphere warm — way warm — at the 24th annual Flushies, the Losers’ own awards banquet*potluck*sillyfest. The breathtaking views from the 20th-floor party room in Style Invitational Devotee Kathleen Delano’s Crystal City apartment house were matched only by the breathtaking air on an afternoon that reached 97 degrees outside and, well, many degrees less than that inside. But as always, the 50-some Losers and their auxiliaries enjoyed the potluck spread plus outdoor grill; emcee Kyle Hendrickson’s somewhat abbreviated game; the presentation of awards for milestones of 50, 100, 200, etc., blots of Invite ink — the presentation being tossing a roll of toilet paper inscribed with the Loser’s name in the general direction of the recipient or proxy; and the honoring of Rookie of the Year Jon Ketzner. And then there was the tribute to the Loser of the Year — the person who’d gotten the most ink from March 2018 to March 2019 who hadn’t won this honor before. This time, after 26 straight years of his entering this contest, that person was Tom Witte. AD AD Tom didn’t bother to show up to accept his award or two hear the two song parodies written in tribute — excellent plays on “Windy” and “I Feel Pretty” by Elden Carnahan and Duncan Stevens, respectively. (You can see the lyrics on the Style Invitational Devotees page in Facebook, along with video of everyone singing with gusto.) But I scrapped the Witte’s-greatest-hits ink compendium that I’d compiled. Guy doesn’t even show up, I’ll save my voice. Thanks again to the band of Losers who work so hard to put on the Flushies and the winter Post-Holiday Loser Party each year: Elden Carnahan, Dave Prevar, Pie Snelson, Kyle Hendrickson, accompanist Steve Honley. And this summer*and* last, Kathleen Delano for providing the venue and making so many arrangements. And to all those who came in from out of town — and even some who just had to walk down the street. *AND COMING RIGHT UP: IT’S OUR KIWI LOSER* A week from Saturday — July 13 — we’re having dinner with 41-Time Loser Andy Bassett of Taranaki, New Zealand, who’s stopping in D.C. on a tour of rock concerts across America and his native Britain (here he’s seeing Jeff Lynne and ELO at Capital One Arena). Andy is a guitarist who has a weekly radio show that I and some of the other Losers enjoy listening to online, when we figure out the ever-changing time difference. So if you’d like to join us and meet Andy, join us at 6 p.m. July 13 at Thai Chef on Connecticut Avenue very close to the Dupont Circle Metro station. You MUST contact Elden Carnahan — elden (dot) carnahan (at) gmail (dot) com — ASAP so he can get an accurate head count for the reservation; it’s not a huge restaurant. Happy July 4, everyone — enjoy watching tanks roll down our city’s streets! ====================================================================== WEEK 1352, published October 6, 2019 Style Conversational Week 1352: Ooh, baby, I want you to enter The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s “hee-rotica” contest and compare*contrast results Add to list Add to listAdd to list Bob Staake's sketch for Style Invitational Week 1352, to illustrate Mark Cognata's faux-porn used as an example. Because Mark attributed it to a "Garth," I asked Bob to change the lovestruck customer to someone who's gender-fluid. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) Bob Staake's sketch for Style Invitational Week 1352, to illustrate Mark Cognata's faux-porn used as an example. Because Mark attributed it to a "Garth," I asked Bob to change the lovestruck customer to someone who's gender-fluid. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Bio Bio Follow Follow Oct. 3, 2019 at 3:43 p.m. EDT This week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1352, comes to us via the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, where Loser Daphne Steinberg called my attention to “Sexual Fantasies of Everyday New Yorkers,” a humor piece recently published in the Daily Shouts department at newyorker.com. “A possible contest idea, Pat?” Immediately, Devotees started writing steamy*unsteamy sentences in the comment thread under it. Hold off, I said. “Save it for a contest.” I’m running this contest — and quoting at length from the source — with the approval of the magazine and with the happy endorsement of writer Mark Cognata, since he now gets a plug in The Washington Post as well as his first New Yorker ink. (Mark’s day job is developing educational programs for The First Tee, a nonprofit that helps young people develop life skills through the prism of golf.) Mark hadn’t known about The Style Invitational, but he got a kick out of some entries from a similar contest we’d done many years ago (see below). I told him that he’s even welcome to enter Week 1352. “But I’ve already used my best ideas!” This week, though, the scope of the panting prose extends past “everyday New Yorkers.” I gave some top-of-my-head examples, but creative “sources” could be a big part of the humor. One potential problem: How fake-dirty can you be and still get ink in The Washington Post? Well, there wasn’t any objection to my top example of Mark’s prose: “My eyes can’t help but follow his hand — down, down — until, to my delight, he pulls out his big, bulging carton of oat milk.” But that is probably the outer limit of blueness, especially for the print paper; it has to be rated Mild Romance Novel. Here’s one that would NOT be printable: It’s an old joke that Daphne shared in the Devotees group: “As I slipped my finger slowly inside her hole, I could immediately feel it getting wetter and wetter. I slid my finger back out, and within seconds, she was going down on me. I thought to myself, “I really need a new ---ing boat.” We may have done this very contest sometime in the past 1,351 weeks, but this one from 2005, a couple of years into my Empressitude, was the one that occurred to me. I’m not worried about too much duplication from this one, though: we have 14 years of societal (d) evolution, not to mention current events, which unsurprisingly figured into the Week 637 ink as well (I’ve added some reminders on the allusions). *Report From Week 637, *in which we sought steamy scenes in novels as penned by your choice of people who aren’t best known for being novelists. A whole anthology could have been compiled of Iraq-metaphor entries whose punchline was “pull out now.” *Fourth place: *Did you ever notice how, when a woman is seductively removing her undergarments, all you can think about is how Lois Lane might look doing the same thing? — Jerry Seinfeld (Eric Murphy, Ann Arbor, Mich.) *Third place: *With a twinkle in his eye, he beckoned her to the bedroom. “But why?” she asked. “It's too early to go to sleep." As he put his arm around her he said, “No, my dear, I’ve invented a wonderful new thing for two people to do together in bed. Come with me and I’ll show you.” — Al Gore (Jonathan M. Guberman, Princeton, N.J.) [A widespread but pretty unfair story that Gore had claimed he’d invented the Internet is referenced even today.] *Second place, the winner of the hollow ceramic potato: *“I like to watch,” Margaret said … — Eleanor Holmes Norton (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) [It’s not out of date, alas: The District of Columbia’s only representation in Congress for its 700,000 residents — and it’s still Del. Norton — can’t vote on legislation.] *And the winner of the Inker:* The marble rolled down the chute, striking the lever that turned on the fan. Angela looked up at him, then back at the device, breathing heavily. The dart flew in a perfect arc, as he knew it would, ultimately propelling the two catcher’s mitts toward her chest. It was perfect. Embraced by the mitts, she turned her attention to the second device waiting below, and as the next marble started its journey, she moaned softly. — Rube Goldberg (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) *Honorable Mentions* The pusillanimous prattling of his advance was pathetic — bearing no resemblance to his carnal conquest of the erstwhile pristine Janelle at Notre Dame in 1968; and yet the expression in Rachel's pulchritudinous orbs supported the conclusion that in fact, he-could-go-all-the-way! — Howard Cosell (Jeff Brechlin) On or about June 11 or 12, 2003, Person A had sex with Person B … — Patrick Fitzgerald (Joseph Romm, Washington) [Fitzgerald was the “special counsel” counsel who headed the unending investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame by White House aide Scooter Libby.] As Brad eyed Amber’s assets, the old volatility in their relationship was running high, and he was hoping for a quick upturn, a good rate of growth and an eventual merger. But Amber was concerned about his performance, particularly his penchant for short-term, rather than long-term, investments, and the inevitable deflation that followed. — Alan Greenspan (Marty McCullen, Gettysburg, Pa.) Frank stared into her eyes. Time seemed to stand still, although, as the world’s foremost authority on time and space, Frank knew this was impossible, and what seemed like an eternity was in fact only a second, or 1*141,912,000,000,000,000th of the time since the Earth’s crust had cooled. — Stephen Hawking (Andrew Hoenig, Rockville) The table was cleared, and he gazed adoringly into her eyes. “Issue 17,” he announced. “Your place or mine?" “I think — ” “Question: Tonight was (a) very romantic, (b) supremely enjoyable, or (c) the most wonderful night of your life? Eleanor!" “Really, it — ” “Well, that settles it — my place. Issue 18: Your car or mine?" — “Date, Interrupted” by John McLaughlin (Martin Bancroft, Ann Arbor, Mich.) [“The McLaughlin Group” was the model for the era of political pundits yelling at each other on TV. McLaughlin famously would cut off a panelist who disagreed with him.] Before the engaging by John in the carnal reproductive enjoyment that occurs between a man and a woman of certain ages upon the precondition of the forthright giving of consent by both parties, he had to first be sure that Jane was going to be receptive to his linguistic and not dispassionate requests for such behavior by him. — Harriet Miers (Marc Leibert, New York) [Just a month earlier, President George W. Bush nominated Miers to the Supreme Court. But support for her was so weak — for one thing, her responses on a questionnaire made some suspect her competence — that she withdrew the nomination 20 days later.] He hit the ground running, opening a gap in her already flimsy defense. Bottom line? It was crunch time. Lex left nothing on the field. He split the uprights, and they finally came together as a team. — From “Two-Minute Drill,” by [Redskins Coach] Joe Gibbs (Steve Fahey, Kensington) She lay languorously on the satin sheets, misting her nude body with a special mixture of Chanel and Lysol; she tugged on the guardrails alongside the bed — one can’t be too careful when romping about on slippery satin, she thought. As her man approached, she gave her throat a quick spritz of zinc gluconate. Suddenly, nostrils flaring, she demanded: “Why isn’t your surgical mask in place?” — Sally Quinn (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) [I don’t have what’s probably a specific reference here, but I did see: "“Georgetown socialite and Post writer Sally Quinn has been on a chem*bio-terrorism freak-out dating back to Sept. 11.”] His lovemaking was intoxicating — Ann felt like a prairie dog trapped in a moonshine still at an Amarillo tractor pull. But what she truly marveled at was Kenneth’s frequency. — Dan Rather (Brendan Beary) [The CBS newscaster was famed for his folksy Texas “Ratherisms” (we did an Invite contest, Week 379, for similar ones. In 1986 Rather was physically attacked on the street by a mentally ill man who kept asking him, "'Kenneth, what is the frequency?''] He ran his towel up and down the sculpted legs. Then he let his fingers wander across the arms and up to the lovely shoulders. He was aching to kiss that magnificent neck, but realized he never could. A tear welled up as his gaze wandered to the hands of his beloved. The hands that could catch anything except his tongue … He pressed his hand against the mirror and sighed. — From “I Love T.O.,” by Terrell Owens (Steven King, Vienna) [The flamboyant NFL wide receiver had just been suspended for publicly criticizing teammates] Like unto 40 years had he pursued her; and when at last she graced his bed, he finally gazed upon the Promised Land. “Holy me!” he shouted. — Moses (Jeff Brechlin) Maybe it was the peyote messing with my brain, but Rosie O’Donnell looked awfully good to me right then. She winked one hooded, reptilian eye and flicked her long, bifurcated tongue at me. If only the stadium weren’t full of careening vampire bats, I would have leapt out of my box seat and taken her right there at home plate. — Hunter S. Thompson (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Mmmmmmm, breasts. — Homer Simpson (Peter Metrinko) “Wow, Bob, wow!” Anna murmured hungrily. “Tuna roll, or a nut?” I offered. She shook her head. “Wonton?" “Not now!” She seemed to be getting a bit testy. “Xanax?” I suggested. “Dammit! I'm mad!” And then she was gone. “Huh?" — From “My Palindrama,” by Robert Trebor (Katherine Hooper, Jacksonville) I gazed longingly at his muscular calf, glistening with a film of manly sweat after his mountain bike ride. The tightness of his cycling shorts around that firm thigh sent shivers through my loins. I could not resist any longer — I must take the plunge and slake the thirst of my lust … “Hey, get off my leg!” George yelled. — Barney the Scottie [of President George W. Bush] (Chris Parsons, Gaithersburg) And Last: Said a lecher who leered at his guest: “With your cleavage I'm truly obsessed." “You should move,” she did say, “And right there you may stay. Due south, that is where I suggest." — Chris Doyle (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Some linkage may occur*: The results of Week 1348 **Non-inking headline by Tom Witte, though it was also an inking headline by Tom Witte for Week 1120* The Great Loser Community*always*finds some ingenious connections between two items on the list of random items we supply, and so it was with the results of Week 1348 . (It always finds even more uningenious connections, but that is why they pay your friendly neighborhood Empress to read those and throw them away.) The compare*contrast contest — we’ve done it umpteen since its debut back in Week 155 — is at heart a wordplay contest making extensive use of a few formats: There’s the one in which a single phrase is used in two different contexts: This week’s winner by Jon Ketzner, about Boris Johnson “pulling off” both Brexit and Jockey shorts, is a classic example. A few of the others in this form getting ink this week: Mary McNamara’s “slug with a stick up its butt” for both a charred mollusk and the “dancing” Sean Spicer (plus “well done”); and Duncan Stevens “covering an ass” for Jockey shorts and Boris Johnson’s hair. Then there’s the one that uses two similar — but notably different — phrases: Warren Tanabe’s print*punt; David Peckarsky’s Ulster*oyster; Mark Raffman’s E.U.*eeewww (the best of several of these) Beverley Sharp’s E.U.*P.U. I feel that it’s fine to run lots of entries in both of those forms, but not in this third one, because it relies on the reader’s surprise: In this format, you list Items A and B; then you say “One is ...” The order leads the reader to think you’re talking about A. But then you make it clear you’re talking about B instead. While I get lots of good jokes in this form, I just can’t run more than one or two, because the reader knows exactly what’s coming. This year, this honorable mention from Stephen Dudzik got the ink: The difference between bedbugs and John Bolton’s mustache: One makes you look away in pure revulsion, and the other can be treated by using a dryer with a high heat setting. Here are a few other good ones: Avocado toast and hand-marked ballots: One’s an artisanal fad beloved by millennials, and one is lunch. (Melissa Balmain) Boris Johnson’s hair and Russian dressing: One is a messy, pale orange topping, and one goes on your salad. (Ha, also Melissa Balmain — I’m looking up the authors’ names just right now.) The difference between Russian dressing and hand-marked ballots: One is manufactured for the American market in a factory in St. Petersburg, and the other goes on a Reuben sandwich. (Ward Kay) It’s the first Lose Cannon, and 32nd ink in all, for Jon Ketzner, our most recent Rookie of the Year. Before Jon got his first blot of Invite ink, he ended up several times in the Conversational’s “unprintables” section, but it’s clear that if he*reallly* wants to, Jon can keep his humor out of the You Must Be Kidding department. (This is a wild Invite week for the Western Maryland mountain town of Cumberland; in addition to Jon, we have ink for his friend Brett Dimaio — and for First Offender Pia Palamidessi, who I understand is Brett’s spouse.) It’s just the 10th blot of Invite ink for Mary McNamara, but this laugh-out-loud second-place entry is her second trip to the Losers’ Circle. Warren Tanabe has now reached 125 inks without showing up at some Loser event, an Empress-frowny statistic for a local that needs to be rectified. And then of course there’s Jesse Frankovich. *Shame difference*: *Unprintables from Week 1348: *Headline by Jeff Contompasis I think I was pushing the boundaries this week by running Joe Neff’s “crowded ballroom” joke for tango*Jockey shorts. But among the clever blue entries, I drew the line at: The difference between charred mollusk on a stick and Jockey shorts: The mollusk is boneless. (Tom Witte) And not quite as good because of the spelling change: The difference between Jockey shorts and bedbugs: Bedbugs inhabit the sack; the sac inhabits Jockey shorts. (Also Tom Witte) Meanwhile, in the Has No Shame category: A dot matrix printer and Will Shortz: Both can be found under the Empress’s desk. (Bird Waring, who, I’m guessing, doesn’t know much about Will Shortz. Or about me — why would I have a dot matrix printer?) ====================================================================== WEEK 1353, published October 13, 2019 Style Conversational Week 1353: Here’s to the Record-breakers The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s new contest and results This ubiquitous line in congressional proceedings became a wry Style section headline in July to lament Robert Mueller's disappointing performance during his greatly anticipated hearing. Jesse Frankovich and Jeff Contompasis took a different tack in this week's results. (The Washington Post) This ubiquitous line in congressional proceedings became a wry Style section headline in July to lament Robert Mueller's disappointing performance during his greatly anticipated hearing. Jesse Frankovich and Jeff Contompasis took a different tack in this week's results. (The Washington Post) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Oct. 10, 2019 at 3:53 p.m. EDT Invite-Addled Loser Duncan Stevens is a great student of the Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, and I knew that he’d already perused the MOV sub-list — already up to*forty-five* contests — to be sure there wasn’t one in which you use the opposite of a word in the title to create a new movie. Plus he sent a set of good examples. So it’s yet one more Potbelly (getting to be an apt name in my case) prize milkshake for Duncan for bringing usWeek 1353 . But I did remember at least one contest whose results could overlap with this one. But even it was from almost a decade ago. So for inspiration — and so you won’t send in the same entries — here are the results of Week 851 (January 2010), complete with some entries that lacked funny descriptions. (I was going to say that you*could*use those titles if you had an absolutely fabulous description, but I don’t think any would count as an “opposite”; well, I guess I’d take “The Meh Santini.”) *Report from Week 851*, in which we asked you to “shrink” the title of a book, play or movie and describe the new plot. We got lots of funny titles whose descriptions didn’t really enhance them, including “Less Miserables,” “Mildly Annoyed Max,” “Post-it Notes From the Underground,” “Physician Assistant Zhivago,” “The Discount of Monte Cristo,” “Intestine of Darkness,” “The Meh Santini,” “Lost Verizon,” “Policy Disagreement on the Bounty,” “Malcolm PG-13” and “Nicoderm Road.” The winner of the Inker:*The Fifth Sense: *“I smell dead people.” (Adam and Russell Beland, Fairfax) 2. the winner of the unflattering Eleanor Roosevelt doll: *The Mediocre Gatsby:* The biography of Tareq Salahi. (Ira Allen, Bethesda) [Salahi’s 12 seconds of fame involved crashing a White House state dinner.] *3. Slaughterhouse $4.99:* A family gets to choose among beef, chicken and pork with all the trimmings — only at Denny’s! (Greg Arnold, Herndon) *4. Three Days of the Condom:* Love on a shoestring. (Edmund Conti, Raleigh) *Missed the Marquee: Honorable Mentions* *Guess Who’s Coming To:* A guy passes out. Then he wakes up. (Judy Blanchard, Novi, Mich.) *Casablank: *Rick can’t really recall meeting Ilsa before, but he plays along because, what the heck, she looks like Ingrid Bergman. (Larry Yungk, Arlington) *The Least of the Mohicans:* A young Indian in New York scalps his theater tickets. (Roy Ashley, Washington) *The Manchurian Media Darling Who Won't Say He's Running and Won't Say He Isn't:* A Chinese plot to get Americans to give up on democracy once and for all. (Tom Kreitzberg, Silver Spring) *Perturbed Bull:* “Did you read off-color poetry to my wife?” (Bruce Alter, Fairfax Station) *Halve-atar:* See it in 1.5-D! (Jim Deutsch, Washington) *75 Days of Summer:* A guy lives in Minnesota. (Josh Borken, Minneapolis) *One Hundred Minutes of Solitude:* A teenager gets after-school detention. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) *Apollo 12: *Three U.S. astronauts blast off for the moon, where they plant a flag, gather rocks and drink Tang, then return to Earth without incident. (Bob Dalton, Arlington) *20,000 Millimeters Under the Sea: *The story of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. (Jon Graft, Centreville) *The Satanic Doggerel: *The Koran in limerick form. “There once was a Prophet from Mecca …” (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) *Oh. Calcutta: *Teens are disappointed after sneaking into a play about … Calcutta. (Kyle Hendrickson, Frederick) *Eat, Pay, Love:* Eliot Spitzer’s soul-stirring memoir of self-discovery on a brief business trip to Washington. (Gordon Barnes, Alexandria) *The Hitchhikers CliffsNotes to the Galaxy:* 42. (Kyle Hendrickson) *Naked Breakfast:* Embarrassing dad forgets to close his robe while cooking, finally learns lesson from bacon splatter. (Randy Lee, Burke) *The Pelican Briefs: *Travelers with oversize underwear arouse suspicion at airport security checkpoints. (Jeff Loren, Manassas) *The Man Who Would Be Deputy Assistant Secretary:* The stark truth about civil service. (John Shea, Lansdowne, Pa.) *Reasonable Expectations:* Orphaned Pip realizes that his life in the mid-19th century is going to stink no matter what. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn) *Gone in 60 Minutes:* Man starts the car while his wife finishes getting ready to leave. (David Friedman, Boston) *Gone in 30 Seconds:* Fast-paced film about a mom who brings home pizza for three teenage boys. (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.) *Around the Mall in 80 Minutes:* NOBODY has those cute boots! (Jean Berard, Arnold, Md., a First Offender) *Mr. Smith Goes to Scaggsville: *Near the end of his trip to the nation’s capital, a traffic jam on I-95 forces him off the road south of Baltimore. (Beverley Sharp, Washington) *Lightly Soiled Harry:* “What you have to ask yourself is ‘Do I feel yucky?' " (Russell Beland) *The Hunchback of South Bend Community College:* Walk-on lineman doesn’t let his disability deter him in the big game against Iowa Normal School. (Edmund Conti) *The Da Vinci Code Ring:* Robert Langdon unearths a monstrous conspiracy hidden in a box of Cracker Jack. (Ben Frey, Frederick, a First Offender) Droll call*: The Congressional Record ‘questions’ of Week 1349 **Submitted as a headline by five or six people* I’d predicted four weeks ago in this column that I wouldn’t get a whole lot of entrants to Week 1349, a version of our recurring Questionable Journalism contest in which people had to dig around the Congressional Record website and write funny questions that quotes from the Record could answer. “But I’m also confident that some people out there will see this challenge as lots of fun — and will send me lots of inkworthy questions.” All of this proved true, and despite the relatively small entry pool I still had to trim entries for this week’s results . Along with the sort of thing I was envisioning with this contest — reinterpretations of such Congress-speak as “morning business” and “yield the balance of my time” and of course “member” — enterprising Losers managed to turn up some classic inanities by our elected officials from both parties, whom I don’t at all feel bad about calling out by name, since the legislators are free to go back and fix up their quotes “for the record.” And the champ among these — Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney illustrating the gender wage gap by noting that half of the workers who earn the minimum wage are women — earned Sam Mertens a Lose Cannon. I’m always delighted to see new Losers get ink — and thrilled when they dive right in and start inking up the joint. And rookie Sam certainly seems to Get It: Starting with his debut in Week 1323, the software engineer from Maryland’s outer suburbs had blotted up ink in 19 Invite contests, for 23 blots of ink including a runner-up. Now this week that ink total jumps to 26 — including first and second place. The stated rule of the Invitational is one prize per week, something Sam seemed to know, since he just wrote me to opt for the Lose Cannon rather than the second-prize Poop Hoop head-basketball game. But I’m not going to deprive Sam of the chance to get poop emoji balls thrown at his head; I’ll magnanimously send him both invaluable (i.e., not valuable) prizes. Though I hope he’ll send a photo of himself wearing the Poop Hoop. Come to think of it, it’s an all-Montgomery County Losers’ Circle this week: Gary Crockett, of Chevy Chase, is there for the millionth time, but in fourth place it’s another rookie, Sarah Walsh of Rockville, who doubles her previous ink total with two blots today. As is usually true for our contests that play on quoted matter, the humor works best when the reader grasps the context of what the quote’s actually about. And indeed, except for pointing out that “Empress” is a casino (in Joliet, Ill.), I didn’t feel a need to explain the original statements. But in the early part of the judging, I wasn’t sure about that, and was writing up explainers for appealing entries such as these, which ended up not getting ink: A. “Mr. Speaker, I suggest that these Chinese berets be made into suppositories and be used on Pentagon brass.” Q. We haven’t passed anything weird this morning — anyone got something? (Frank Osen) The quote was part of a 2001 rant by the colorful Rep. Jim Traficant (D-Ohio), who was angry that the Defense Department had ordered 600,000 berets from China for U.S. service members. They were eventually shelved after such outcries. A. Mr. Speaker, I rise, as doth the golden orb pulled across the sky each day by the chariot of Apollo, to decry an ignominy perpetuated on this Body by the captious Sunlight Foundation. Q. What’s wrong with a foundation that advocates for plain-speaking in government? (Oh, it’s also Frank Osen — I’m just looking these up now.) Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), jokingly decrying the foundation’s 2012 report that the discourse in Congress had dropped by a full grade level in the past decade. Afterward, the foundation rated Quigley’s speech not that high either. A. I am just looking for one that is particularly bad in violating the Constitution and his oath of office, yes. Q. What did the president say about the search for his next Cabinet pick? (Sam Mertens) Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in 1998, on compiling a list of “activist” judges who he thought should be impeached. *What Doug dug: *Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood is back from a three-week staycation (though we wish he’d sent a picture postcard from Hyattsville) and is back to offering his faves of the week. This time he agreed with me about the Lose Cannon winner and also singled out Frank Osen’s “morning business” (my favorite of several entries playing on that phrase) and also Frank’s ba-da-bing “bicameral” joke; Chris Doyle’s “words fail me,” and the play on the recurring line “The time of the gentleman has expired,” from both Jesse Frankovich and Jeff Contompasis. *What’s with the bare-bones Staake? *A last-minute emergency prevented cartoonist Bob Staake from finishing this week’s cartoon. So we went with his pencil sketch instead. It’s not too late to advance on Gettysburg: Loser brunch and battlefield tour Just about every year, a contingent of Losers takes advantage of Loser Roger Dalrymple’s tour guide expertise, driving up to Gettysburg, Pa., for lunch in a local pub followed by a drive to various sites where the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg transpired, and perhaps a stroll around the historic town. I can’t make it this year, but it’s always fascinating and fun. (Except the time I got sick …) And Roger just got ink this week, so he should be in an extra-nice mood. Lunch is at Appalachian Brewing Co., a nice pub. Because Keeper of the Brunches Elden Carnahan is on vacation, it’s best to RSVP to Roger directly at rogerandpam [at] comcast [dot] net. I*will,*however, be at the November 10 brunch at Paradiso on Franconia Road just outside the Beltway. And if you can make it downtown for lunch sometime between Monday and Wednesday, Nov. 18-20, we’re trying to have a Dorkness at Noon lunch so we can greet Nonstop Loser Jesse Frankovich, who’ll be in town from Michigan at a convention. (He doesn’t yet know his daily schedule, so stay tuned for the details.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1354, published October 20, 2019 Style Conversational Week 1354: Let’s do the twist The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s neologism contest and new-word poetry results. The 24 vowel-heavy words that the Empress fed into the generator at Puzzle-Maker.com. Not shown: lots of other words hiding out in this grid for you to discover -- and create -- in Week 1354 of The Style Invitational. And you don't have to stick to those boring straight lines. The 24 vowel-heavy words that the Empress fed into the generator at Puzzle-Maker.com. Not shown: lots of other words hiding out in this grid for you to discover -- and create -- in Week 1354 of The Style Invitational. And you don't have to stick to those boring straight lines. By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Oct. 17, 2019 at 4:01 p.m. EDT As I mention in my intro to Style Invitational Week 1354, Hall of Fame Loser Jesse Frankovich noted to me recently that last year’s As the Word Turns word grid, Week 1294 , was especially short on vowels, making it harder to “discover” lots of neologisms by snaking through it. So I made an effort to vowel it up this year: For the list of words that I fed into the generator at Puzzle-Maker.com , I looked for ones that were at least half vowels (including Y), starting with “onomatopoeia” (the Royal Consort’s suggestion); then finding a page for Scrabble aficionados featuring words with lots of vowels; then just leafing through a print dictionary (those things do come in handy!); then resorting to the random word generator I’ve used in the past. Style Invitational rookie phenom Sam Mertens, who won both first and second place in Week 1349, displays his prize of the Poop Hoop head-basketball game, with the assistance of son Isaac. (Actually, the "basketballs" are poop emoji blobs.) (Laurie Mertens) Style Invitational rookie phenom Sam Mertens, who won both first and second place in Week 1349, displays his prize of the Poop Hoop head-basketball game, with the assistance of son Isaac. (Actually, the "basketballs" are poop emoji blobs.) (Laurie Mertens) Then I clicked on Build Puzzle and ta-da — a grid that didn’t quite fit the dimensions I needed for the print page in the Arts & Style section. (The tool builds the smallest puzzle it can that accommodates the word list you feed it.) There must be a setting somewhere to specify instead how big you want the grid, but it was easy enough to just add and subtract words a few times until I ended up with this week’s 20-by-20 square. Here are the words I used — and if you were to produce some hilariously brilliant definition for any of them, you’re certainly free to use it as an entry. examinee, hemiparasite, physiology, eleemosynary, lanceolate, aqueous, ipomoea, nouveau, aquaria, zooecia, aureolae, quinoa, boohoo, opioid, aikido, pityriasis, intrauterine, epopoeia, ouguiya, castigatory, style (added at the end to make the grid fit*just*right), dentilabial, nepheline So what’s the upshot? After I posted Week 1354 this morning, Jesse sent me a message: “Grid looks pretty good on first glance. I think the issue with the vowel percentage is that after your words are placed all the leftover spots get filled with consonants. So if you only submitted “cat” there would be that one A and 399 consonants. So you just need to submit enough words to fill up most of the grid and it will naturally work out. Anyhow, choosing vowel-heavy words seems to have worked well too. It’s about 35% vowels (English average is around 40%; I think the past grids may have been something like 20% or less). <*dorkanalysis>” So: My plan didn’t vowel it up as much as I thought it would, because — who knew — all the “fill” is consonants. Next year, then, God willing, what I’ll do is submit lots of*short* words with vowels: pine, rate, ease, aide, etc. The more words, the less fill — and so the fewer consonants. On the other hand, the Loser Community has risen admirably to the challenge; words don’t*have* to have lots of vowels. And it’s a big, big grid: I guarantee that there are hundreds of pronounceable words in there waiting to be discovered. For inspiration and guidance, here’s the Losers’ Circle (a.k.a. Above the Fold) — the winner and runners-up — from Week 1294, featuring someone whose name will quite possibly be cited in Week 1354 entries as well: Fourth place:*J-4:*ALARMOPATH: An extreme worrywart. “Nellie stayed up all night fretting that she might be an alarmopath.” (Jesse Frankovich) 3rd place:*F-7:*MaTOO: Reminder that sexual harassment did not start yesterday. (Mark Raffman) 2nd place:*P-5:* ZITSEN: The other red-nosed reindeer. (Dudley Thompson, Cary, N.C.) And the winner of the Lose Cannon:*N-16:* DJ DIZZY G: Rudolph W. Giuliani’s secret hip-hop name: “I’m a long-in-the-tooth sleuth for truth-isn’t-truth — kind of goof, like I’m dipped in vermouth or I fell off a roof, trying to prove there’s no proof …” (Frank Osen) I stress this in the intro AND atop the entry form, but I’ll give it one more shot here: When I get all the entries together after the Oct. 28 deadline, I’m going to group them, as always, into one anonymous list of what might be several thousand entries. And after that, I would really like to copy them into a Word document and click on Sort. *IF* each entry begins with the word’s starting coordinates — A-1, F-15, etc. — rather than a number, or a bullet, or the word itself, or “Starting on A-1,” or “1-A,” or “This one is my favorite,” I’ll be able to look at all the A-1 words at once, including the ones that are similar to one another. C’mon, help me out here. Don’t you want me to be in a good mood when I’m deciding how funny you are? Fabulosity, of course: The new-word poems from Week 1350 I’m expecting lots of entries to Week 1354; pondering the word search grid during a five-minute after-breakfast sitting should make for an entry or three from even an occasional Invite reader. A poetry contest is a different matter, especially one that asks you to use words you might have to look up — and one that requires you to be especially skilled in using the English language with wit, economy and some semblance of an ear. And so I wasn’t exactly shocked that the ink in Week 1350, for poems that focused on words newly added to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary — ended up mostly on the blotters of our veteran Loserbards. And sure enough, it’s LB Brendan Beary, of the 1,078-ink Brendan Bearys, who earns his whoa 39th Invite win with “Escape Room,” a beautifully crafted verse that builds perfectly to its twist ending: This *escape room’s* the worst, everybody agrees; We feel trapped, with a lingering sense of unease That we’ll never get out of here, try as we may — We get sullen or spiteful, our nerves start to fray Till at last we’re released, overjoyed to survive … And we come every weekday, 8:30 to 5. I had specified that the poem had to use, or at least acknowledge, the new term’s actual meaning. But I was talking about such cases as “haircut” to mean a financial loss, not the term being used, as Brendan does so deftly, as a metaphor. And of course, until the last line the poem makes perfect sense as a reference to the clue-solving on-site game. The Year of the Rookie Phenom continues with the second-place ink by Bob Kruger; Bob now has a two wins and a second since his debut in Week 1271. In third place is the most occasional Loser to get ink this week: It’s just the fifth blot of ink for Michelle Christophorou, who serves up this week’s best line in her ode to the sexiness of her “rhotic” American man who, unlike the British, pronounces the R-sound within words: “There is nothing as firm as his R’s.” Erhotic, I’d say. And there’s ol’ Duncan Stevens, with yet another above-the-fold Loss and three for the week. I just looked up my shortlist to check who wrote what, and it turns out that I’d first singled out*eight*of Duncan’s poems this week. *What Doug Dug: *Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choices for first and second place. He also singled out both Stephen Gold’s and Jesse Frankovich’s takes on “free solo” climbing, plus Frank Osen’s “sesh.” Last call to march into Gettysburg! *(Reprinting the following from last week’s Conversational)* Just about every year, a contingent of Losers takes advantage of Loser Roger Dalrymple’s tour guide expertise, driving up to Gettysburg, Pa., for lunch in a local pub followed by a drive to various sites where the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg transpired, and perhaps a stroll around the historic town. I can’t make it this year, but it’s always fascinating and fun. (Except the time I got sick …) Lunch is at Appalachian Brewing Co., a nice pub. Because Keeper of the Brunches Elden Carnahan is on vacation, it’s best to RSVP to Roger directly at rogerandpam [at] comcast [dot] net. ====================================================================== WEEK 1355, published October 27, 2019 Oct. 24, 2019 at 3:32 p.m. EDT It wasn’t a costume or party idea, but surely no one will argue that Jesse Frankovich doesn’t fully deserve a zippered bag with a naked-belly motif for hisexquisitely carved Style Invitational pumpkin that he sent us (by photo, thankfully) as an entry in Week 1351, whose results run today . I had forgotten that Jesse was a hands-on crafter as well as a virtuoso wordsmith, until I remembered that he’d also crocheted a set of L, O, S, E and R coasters and donated them as a prize. We’ve had many lovely prizes handmade for the Invitational over the years. The most elaborate is probably the leaded-glass magnet box crafted by Loser Peyton Coyner back in the day and pictured below. But we recently had a basket crocheted from tightly twisted Washington Post delivery bags by reader Janine Borofka. And back in 2012, we offered the following — whose photo I don’t have because I couldn’t print it in the paper and now the link is dead: “Second place wins a very special item, created by Jolene Mosley and donated by Andrea Kelly; it is like the ones sent to male members of Congress during the recent all-male hearing on birth control funding. Loser Anne Paris describes it as ‘a lovely hand-knitted replica of intimate female parts, suggesting what Martha Stewart would be inspired to create if she went to the gynecologist while stoned,’ while fellow Loser Craig Dykstra calls it a ‘she-cozy.’ ” It was adorable. A custom-crafted key chain made by an artisan in Thailand in 2010. (Pat Myers*The Washington Post) A custom-crafted key chain made by an artisan in Thailand in 2010. (Pat Myers*The Washington Post) Oh, and I don’t want to forget the “Loser” key chain that Larry Yungk commissioned from a metalworking artisan at the Lumphini Night Bazaar in Bangkok, who made it for him on the spot. “It cost him about $3 plus plane fare.” A prize in Week 859, 2010, It is now part of the John Glenn (not that one) Loser Stuff Collection. My apologies to the donors of equally impressive handcrafted prizes that have slipped my mind. If you’d like to make something silly yourself and hand it over to me for free to go to who-knows-who, please let me know! Red‘ux’! It’s the ‘Sty’le Invitational ‘air quotes’ contest I’m leery of doing exactly the same contest we’ve done several times before that’s not specifically about current events, but Jesse Frankovich’s list of half a dozen brand-new ideas persuaded me that we could safely do “air quotes” yet again. For inspiration and guidance for Week 1355 — and to make sure you’re not repeating an entry that’s already gotten ink — here are links to our previous results (scroll down past the new contest if necessary). If a certain “air quote” has been noted but your description is a different joke, that’s fine. One way to avoid repetition is to work with newer names and terms. Week 1280, 2018 Week 1134, 2015 Week 1031, 2013 Week 826, 2009 Week 405, 2001 Week 336, 2000 Fortunately, we have a very wordy and namey language. Deadline is Monday night, Nov. 4. Snicker treat*: The Halloweenies** of Week 1351 **Non-inking headline by Duncan Stevens; ** non-inking headline by everybody else* Invitational readers have up to a whole week to steal your ideas (at least the remotely feasible ones) for Halloween contests and parties this year. Nobody went to the trouble to assemble and don a costume weeks ahead of the holiday for the purpose of sending me a photo, but Jesse’s pumpkin proved a great visual, and Lee Graham’s decoration of a “Nosferatu” still was lovely as well. I’m not sure exactly how one would effect a costume out of a twirling lawn sprinkler, but it mattered not at all: Hildy Zampella’s idea of putting googly eyes on it to make a Rudy Giuliani was one of very few entries this week to generate a genuine belly laugh. Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood deemed it “fabulous!” complete with exclamation point (or “banger” in journalese). Aside from Jesse’s pumpkin, this week’s other runners-up used wordplay: Bob Kruger’s literal “spinning in their graves” and Sam Mertens’s whistleblower. The latter is sure to pop up at every Washington party next weekend, perhaps with that Sam-inspired target on his or her back. Along with M-Peach, Peach-Mint, I’m Peach, etc., there were numerous suggestions to go as some hybrid of a ewe and a crane, or to have a ukulele suspended from a crane arm. I bet that someone out there is going to build a fantastic costume on one of these puns. This Sunday, a Czar-studded event! (Plus a little Loser one.) Gene Weingarten, whose pair of Pulitzers are mere footnotes in his career under the main chapter of Founder and Czar of The Style Invitational, is going to be reading from and talking about his just-released book “One Day” this Sunday, Oct. 27, from 5 to 6 at Politics & Prose bookstore in upper Northwest Washington. The book, subtitled “The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America” and six years in the making, tells well over a dozen deeply reported stories that are centered on a randomly chosen day, December 28, 1986. The idea is gimmicky, but the execution is art — kind of like J.S. Bach’s writing a fugue theme based on the letters B-A-C-H (a.k.a. B-flat). I know this because I read Gene’s manuscript — I think the whole thing — in bits and pieces over the years, and was continually riveted. The Politics & Prose appearance is free, but it’s a relatively small space; they just put out a few dozen chairs and other people stand around in the stacks. So if you’re going, I suggest you get there early. The Royal Consort and I plan to go — and Losers Roy and Inge Ashley, who live nearby, tell me that you’re all welcome to stop by their home afterward for a snack and a chat. (See Roy at the event for directions; I’ve been to Roy’s house and he has all sorts of cool mementos and such.) And in November … We have our Loser brunch Nov. 10 at noon at Paradiso Italian Restaurant (nice buffet — breakfast stuff, lunch stuff, mimosas) on Franconia Road, just outside the Beltway. I am a buffet nut and try never to miss this stop on the yearly brunch rotation. I’m looking forward to meeting some people who’ll be attending their first Loser event. And Jesse Frankovich is still awaiting a schedule about the D.C. convention he’ll be attending Nov. 18-20 (Monday-Wednesday), so it’s still up in the air about whether we can schedule an in-town Dorkness at Noon lunch one of those days before he heads back to Michigan. Aorta say ‘whew’ to Bob Staake! As I noted in this week’s Invitational, Bob Staake plans to be back next week while he’s on the mend from an emergency valve job, which he didn’t make public until he got out of the hospital near his home on Cape Cod and then a week in rehab. Just this afternoon, Bob posted a photo of his giant sternum scar on Facebook (I’ll spare you) with the following message: “For those who wondered if I fell off the planet or something, I have a pretty good excuse: A couple weeks ago I visited the hospital for an impromptu chest shaving — and the next thing I know the doctors are rushing me to the ER, opening up my heart and replacing my aortic valve in a five-hour operation. The good news is that while my flapper needed swapping out, my heart is STRONG and I don’t have coronary disease — the bad news is you’re all stuck with me for a few more decades. “While I don’t remember saying it, as they were hurrying me into the OR I apparently reminded my surgeon, ‘Just remember, doc — I still have a LOT of creating to do.’ ” I know how Bob can greet the trick-or-treaters next Thursday! ====================================================================== WEEK 1356, published November 3, 2019 Style Conversational Week 1356: That’s what she said The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s absolutely non-erotic results, and the new Ask Backwards contest The Empress was shocked! shocked! that the Loser Community made the most mundane of quotidian activities sound dirrrteee. (Elise Amendola*AP) The Empress was shocked! shocked! that the Loser Community made the most mundane of quotidian activities sound dirrrteee. (Elise Amendola*AP) By Pat Myers Oct. 31, 2019 at 3:45 p.m. EDT If you read the results of Style Invitational Week 1352 in The Post’s Nov. 3 Arts & Style section, you’ll see 12 funny faux-racy accounts of mundane or otherwise nonsexual activities. But print edition readers won’t see such phrases as these: “Tom pressed up hard behind David, whose muscular back was bent over in anticipation. Tom reached quickly between his tensed thighs. …” “Fellatio!” he almost shouted. “He slid it in gently …” “When the tip emerged, a glistening drop of liquid quivered … ” Respectively: A quarterback takes the snap (Jon Ketzner); a spelling bee (Duncan Stevens); a CD player (Hildy Zampella); checking a car’s oil (First Offender Jack Doherty). My self-censorship for print seems to be sparing this week’s entries the fate of a similar contest I ran five years ago, in Week 1094: That was to write poems using any from a list we offered of obscure but dirty-sounding words, and the poems had to make sense with their actual meanings. Four weeks later in this column, (full column here), in one of my less pleasant weeks of my career, I explained what happened: “Sure don’t see why not. Words are words,” answered my editor a month ago when I sent him an e-mail titled “Can we do this contest?” I was pleased, of course, that he’d given the go-ahead to Loser Ward Kay’s suggestion of a poetry contest based on the list of “50 Words That Sound Rude but Really Aren’t.” And readers seemed to agree: Four weeks ago, in announcing the Week 1090 contest, The Style Invitational printed 40 or so of the words, both in print and online, including such genuine wholesome English words as “shittah,” “dreamhole,” “fuksheet” and “dik-dik” — without any indication of what their real meanings were … Yeah, it was a pretty immature idea. But “immature” is part of the Empress’s job description anyway, and, as I’d expected, we received the usual number of complaints for a Style Invitational column: zero. Four weeks later, however — yesterday evening — my editor had a serious change of heart. He remembered his earlier approval, “but after seeing the page today I think we just have to go another direction. There’s simply too much in there that crosses the line, when taking into account that we are still a family paper.” Fortunately, he agreed late this morning to let the entire set of results run online, and to allow the winner and two other entries — ones that weren’t double-entendres — to run in print. . Here are the results of Week 1094 online, annotated at the last minute to award runner-up prizes to my original choices as well as the ones I ended up making for print. Amazingly, whether because I’d banished the dismal episode from my mind or (more likely) general all-purpose senescence, Week 1094 hadn’t even occurred to me when I posted Week 1352, inspired by the humor piece “Sexual Fantasies of Everyday New Yorkers” by Mark Cognata, in the online New Yorker. But, though even the excerpt that I ran as an example that week (about someone thrilled that the barista had oat milk for his coffee) included such phrases as “down, down,” “pulls out” and “big, bulging” — and I got no flak about it before or after it ran — I knew that I had to stay away from the most (faux) explicit writing for the print edition, and indeed neither of the two copy editors who read it complained about any of the 12 entries. And while I know that inductive reasoning has been pooh-poohed since the ancients, I choose to believe that if I haven’t had a single taste complaint to management — for almost 16 years now — about anything that’s appeared in the Invitational only online, the nine graphic entries I run only in the lower half of the Web Invite this week won’t bring us down. Sorry, Jack Doherty, but I couldn’t mention your Fir Stink in the paper with an entry like that. It’s the first Lose Cannon — indeed, the first “above the fold” ink — for Jeff Strong, yet another of this year’s outstanding freshman class. Jeff’s sensual description (I’ll let you discover what it’s about) earns him his seventh blot of ink, and perhaps the motivation to start entering more. — What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood also singled out Jeff’s winning entry among his faves, but first noted Kevin Dopart’s belt-tugger as well as the “And Last” entry, Tom Witte’s “secret love. Let’s just call her ‘E.’” (That was just one of several Empress-fantasies. I shuddered repeatedly.) And the answer is … a 10-year-old jar of natural peanut butter: It’s Ask Backwards Once again, it’s The Style Invitational’s most frequently presented contest — by my count, Week 1356 is No. 38 — in which you write a funny A&Q starting with one of the 16 items we throw at you. Obviously, there’s a different set of “answers” each time, but for guidance and inspiration, here are a few random winners from Asks Backwards 1 through 37. Honorable mention from the first contest, Week 24, 1993: A. Lorena Bobbitt or Mahatma Gandhi. Q. Who was the wrong person to tell: “Don’t make trouble. Just lie back, be quiet, and think of England”? (Jackson Bross) Runner-up from Week 264, 1998: A. Leonardo DiCaprio’s dental hygienist. Q. Who is the only woman on earth likely to give Leonardo DiCaprio the brush? (Mike Genz) Runner-up from Week 801, 2009: A. Ferret booties. Q. According to a recent poll, what are most male ferrets interested in, way ahead of “good ferret personality” and “good ferret sense of humor”? (Tom Witte) Runner-up from Week 995, 2012: A. The thing that goes “woo.” Q. During one of his senior moments, what did Joe Biden call his beloved Metroliner? (Kevin Dopart; Susan Thompson) Runner-up from Week 1249, 2017: A. Mike Pence’s favorite pastime. Q. What are cold showers? (Rob Huffman) Runner-up from our last Ask Backwards contest, Week 1302: A. An almost-everything bagel. Q. What favorite food did Elizabeth Warren cite as evidence of her Jewish heritage? (Mark Raffman) For literally hundreds and hundreds more entries, go to the Master Contest List at the Losers’ own website, and search on “backward.” Note the week number, then look down three or four weeks to see the link to the results to that contest. Repeat up to 37 times. We’re gonna be movie stars! Come to the Nov. 10 Loser brunch I’d mentioned some time ago that the editors of The Lily, an online Post publication targeted at young women, wanted to do a piece — probably a short video — about The Style Invitational and the phenomenon that is the Loser Community. And I heard this afternoon that they plan to send someone to our next social event, the Loser Brunch on Sunday, Nov. 10. It’s at noon at Paradiso Italian Restaurant, 6124 Franconia Rd., Alexandria (just outside the Beltway between the Van Dorn Street and Springfield exits). There’s a big buffet, but you can also order from the menu if you don’t have an Empress-size appetite for both breakfast and lunch fare. And mimosas. Anyone is welcome: ink-blotters, auxiliaries of ink-blotters, and just Invite fans. So we can get a head count, please RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). Meanwhile, Insanely Successful Loser Jesse Frankovich has found out that his schedule on Nov. 18-20 — he’ll be in D.C. from Michigan for a convention — has him booked all day. The best bet to get together, he says, is sometime after 5 p.m. on Tuesday the 19th, in the Foggy Bottom area. Time to put on all those Peach-with-Mint-and-an-M costumes! ====================================================================== WEEK 1357, published November 10, 2019 Style Conversational Week 1357: We have another sing coming The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s parody contest and “opposite movie” results. Bob Staake's pencil sketch for this week's Style Invitational cartoon. Recent surgery to replace a heart valve resulted in nerve damage that reached Bob's fingers (it's likely to be temporary). But he's clearly still able to kick the competition. More about Bob below. (Bob Staake for the Washington Post) Bob Staake's pencil sketch for this week's Style Invitational cartoon. Recent surgery to replace a heart valve resulted in nerve damage that reached Bob's fingers (it's likely to be temporary). But he's clearly still able to kick the competition. More about Bob below. (Bob Staake for the Washington Post) By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow November 7, 2019 at 4:06 PM EST Before we talk about this week’s contest and results, I want to give one last reminder about this Sunday’s Loser brunch, at noon at Paradiso Italian Restaurant, 6124 Franconia Rd., Alexandria — close outside the Beltway between the Van Dorn Street and Springfield exits. Not only will some up-and-coming rookie Losers be there, at their first Invite event, but we’ll also have a reporter and videographer from The Lily, an online division of The Post that’s targeted toward women; they’re working on a video story about the Invitational, and especially our Loser Community. So it would be a shame if we didn’t show up and Commune, you know? It’s not too late to RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org , the Losers’ website; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” You’ll also see a roughed-in calendar for the next 12 months. And if you’re coming, flip me an email as well at pat.myers@washpost.com. Play it again … Tips for the Week 1357 parody contest They take a long time, but song parody contests are my favorite of all the Invitationals to judge — primarily because I’m*always*blown away by the wit and craft and humor of the best entries. And so I’m eagerly awaiting what the Loser Community sends me for Week 1357 . I had considered limiting the contest, as I sometimes do, to a certain genre of music (e.g., Beatles songs, holiday songs) or to particular subject matter (food, school, animals, advice). But this time I’m giving you free rein — just keep the subject matter to current events. And it’s fun to share a variety of musical genres and time periods. We had our last parody contest just four months ago, in Week 1339 ′s contest for songs about “modern woes,” but I like to run two a year, and the remaining weeks of 2019 are spoken for. And Lord knows there should be enough inspiration in the daily headlines. What follows are the same Handy-Dandy Guidelines I posted in the Week 1339 Conversational — which in turn were lifted from the previous parody contest. ● As with all Style Invitational song parody contests, *we value flawless rhyming,* even if the original rhymes loosely. And we’re a humor contest; witty wordplay (including, but not requiring, clever playing off the words of the original), a zingy ending and the avoidance of bitter anger — our word for this is “screediness” — are the paths to Invite ink. ● Because the Invitational is a contest that is read rather than listened to — especially, duh, in the print version — *a reader has to easily figure out how your lyrics match the tune*. The best way to know this is to show someone the lyrics and see if the person — without your help or cues — can figure out how to sing them. For the print page (which includes the four top winners), I’ll be choosing what I hope are very well known songs among at least a couple of generations. Online, I’ll include links to video or audio versions to the originals, and so less well known songs are welcome there. In either case, feel free to include the URL of a clip on YouTube or elsewhere whose music matches your lyrics. (Handy hint: To make a YouTube clip start playing at a certain point: Play it, pause it at your starting point, then add to the end of the URL, with no spaces: #T=0m25s, or how many minutes and seconds it really is. If this task proves confusing, don’t worry about it.) ● In our Golden Era of Political Parody Videos,*I’d love it if I could share your fabulously inkworthy parody as a performance,* particularly if the lyrics are right there on the video — like this one by Sandy Riccardi in our Week 1287 parody contest (results here ). But it’s your lyrics, not the performance, that I’m judging. If you send a link to a video, please also send the text of the lyrics. ● Our general rule with the Invitational is to run *humor that hasn’t been published elsewhere.* But I’ve made exceptions in cases where it hasn’t yet been distributed widely, or by another publication. Write me at pat.myers@washpost.com . about specific cases and I’ll make a ruling. ● Also, while I normally consider the Invite not to be a team sport, *I don’t mind crediting two people for a single parody.* ● Note that once again,*I’m extending the usual deadline by a week* — so you’ll have till Nov. 25 to submit your parodies. If you’ve done a video and it’s ready for me to see earlier, drop me a line and I’ll have a look at it, in case I’d like you to tweak your lyrics. (My normally strict blind judging, in which I don’t see the writers’ names until I’ve chosen the winners, has to involve a little peeking in cases like this; don’t worry — even if I know and adore you personally, I won’t have any trouble at all denying you ink.) Opposite attractions: The movies of Week 1353 Contests that play on movie titles have been very good to The Style Invitational over the years — there’s an enormous pool of titles to work with, and it’s usually not necessary for the reader to know the movie well to appreciate the joke. And the results of Week 1353 — a contest to change a word in a title to its “opposite” — hold their own. More than 250 people entered this contest, with at least 2,000 entries in all. At first I was troubled because a lot of the entries were too obvious — lots of stuff like “The Slow and the Furious: Rush hour on the Beltway” — but once I threshed out the wheat of the shortlist from the chaff of “The Worst Years of Our Lives: The Trump administration,” I had more than enough clever ideas, including imaginative interpretations of “opposite.” It’s the first Lose Cannon for Jesse Rifkin, who was still inkless when he performed a song parody at the Loser party in January, but in recent months has been blotting more weeks than not. This week his “Lion Queen” gets him Ink No. 13, and he also gets an honorable mention for my pick among numerous “Mission: Possible” entries. Frank Osen, who doesn’t have a cat but has a boatload of Loser prizes, has already passed on his Twinkle Tush “jewel”; perhaps I’ll offer it up once again in a future contest, or perhaps it’ll be a door prize at a future Loser event. After a period of appearing only in the Unprintables section of the Conversational, current Rookie of the Year Jon Ketzner has figured out how to be inkably edgy — as in his runner-up “Moby Niceguy.” After I posted this week’s results this morning, 256-time Loser Mike Gips wrote me with this note: “My entries for the movie contest were in honor of my father. He designed the poster for each of my entries.” Which meant that Philip Gips, who died last month, was the creator of the famous posters for: “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “Altered States,” “Catch-22,” “Rosemary’s Baby” — perhaps his most famous image — “Downhill Racer,” “No Way Out” and “Fatal Attraction.” Not to mention “Alien” and the ESPN logo, which has never been changed. There’s a great obit in the New York Times. *What Doug Dug: *The numerous faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood all came from the honorable mentions: “White Hawk Down” as the John Bolton story (Tom Witte and David Kleinbard); “Hygienic Harry” — Go ahead, make my bed (Lee Graham); “Death of Pi” (rookie Stuart Anderson); “The Dropout” — with the “plastics” guy telling cashier Ben his preference in grocery bags (great debut by First Offender Marco Di Pietro, who also wrote the headline, “Box Office Flips”); “Small,” a dig at Trump by Deb Stewart; “The Godmother,” Cinderella ordering a hit on her stepsisters; and the best of many for “One Flew Into the Cuckoo’s Nest,” another White House dig by Howard Walderman. *And a Laura Laurel: *Laura Michalski, who gave the Invite yet another pair of eyes last night, most enjoyed Jeff Shirley’s “20,000 Leagues Over the Sea,” a large program of starting bowling teams on Navy ships. Bob-Bob-Bobbin’ along: A Staake update Last week I was delighted to welcome back Bob Staake as our Forever Illustrator just two weeks after he underwent emergency surgery to replace a heart valve. Since the operation, Bob developed a problem in the nerves leading to his drawing hand — but as you can see in both his pencil sketch above and the final cartoon in this week’s Invitational, he’s coping with it magnificently. Here’s an excerpt of what Bob has posted on Facebook in the past days about his condition: *Just two days ago:* “It’ll take 12 to 18 months for your drawing hand to fully recover.” “That’s what the neurologist told me yesterday. Seems that one of the surprisingly common side effects of open heart surgery is brachial plexopathy. … When the patient undergoes anesthesia and their arms are opened wide … this causes the nerves extending from the neck to the fingers to be stretched to the point that they can become damaged. During my rehabilitation in the hospital I noticed that both the pinkie and ring finger on my right hand were numb. … “ I thought this was something that would go away, but when I returned to the studio and tried to draw with either a pencil or pen, it was almost impossible. With those two fingers on the drawing board, my line was shaky, tentative, and lacked any spontaneous confidence whatsoever. Sometimes I would lose a grip on the pencil, sometimes it completely slipped out of my grasp. Yesterday I went through a number of nerve stimulation tests and was diagnosed with brachial plexopathy. It will heal, I was told — in 12 to 18 months — and worse yet, the healing begins at the neck and ENDS at the fingers. “I discussed with my neurologist ways to compensate for what will clearly be a (temporary) decline in the quality of my line drawings, but I’ve always been pretty good at faking it with graphic “smoke and mirrors” (it helps that I ultimately digitize my hand drawings). So, while I now have a new aortic heart valve, I also have a new challenge — one that for most people would be nothing more than an annoying numbness in a couple for rarely used fingers, but for an artist who makes his living with his hands, the stakes are a little more complicated …” *Today:*“Today’s illustration for The Washington Post [is] my first after being diagnosed with brachial plexopathy in my drawing hand. … My pinkie and ring finger continue to remain numb (amazing how important those two stupid fingers are when drawing) but I’m doing my best to compensate for my lack of tactile control, a less than ideal pen line and a decidedly shaky stroke. Neurologist projects a 12-18 month recovery, but I’m committed to cutting that time in half.” So those gracefully zany pencil lines in the sketch above of You Know Who and the ambassador to Ukraine? Those were done with a half-numb hand. Ditto the pen work in the final. And so while of course we’re wishing Bob the speediest of recoveries, it’s abundantly clear that his artwork will continue to be of world-class quality — even if he still draws cartoon horses with their leg joints backward. We’re so freaking lucky to have him. ====================================================================== WEEK 1358, published November 17, 2019 Style Conversational Week 1358: Let’s do some stirring, creatures The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s ‘Night Before Christmas’ contest and neologism results A handwritten version of “A Visit From St. Nicholas” penned by Clement Moore as a gift from the poet. (New-York Historical Society) By Pat Myers November 14, 2019 at 3:27 p.m. EST It’s been close to three years since The Style Invitational did its last word bank contest: In February 2017, just a couple of weeks after Donald Trump swore on the Bible to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, I announced our Week 1214 contest thus: “Donald Trump’s inaugural address was 1,433 words of pure … source material for our perennial word bank game, in which we present some widely known work or passage, and ask you to write something else from some of its words.” This week’s contest, Week 1358, gives you barely a third as many words to work with, but I’m confident that we’ll get a wide variety of funny, creative entries. After all, our contest using the Gettysburg Address (Week 758, 2008) used just 272 words, though back then I let people use words extracted from other words, like “bra” from “brave.” Sorry, no more of that. If there’s anyone attuned to what works in Style Invitational contests, it’s Jesse Frankovich, for whom getting three blots of ink in a contest is an off week. And so in addition to the half-dozen sample entries he sent me with his suggestion, Jesse also noted the “lots of interesting words to play with in there (brains, breast, cheeks, finger, hurricane, jerk, mamma, opening, spite, wall, to name a few).” “Opening”? Oh, boy. AD For those who don’t want to read “A Visit From St. Nicholas” 927 times while working on this contest, Jesse helpfully provided this alphabetical list, which he counted at 540 words. I broke the five hyphenated words in the poem (e.g., “new-fallen,” “sugar-plums”) into two words, so the list now has 545. So you can make a bunch of copies of the list, then cross out or delete words as you’ve used them in your entry, to make sure you didn’t, say, use “what” more than twice — or “is” at all. I’m hoping to use a variety of subject matter — political stuff, jokes, dialogue, maybe poems — and a mix of short and longer entries. You are NOT more likely to get ink by sending me the longest thing you could write before tiring of the exercise; long entries have to be worth the space they take up. (Although I did indeed run the incredible 700-word entry by Mike Burch at the end of the Week 1214 results) Remember that while you can’t add to or subtract from the individual words below, you can change the capitalization or add punctuation. So, for example, you could change “brains” to “brain’s,” or “away” to “a-way.” And I hope I can prevail upon Loser Gary Crockett once again to validate the entries via computer wizardry rather than the Empress’s manual tedium, as he did so usefully for this week’s results. Here’s the list: AD ADVERTISING a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a all all all all all all all all all an and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and appear arose around as as as as ashes aside away away away away away back be be beard bed beds before before belly below Blitzen bound bow bowlful brains breast broad bundle but but but by by called came came cap care cheeks cherry children chimney chimney chimney chin Christmas Christmas chubby clatter clothes Comet coursers coursers creature Cupid danced Dancer dash dash dash day Dasher dimples Donder down down drawn dread dressed drew driver droll drove dry each eagles eight elf encircled ere even exclaim eye eyes eyes face fallen filled finger flash flew flew flew flung fly foot for from from full fur gave gave gave giving good had had had had happy he he he he he he he he he he he he head head head head heads heard heard held her him him his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his hoof hopes house house how how hung hurricane I I I I I I I I I I in in in in in in in in in in in it it jelly jerk jolly just just kerchief knew know laughed laughed lawn laying leaves like like like like like like like like little little little little lively long looked lustre mamma matter me meet merry mid miniature moment moon more mount mouse mouth must my my my myself name nap nestled new Nicholas Nicholas Nicholas Nick night night nod nose nose not not not nothing now now now now objects obstacle of of of of of of of of of of of of of of of of of old old on on on on on on on open opening our out out pack pawing pedler pipe plump plums porch Prancer prancing quick rapid reindeer right roof rose roses round sash saw see settled shook should shouted shutters sight sky sleigh sleigh sleigh smoke snow snow snug so so soon soon soot spite spoke sprang sprang St. St. St. St. stirring stockings stockings straight stump such sugar tarnished team teeth than that that that the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the their their them then then there there they they they they they thistle threw through tight tiny to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to too top top top tore toys toys turned turning twas twinkled twinkling twist up up up up visions Vixen wall was was was was was was was went were were were were what what when when when when when when while whistle whistled white wild window wink winter’s with with with with with with with wondering word work would wreath By the way, the print version of this week’s Invitational includes the first 18 lines of the poem. I’ve found that, no matter how easy I make it to look something up online (hence the wapo.st*TNBC address), a lot more print readers will send in an entry if I give them the necessary material right on the page. Grid quote pros*: The results of Week 1354 *Non-inking entry by Jon Gearhart AD Despite a grid that turned out to be heavily oversalted with Q’s and Z’s (we think we have a way to prevent that next time), the Loser Community came up with lots of cool neologic finds by snaking through the word search puzzle in Week 1354. Thank you thank you thank you, Gary Crockett, for offering, unsolicited, to devise a computer program that “in no time flat” would test whether the letters in each word actually did connect correctly through the grid: that each letter was adjacent to the next, and that no spot on the grid was used twice in the same word or phrase. That saved lots of time and tedium on my part — I sent him my whole shortlist of several dozen entries — and it did catch a word in which a word used the same letter twice: Dangdale, a town where it seems nobody curses (Mayberry is a famed dangdale), used the D at G-19 twice. (So close, Daniel Helming!) Once again, a member of this year’s remarkable rookie class scores the Lose Cannon — and it’s his second: Sam Mertens’s “DoveSwanGiantRat” — one-upping the turducken — was both Thanksgiving-timely and hilarious; my predecessor the Czar singled it out as the only entry this week that literally made him LOL. Sam got his first blot of ink in Week 1323 and now is up to 30, with the two wins plus three runners-up. AD A longtime Loser but a very occasional entrant, Mike Creveling usually prefers to serve up his wit in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group. His full statement of White House foreign policy, “SAUDI OIL? OK, AID!,” gives him his 16th blot of Invite ink, and his first entry ever “above the fold.” With this week’s runner-up plus an honorable mention, Raymond Gallucci also scores Ink No. 6, while Frank Osen is the sole member of the Losers’ Circle this week to be there too often to write about. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choices for this week’s winner and ‘zup, and also singled out Jesse Frankovich’s NEPOMAT (overseas envoy who just happens to be related to the president) Chris Doyle’s GUDWIG (Beethoven’s better-coifed brother) and Duncan Stevens’s MLKING, what the civil rights leader’s estate does to those who’d like to show a clip of the “Dream” speech. TL;DR. Or barely. The week’s longest entry — which Gary Crockett didn’t have to validate because no way was it on my shortlist: “DARN TARTY AMOEBA SAID I BID AN OUTER TUB OR LEG. BOOM! LOVES WIN! ANY I’D BURN?: I think this microbe may be cheating me.” It was by … Gary Crockett. (Who did get three honorable mentions this week.) AD FINDING HIMSELF: I was judging blindly as usual, but my EmpreSP led me to guess that Loser Eric Nelkin was the author of “NELKIN RANTS: ‘Anytime he doesn’t get ink, he goes one of his Nelkin rants about the Empress’s poor judgment.’ ” I presume that Eric won’t be ranting about his two blots of ink this week for other entries. What you doing Tuesday night? If you’re downtown around 6 p.m. (exact time TBD) on Tuesday, Nov. 19, join me and some other Losers and Devotees as we welcome the visiting Jesse Frankovich, who’s coming in from Michigan for a conference. We’re meeting at District Thai, 1014 Vermont Ave NW (near K Street); nothing fancy but it’s been good the times I’ve been there for lunch. The restaurant is on the second floor. If you’re planning to be there, send me an email and I’ll make sure to give you the exact time when we work that out. Parody on — you have another week! Remember that the deadline for the Week 1357 song parody contest isn’t till Monday, Nov. 25, the same as for Week 1358. I already have songs from 52 Losers, but am always eager for more. ====================================================================== WEEK 1359, published November 24, 2019 Style Conversational Week 1359: The Thirl is gone Remembering the renowned legal scholar -- and 37-time Loser -- (Hugh Thirlway, The Hague), 1937-2019 The legal secretary of the World Court and renowned scholar of international law still made time to write hundreds of limericks and other bits of mildly racy humor, including dozens for The Style Invitational over the years. (European Journal of International Law) By Pat Myers November 21, 2019 at 4:15 p.m. EST I was up late last night, past deadline to finish this week’s Style Invitational, Week 1359, when I got an email. The subject line was “Hugh Thirlway.” “Dear Madam, “May I trouble you with an enquiry: One of your contributors to the limerick contest, a good friend of mine, has recently passed away. He is mentioned in your guidelines as being “ace limerician Hugh Thirlway.” It turned out that my Googling correspondent, Cristina Hoss, was writing an obituary for the Leiden Journal of International Law, and wanted to include one of Hugh’s limericks to show the lighter side of this illustrious legal scholar and professor, who for a number of years held a high post at the International Court of Justice (a.k.a. the World Court), based in The Hague, capital of the Netherlands. So I went through the Invite archives and sent a few of the dozens of limericks, double dactyls and other inking entries credited to Hugh since his Style Invitational debut in our 2008 Limerixicon contest. And though Cristina said her obit wouldn’t be published until at least January (“the pace of international law is slow”), I asked if she could send some information about him to share with Washington Post readers. So first, a little bio on this extraordinary man (he died Oct. 13 at age 82), and then the lims. AD Hugh Thirlway was born in London in 1937, studied law in Cambridge and worked as a solicitor (attorney) for some time. He then moved to the French city of Nancy, “where he learned French and surpassed all his French fellow students in the law exams. He actually wrote his PhD in French. His knowledge of French and perfect Cambridge English were good preconditions for a career in International law,” since the World Court, the main judicial arm of the United Nations, works in both those languages. “In 1968 he entered the service of the International Court of Justice as Secretary of the Court became shortly after First Secretary and, in 1987, Principal Legal Secretary. For younger colleagues as myself (he was 40 years my senior), he was someone to look up to, yet approachable and in many ways a very subtle teacher. His legal drafting skills were simply remarkable.” After his time at the World Court, he became a professor of international law in Geneva and a visiting professor around the world, while continuing to keep his residence in The Hague (I know this, remember, because you have to include your mailing address on your entry form). AD ADVERTISING “And as if all this wasn’t enough,” Cristina added, “he was a very talented musician, piano player, composer and director. He regularly organised musical events at his house and outside.” Mr. Thirlway’s magnum opus was an examination of the half-century history of the World Court, “The Law and Procedure of the International Court of Justice.” I see that you can pick it up from Oxford University Press for $515, if you’re doing some Christmas shopping. Otherwise, I recommend instead Mr. Thirlway’s minimum opus: these limericks (plus a double dactyl) from various Invite contests. Without fail they’re ingeniously crafted and devilishly clever — and often mildly racy. Hugh’s Invite debut came with this entry in our 2008 Limerixicon contest, for limericks featuring words beginning with “da-”: The damselfish lurks in the sea, AD Self-centered as ever could be. Hunting food in the deeps; All it finds there it keeps: It seems pretty dam selfish to me. And the hits just kept on comin': When invited to dine with Count Dracula, I expected a menu spectacula; But d'you know what I got? Merely blutwurst, that’s what! (I.e., “blood sausage” — that's the vernacula). (2010) When one person’s word is the law, That's dictatorship. Do not ignore Or contest the decrees Addressed to you, please: Just say “Yes, dear,” and not a word more. (2009) As to diets, I see this dichotomy: There are those that would not leave a lot o' me, While those I indulge in Result in gross bulgin': A figure all paunchy and bottomy. (2009) I parked by the side of the road Outside her (and her husband's) abode; We'd just time for a quickie, But then it got tricky When I found that my car had been towed. (2010) AD There was an Old Man of Jamaica, Who suddenly married a Quaker; For that's how it ends If you start off just Friends: She may press you one evening to take her. (2011) It’s a subject I’m not keen to touch on: A blot on the family escutcheon. The king granted arms To Great-Grandma, whose charms He enjoyed when I fear she'd not much on. (2012) A double dactyl: Miracle-pyrical, Jesus of Nazareth Feeding five thousand: two Fish and some bread. Such a proceeding is Uneconomical, Bakers and fishermen Hastily said. (2014) I recall, as we sit by the fireside, How exciting the life I've led by 'er side: When my football side scored She'd make love, to reward Not just me, but each man — the entire side. (2014) To the joys of the flesh let’s surrender! To my eager caresses please tender Your breasts — or your pecs! (I'm addicted to sex, AD But I'm simply indifferent to gender. (2016) This limerick showed that the form can work for serious subjects as well: Jewish David stood up, self-reliant, With his slingshot to topple the giant. Now Goliath's Israeli, And against him stands daily Palestinian David, defiant. (2008) And Hugh’s final Style Invitational poem, from May 2018: In view of all Trump’s said and done, A State of Despair has begun. Fifty States, I recall, And that once was all; But now I have found fifty-one. As impressive as Hugh’s Invite oeuvre is, it’s peanut-sized compared with the hundreds of limericks he wrote for the OEDILF project, the ongoing unabridged dictionary in limerick form: more than 500 under the pseudonym Timon, plus 200-some more at Hugh T. Super-Loser Jesse Frankovich “workshopped” with Hugh to polish the OEDILF limericks, and remembers him as “friendly, funny, and appreciative of suggestions, and he gave a lot of constructive comments to others as well. Hard to get an exact count but it appears that he workshopped over 2,000 limericks by other authors.” AD I knew Hugh personally through just a few emails in which he’d ask for clarification about a contest, or occasionally to ask for an explanation of a local-to-Washington joke. Needless to say, he was always amusing and thoroughly charming. I — and The Style Invitational — will miss his wit terribly. Air quotes coming and going Sometimes when a Loser is working on a set of contest entries, inspiration strikes for the creation of a related contest. That’s what happened with 400-something-time Loser Roy Ashley, who expanded our recurring “air quotes” contest (whose results run today) into one in which the word being air-quoted must be written into a sentence — and span more than one word. Roy sold me on the idea by enclosing several clever and varied examples that explain this week’s contest, Week 1359, better than a description does. I’m eager to see what you come up with. AD And the Plain Old Regular Air Quotes Contest — trotted out yet one more time — seems to be a bottomless font, especially since so many Losers alluded to he latest headlines in their entries. But it was Hildy Zampella’s ingenious definition for h"USB"and — “Consider yourself lucky if you get it right on the first try” — that won her a 10th Invite win, for 135 blots of ink since she started in Week 1140. Duncan Stevens continues to charge toward the 500-ink Hall of Fame mark (he’s neck and neck with Frank Osen for first dibs) with his use of Reagan National Airport’s abbreviation in bir"DCA"ge. Warren Tanabe scores a personal-best four blots in a week, including his runner-up, “Invent”ory cataloguing the president’s strengths, to hop his career blot total to 130 (and he still hasn’t shown up to a Loser event!). And yeah, Chris Doyle wrote some clever stuff too. What Doug Doug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me again about the bestestness of the winners and runners-up, and also singled out Rivka Liss-Levinson’s co"nun"drum (“How do you solve a problem like Maria?”), e“con”omics (a dig at Elizabeth Warren’s promises by Ellen Raphaeli), Encou“rage”ment (Jeff Contompasis on MAGA rallies) and Satis“fact”ion (David Kleinbard of the joys of proving your spouse wrong via Google). Next week: A Wednesday Invitational, an AWOL Convo Because of Thanksgiving, I have to finish next week’s Invite a day early and post it next Wednesday, Nov. 27. Which means there’s just not going to be time for me to do a Convo as well. Look for the Invitational about noon next Wednesday; I’ll send out the email newsletter as usual. AD Next Loser Brunch: It’s on Sunday, Dec. 8, at noon at Asian Palace, a pan-Asian restaurant in Columbia, Md. I’m singing in a choral concert that afternoon and can’t make it, but I hope there’s a good turnout, especially from the North of the Beltway contingent. I certainly hope that Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan is over his nasty bronchitis by then; RSVP to him on the Losers’ website NRARS.org and click on “Our Social Engorgements.” ====================================================================== WEEK 1361, published December 8, 2019 Style Conversational Week 1361: The old (crystal) ball game The Empress of The Style Invitational looks at last year’s ‘Year in Preview’ predictions -- and she has some party news All the way over and out: Beto O'Rourke — pictured at the far right during a debate in July — didn't turn out to be the Loser-Turned-Nominee that our Week 1311 entry predicted. (Paul Sancya*AP) All the way over and out: Beto O'Rourke — pictured at the far right during a debate in July — didn't turn out to be the Loser-Turned-Nominee that our Week 1311 entry predicted. (Paul Sancya*AP) By Pat Myers Dec. 5, 2019 at 4:00 p.m. EST As we kick off (as in begin, not die) our at least annualish Year in Preview contest, Style Invitational Week 1361, I thought I’d check on last year’s inking predictions — remember, they are jokes — and see if any of them turned out to have a wee bit of foresight. Here are a few prog“no”stications from Week 1311 (full list of results here): Nov. 6: Beto O’Rourke loses election for dogcatcher, but his rousing concession speech vaults him to the lead in Democratic presidential primaries. (John Hutchins’s third-place winner) A year ago, O’Rourke was the Democrats’ glamour boy, being touted as the Heir to Obama even though his most famous political achievement had been losing to Ted Cruz in their Texas Senate race. Alas, O’Rourke bumbled in the early debates, ended up in the outside lanes, and dropped out of the presidential race Nov. 1. Perhaps nominations are still open for dogcatcher. AD Sept. 22: The National Council of Teachers of English disbands after a violent battle over inserting a comma into MeToo. (Ira Allen’s Lose Cannon winner) Commas and apostrophes continue to disappear, thanks especially to the hassle of typing punctuation on phones, and because you can’t use them in hashtags. (Note in Gary Crockett’s song parody today that The Post has decided to use “OK boomer” rather than “okay, boomer,” which would be its standard spelling and comma.) I personally will continue forever to use a comma when addressing a person by name (“Hi, Joe”) even as it begins to make me seem like a language-fossil. It’ll be my brand. Jan. 20: Rudy Giuliani declares that Trump has been totally vindicated and condemns Robert Mueller for “not even trying to find the criminal, Individual 1.” (Frank Osen) Can’t blame Frank for lacking the imagination to guess what Rudy would really end up doing. March 21: In a last-minute deal, the EU trades the UK and a country to be named later for Bryce Harper. (Kevin Dopart) Of course, the UK still can’t figure out how to leave the EU, and Bryce Harper never got traded, but left the Nationals for the Phillies and $330 million — and got to watch the World Series on TV. AD April 14: The NRA announces, proactively, that there will be nothing that could have been done. (Art Grinath) Well, at least we’re past our NRA-induced legislative paralysis on gun control. Ha ha no. But you can’t send this entry again unless you substantially change it. April 15: Ruth Bader Ginsburg wins the Boston Marathon, throws her lace collar into the air in celebration. (Lynne Larkin) I worry about a jinx from even reprinting this. June 2: Jimmy Carter announces he’ll seek second term as president; he immediately jumps to top of the polls. (Jon Ketzner) Ditto. Dec. 1: Melania Trump unveils this year’s White House holiday decorations, which feature a festive motif based on the Spanish Inquisition. (Frank Osen) Last year’s color scheme could be described as Hemorrhage Red; this year’s, perhaps, could be called Rally White. AD July 25: Ben and Jerry’s finds unprecedented success in Massachusetts, New York and California with its new flavor, Peach Mint. (Ken Gallant) Maybe it never made it onto Ben and Jerry’s menu, but the peach-mint pun continues to pop up with tiresome regularity in Style Invitational entries. See, people, we did that one already. Anyway, there’s a lot to imagine for 2020, and we might as well get our laughs in beforehand. Note that you should include a date on your entry only if it’s relevant to the event you’re “predicting”; I’ll fill in the date more or less at random otherwise (if I use dates at all). Also note that last year’s entries were in present tense. We’ll probably do that again. This just in! Loser Post-Holiday Party, Saturday, Jan. 11 Watch your email for an Evite — or just read this column next week — about details of our annual Losers’ Post-Holiday Party, once again at the lovely, Metro-convenient house of Losers Steve Langer and Allison Fultz, who despite being wildly overeducated, ridiculously accomplished professionals, seem to think it’s just dandy to have 50 or 60 Style Invitational Losers and Various Hangers-On swarm through their house while dripping potluck dinner, and make their cat start to howl pitifully upstairs by singing song parodies en masse in their living room. AD Really, it’s a great way to Meet the Losers, hit on their spouses, bitch at the ink-robbing Empress, etc. Once again, we’re lucky to have Loser Steve Honley as piano accompanist — and we’ll certainly have some good new material to sing. Out-of-town folks, I understand that there are a few other attractions in Washington, D.C., that might interest you were you to make a tourist weekend out of it. Nerds and Music*: The Parodies of Week 1357 *Non-inking headline by Chris Doyle We had run a parody contest — with the exceedingly broad them of “modern woes” — only four months ago. But not one of those 20-odd songs mentioned Ukraine. Say what you will about this whole mess, but it sure has given us a lot of new material. And I got a deluge of it for Week 1357. Easily more than half of the songs — I don’t have an exact count, but I heard from 161 different people, many of whom wrote multiple entries — concerned Ukraine and*or impeachment hearings. (Well, we also had a World Series and a departing panda.) AD As I explain in the intro to this week’s results, I had so many fine entries that wouldn’t work on the print page — the song was too obscure and needed a link to the melody, or it was a video — that I decided to name a winner and three runners-up both for songs that are running on the print page (in the Arts&Style section in the Sunday Post) and for songs being published only online. This allowed First Offender Donna Saady to choose between a Grossery Bag and a Loser Mug for her parody of “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,” a fairly deep cut from Stephen Sondheim’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” And for parodist*performers Sandy and Richard Riccardi to make it into the Losers’ Circle with a new addition to their video parody collection. The remaining members of both Losers’ Circles this week are all repeatedly decorated Loserbards, with lots of parody ink from over the years. I was especially thrilled to see the return to Loserdom of super-parodist Nan Reiner, who’s been dealing with health issues for quite a while. As usual, Nan makes videos of herself singing the parodies to karaoke-type accompaniment, and her voice sounds great; check out the ones for her two inking entries this week, and YouTube might well offer you some of the others. Unfortunately, there were easily another 19 songs — oh, more than that — that I’d hoped to run before I realized that the column would have been way, way too long. Feel free to share your favorite “noink” parody (one at a time) in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group. That won’t disqualify you from also reentering it in one of our upcoming retrospective contests, in which you get another chance at any of the contests from the past year. AD What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood read the print version yesterday and, after grave consideration, declared, “They’re all good!” With the exclamation point and everything. Doug also got a kick out of Malcolm Fleschner’s sample 2020 event of Trump giving the State of the Union with a little Lindsey Graham curled up in his lap. Last call for North-of-the-Beltway types: Loser brunch Dec. 8 in Columbia I can’t make this one, but I’m sorry I can’t try out the highly recommended pan-Asian restaurant Asian Palace in Columbia, Md., for this month’s Loser brunch. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” And watch for the Evite! If you’re not regularly in touch with me and want to make sure you’re on my mailing list, write me at pat.myers@washpost.com ====================================================================== WEEK 1362, published December 15, 2019 Style Conversational Week 1362: Do Wit Again The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s retrospective and the ‘Night Before Christmas’ ink Our 21st winter potluck*singalong will be on Saturday evening, Jan. 11, in Chevy Chase, Md. And YOU are expressly invited. See below. Our 21st winter potluck*singalong will be on Saturday evening, Jan. 11, in Chevy Chase, Md. And YOU are expressly invited. See below. By Pat Myers Dec. 12, 2019 at 4:50 p.m. EST I love The Style Invitational’s now-yearly retrospective contests, in which you can get another chance at the past year’s Invites. As we’ve been doing the last few years, we’ll do the first half of the year (November-May) this week, with Week 1362, and, well, I’ll let you be surprised about what we do next week. As I promised in this week’s contest in both the print and online versions, I’d make finding the contests as easy as I could by supplying a list of links here in the Conversational. You can also go to the Master Contest List at the Losers’ own website, NRARS.org, and click on the various icons for PDFs of the print or online version of each week. Both there and here, remember to check the results of the contest you’re entering (or reentering), to make sure you’re not sending in the same joke: So scroll down four weeks to see the Invite that runs those results. I’m supplying two links for each contest: One is to The Post’s online Invite, the real thing; the other, labeled “Archive,” is a PDF of that same version, which Elden Carnahan keeps on the Master Contest List so we’ll always have a copy if The Post’s link goes away someday, or loses the cartoon (these things have happened surprisingly recently). The PDFs there and below are not behind The Post’s paywall and so nonsubscribers (who should be subscribers, gotta tell you) can read them. The only drawback is that downloading the PDF onto a website brings with it a lot of extraneous material (mostly at the top) that you’ll have to scroll past. AD Week 1307, replace one letter in a word with one other letter to make a new word. wapo.st*invite1307* Archive Week 1308, cartoon captions, or explain what’s wrong with the picture. wapo.st*invite1308* Archive Obviously I won’t have space to run many of these — but do need to run some picture. Weeks 1309 and 1310, last year’s retrospective contests, and Week 1311, the predictions for 2019, aren’t part of this week’s contest. Week 1312, Tour de Fours: neologisms including the letter block T-O-U-R in any order. wapo.st*invite1312* Archive Because of their short form, this and other neologism contests often see ink in the redos. Week 1313, obit poems. wapo.st*invite1313* Archive Remember that these still need to be about people (animals, etc.) who died in 2018. (This column also has the results of last year’s retrospective contest.) AD ADVERTISING Week 1314, “joint legislation” combining names of two new members of Congress. wapo.st*invite1314* Archive Week 1315, crossword clues. We published a filled-in grid, you write the clues. One clue is one entry. wapo.st*invite1315* Archive Week 1316, bogus trivia that cites statistics. wapo.st*invite1316* Archive Week 1317, Punku — haiku containing a pun. wapo.st*invite1317* Archive Week 1318, anagrams that are not just someone’s name. wapo.st*invite1318* Archive Week 1319, coin words found in any of the given seven-letter ScrabbleGrams “racks” wapo.st*invite1319* Archive The words don’t have to use all seven letters; see this week’s example of Danielle Nowlin’s MEDDLR. Week 1320, Questionable Journalism. Find a sentence in print or online dated Dec. 12-23 and follow it with a question that the sentence could answer. These work best when readers can guess what the original sentence was about so that they can enjoy how it’s being placed in a different context. (This is true of bank heads as well.) wapo.st*invite1320* Archive AD Week 1321, creative reviews of mundane products listed on Amazon. This year we featured seven items including binder clips, a vegetable peeler and a block of Velveeta. wapo.st*invite1321* Archive Week 1322, problematic inventions. Jeff Contompasis’s winner was Braille alphabet soup. wapo.st*invite1322* Archive Week 1323, take one or more letters off the beginning and*or end of a movie title and describe the new movie. This was a hugely popular contest. wapo.st*invite1323* Archive Week 1324, write a scene from a Bible story, classic myth or folk tale as someone else would write it. There was a 75-word limit, but I encourage even more brevity this time around. wapo.st*invite1324* Archive Week 1325, jokes for the White House correspondents’ dinner, which did away with a standup comic this year. Don’t pretend you’re still in the spring of 2019 and submit jokes that would be out of date by now. I guess you could assume that the president would actually attend this time, and have him deliver the joke. wapo.st*invite1325* Archive AD Week 1326, foal names derived from “breeding” any two names on a list of 100 Triple Crown nominees. This is our most heavily entered contest, with around 4,000 entries, and there are always many that are robbed of ink. Here’s a second chance. wapo.st*invite1326* Archive Week 1327, bank heads. Find any headline in an article or ad dated Dec. 12-23 and reinterpret it by following it with a bank head, or subtitle, that gives it a new meaning or comments wryly. See my note at Week 1320. wapo.st*invite1327* Archive Week 1328, same as 1324 except that you use a story with a known author. wapo.st*invite1328* Archive Week 1329, Shakespeare tailgaters. Choose a line by Shakespeare and pair it with a line of your own to produce a funny rhyming couplet. This was another hugely successful contest with lots of great entries that didn’t get ink the first time around. wapo.st*invite1329* Archive AD Week 1330, “grandfoals.” “Breed” any two foal names that got ink that week. Because many of those names already have puns, this contest is a bit harder than Week 1326. wapo.st*invite1330* Archive Week 1331, move material around from one sentence to another. I’m going to advise against trying this contest, because it requires a lot of description, but if you can do it elegantly, go for it. wapo.st*invite1331* Archive Week 1332, acrostic limericks. The first letters of the five lines spell out a relevant word or name. Not suprisingly, this was a very challenging contest. wapo.st*invite1332* Archive Week 1333, homophone neologisms. Invent a new word or phrase that has a word that sounds like an existing word, but is spelled differently. Beverley Sharp’s runner-up that week was “No-it-all”: A cranky toddler. wapo.st*invite1333* Archive AD So there’s lots to use here. Please remind me which contest each entry is for, by the week number and a few words of description. And I guess you know what we’ll be doing next week. O that I might gaze upon thy visage! Loser Post-Holiday Party, Saturday, Jan. 11 While I make the final adds to the Evite mailing list, you can mark your calendars and book your plane*train*camel*carpet now for Saturday evening, Jan. 11, for the 21st annual Loser Post-Holiday Party, which we’re having for the fourth straight year at the gracious and spacious and Metro-convenient home of Losers Steve Langer and Allison Fultz. It’s a mostly uncoordinated potluck, with general schmoozing broken up with a singalong of Loser-penned parodies, accompanied on piano by Loser Steve Honley, and perhaps a game led by Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson. It’s a relaxed, perhaps disappointingly sedate evening that gives us a chance to meet and chat with the people who write the funny. Even if you’ve never gotten ink in the Invitational — or even if you’re just a fan who’s never entered — we’d love to have you. AD For the Evite, I’m going with the lists I used for last year’s winter party and this past summer’s Flushies, minus people I’ve invited repeatedly but never expressed interest in attending — plus people who are (a) local and (b) have gotten ink in the past couple of months, and even people who are (a) local and (b) have entered a few times and almost gotten ink. If you’d like to get the Evite — which is how we can keep a head count and can notify you with any updates — and you think you might not make my list otherwise, please email me at pat.myers@washpost.com and ask me to add you. (Don’t, like, put it at the bottom of your Invite entry; I won’t see it in time.) The word is that the weather will be unseasonably clear and mild on the evening of Jan. 11. Whew. LOL through the house*: The results of Week 1358 *Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich, who just might be clever and*or funny AD Using the 1823 version of Clement Clark Moore’s “A Visit From St. Nicholas” — popularly known as “The Night Before Christmas” as a word bank contest in Week 1358 presented some real challenges — among them the absence of “is” and “she” — but as almost always happens, the Loser Community met them with creative resourcefulness, often laugh-out-loud humor, and, well, dirty minds. (If you’re not at all bothered by seeing a delightful family poem turned into Stormy Daniels Describes Her Encounter in Frank Terms, then you can scroll to the very bottom of this column and see that and other unprintable entries. If you are at all bothered, simply do not read that far.) Thanks once again to Gary Crockett for validating the entries; without the computerly help of Gary and, in some earlier contests, Kyle Hendrickson, I simply wouldn’t be able to run this contest, to catch that someone (i.e., Sarah Walsh) used the ineligible “take” in a hilarious rant about Christmas decorations put up too early, saying, “Thistle be the night I take them down!” I ran just 22 entries (fewer fit on the print page) because you sometimes have to puzzle them out. Still, the inking entries read far more like normal English than many of the non-inking ones — it’s a real achievement to write in natural syntax with such a limited list of words. Not surprisingly for a contest that takes so much effort, the inking Losers this week consist of a list of Usuals, if you count the New but Clearly has Caught the Invite Bug Ms. Walsh. Duncan Stevens, fresh off a stellar week of song parodies, adds yet another Lose Cannon to his oversize arsenal, while runners-up Brendan Beary, Jeff Shirley and even rookie Sam Mertens are same-old in the Losers’ Circle. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood was partial to Stephen Dudzik’s bit about the reindeer who goes to an “A. A.” meeting; Jesse Frankovich’s poem about the impeachment hearings; Brendan Beary’s looking too long at a breast and being scolded, “My eyes are appear”; and Tom Witte’s headline for the results, “The Wizards of 'Twas.” Remembering Loser (Becky Fisher, Madison, Wis.) Becky Fisher, right, and her best friend Kathy El-Assal, left, meeting up with fellow Loser Diane Wah on a visit to the Seattle area this past summer. (Courtesy Kathy El-Assal) Becky Fisher, right, and her best friend Kathy El-Assal, left, meeting up with fellow Loser Diane Wah on a visit to the Seattle area this past summer. (Courtesy Kathy El-Assal) I was greatly saddened this week to learn of the death of eight-time Loser Becky Fisher, best friend and neighbor of longtime Loser Kathy El-Assal; they lived just a mile apart in the Madison, Wis., area. They met in graduate school — Kathy’s a librarian, Becky a linguist and ESL instructor — 45 years ago. Kathy introduced Becky to the Invitational, and a few years back, they both joined us at a Loser brunch in Northern Virginia when they came to Washington for the Cherry Blossom Festival. I’m glad to have met them in person. In fact, I’d hoped to see them again when my husband and I were visiting Madison this past summer for a friend’s wedding. But neither was in town: Kathy and Becky had taken a trip, together, to Seattle, where they’d gone on an earlier vacation — and were visiting with another Loser. “Becky loved to travel, so we took two last trips before her cancer progressed,” Kathy told me — and for the second time, they met up with Diane Wah, whom they’d gotten to know from the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group. “She was the outgoing people person to my more introverted sidekick,” says Kathy, “so my world was enlarged by her being in it.” Here’s Becky’s Invite oeuvre. She was clearly an ace at horse names, but dabbled in some other contests as well. Our Invite world is enlarged by her being in it. Week 1020, 2013, grandfoals: Chris Christie x Burning Sensation = Chris Crispy Week 1070, 2014, grandfoals: YouCanKeepYourPlan x Pi Rho = Backfire Week 1122, 2015, foals: Big Ben x Far From Over = 2B Continued Week 1271, 2017, combined businesses: Italian restaurant*funeral parlor: Pastaway Trump boutique*apiary*landscape service: Ivanka-Bee-A Lawn Week 1274, 2017, foals: Alpha to Omega x Dunk = Absorba the Greek Week 1330, 2019, grandfoals Laughing Gash x Shivalry = Mock the Knife And Week 1333, 2019, neologisms that are homophones of an existing word: Plaiditude: A hoary maxim about Scots, like “Kilt is what happened to the last person who called it a skirt.” See what was the matter: Unprintables from Week 1358 “Lots of interesting words to play with in there,” noted Jesse Frankovich when he suggested using “The Night Before Christmas” as a word bank contest: “brains, breast, cheeks, finger, hurricane, jerk, mamma, opening, spite, wall, to name a few.” Yup. Not to mention “hung” and “head,” which figure prominently among this week’s many unprintable passages, some of them very clever but. Here are a few. Note: If you don’t think crudity about bodies and sex is funny, please stop reading now! — Hurricane-Vixen [a.k.a. Stormy] knew a plump jerk. “He called me a droll broad. He was pawing my breast, then he tore my clothes and sash. I was happy to dash objects on his back-dimples. Then I saw him mount; he came so quick, so rapid!” “Hung?” “All I saw of him — nose, and more — was little, tiny, miniature.” (Duncan Stevens, who, it turns out, used “saw” once too often anyway.) [A selection of old-timey parlance for “Grab her by the p***y”:] Twist up the whistle. Laying a finger on her cherry. Stirring the bowlful of jelly. Twinkling the rose bed. Pawing the dimples. Jerk the kerchief. (Sarah Walsh) The lustre [took me a minute to understand this as a homophone] laughed that he settled his mouth on them and they just went with it — nothing was an obstacle. He would even finger a broad by the opening! (Jesse Frankovich) When a wild vixen dressed in nothing but her stockings bound me to the bed, I was so turned on that my happy little pipe sprang straight up! (Jesse Frankovich) “I saw what he had down there,” the tarnished vixen laughed. “He was hung like a tiny stump. All the while, I was wondering how it came to be that I was there in bed with him. I was just happy that it was so quick.” (Jesse Frankovich, who did also get his usual four blots of ink with printable entries) To St. Nicholas — what I would like for Christmas: To be hung like a reindeer. … To be nestled snug in bed, with night-long visions of my Wall … and with a broad giving good head. To dash the hopes of the old, and twist all Care away from them. To top it all, snow twinkling on the White House lawn, and a Merry Christmas to Myself, and to Me! (Brian Allgar) Vixen was wondering how Donder was hung. Like a mouse? Like a chimney? Like a stump? There was nothing to see; it was all nestled in long reindeer fur. (Gary Crockett) With a wild vixen* In bed: In, out, in out, in—* White jelly — too quick! (Tom Witte — one in a long list of haiku along the same line) The pack of toys flew down the chimney and right on top of the children below. Heads open, their brains looked like jelly. Dasher shouted. Nick turned around. Comet threw up. (Neal Starkman) This one hits my ban on graphic violence, especially against children. Yecch. The night a plump pedler of tarnished vixen whistled up his team, I had a vision of snug stockings, beds, toys and laying. I shook my tiny stump with wild, rapid jerk. My plums came! And a tarnished kerchief. (Chris Damm) Okay, boys and girls. Watch for the Evite and to all a good week. ====================================================================== WEEK 1363, published December 22, 2019 Style Conversational Week 1363: Another mulligan stew The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s contest and results From our Week 1328 contest to write something in the style of another writer. That's one of 24 contests from the first half of the past year that you can enter or reenter in Week 1362, at wapo.st*invite1362. Deadline is Monday, Dec. 23, 2019. (Poem by Robert Schechter; design and illustration by Valerie Holt) From our Week 1328 contest to write something in the style of another writer. That's one of 24 contests from the first half of the past year that you can enter or reenter in Week 1362, at wapo.st*invite1362. Deadline is Monday, Dec. 23, 2019. (Poem by Robert Schechter; design and illustration by Valerie Holt) By Pat Myers Dec. 19, 2019 at 4:30 p.m. EST Here we go again, looking back on the past year. Last week (in a contest that’s still running through Monday, Dec. 23) we offered a chance to enter or reenter 24 Style Invitational contests from the first half of the past year; now, in Week 1363, we can retract the zoom lens a bit to revisit the 24 contests beginning with Week 1334 and going all the way to the “air quotes” contest whose results run this week. The links below are to The Post’s own pages; since they’re no more than a few months old, they should be complete. Remember that the entry form is for this week’s contest, wapo.st*enter-invite-1363, not the ones specified in those pages (I’ve deactivated those old forms, but just in case it lets you in …). Remember to check the results of that contest (from four weeks down the list) to make sure that you’re not sending me the same joke that already ran. If you’re not a Post subscriber, you won’t be able to click on more than one or two of the links below. I truly believe that if you’re an American — and especially one in the D.C. area — you owe it to yourself to take advantage of the extensive, expensive high-quality journalism that The Post creates, especially while it’s offering a big discount on an online subscription — just $40 for the first year (and just $100 a year otherwise; I pay $200 for the New York Times). I guarantee that your government isn’t interested in providing this information for you. Plus, you know: Style Invitational. AD But for those who can’t or won’t subscribe, there’s another way to see the contests: Go to NRARS.org, the Losers’ website, and click on “Master Contest List,” which contains a link to every Invite since Week 1, in one form or other (usually several). Scroll down to Week 1334 and later, and click on the icon that’s a little cartoon. That is a PDF of The Post’s online page, which Keeper of All of This Elden Carnahan maintains in case The Post’s page disappears or gets messed up. On this you’ll see a sort of low-rent (typographically) version of The Post’s page, with some extraneous material that you’ll have to scroll past. But everything you need will be there. The online form for sending your entries is not behind The Post’s paywall, so you don’t need to be a subscriber to enter (or send a letter to the editor, or other things you send through an online form). Okay, here’s the handy-dandy list for Week 1363. Please read the actual instructions for the contests; these thumbnails often omit important elements. AD (Remember that the contest that covers first half of the year, Week 1362, is still running, though Monday, Dec. 23; see last week’s Conversational, wapo.st*conv1362, for the equivalent list.) Week 1334: Combine any two words, names, abbreviations, etc., from anywhere in the redacted Mueller report, into a two-word or hyphenated phrase and define it. Week 1335: Poems featuring words from this year’s National Spelling Bee. Week 1336: Something you could say in two different situations among the list we provide, such as “at the supermarket” and “in bed.” Basically double-entendres. Week 1337: Write a Q&A-form joke whose punchline contains an anagram of a word or name that’s relevant to the joke. Week 1338: Captions for any of four cartoons. (I could well run a cartoon again, online, with the results of Week 1363, but no more than one.) AD Week 1339: Song parodies on the theme “modern woes.” This overlaps significantly with the Week 1357 parody contest, but also allows for topics that aren’t really “news.” I always run a parody or two in the retrospective, despite the length, because there are always so many deserving ones. Week 1340: Slightly change a famous name and describe the resulting personage. This was the most heavily entered contest of the past six months. Week 1341: Combine two words into a portmanteau beginning in E- through R- in which at least two letters overlap. Week 1342: Combine two abbreviations into a new entity. There was no new contest for Week 1343, when the Empress was on a progress through Midwestern Loserdom. Week 1344: Limericks featuring words beginning with gr-. Week 1345: Bogus trivia about food and drink. AD Week 1346: “Alphabetically balanced” neologisms, in which the first and last letters are equidistant from the two ends of the alphabet, e.g., a-z, b-y, in either direction. Week 1347: “Reologisms”: A lot of entries come with great new words but meh descriptions; choose one from the list and make your own definition. Week 1348: Explain how any two items from the provided 16-item list are alike or different. Week 1349: Look through any issue of the Congressional Record (link provided), choose a sentence, and follow it with a question that it could humorously answer. Week 1350: Poems featuring one or more words newly added to the dictionary, from a list we supplied. Week 1351: Timely ideas for Halloween costumes or parties. (If you wore such a costume this year, you can send a photo.) Week 1352: More double-entendres: Write a steamy-sounding description of a non-steamy event. The original limit was 100 words, but this week’s should be shorter. AD Week 1353: Change a word in a movie title to its “opposite,” then describe the new movie. Another contest that drew thousands of entries. Week 1354: Snake through the provided word-search grid to discover a new term and define it. Week 1355: Highlight part of a word in “air quotes” and define the word to reflect that context. Week 1356: Ask Backwards: We give a list of “answers”; you give the questions. (Week 1356 results below Week 1360.) Week 1357: Song parodies about the news. See Week 1339. (Week 1357 results below Week 1361.) Week 1358: Write something funny using only words in the poem “A Night Before Christmas.” (Week 1358 results below Week 1362.) Week 1359: Write a sentence that has an “air quote” that spans two or more words. (See this week’s results.) Between-the-Holidays Loser Brunch: Dec. 29 in Alexandria, Va. For the third year running, Loser (Edward Gordon, Austin) will be in the D.C. area for the holidays, and so we’re having a brunch near his hotel in Alexandria, on Sunday, Dec. 29, at noon at Joe Theismann’s Restaurant near the King Street Metro station. Recently renovated, it’s an upscale pub*sports bar. They’ll validate parking in the adjacent garage. RSVP on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” AD And we’ve already gotten a number of Yeses from both Invite veterans and newbies for the big do, the Losers’ Post-Holiday Party potluck*songfest, Saturday evening, Jan. 11, in Chevy Chase, Md. If you didn’t get the Evite by mail, here it is expressly for you. I will be wearing, in addition to my standard tiara, a fantastic new piece of headwear courtesy of the Royal Consort’s office gift swap. Let’s regroup*: Results of the Week 1359 ‘air quotes’ contest Non-inking headline by Beverley Sharp To be honest, I didn’t have a lot of confidence in Week 1359, a contest for “air quotes” that spanned two or more words. It wasn’t that challenge per se, but the requirement that the entry was to be a sentence containing the “air quote,” rather than our usual format of Word: Description (optional example). Would the sentences supply some humorous irony? And they were sure not to take up much room on the page. But no problem, I figured: I could always fill with one or more of the fine song parodies that were robbed of ink in Week 1357. AD But I ended up with a “shortlist” of some 100 entries, 40 of which get ink this week. I redundantly set off the air quotes with both boldface and quotation marks, to make it clear in both print and on various devices. (The computer and spell check kept trying to “fix” the open-quotes I’d added in the middle of a word; I had to add a space, type in the mark, then delete the space.) The words often take a bit of puzzling out; I hope it proves fun rather than tedious for a reader. This was a much harder assignment than the regular air quotes contests, in which you just have to find a word inside another word (Week 1355 entrants, didn’t you find yourself seeing air quotes in everything in the following weeks?). And I’m not surprised that all 22 inking Losers were well blotted. It’s the 141st ink, and fifth win, for Matt Monitto, who’s trying to arrange to drive down yet again from Connecticut on Jan. 11 for the Losers’ Post-Holiday Party; I hope to present his Lose Cannon to him there. But the week’s real star has to be runner-up Sam Mertens, who scored six! blots of ink this week, catapulting his total to 39 — and he didn’t even get his first ink until Week 1327, which is almost at the end of the 24 contests reoffered last week. Sam, along with veteran Losers’ Circle veteran Mark Raffman, scores the first of our new Loser Mugs, which I ordered this past Tuesday and are sent to arrive late next week. So I can bring them to the Loser party as well. It’ll be Sam’s first Loser event, though I was happy to meet him in person already for a minute, at a bookstore event. What Doug Dug: The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood this week included all four top winners, as well as the “fait ac‘compli, cit’ations from legal cases” by Drew Bennett and the “change, a new direction, and better live‘s. Ame’rica, you can trust me!” by Sarah Walsh — another rookie, whose three inks this week move her way up the charts to nine in all. (Sarah will be at the party, too!) AD Speaking of Drew, that’s his joke on the new Loser mug; he got ink with it all the way back in Week 715 (2007) for, duh, a mug-slogan contest. Drew’s mission to both reach 200 inks and get down to 200 pounds continues, though he informs me that Part 2 of that challenge may have to wait till after that huge cruise he and his wife are taking. But he’s now at 192 blots of ink. One thing that clearly didn’t work was to misspell the word in the quote, like “You look very smart on v”idio, T”rump." Happy All Your Holidays! And we’ll be back on . . . Next week’s Invitational will come out as usual on Thursday, though it might be later than usual that day; the question is whether I’ll have everything finished by Tuesday so that Ace Copy Editor Vince Rinehart can read it over. As long as there’s a morning Invite, there can be an afternoon Conversational. (This will all replay in some form for New Year’s.) In any case, here’s wishing you a happy and healthy and warm and dry rest-of-the-year. Thank you once again for taking part in this crazy thing we keep doing under the banner of an esteemed publication as we look back on 2019 and saunter up to Invite Year 28. ====================================================================== WEEK 1364, published December 29, 2019 Style Conversational Week 1364: We haven’t a clue The Style Invitational Empress talks about this week’s reverse crossword -- and shouts out some memorable losing entries from the past year. “Watch out, glass ceiling!” That caption won a runner-up prize for Susanne Pierce Dyer in Week 1308. This week the Empress looks back on various gems from the first half of the past year. (Bob Staake) By Pat Myers Dec. 26, 2019 at 3:49 p.m. EST (This is a long column; scroll down to the bottom for details about the Dec. 29 Loser brunch and the Jan. 11 Loser Post-Holiday Party) In a bit of company disloyalty, I subscribe to the New York Times online crossword and routinely grab it as soon as it’s posted, at 10 p.m. the previous day. I’m not very fast compared with people who compete in tournaments, including numerous members of the Loser Community (I finally went to the Indie 500 in D.C. this past summer and finished somewhere like 135th out of 200), but I do have a Times solving streak that currently stretches to 228 days. Anyway, I like crosswords, especially when their clues are full of wordplay. And for many years now, beginning in 2006, I’ve been posting filled-in crosswords and asking for creative (if not necessarily authentically brief) clues. But this is the first time I decided to use a Sunday puzzle: If you can submit only 25 entries, but you have about 125 words to choose from, there’s less likelihood that I’ll get 15 of the same clues for a single word.) AD ADVERTISING One reason I chose the L.A. Times Sunday crossword (which runs in The Post’s Arts & Style section on the same page as the Invite), rather than The Post’s own Sunday puzzle, is that Post constructor Evan Birnholz is a super-clever wordsmith himself; I didn’t want to keep checking that the inking clue was as good as Evan’s own. “Pet Sitting,” the puzzle we run today in Week 1364, has a nifty construction with the letters CAT “sitting” on top of words like “couch” at several places in the grid. But the clues are as straight as can be: “Hall of Famers: GREATS”; “Sedentary sort: COUCHPOTATO.” Contrast that with a few random inking clues from our contests over the year; while most use wordplay, especially repronouncing the word, others are just funny descriptions: IRONLADY: The ferrous maiden of them all (Dana Austin) BEAT: Follows “A: Get up” on a forgetful person’s to-do list (Frank Osen) [B. Eat] AD AETNA: Latin for “we don’t cover that” (Peter Metrinko) SPIRAL: An Agnew-Gore ticket (the late William Bradford) ABBA: Hebrew for father and Swedish for pop (Kathy Hardis Fraeman) SAUDI: He’s at the top of the OPECking order. PERON: Juan or another (Phyllis Reinhard) WHATAMESS: A female whatam. (Jim Lubell) EDBEGLEY: Ed Begley Jr.’s father’s name (Ted Weitzman) BAR: Both lawyers and drunkards need to pass this (Rob Huffman) SIDING: Contributing something to Thanksgiving dinner (Kevin Dopart) SIDING: In Barcelona, the answer to “Does that bell make a sound?” So: Like that. And please use that format — don’t number your entries; don’t break up the initial word, so that when I hit SORT, all the entries for each word will clump together. One more thing: Many crosswords will spread a single answer across two lines; the 6 Across clue might begin with “With 23 Down, a hit TV show.” Our contest doesn’t use numbers in the boxes, and so such a clue tends to be rather inelegant in this format. But I have run some especially clever combos, like “FATES+WEIRDO”: The word “SO” in Comic Sans (Kathy Hardis Fraeman). That’s “fat S and weird O.” No, really, the Style Invitational is fine (as far as we know). A headline about Sports Illustrated from the Dec. 24 Post sports section. No, really, the Style Invitational is fine (as far as we know). A headline about Sports Illustrated from the Dec. 24 Post sports section. Looking out past Number One: Classic losing entries from the past year “Congratulations — you lose.” AD That’s my standard salutation on the letters that I send out each week to people who got Invitational ink (except to whoever wins the Lose Cannon, since that person failed to lose). The point, of course, along with the Loser Mug and the whole moniker, is that the quality of the Invite is so deep that it’s a big deal to get ink at all, especially to be a runner-up in the Losers’ Circle, a.k.a. to finish “above the fold.” As we wrap up 2019, I felt like sharing some losing entries from the past year. Here are various runners-up, along with the occasional honorable mention, one each from Weeks 1307 through 1333. The choice of one entry over another shouldn’t be read as second-guessing on my part; they just struck me as funny as I scrolled through the results. Week 1307, change a term by one letter: Peerogative: Getting to use the bathroom of your chosen gender. (Runner-up by Steve Fahey) AD Week 1308 — see the cartoon caption at the top of this page. Week 1309 (do-over from the previous year, Part 1): Yelp reviews, Week 1264: Heaven help the unsuspecting concertgoer attending Elm Street Preschool’s holiday sing! Several of the vocalists were off pitch, the production values were slipshod, and Kevin in the second row needs to stop picking his nose. Two stars. (honorable mention for Frank Osen) Week 1310 (do-over Part 2): Anagrams of movie titles, Week 1291: “The Big Lebowski” > “The Big Bowelski”: Same movie, but with a dirtier rug. (runner-up, Matt Monitto) Week 1311, predictions for 2019: March 7: On World Math Day, the president states that he can divide by zero. “I write down a number, draw a line under it, then put a zero below that. It’s very, very easy for someone like me.” (honorable mention, John McCooey) AD Week 1312, neologisms containing the letter block TOUR in any order: Rotunderpants: “Relaxed-fit” drawers for wearing after the holidays. (honorable mention, Jesse Frankovich) Week 1317, poems about people who died in 2018: Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher: His business acumen was never doubted. Now he’s aloft — unless he’s been rerouted. (Honorable mention, Frank Osen) Week 1314, joint legislation between new members of Congress: The Pappas-Torres Small-Pence bill to ban the sale of “slim-fit” trousers to men over 50. (Honorable mention, Paul Burnham) Week 1315, crossword clues: ADE: what to make if life gives you lemons, poms, brigs, stock, or Gators. (Honorable mention, Neal Starkman) Week 1316, fake trivia featuring “statistics”: It is now possible to tango with only 1.75. (Runner-up, Duncan Stevens) AD Week 1317, haiku with puns: The #MeToo movement Has had it up to here with Male pattin’ boldness. (Runner-up, Chris Doyle) Week 1318, anagrams: Original: “I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.” Anagrams to: “I, Donald J. Trump, attest that I will offend you, expel the White House staff, and fleece the country for side millions.” (Runner-up, Jesse Frankovich) Week 1319, neologisms found in any of the given ScrabbleGrams racks: ADFHLNU > ANDUH: Filler used to stretch your essay when you run out of things to say. “Try to avoid such anduh as ‘In conclusion, it has become clear that all people of reason can surely agree that … ’ ” (Runner-up, Danielle Nowlin) Week 1320, take a sentence from the paper and supply a question that it might answer: AD A. Tip-off is 7 p.m. Q. So you think the Mueller report is going to be leaked? (Runner-up, Drew Bennett) [It wasn’t!] Week 1321, Amazon reviews of any of several everyday products: Men’s white handkerchiefs: Who would have guessed that carrying my mucus in my pocket all day could be so stylish? (Runner-up, David Kleinbard) Week 1322, problematic inventions: The Swiss Army Gardener: A handy, foldable multi-tool combining a shovel, rake, hoe, hacksaw, pitchfork, pruning shears and posthole digger. (Runner-up, Jesse Frankovich) Week 1323, delete one or more letters from the beginning of a movie title: [P]ORGY AND BESS: The never-before-told story of Mrs. Truman’s wild years in the White House (Runner-up, Neal Starkman) Week 1324, retell a Bible story or folk tale in the voice of another author: Adam and Eve as told by Edgar Allan Poe: AD In the Garden known as Eden, one without a single weed in, Grew a tree with a bad seed in: one who worked toward their downfall. “This is the lone Tree of Knowledge. Eat and know the truth — no college! Such a deal, you must acknowledge!” So they ate, quite in his thrall. God appeared. “That’s it! Now get out! But before you pass the wall …” And He handed Eve Midol. (Runner-up, Todd DeLap) Week 1325, jokes for the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner: The president couldn’t be here tonight because he’s hard at work in the Oval Office — there are a lot of Democratic candidates who need childish nicknames. (Runner-up, Howard Walderman) Week 1326, “breed” any two names on a list of the year’s Triple Crown-nominated racehorses: Castle Casanova x Maximum Security = Romeo in Joliet (Runner-up, Steve Smith; Jonathan Paul) Week 1327, select a headline from the paper and reinterpret it by adding a “bank head”: Real headline: Hoda Kotb welcomes baby number two! Bank head: ‘I know it’s weird but I love changing poopy diapers,’ TV host says (Runner-up, Jesse Frankovich) Week 1328, rewrite some passage in the style of a different author: “A Tale of Two Cities,” by Donald Trump: It was the best of times, it was the best of times, it was the greatest time you’ve ever seen, believe me, it was a beautiful time, it was really great, most people don’t know this but it was the best of times, it was huge, not like those times that weren’t so great, it was incredible, a lot of people are saying it was the best of times, except for the Fake News, but it was the best of times, NO COLLUSION! (Runner-up, Laurie Brink) Week 1329, start with a line from Shakespeare and follow it with your own rhyming line: “Methinks no face so gracious is as mine” (Sonnet 62) Is my least successful pickup line. (Runner-up, Pete Morelewicz) Week 1330, “breed” two of the inking foal names from Week 1326 to name a “grandfoal”: Cruella de Villa x Pretentious Op-Ed = 101 Dull Mentions (Runner-up, John Hutchins) Week 1331, “accidentally” delete or move some text in the paper: Trump to unveil plan to move immigration toward ‘me[rit]-based’ system. (Runner-up, David Peckarsky) Week 1332, acrostic limericks: There now is a man (you know who) Who pours out his heart on the loo. Each grudge he has held — Emphatic, misspelled — The musings of Whiny the Pooh. (Runner-up, Gary Crockett) Week 1333, create a word that sounds like an existing word but is spelled differently: SerPhDom: Trying to eke out a living as an adjunct professor. (Runner-up, Pete Morelewicz) Ah. Ya’ll are just so good. Cold har ‘facts’*: The winter fictoids of Week 1360 *Non-inking headline submitted by at least half a dozen people Week 1360′s winter fictoids, the first of what most likely will be four contests — though I’m not giving Jeff Contompasis four milkshakes for the contest idea for fake trivia about each season — proved smooth sledding for the Style Invitational Pack of Lies Manufacturers, with jokes ranging from the scatological (including the winner) to the surreal (Iditarod drivers need to bring their own snow), with the usual doses of wordplay and political jabs. Mark Raffman’s “news” about the problem with “snow-writing” skills these days wins him yet another Lose Cannon (he’s mercifully stopped asking for them, since this is his 22nd contest win). Frank Mann brings his total ink to 118 with his runner-up and two honorable mentions; perhaps he’ll wear his second-prize “Got gas” boxers to the Loser party on Jan. 11. (Even better, he could just tell us he’s wearing them.) And for third and fourth place, we have one Loser who’s gotten ink every year since Year 1 — Hall of Famer Stephen Dudzik is up to 571 blots of ink — and another, Andrew Wells-Dang, who’ll be getting a Fir Stink for his first ink, along with his choice of Loser Mug or Grossery Bag. Her Shannon stars: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood got Christmas Eve off, bless his heart, and so this week we have Guest Ace Shannon Croom to cite her faves of the week. Shannon singled out two honorable mentions: “The Inuit have only one word for snow but 50 words for “gullible anthropologist” (Dudley Thompson) plus this from Rick Lempert: “The record low for Washington, D.C., had been minus-5 degrees Fahrenheit, set Jan. 17, 1982. Now it is whatever happened at the White House today.” There’s still time to RSVP: This Sunday’s brunch and the Jan. 11 party Loser (Edward Gordon, Austin) is in town through Sunday, and as for the past couple of years, he’s invited the Losers to gather for brunch near his hotel at noon on Sunday, Dec. 29, at Joe Theismann’s Restaurant, a more upscale pub*sports bar near the King Street Metro in Alexandria (validated parking in the adjoining garage). RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). I can’t make it to the brunch, but I’m polishing my tiara in preparation for the annual Losers’ Post-Holiday Party, the potluck*songfest at the Metro-friendly Chevy Chase home of Steve Langer and Allison Fultz on Saturday evening, Jan. 11. The yes-guests include such Invite veterans as early-years icon (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) as well as brand-new Losers like Rick Foucheux (pronounced fo-SHAY), the longtime D.C. actor whom I’ve seen many times at Arena Stage and Round House Theatre, but have never met. Attention must be paid! If you haven’t replied to the Evite, please do; if you didn’t get an Evite, here it is just for you. Happy New Year and End of Hanukkah — and thanks to all of you who keep this Invite thing viable by entering the contests, and by just reading them. Even if you’ve already read the Invite, please click on the Thursday afternoon email I send out, bring it up to your screen, so that The Post knows you like this feature. Even better: Once you open the email, please also click on the link for the Invitational and*or the Conversational. THANK YOU! ====================================================================== WEEK 1365, published January 5, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1365: The Post’s Mortems The week of our obit poem contest, remembering the Invite’s bristly brush with Don Imus Don Imus (1940-2019) in 2011. In 1995 he read some Style Invitational entries on "Imus in the Morning," then promptly labeled them lame. In return, the Czar invited contestants to come up with the nicest thing they could truthfully say about Imus. See the results below. (Richard Drew*AP) By Pat Myers Jan. 2, 2020 at 4:14 p.m. EST As we’ve been doing in the year’s first Style Invitational contest since 2004 (give or take a week), Week 1365 welcomes the year with tributes — or “tributes” — to various characters who’ve bitten the dust the year before. As always, there are surely plenty of characters to eulogize (ewwlogize?) in a witty, perhaps teasing but not truly hateful way. Below, I’ll share the top winners from last year’s contest, to give newcomers an idea of what we’re looking for. One person we can safely be pretty mean to was someone who himself was mean to so many others — including The Style Invitational. “Caustic” and “acid-tongued” were some of the blander descriptions in the Dec. 27 obits to describe proto-shock-jock Don Imus, whose radio show “Imus in the Morning” gave a daily rude awakening to millions of listeners nationwide, a superstardom continuing until he decided to call the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos” in 2007. On May 14, 1995, way back in the Invite’s toddlerhood, the Czar of The Style Invitational tagged onto the Week 113 contest (the first foal names!) the following announcement: “The Faerie of the Fine Print and the Ear No One Reads [that’s a bit of history for another Conversational] is reliably informed that New York radio personality Don Imus last week referred to The Style Invitational and its readers as ‘lame,’ and flatly prohibited any participant in this contest from ever appearing on his show. Normally we would ignore such a trivial matter; Don Imus flatly refusing to let Style Invitational readers on his show is kind of like a bowl of poop flatly refusing to be served at Lutece, but it occurred to us that possibly our lame-o readers might wish to respond more directly to Mr. Imus. As a sign of respect, come up with the nicest thing one can truthfully say about Don ‘Imus in the Morning’ Imus. Not that we really care whether you enter, but the best entry gets five Style Invitational loser’s T-shirts. Five.” AD ADVERTISING We don’t have a record of what Imus read that brought him to this conclusion, but Hall of Fame Loser Elden Carnahan remembers that it included one of his own entries, perhaps the winner in a contest for imagined typos (“Bulge Boy shorts”). “My sister-in-law was so startled to hear my name out of her car radio she almost drove into Long Island Sound,” Elden recalls. In any case, the very next week’s Invitational included this report: "Some of you may recall that several weeks ago, New York talk radio personality Don Imus declared The Style Invitational and its readers ‘lame,’ flatly prohibiting anyone who participates in this contest from appearing on his show. In the spirit of goodwill, we asked you to enumerate the nicest things that can truthfully be said about Don Imus. (For coming up with this contest idea, Don wins “The Portable Scatalog,” a completely humorless book chronicling pooping and peeing rituals from around the world, with a foreword by Sigmund Freud, originally published in 1891, and personally inscribed to Imus by the Czar. Since Imus is now an official participant in the Style Invitational, he can no longer appear on his own show.) "Without further ado, the 10 nicest things that can be truthfully said about Don “Imus in the Morning” Imus: AD 10. So far as we know, he doesn’t spread Ebola. (Scott Vanatter, Fairfax) 9. He is probably preferable to a colostomy bag. (Jim Brockton, Fairfax) 8. He gave Engelbert Humperdinck’s hairdresser a job. (Rick Hartman, Funkstown, Md.) 7. Howard Stern [click]. (Paul Styrene, Olney) 6. The shortness of his name prevents precious ink and newsprint from being wasted.(J. Ponessa, Washington) 5. He hasn’t yet broadcast the recipe for fertilizer bombs. (Scott Vanatter, Fairfax) 4. Three out of four dentists pipe “Imus in the Morning” into their reception area to make their patients look forward to drilling. (Joseph Romm, Washington) 3. He can make the lame talk. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) 2. Once, he was somebody’s beautiful bouncing baby jerk. (Cindi Caron, Lenoir, N.C.) And the winner of the five losers’ T-shirts: He is the 38th most famous Don, right after Trump, Rickles, Knotts, Johnson, Juan, that other Juan from the weird books, Ameche, DeFore, Everly, Corleone, Ho, Osmond, McLean, that guy from New Kids on the Block, Sutherland, Pardo, Adams, O’Connor, Quixote, King, Shula, Maynard, Cornelius, Meredith, Hot Lips’ husband, Kirshner, that river in Russia, Pleasance, Mattingly, Geronimo, Giovanni, Meek, Regan, Rumsfeld, Hollinger, The Snake Prudhomme, and Duck. (Russell Beland, Springfield, and Jerry Pannullo, Chevy Chase)" AD So for Week 1365, feel free to be caustic and acid-tongued about Imus, without breaking the general Invite rule of not to say you’re glad he’s dead, he’s rotting in hell, etc. For one thing, there are more clever and funny ways to make your point. For inspiration and guidance, here are the top winners of last January’s contest, Week 1313 (read complete results here). Perhaps some of the winners found their subjects among the Darwin Awards. Note that although this contest has an eight-line limit, I’m generous about how long those lines may be. (Please excuse the excess line spacing, the fault of the new, still-in-beta system on which the Conversational is now composed.) 4th place: ALAN ABEL (1924-2018), practical joker extraordinaire: Alan Abel loved a hoax And spent a lifetime fooling folks; He staged his death in 1980, AD Then trashed his obit with much gaiety. So this time did the public scoff and Demand a peek inside the coffin? (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) 3rd place: PRABHU BHATARA, unwise cabdriver in India: Prabhu hopped outside to pee and let the engine idle. What followed many people see as close to suicidal: “He snapped a selfie with a bear,” the Indian police’s Official said of this affair. “Now Prabhu rests in pieces.” (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) 2nd place: RICHARD DeVOS (1926-2018), co-founder of Amway: Said Saint Peter, “Can’t let you in now, Rich, alas. Though I’m sure that you think this is urgent, But you haven’t yet reached our Cloud Nine Elite class, So go sell some more laundry detergent.” (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) And the winner of the Lose Cannon, STEPHEN HAWKING (1942-2018): In heaven, maybe, Stephen Hawking AD Can be found upright and walking, Asking God with great respect, “Was my cosmology correct?” (Robert Schechter, Dix Hills, N.Y.) And for good measure, the first Honorable Mention: ZAIM KHALIS KOSNAN, inexperienced snake collector: In Selangor, Malaysia, on a morning bright and sunny, A biker met a 12-foot snake and thought, “He’s worth some money!” He caught the thing, but in the end, the python was the victor, ’Cause poor ol’ Zaim didn’t know he’d captured a constrictor. He marveled at his trophy; he was more than slightly pleased, Until the snake attacked him! (He was more than slightly squeezed.) A python is a deadly thing, a cousin of the boa; So just be sure you know your snakes, ’cause Zaim is no moah. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) Make real cash money with Invite ink! Loser Jon Gearhart brought to my attention the endearingly named Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest at WinningWriters.com, which gives serious money to the winners: $1,000 for first place, $250 for second, and more. The reason I’m telling you about this, when all I’m offering you are crappy trinkets, is this line I saw in the rules: “You may submit the same poem simultaneously to this contest and to others, and you may submit a poem that has been published or won prizes elsewhere.” AD Unlike Mr.*Mrs. Flomp, The Style Invitational does not accept entries that have already been published. But it’s okay with me if you get ink in the Invite (or failed to), then send that entry somewhere else, as long as you’re not misleading the other party. I haven’t read beyond the details mentioned above; I’ll leave that to you. But if it won’t hurt your chances in this contest, please credit the Invite. You get to enter just one poem, and you have till April. And with genuine praise and affection: Remembering Loser Marty McCullen (1936-2019) Marty McCullen at a 2015 Loser brunch in Gettysburg, with Nan Reiner (top) and Marsha Alter. (Pat Myers) Marty McCullen at a 2015 Loser brunch in Gettysburg, with Nan Reiner (top) and Marsha Alter. (Pat Myers) Just as the year ended, we lost one of our most veteran and most endearing Losers, Marty McCullen, who passed away Dec. 23. Marty, who for many years lived in Gettysburg, Pa., would, along with fellow G’burgian Loser Roger Dalrymple, show us around the historic sites on our yearly brunch visit to the town, a tradition that continues every spring. And he came down quite often, in later years with his son, to numerous Loser events in the D.C. area. Marty had an impressive career serving the country — first in the Navy, then at NSA — and a list of extracurriculars: marathon runner, soccer coach, history buff, folk dancer. But his family saved the last line of the bio in his death notice for this: “He was an avid contributor to the Washington Post Style Invitational.” AD Marty amassed 115 blots of Invite ink starting back in Week 477 (2002), including three contest wins and seven runners-up. For many years, he would enter every single week. But in the last few years, the entries tailed off and eventually stopped. To be honest, some of Marty’s entries and some of his comments in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group in those later years seemed a little puzzling. But for much of the Invitational’s history, Marty’s wit and humor were a joy. Here’s a small sample: One of our word bank contests — one of our best ever — was to write a new Constitutional amendment using words in the Constitution. Marty won the whole contest with this: “Those persons resident in the District are second-class, inferior citizens. But they have the right to death, taxes and post offices.” Another contest winner was in Week 665, to coin a new word ending in “-ion.” Marty offered “Percycution: Giving your child a name he will hate for the rest of his life.” AD In Week 506, mottoes for federal agencies: NASA: Coming Soon to Your Backyard! Second place in Week 527, things to say in embarrassing situations: On being caught by the boss: “I’ll have you know this is not an ‘adult’ website. Why, these are mere girls -- 18 years old, tops.” Product placements in literary passages: To dust thou shall return -- unless thou dost secure a weekly service plan with Merry Maids™. Week 609, would-be-funny newspaper corrections: "In an article on the history of the Potomac River, rowing enthusiast Max Schmitt was misquoted; he actually referred to Fletcher’s as ‘the best oarhouse I’ve ever been to.’ ” One of our most challenging contests ever was to present a seemingly logical proof of something that clearly wasn’t. Marty got ink with this entry in Week 500: The best things in life are free. Freedom comes at the price of eternal vigilance. Freedom, therefore, isn’t free. Freedom, therefore, isn’t one of the best things in life. Tyranny is the complete opposite of freedom. The complete opposite of something is everything that the first thing is not. Tyranny, therefore, is one of the best things in life. Ergo, tyranny is better than freedom. Inkin’ About Tomorrow*: The Predictions of Week 1361 *Headline by Tom Witte that would have gotten ink but didn’t fit in the hed space on the print page There’s a hole in the 2020 timeline cobbled together from this week’s inking entries: That would be Tuesday, Nov. 3. Of the 100-odd predictions I saved to my shortlist from the Week 1361 submissions, none of them concerned a winning incumbent or a winning challenger in the presidential election. Maybe that day is just too emotionally fraught for many of you even to think about that moment, let alone joke about it; maybe it’s just me. It wasn’t intentional; I just realized it when I looked at the fake-chronicle of the coming year that I’d amassed in this week’s results. No matter; we still have 37 other events (30 in print) to mark, exactly zero of which could possibly happen. (C’mon, history, prove me wrong. I dare ya.) History repeated itself in this week’s Losers’ Circle; all four occupants are Invite veterans, especially Nos. 1 and 2 Duncan Stevens and Gary Crockett, who each have blotted up more than 400 inks as they bop along ever closer to the Invite Hall of Fame. Mike Gips (257 inks) and Jeff Hazle (116) also kind of know this Style Invitational thing. Perhaps more surprising was who didn’t get ink this week: Jesse Frankovich has been so ridiculously ink-spattered in the past few years that almost every week, other Losers mention him in their own entries. I was ready to run one of the following (or a combination), but they wouldn’t have worked unless they were following the usual several Frankovinks, so they went inkless: --The phrase “Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.” does not appear in the Washington Post. Congress demands answers. (Elden Carnahan) --Jesse Frankovich captures another Lose Cannon by creating an anagram of an entire weekday edition of the Post, including the classified ads. (Duncan Stevens) --The Style Invitational community is shocked to learn that prolific Loser “Jesse Frankovich” is actually a humor algorithm developed by Google. --The winning anagram in Week 1385 was submitted by “HAL Frankovich.” (Jon Ketzner) Sorry, guys. Blame Jesse. What Doug Dug: Working on New Year’s Day, Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood still seemed to be in a good mood and found lots to like this week, singling out seven entries: Mike Gips’s runner-up dig at the Redskins; Duncan’s winner in which Zelensky calls Warren “Pocahontas"; Jon Ketzner on Trump reporting a excellent physical, including a "perfect Pap smear’; Jesse Rifkin on a Lil Nas X who finally can’t no more; Steve Honley on Kellyanne and George Conway leaving each other for James Carville and Mary Matalin; David Kleinbard for Pence coming out as gray; and Frank Mann for Trump pardoning the linebacker during the Army-Navy Game. Not on the calendar: The Unprintables. If you’re still reading this far into the column, I trust that you know that you shouldn’t read farther if you don’t want to see these three jokes that are too graphically tasteless even for the Invitational. June 7: Suffering from constipation, President Trump uses Lindsey Graham’s nose as an enema. (Robert Schechter) July 27: In an attempt to gain a psychological edge, the men on Cuba’s Olympic wrestling team are given Viagra prior to matches, and all win when opponents are hesitant to grapple with their “sporting ragers.” (Bird Waring) And the Scarlet Letter of Are You Kidding Me: Ruth Bader Ginsburg passes away at age 87. President Trump declares, “She died like a dog, she died like a coward, she was whimpering, screaming and crying.” (Tom Witte) Still time to RSVP Yes for the Loser Party! Saturday evening, Jan. 11 We’re currently at an entirely sane 46 people (the number is sane, I mean) for our annual Loser Post-Holiday Party, once again at the home of Steve Langer and Allison Fultz in Metro-close Chevy Chase, Md. As always, it’s an uncoordinated potluck that is sure to result in a fabulous spread, and as always, we’ll all be joining in on Loser-penned song parodies -- but more of them than usual, with Duncan Stevens and pianist Steve Honley coordinating the music, and several Losers who Can Actually Sing to lead us. If you are reading this, you are expressly invited; if you’d like to come, reply Yes on this link right here to the Evite. Oh, well Remember how the videographer from The Lily, The Post’s online publication focusing on women, came to our recent Loser brunch to get footage for a planned mini-documentary about the Invitational? Well, Editor Amy King, the big Invite fan, got an even bigger job at the Los Angeles Times. Her successor has other plans. So it goes. But we’d love someone to record the parodies on Jan. 11. Let me know if you’re interested. ====================================================================== WEEK 1366, published January 12, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1366: Invinite variety The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s 17-contest Kook’s Tour Bear the Newfoundland looks a bit intimidated by Sparkle the Chihuahua. Ken April's "problematic invention" of a Newfohuahua was a runner-up in the Week 1362 retrospective contest. (Wikipedia Commons*Wikipedia Commons) By Pat Myers Jan. 9, 2020 at 3:39 p.m. EST It’s a lot more fun to look at, say, 50 entries to each of 20 Style Invitational contests than 1,000 entries to a single one, which is one reason I always enjoy our end-of-year retrospectives. And I think it might be more fun for the reader as well. Today’s results of Week 1362, which span Weeks 1307 to 1333 (November 2018 to May 2019), show the wide scope of our Humor Delivery Systems, from foal names to crossword clues, to movie title jokes, to anagrams, to cartoon captions, to longer-form (for us) writing, to song parodies. I’m counting on that variety — I ended up running work from 17 contests — to keep readers engaged through 46 entries. While this week’s four top winners all happened to be newly submitted, many of the honorable mentions were “noinks” the first time around; I remember liking a lot of them, since they’d had made my shortlist. Not every week, but almost, my list of inkworthy entries is far longer than space (or a sane reader’s attention span) allows, especially longer-form humor. I still didn’t know (or at least remember) who’d written what; I generally don’t look up the authors of the entries unless they’re getting ink, or after the fact when I send someone a prize and sometimes check what else the person had sent that week. Not surprisingly, a few Losers this week amassed veritable vats of ink — six blots each for Chris Doyle, Jesse Frankovich and Duncan Stevens, five for Jeff Contompasis. And most if not all of their entries were resubmissions: It’s a testament to just how dang good they are in all these different contests that despite getting multiple ink almost every week, they had stuff like this left over. AD Kevin Dopart, who just a few weeks ago scored his 1,500th blot of ink, had just one this week, but to me it was the out-and-out winner: the impeachment clause of the Constitution, 168 characters long, anagrammed into a mordantly sarcastic view of the GOP’s position. Also, it included the epithet “sphincters.” Jon Gearhart, who’d been under the weather lately, wins the nice book of paper dolls with his clever “receding heirline,” as well as virtual ice cream for his suggestion and examples for this week’s Tour de Fours contest. His runner-up marks the 20th trip to the Losers’ Circle for Jon as he continues to glide away from the 200-ink mark. Hall of Famer Jeff Contompasis adds to his crap collection with his first of the new Loser Mugs. Our final runner-up, by Ken April — whose last Invite ink, his sixth, was for Week 733 a dozen years ago — made me laugh out loud and wince simultaneously: the “problematic invention” of a Newfohuahua. I was dismayed to learn that, after I posted the Invite this morning in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, several Devotees didn’t get the joke, that it’s a portmanteau for a Newfoundland-Chihuahua mix, like a Labradoodle or cockapoo, except that the first of those breeds runs 150 pounds and the other one 5. I hope that the Chihuahua is the very cocky male in the pairing. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choices for the winners and also singled out three honorable mentions: John Hutchins’s statistical fictoid that “92 percent of clickbait uses this one weird trick”; Jesse Frankovich’s elegant anagram “Articles of impeachment = The top criminal faces ’em"; and Duncan Stevens’s bank head about “the oldest story ever told” being discovered in a cave: “Etching translated as ‘Wife no understand me.’ ” A RIAL doozy: This week’s contest It’s our 16th go-round for our Tour de Fours neologism contest, Week 1366, for the letter block L-I-A-R, and I think the examples at the top of the column should give you an idea of what we’re looking for. You even get the bonus inspiration of three honorable mentions this week from our previous T de F, for T-O-U-R: “Sourteen,” “Bot-rus Bot-rus Ghali” and “See Spot Run.” By the way, thanks for the helpful thought, but please don’t try to boldface or underline your RIAL (or permutation) block in your entry. The entry form turns it into plain text regardless, and sometimes coding will show up as garble. I promise I’ll figure it out. Last call for the Loser Post-Holiday Party! This Saturday. We’re up to 61 yeses for the Loser Community’s 22nd annual winter potluck*songfest, along with 20 people who are listed as “maybe” two days out (my general formula is that 10 maybes translates to one guest) and whoever inevitably shows up without having responded. Yes, YOU are invited! Click right here. I’m especially excited about this year’s festivities because we’ll be singing as many as a dozen song parodies that have gotten ink over the past year. (Once again, if anyone has a camera that can record the singalong, I can bring a tripod.) AD I’m also excited that a lot of rookie Losers are attending, as well as older hands who are finally showing up at their first Loser event. If I don’t see you amid the throng, please come over to me to say hi and chat a bit: I guarantee that even though I am comically short, you will see me. (All I’m going to say about my brand-new headgear that I will wear along with my tiara.) As always, we’re not coordinating what people should bring. But keep in mind that while we’ll have plenty of folding chairs brought to the lovely house of Steve Langer and Allison Fultz, we won’t be sitting at tables. So it’s best to bring food that can be eaten from a handheld or at least lapheld plate. Finger food, of course, also works. Remember that you don’t have to bring enough food for 63 people! Figure six or eight. Also, I’ll be giving out a bunch of recently won prizes. If I owe you a cannon or mug, or even a recent magnet, be sure to pick it up from me. And if you might have a prize to donate, I can take it at the party; how else can I make it a three-year streak (might be four!) of accidentally leaving stuff at the Loser party and having to pick it up downtown from Allison? See 60-some of you soon! ====================================================================== WEEK 1367, published January 19, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1367: Love me, I’m a Loser The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest and results, plus songs from the Loser party Tiara typically askew, the Empress presents yet another Lose Cannon to Kevin Dopart, in yellow shirt, for last week's win -- and gives him a shout-out for his 1,500 blots of Invite ink -- at the Losers' Post-Holiday Party Jan. 11. Gawking in awe, from left: Losers Steve Honley, Jeff Contompasis, Matt Monitto and Duncan Stevens. Behind Duncan is the Royal Consort, Mark Holt. (Andrew Schotz) By Pat Myers Jan. 16, 2020 at 4:19 p.m. EST The way the past year’s Style Invitational contest calendar broke in half, Part 2 of our 2019-20 retrospective contest — whose results (of Week 1363) run today — contained both song parody contests: Week 1339, for songs about “modern woes,” and Week 1357, for current events. Every time I run a parody contest, I end up with far too many excellent parodies than I can share — which means the Loserbards often send their best “noinks” again at the end of the year for the redo. So along with more than 1,000 entries for 22 other contests, I received forty-three song parodies among the two contests — most, but not all of them, ones I’d seen before — plus a few that were submitted for various poetry contests, like the one to use new dictionary words. So once again, lots of Losers were robbed of ink for their clever, singable song parodies, even though probably more than half the space in the results were for those two contests. Sorry once again, Chris Doyle’s “Bye Bye Bei-Bei” (about the panda sent back to China) and “Stephen Miller’s ICE” (“Bette Davis Eyes”). The Loser Community’s extravagant wealth of parody talent served as fabulous fodder last weekend at its Post-Holiday Party, its 23rd annual winter get-together, and the fourth straight one at the home of Insanely Gracious Loser Steve Langer and Loser Auxiliary Allison Fultz in Chevy Chase, Md. Duncan Stevens, parodist extraordinaire himself, chose about a dozen inking parodies from recent contests, focusing mostly on those whose writers might be able to come to the party. Loser Pianist Steve Honley then tracked down the sheet music. And so once the 70 or so guests had gorged and imbibed from the vast potluck spread, everyone crowded into the living room and … well, let’s say that the Loser lyrics were more polished than the no-rehearsal performances, but dang, it was fun to sing them (or in some cases, “sing” them). AD ADVERTISING Most of the clips of the songs — each runs just a minute or two — can be found on the playlist “Style Invitational Parodies” on YouTube. The lyrics appear at the top of each comment thread. (When I get some time, I’ll track down some previous Invite-related videos and add them to the playlist as well.) Here’s one of them: Hildy Zampella leading us in her parody of “New York New York,” about Trump’s changing his residence to Florida. In addition to the parodies, we also sang an original Loser Anthem, composed for last year’s festivities by then-newbie Jonathan Jensen. Jonathan was out of town this year, but his Gilbert & Sullivan-style song is so funny and endearing and singable that we gave it an encore to close out the set. Here are the lyrics: Dear wags and wits, before you sits a smirking, shameless schmoozer, AD My brain’s askew, my humor’s blue. Love me, I’m a Loser. I’m vain and snide, and full of pride, says many an accuser, I must get ink, or turn to drink. Love me, I’m a Loser. Not many folks would hang around this person I describe, But now I have my gang around, at last I found my tribe! I’m bad at sports, look sad in shorts, no barrel-chested bruiser, I’ve got esprit du repartee! So love me, I’m a lonely, lib’ral, language-loving, Lexiconniving Loser! When Jonathan — who plays string bass in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra — saw the clip posted on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, he sniffed: “OK, not bad. Next time I’m able to attend the Loser party I’m going to crack the whip and REHEARSE this. Altos, you’re flat!” (That’s probably me.) Unless we have one of our upcoming Loser brunches at someone’s house rather than the usual restaurant gathering, our next songfest will be at the Flushies, the annual awards for Loser of the Year, Most Imporved [sic], Least Imporved, etc. The Flushies are usually held in May or June, but some years they’ve been as late as October. Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan and his associates will figure out the where and when, and I’ll let you know. For now, check out the tentative calendar of 2020 Loser events at NRARS.org (“Our Social Engorgements”);. our next brunch, at noon on Sunday, Feb. 16, will be at Coastal Flats restaurant in Fairfax, Va. If it’ll be your first Loser event, let me know and I’ll make it a point to attend. AD We’ll have to save a spot on the Flushies program for today’s Lose Cannon-winning entry. Duncan Stevens took Richard Marx’s sappy 1989 pop smash “Right Here Waiting” and turned it into a toadying loyalty pledge by Mitch McConnell to confirm a slew of right-wing judges. (Maybe we can book the Turtles as the band.) Marx’s “Right Here Waiting” appears on the album “Repeat Offender” — a good label for Duncan, whose 13th Invite win and several other blots this week (including the new-contest idea and examples) place him on the front lawn of the 500-ink Style Invitational Hall of Fame, next to the flamingoes. The rest of this week’s Losers Circle consists of Invite big shots as well: Rob Huffman’s “Mick Nagger” brings him “above the fold” for the 22nd time along with about 200 honorable mentions; anagram savant Jon Gearhart has almost the same stats as Rob; and it’s an enormous five-blot week for Hall of Famer Beverley Sharp, who I think sent in her entries while on a cruise. (Be sure to notice her cartoon caption as well.) What Doug Dug: This week’s faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood (who read just the entries in the print Invite) came from the honorable mentions: John Hutchins’s “Will this lump ever go away?” as something you could say both in the doctor’s office and when Trump visits your country; Ryan Martinez’s “Dee Nye the Science Guy,” Fox climate expert; Jon Ketzner’s “Joe Bidet” (such a fixture); Raymond Gallucci’s “perplexiglass,” used in funhouse mirrors; J. Larry Schott’s acerbic “Lady Liberty” limerick; and Steve Smith’s fake biographical trivia that Trump has always been haunted by that dastardly chip thief the Frito Bandito. AD Hey, sailor, check out our Week 1367 contest This week’s contest, Week 1367, is pretty straightforward: pickup lines from anyone in particular; I was sold on it by the lengthy and varied list of examples that Duncan Stevens sent me along with his suggestion. I can see overlap with some previous contests, and not just Week 382, inept pickup lines (results here), but the related “disqualifying statements” for a potential romance (Week 802 results here) and even the recent double-entendre contest Week 1336, which we feature in today’s results. But the emphasis on particular fields is new, and I’m eager to see what you come up with. Deadline is Jan. 27. Next week we have the crossword-clue results of Week 1364, which means the super-short-form entries will give us the space to run another Bob Staake caption contest — or run more song parodies! ====================================================================== WEEK 1368, published January 26, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1368: 'Cryptic, enigmatic and stupid as possible’ How Bob Staake puts together the Style Invitational cartoon caption contests Bob Staake's sketches for possible cartoons for the Week 1368 caption contest. The Empress opted for A, D, E and F, with some modifications. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers Jan. 23, 2020 at 4:39 p.m. EST One of the most valuable aspects of The Style Invitational — second to the Loser Community itself — is our Cartoonist Since Year 2, Bob Staake. Bob’s first illustration for the Invite was a fill-in gig in Week 54, in March 1994, but by May 1 the Czar had announced that the Invitational was switching artists, from Marc Rosenthal to Bob. And on Week 82, that October, the first caption contest featuring Bob’s cartoons appeared. Since then, the Staake cartoon contests have appeared at least twice a year — in addition, of course, to his illustration for the new contest virtually every week for the past 26 years. And for the last 800-plus of those weeks, I’ve had the delightful task of working with Bob, to bounce ideas off his mind and, perhaps more often, to seek his ideas as well. And when we have the caption contests — like Week 1368 this week — it’s Bob who runs the show; I’m just the referee. I just say “we need a cartoon contest this week” and he just gins up the ideas on his own. I thought I’d share this week (with Bob’s permission) his initial sketches along with the final. Bob Staake's final versions for this week's Style Invitational, complete with colorful people who perhaps might be talking. (For The Washington Post) Bob Staake's final versions for this week's Style Invitational, complete with colorful people who perhaps might be talking. (For The Washington Post) I emailed Bob over the weekend to remind him that this would be a good week for captions, and on Tuesday, as usual, he sent me a page of nine sketches. (Sometimes he’s sent me as many as 15 — the man just can’t help but create and create.) AD After immediately ruling out the grrrrosss Picture I, with the magician, I considered the rest. I ruled out Picture B because a year or so ago, we ran a cartoon with a woman standing atop a file cabinet in the office; it seemed a bit too similar. G would have brought in 79 jokes about CVS receipts. The others all looked promising — zany and ambiguous enough to generate some wildly different and funny interpretations — except for one problem: While some of the captions we run are descriptions of the cartoon, most of the funniest ink features lines of dialogue. So I needed cartoons in which at least one person might be saying something. So take a look at Sketch A in the final (now labeled B): Bob added a second person in the doorway. The people in what’s now D, standing around the pedestal, can obviously be seen as speaking. And while he didn’t open the mouths of the people in C, we can assume that they’re talking with gritted teeth. And even the lady in B, who’s sitting alone with her mouth closed, might maybe be talking to someone out of the picture? (That one in particular might benefit from a narrative caption rather than a quote.) Also, I never need to remind Bob that the people shouldn’t all be Caucasian, heterosexual, etc.; I knew that when he sent the final art his very morning that there’d be a wide variety, and this time he even went purple. (My great pal Eddie Alvarez, who designs and arranges pages in the Sunday Arts & Style section, took it upon himself to move the Invite today to the back page, which has color — a major reconfiguration at the last minute — so that Purple Lady in Picture A will be clearer to print-paper readers. I am so grateful for that!) Bob might have been inspired by yet another children’s book he’s writing and illustrating: As he posted on Facebook just yesterday, along with some samples of the art: “For as long as I’ve written and illustrated them, I’ve always tried to make sure that my books reflected diversity in their characters, but then I learned to use color in a far more effective way. By making the skin tone of my characters pink, brown, yellow, blue and even green I’d always have everyone ‘covered,’ so to speak. These may only be background characters in the book I’m currently working on (“I’m a Snowplow” — Little Golden Books*Random House) but there’s no reason that they can’t reflect the rainbow.” Bob Staake's first Style Invitational illustration, an example for Week 54 in 1994. [Marcia Brady training a pistol on Mr. Bill, who cries "OH NOOO!" Caption: If Marcia Brady married Mr. Bill, she would become Marcia Brady Bill." (EJC)] Some final words from Bob today about drawing the Invite caption art: “When I do these cartoons I sort of have to put myself into a trance-like state and let my pen aimlessly wander around on the paper like a drifter*hobo. My hope is that the drawings are as cryptic, enigmatic and stupid as possible — and still getting paid by The Post. Maybe in the future we should do a contest wherein the losers write pithy captions and then i’m forced to illustrate them, or better yet, maybe the Empress could illustrate them. Pat has always maintained that she can’t draw a straight line, and I always have to remind her that most illustrations are comprised of curvy lines, and once you hit your 60s, very shaky lines.” AD ADVERTISING Well, leaving me out of it: I’m not sure whether Bob is thinking about a contest where the Losers create the idea of a cartoon along with the caption and Bob does the drawing, or if he means that they’d submit some open-ended ideas for captions and Bob would interpret them in that inimitable Staakian way. I think either one would lead to good results, but I’m not sure it makes sense to award prizes to people’s vague prompts. We did have a reverse cartoon contest back in 2007 (gawd, feels like yesterday). We gave the choice of captions; you described the cartoon; Bob drew the top winners and we ran your descriptions of the rest. Here’s my intro to that contest, Week 725: 1. Old dog learns new trick. 2. When Harry met Sally Forth. 3. “No, no, Sonia! It was supposed to be a harmonica!” 4. Watson discovers Sherlock’s secret. 5. Bob just wasn’t a “word person.” 6. The Founding Fathers wept. 7. A small error in pronunciation can have huge consequences. 8. Just remember, no underpants! AD Harry Truman is at a table with Sally Forth. She is yammering, “So then Ralph said he thought the department should be reorganized and I pointed out that it was just like a man to blah blah blah …” Harry looks at her balefully. Above his head, in a thought balloon, is a vision of her chair, with a mushroom cloud over it. “A few weeks ago, the Empress received an urgent communique from a figure in her distant past: the Czar of The Style Invitational, who was evidently getting a bit restless out there in “retirement” on the Siberian steppes. “I have a great idea for an Invitational,” it burbled with characteristic modesty. “It may be the best and most original and most fantastic in the entire history of the written word.” “Yes? “ ‘What about a REVERSE caption contest? We supply the captions, they come up with what the cartoon should be (just a written summary). Staake draws the winner and runners-up.’ AD The Empress expressed certain reservations, citing the well-established 1,000-to-1 word-picture-worth ratio and possibly using the words “idiotic” and “doomed.” " — In the introduction to the results four weeks later, the Empress “concedes that her fears were unfounded, and therefore owes the Czar the heart cut out of her chest.” So we’ll see. Meanwhile, have fun this week. Good griddance*: The results of the Week 1364 reverse crossword *Headline suggested by seven people and anyway was used for Week 1294 Many of the twists on the interpretations of crossword clues in our reverse crosswords, as in today’s results of Week 1364, are much the same jokes as in our several earlier installments of this contest. But of course, your typical Washington Post reader isn’t going to have earlier years’ contest results printed out alongside the current one, balanced on the vanity opposite the toilet seat. What’s more, it’s a contest that a less obsessive Loser might try; while the pool of entries didn’t approach that of our typical foal name contest, I did hear from a lot of people who hadn’t sent anything in years, along with a healthy does of new names. (Congratulations, First Offender Neil Greenberg!) AD Using a Sunday crossword rather than a daily one turned out not to make that much of a difference, surprisingly; perhaps it’s that this particular grid had so many three-letter words that it was harder to work with. Anyway, I still tossed ink by the 55-gallon drum: 53 blots among 39 Losers (including double credits). It’s the thirtieth win for Lose Cannoneer Tom Witte, the Invite’s second-highest-inking Loser, behind Chris Doyle. Tom has entered the Invitational virtually every week since its founding; his first ink was in Week 7. Still, you don’t get 1,576 blots of ink by just showing up. While he’s most renowned for sex jokes, especially rather cynical ones about dating, Tom went for just plain funny to describe INTHELAPOFLUXURY as being “a better place to be than in the armpit of luxury.” Runners-up Frank Osen and Jeff Contompasis are also Big Invite Names, and fourth-place Sam Mertens, while still in his rookie year, is showing all the happy (for me, anyway) signs of Burgeoning Invite Obsessiveness: since he debuted in just Week 1323, Sam’s already blotted 44 inks, including his three today. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood most liked Jeff’s runner-up for MOOLA (“It’s obtained by milking a cash cow,” a definition that edged out several similar ones; Frank’s runner-up OHOH (“a snack cake way past its sell-by date”); and, from the honorable mentions, both definitions of AAR: “What a doctor tells a pirate to say” (Gary Crockett) and “An organization for the not-so-OK boomers who can’t hold their P” (Kevin Dopart); Jesse Frankovich’s CATHODE, a poem to a catheter, which nosed out two different odes to Cathy of comic strip fame; and Loser From Way Back Mike Hammer’s OMA: “Gawd’s first name.” (Mike, by the way, was the person who suggested our foal name contest in 1994; he’ll sometimes still enter, when he’s not busy playing the ponies for real.) AD A little point of housekeeping: I just heard this while typing the Conversational this afternoon, but I was told that The Post plans to drop a number of lesser-read email newsletters, including the one from me that tells readers about the new Invitational and Conversational each week. I’ve already asked the powers that be to change their minds, but I’m going to think about how else I can let readers know each week about the contest. Certainly, if you have a Facebook account, please join the Style Invitational Devotees group at on.fb.me*invdev; I post links to the Invite and Convo there the moment I publish them online, Thursday morning and late afternoon respectively. Also, I’ll resume posting the Invitational to Twitter from the account @StyleInvite; I’ll then retweet it from @PatMyersTWP. So follow either of those accounts, which I haven’t been using much lately but will if people look at them. ====================================================================== WEEK 1369, published February 2, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1369: The bones mots of Style Invitational obit poems You'd be grumpy, too: Although several Losers wrote elegies to Grumpy Cat, the Internet sensation who finished her ninth life this past May, the Empress didn't give any of them ink in this week's Style Invitational. (Richard Vogel, File) By Pat Myers Jan. 30, 2020 at 4:37 p.m. EST How do you write in a humorous way about someone who recently died without being either treacly or cruel? It’s the challenge that our Loserbards — entrants who get lots of ink in Style Invitational light-verse contests — have mastered over the past 16 years of annual contests for people who died the previous year. And this week’s results for Week 1365 continue the tradition smashingly. One way to do that is to look for offbeat subjects, rather than the celebrities who get the applause on the In Memoriam reel. Today’s inking entries include the guy who popularized paint-by-number kits; the guy who came up with the “Paul is dead” conspiracy theory; the guy who insisted that he was the sailor kissing the nurse in the famous V-J Day photo. Not to mention the last surviving snail of its species. But there were also odes to more boldface names, some with a fair amount of scorn. Someone as odious on the air as “Imus in the Morning” host Don Imus was — he called the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos,” and even dissed The Style Invitational — deserves the two jabs that ran today by Duncan Stevens (“for Imus not in mourning”) and Ken Kaufman (“gone to take his eternal nappy”). Just missed getting ink: Jesse Frankovich calling him a “crappy-headed host.” AD ADVERTISING Chris Doyle showed once again how he got to be by far the highest-scoring Invitational Loser of all time, with his elegantly funny verse about engineer George Laurer, who chose not to follow his bosses’ directives at IBM, and decided that a rectangle would work better than a target-style circle as a Universal Product Code. Chris doesn’t really talk about Laurer himself — and his punchline is about checkout lines in general — but that didn’t matter to me. I had said that one of our general Invite rules is not to wish or predict that the decedent will go to hell. Runner-up Bill Dorner said only the most laudatory things about the late Rep. John Dingell, but he did slip in, discreetly and plausibly deniably enough for me, a little nasty about the congressman’s most conspicuous and crass critic. For that, Bill wins a toy monster that surprise-pops out of your shirt pocket. Meanwhile, Melissa Balmain and Frank Osen supplemented the already monumental Invite Obit Anthologies with gobs of ink — three poems by Melissa, four for Frank, and each was still robbed of ink for poems that didn’t make the final cut. (Frank’s so good at obit poems that last year, one of his five blots of ink was for Southwest Airlines chief Herb Kelleher, who hadn’t even died in 2018, but on Jan. 3, 2019; Herb gets to be just dead two years in a row courtesy of a couplet this time around by Loser Dean Alterman. Continuing the tradition, someone submitted a poem about Qasem Soleimani, who died Jan. 3, 2020.) AD What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood liked all this week’s top winners, and also especially, from this week’s honorable mentions, Chris Doyle’s amalgam of weird deaths, Ken Kaufman’s “eternal nappy” and Mike Gips’s self-effacing tribute to his father, Philip, creator of some of the most memorable movie posters of the last 50 years — although, it turns out, it was Mike’s mother who came up with the classic “Alien” tagline: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” (“Bones Mots” in today’s headline was submitted as a headline for Week 1365 and would have gotten ink for Tom Witte had it not already run in Week 1180, when it got ink for Tom Witte. The almost 100 percent complete “All Invitational Text” file, in searchable plain text, is added to each week by Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org.) Our typo humor: The Week 1369 contest I was totally strung along by the joke at the top of this week’s Invitational, shared in a more violent form by Loser Michelle Stupak in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook. Whether similar jokes work as well one after another, well, we’ll see. I’m expecting to be pretty wide-ranging in what counts as a “typo” and in which forms of humor will fit the theme. It may very well be the variety of forms that keep the results from reading like one joke told 25 times. The constant reminder: Don’t tell me the best joke you ever heard; keep it to the best joke you’ve ever thought of. AD Next Loser sighting: Ozzie’s Good Eats, Fairfax, Va., Feb. 16 This month’s Loser brunch was moved across the street from the Plan A restaurant Coastal Flats for a reason I forget. In any case, this one is a similar dependable national chain, featuring your typical American and Italian brunch* lunch fare. As usual, the Loser brunch it’s on a Sunday at noon; RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements” to reply and to see a tentative calendar for the rest of the year). I had to miss the December brunch, so will try to make this one, especially to meet people who are new to the Loser Community. Let me know if you’re coming. Good news on the newsletter front: Though two weeks from now, The Post will be discontinuing the weekly email I send out every Thursday afternoon that includes a link to the new Invitational and Conversational, I’ve found a way to easily send you the same thing on my own, to up to 5,000 subscribers. (The Post is trimming back its operation from about 60 to 40 newsletters for administrative reasons; the Invitational’s is one of the smaller ones, and readers tend it click on it less often than most of the other newsletters.) So all you have to do is sign up at tinyletter.com*TheEmpress, and you’ll get virtually the same email as before. And you can unsubscribe just as easily, if you’d like to hurt my feelings. AD Though this new newsletter won’t start for two more weeks, it wouldn’t hoit if you signed up now, since not everybody on the old list can fit on the new one. (I don’t foresee a problem, to be honest, because most people on the current list aren’t opening their emails anyway, but think of the enveloping peace of mind it would grant you.) The signup asks you only for your email address, not your name. Also: You’ll have to click on a verification email after you sign up to be fully entered, so if you don’t see one promptly, check your spam filter. Just as with the current email, the links to the Invite and Convo work only for Post subscribers. The Post is currently offering a really good online subscription promotion — $50 for a year — that truly is an enormous value for what The Post brings you 24 hours a day. Subscribe here. And then you can read the Invite over and over! Also, I understand that it covers various events that happen around the world. ====================================================================== WEEK 1370, published February 9, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1370: Eek, we printed THAT? As the Empress redoes a Style Invitational contest we first did in 2000, we look back and shudder President Clinton and intern Monica Lewinsky in a White House photo from 1997. (The White House) By Pat Myers Feb. 6, 2020 at 4:45 p.m. EST This week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1370, is one that we also did in 2000, 2005 and 2013 (if there were others, I missed them while perusing the Losers’ fabutastic Master Contest List). The challenge is to write something about a person (I guess an animal would be fine as well) using only the letters in the person’s name, as often or seldom as you like. And they produced a lot of clever, funny, ingenious and surprisingly readable work, considering the dearth of letters in some people’s names. (“Cher: Echhh.” — Malcolm Visser) In fact, in the Invite 10th-anniversary retrospective in March 2003, the Czar of The Style Invitational proclaimed the winner of the 2000 contest “the best entry of all time”: Monica Lewinsky: Well, I was, like, a woman, y’know. William was, y’know, like, a man. So I’m, like, so lonely. Willie is, like, well, Willie. Anyway, a wink, some skin, “lookie lookie,” we make some nookie. Willie says, “Nice melons.” I mean, like, wow! Willie was mine, I was Willie’s. No one knew! So I’m, like, seein’ Willie, only slyly. Anyways, I’m, like, callin’ Lin. So we yak 'n' yak. I’m like, well, me 'n' Willie, y’know? Lin’s like, “Wow, Willie?” So I say, “Yes, Willie.” AD ADVERTISING Anyway, now Lin knows. Once I was, like, “Lin, is a click on my line?” Lin says, “A click? No.” Well, as we all know now, a click WAS on my line. Now, Ken comes in. Now I’m, like, NEWS! Monica mania! I’m, like, a mess. Ken is, like, so asinine. Ken was on a mission. Ken is, like, soooooo my enemy! Lin was so sneaky. Lin is a swine. Oink oink. Willie? Well, I say Slick Willie will owe someone some alimony. Me? Well, now I’m, like, a well-known woman. Now I can make me some money. Way cool. Awesome. (Richard Grossman, McLean, Va.) Twenty years later, I still think that’s a terrific entry: Not only did it read smoothly while excluding more than half the letters of the alphabet, but it was funny, with its Valley Girl patois and its amazingly comprehensive narrative. I can’t condemn either the writer or the judge for speculating that (a) Lewinsky hoped to get rich from her worldwide fame and (b) that she (or anyone) expected the Clintons to get a divorce. Unfortunately, however, that wasn’t the only inking entry about Monica Lewinsky. There was also this “honorable mention”: AD Monica Lewinsky: I was once a lonely, lowly lass. I look like a moose (I like cannoli, cannelloni, clams, wine, lemon ice …). I was also one easy woman. (I only say “yes.”) I call my “ally.” I say, “My new man is a slimy weasel.” My sly ally sells my news. We make news kinky. Now I am an icon in a comical, classless way. I make millions, so I cancel any claims on clemency. Twenty years ago (that’s right, fellow boomers, 2000 was not, oh, three years ago), virtually no one in the Mainstream Media Humor Biz — the late-night network talk shows, “Saturday Night Live,” The Style Invitational — would go out onstage or in print with a blatantly racist joke, or one about money-grubbing Jews. Or squint his eyes and do a “Chinaman” shtick. Even, finally — perhaps it took a decade of epidemic deaths — comics laid off the “Bruce” jokes. But oh boy, Monica Lewinsky didn’t get the slightest restraint, let alone compassion, including from feminists. The 22-year-old intern was “a moose,” an “easy woman,” out to sleep her way to millions for her part in almost bringing down that vulnerable, silly ol’ President of the United States with her slutty, scheming wiles. It wasn’t till her 2014 essay in Vanity Fair magazine and her TED Talk the next year — if you’re not one of the 16 million people who’ve seen this video, I hope you’ll find 23 minutes — that a chastened public hung its head in shame over its vicious treatment of Monica Lewinsky. Since then numerous comics and pundits — David Letterman and John Oliver among them — have apologized for the cheap digs of those years. AD But still, this very week, Harvey Weinstein’s defense attorney portrayed her client as the victim of a series of fame-hungry young women who took advantage of his weakness of will to agree to give him sexual favors when he demanded them. There’s still a lot of humor to be found out there, people. Even if you show some decency. Here are links to the full sets of results of the three previous contests; scroll down past that week’s new contest to see the inking entries. The lengths of the entries that got ink in those contest are all fine for Week 1370 as well. Note: Make sure that your entry doesn’t have any ineligible letters! A low-tech but effective way is to print it out, then cross out, one by one, all the times that the first letter of the name appears; then do it with the second letter and so on. Or, on your computer: do a search-and-replace, letter by letter; replace the letter with an asterisk or another character and see if there’s anything left. AD Week 341 (a.k.a. VIII; don’t ask), 2000 Week 617, 2005 Week 1009, 2013 RIAL and error*: The results of Week 1366 *Non-inking honorable-mentions subhead by Jesse Frankovich After 16 years of this, the Royal Consort knows to be skeptical when I’m sitting there judging a contest at home, buried in a pile of printouts or sunk into the laptop, and I groan out, in succession: “Oh, these are TERRIBLE. No, really! This time, there’s, like, nothing! … Ugh, what on earth were they thinking? … Well, I’m sure they did the best they could — obviously I put up an unworkable contest. … Oh, well, I’ll fill the page with a big photo …” This was me all weekend as I plowed through Week 1366. The neologisms featuring the letter block LIAR (in any permutation) were often close to unreadable; the descriptions, page after page, read like clauses in a contract, or were two words long, or had no discernible joke. All of them — well, except the ones that were good. AD And it’s not until I sifted out the gobs of mud from my pan of well over 1,000 entries, and gathered the few nuggets that remained, that I realized that, hmm, these sort of glitter. And actually, huh, there are almost 50 of them. It doesn’t matter how much mud there was. And ding! Once again we expand the Loser Lexicon by more than 40 words by 25 Losers. Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood even commented that there were a lot of especially good entries this week. It’s the second Lose Cannon and 89th blot of ink for Bill Dorner and “flopularity,” while Gary Crockett makes his 51st trip to the top-four Losers’ Circle and Jeff Contompasis his sixty-fifth. And his runner-up plus an honorable mention, Loser Steve Honley crosses the 100-ink mark, ensuring that he’ll receive a Sharpie-personalized roll of toilet paper at this summer’s Flushies awards (which will probably be June 13 or 14) to commemorate the accomplishment. AD What Doug Dug: “A lot of good ones, really,” Ace allowed. He singled out Steve’s “Corialonus” as bowdlerized Shakespeare, Bill’s “flopularity,” Mark Raffman’s “Bail-a-ruse” as the place where Carlos Ghosn went; Steve Dudzik’s “cigarlic” as a flavor that wouldn’t even be flopular; and Kel Nagel’s “Starli” as Kellyanne Conway’s unicorn name. Starting next Thursday: Same email, different sender — sign up now! The email that I’ll be sending out on Thursday, Feb. 6 — the moment after I finish this column — will be the last “newsletter” for the Invitational*Conversational that’s sent by The Washington Post; for administrative reasons, The Post is cutting back on its newsletters, from around 60 to 40, and the Invite’s was one of the smallest in circulation, with about 10,000 recipients, and only a small fraction of those actually opened it. But not to worry! You can still get your weekly announcement every Thursday afternoon complete with links to the week’s new Invite and Convo; I’ll just be sending it myself. AD Just sign up by clicking here: tinyletter.com*TheEmpress, and you’ll get virtually the same email as before, beginning Thursday afternoon, Feb. 13. And you can unsubscribe just as easily, if you’d like to hurt my feelings. It doesn’t ask you for any personal data, even your name. (Which means I won’t even know who you are from my list, unless it’s clear from your email address — feel free to drop me a line and tell me you joined, especially if we haven’t met!) It turns out that I can also add names myself to the Tiny Letter list, and so I’ll continue to do that — just as I did for the Post mailing list — for new Invitational entrants, who, I figure, will want to be notified when the results run for the contest they entered. Once again, unsubscribing is a breeze. If you sign up and you’re told that you already are signed up? I must have added your name, probably because I couldn’t bear the thought that you — especially you — might not hear from me. I do hope to find time to add the names of longtime newsletter recipients, in case they didn’t hear this news. Since I announced this news last Thursday way down in the lower part of the Conversational, I’ve already gotten a stream of sign-ups from addresses I don’t recognize — I was surprised and truly touched to learn that people beyond the core Loser Community read this thing! And if you want to see the Invite even sooner, join the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook; I usually share the Invite around 10 a.m. on Thursdays, before I get down to writing the Conversational. ====================================================================== WEEK 1371, published February 16, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1371: We’re permutation nation The Empress of The Style Conversational on this week’s neologism contest and winning pickup lines Bob Staake's cartoon to illustrate the example (by Ken Gallant) for Week 530 back in 2003. In that contest, a single entrant had to change a word three ways; we figure it's better to combine the best from everyone. By Pat Myers Feb. 13, 2020 at 3:53 p.m. EST There’s a good chance that this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1371, will yield several ingenious new terms that would be delightful and useful additions to the English language; our neologism contests almost always do. But what’s especially fun with contests like our annual Tile Invitational is to see the myriad ways a single set of letters can be played with, especially by several different people. I remember judging this one neologism contest back in 2003, while I was helping out the Czar shortly before I turned around and callously deposed him. It was headlined “Tri Harder,” and contestants had to choose an existing word and alter it in three ways — by adding a letter, subtracting a letter and substituting another letter — and define all three new words. The results of Week 520 were pretty good but not classic — mainly because all three of the words and definitions had to be good. That meant that some better neologisms got no ink that week, because they were yoked to one or two meh or problematic ones. The Czar noted this in the introduction to the results: “Several people fell two short of a good troika, but had one gem: Examples: ‘Redskeins: Strings of consecutive losses.’ ‘Mountainfop: A hillwilliam.’ ‘Mantique: An item a guy keeps from his bachelor days, such as his lucky socks or his Loni Anderson poster.' ” AD ADVERTISING I think we learned our lesson on that one: It’s fun to show several different ways to play with one letter rack, as in this week’s ScrabbleGrams contest, or crossword answer or captionless cartoon. But I’d like to be able to choose from as many players as possible. While you’re certainly welcome to submit multiple entries for a single letter set of — heck, I don’t care if you use all 25 on the same seven letters — I’ll be looking at them individually. For inspiration and, if you’re new to the Invite, here are a few multiple plays on letter sets from previous contests. Click on the links for full results. From the results of Week 1123, 2015 AADGGLR: Glad-ag: The new major in cannabis farming at Colorado A&M. (Frances Hirai-Clark) Ragglad: Relieved to find out you’re not pregnant. (Rob Huffman) AD Raglag: How long a spill gets to seep in before you sop it up. “With a 2-year-old in the house I’ve got my average raglag down to 3.7 seconds.” (Danielle Nowlin) From the results of Week 1072, 2014 AUEALGB: Gabuela: A granny who can’t keep her boca shut. (Mae Scanlan) AA-bulge: The result of eating every time you feel the urge for a drink. (David Adlerstein) AA-bulge: The result of choosing too small a bra size. (Hugh Thirlway) Galbeau: Transgender heartthrob (David Ballard) Glube: What you get if you mix Elmer’s with K-Y Jelly. (Danielle Nowlin) Begaul: Try to impress with French expressions. “That pompous jerk kept begauling me with ‘ma cherie.’ (Chris Doyle) From the same contest: EEVTPXR Vexpert: One who knows which buttons to push. (Mike Gips) Vexpert: The quicker ticker-offer. (Jeff Contompasis) AD Texperv: A Redskins fan in Dallas. (John Shea) Ex-perv: A dead man. (Alex Jeffrey) And one more set, this one including creative definitions of existing words, from Week 1212, 2017: AHINRSV VARNISH: Somewhat like a varn. (Roger Dalrymple) RAVISH: To carjack a Toyota SUV. (Larry Gray) VINRASH: Rosé-cea. (Barry Koch) NRA-SHIV: “Help protect the incarcerated from prison gang violence: Arm inmates.” (Matt Monitto) If you enjoy contests like this, you’re depriving yourself something crazy if you aren’t in the Style Invitational Devotees, a private group on Facebook. Every time someone joins (several people a week) the Devs commence to anagram the newbie’s name in every which way but the real one — sometimes dozens. And then, if you go on to get Invite ink, you can choose one of them as your Loser Anagram (aka Granola Smear) on the offical Loser Stats. Sign up at on.fb.me*invdev. AD Fanfare for the Come-On Man*: The pickup lines of Week 1367 *Terrific headline — but, alas, too long for print — by Roy Ashley In a totally different experience from last week’s judging slog (though it did yield dozens of fine results), I was laughing on almost every page of my 1,650-entry printout at the name- or profession-specific pickup lines from Week 1367 — just so romantic for Valentine’s Day, especially ones like Frank Osen’s for a proctologist (“Is this stool taken?”). My magnet inventory is going to shrink noticeably once again when I send out prizes to this week’s 34 inking Losers responsible for 47 inking entries. It’s the first Lose Cannon — indeed, the first ink “above the fold” — for Alan Duxbury, whose total ink boings 50 percent to six blots with his win and also a particularly good honorable mention. Alan’s pickup line for an orthopedic surgeon — “What a joint like this doing in a nice girl like you?” — sent me to Google to see if perfect word inversion wasn’t all over the jokesphere. AD (Someone else had almost the same thing, also for the orthopedic surgeon, but screwed it up: “What’s a nice joint like this doing in a girl like you?” Not exactly a compliment!) Vincing Argument: Just as Acey Copy Editor Vince Rinehart read over the Invite last night in lieu of Usual Ace Doug Norwood, and I picked up on a feeling that he might have enjoyed it. " Cannot stop laughing. Frank Osen is so effing great.” Frank’s runner-up for Prince Andrew, “Don’t I not know you from somewhere?” was just the first of four memorable inks this week. Vince also raved about his entries for Amnesiac: “Do I come here often?”; and Narcissist: “Is it just me, or am I hot in here?” (And had Vince seen the proctologist joke, which ran only online, he would have loved that one as well.) Vince also singled out Seth Tucker’s Serial killer: “You know, I have the body of an 18-year-old”; Duncan Stevens’s dig at Rep. Devin Nunes; David Kleinbard’s “The number of drinks I want to buy you is twice what I want to buy Mary. ...” for the test prep instructor; as well as a bawdy entry submitted almost identically by both Jon Gearhart and Jesse Rifkin: Crossword constructor: “When you walked in, you turned 3 Down into 6 Across.” AD The crossword entry did make it onto the print page (where I tend not to put the edgiest entries) without any editorial objection. That’s because it requires a moment of figuring out the joke — something that taste-complainers don’t tend to do; they’re usually reacting to particular words or, more often, pictures. One of the two entrants (don’t remember which) used the name Will Shortz for the cruciverbalist flirt, which I thought made the graphic metaphor seem too personal and consequently too tasteless. (But still not approaching this one “from” 79-year-old Nancy Pelosi: “I would prayerfully get down on my knees for you.” REALLY?) Make sure you sign up for the NEWsletter! As I noted in the past two columns, The Post discontinued about 20 email newsletters out of the 60 it was regularly sending out, and the small-circulation Style Invitational notification was one of them. But if all goes well this afternoon, I’ll be sending it out myself on a new platform, but with the same ol’ links to the week’s new Invitational and Conversational. So please sign up for it at tinyletter.com*TheEmpress — all you have to do is give your email address, no other data, not even your name. AD As of now, only about 400 people have signed up; the original mailing list was about 10,000; I can take up to 5,000. It’s not clear to me whether I can add people to the list myself (which I’ll do for new Invite entrants) or whether they have to sign up, but I’ll try. Meanwhile, I get a little email from Tiny Letter whenever a new person signs up. Brighten my day! (Just like The Post’s own newsletters, this one is not a way to get around the paywall; you have to be a digital — or print — subscriber to get to either column. But hey, it’s half the cost of the $200-a-year NYT, even when there’s no sale going on, which there usually is. Yes! $80! And that includes crosswords and recipes, which NYT doesn’t.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1372, published February 23, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1372: The punliness of the long-distance runner Duncan Stevens sets a burning pace into the Style Invitational Hall of Fame. Earning almost al his 500 blots of ink in the past five years, Duncan Stevens becomes the 14th Loser to Hall. (Family photo) By Pat Myers Feb. 20, 2020 at 4:48 p.m. EST Four years ago last week, right here in this column, I introduced an emerging “Loser Phenom” who, after a handful of Style Invitational appearances over three years, was suddenly getting Style Invitational ink week after week — already up to a total of 30 blots. Fortunately for us all, Duncan Stevens’s torrid ink-snarf pace only picked up. And last week, with a typical single-contest haul of three honorable mentions plus the HM subhead, Duncan reached the 500-ink threshold of the Style Invitational Hall of Fame, to become its 14th member. (The first: Chuck Smith, June 2001.) Along that remarkably short route, Duncan won the whole Invite 13 times and scored 41 runners-up, in virtually every type of contest, most notably in a string of classic song parodies, and was Loser of the Year in 2018. And I’m more than thrilled to see that he’s still dashing along with full 25-entry submissions week after Loser week. Today, check out his interpretation of the dots in the window of Cartoon A — unique among the entries this week — as a collection of dog noses, intent on sniffing the woman’s T-Bone Perfume. AD ADVERTISING Since that “Meet the Parentheses” Q&A in the Conversational, Duncan’s become a fixture in the Loser Community as well, with a demeanor and vocal delivery so deadpan, so utterly without affect, that you’d think he was, oh, a federal lawyer dealing in banking regulation, rather than the person who penned a holiday ditty about Stormy Daniels called “Mistress Time Is Here.” Not to mention a member of an improv team called Breakup Wok. The Empress, who is 5-2 (I must be bending my knees), singing parodies with Duncan Stevens at this year’s Loser Post Holiday Party. (Screen image from video) The Empress, who is 5-2 (I must be bending my knees), singing parodies with Duncan Stevens at this year’s Loser Post Holiday Party. (Screen image from video) Here’s a bit from that earlier Convo with Duncan, along with some updates, including some of his own favorite ink from those first 500 blots. MEET THE PARENTHESES: (DUNCAN STEVENS, VIENNA, VA.) [from February 2016] Age: Evidently not old enough to know better. [Mid-forties.] Official Loser Anagram (aka Granola Smear): Unscented Vans. Though I’m also partial to Nuns Dent Caves and Nuns, Vets Dance. AD What brought me to the Invite: I had been enjoying the Invite ever since I moved to D.C. and started subscribing to the Post in 2000, but I would glance at the contest, think “hey, I should enter,” and almost never get around to it. But last summer I said to myself, “Self, this is lame. You like wordplay. There’s a lively wordplay contest in your paper every week. You have no excuse.” So I started sending in entries more or less every week, and I found that a lot of contests that I had never thought to try — like neologisms or snarky notes to “glassbowls” — were a lot of fun once I put some effort into them. What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? ... I also sometimes spoof hymns for my church choir: “Jesus Christ is risen today*Man, that guy won’t go away.” And now from 2020 ... So how do you get all that ink week after week? Do you write the maximum of 25 entries for each contest? I write more than 25 most weeks — sometimes a lot more — and then choose the ones I like best from there, with advice from my long-suffering wife. It’s usually painful to leave a bunch on the cutting room floor, but I’ve found that the first 25 entries I think of aren’t always going to be my best. If Entries 100 and 101 give me a chuckle, it was worth writing Entries 26-99. AD Then what do you do with the rest? I share them on Losernet (the online listserv for Invite entrants), mine them for leftover contests, and reread every so often to amuse myself. So how do you go about writing all those song parodies? I usually try to think of subjects (particularly subjects in the news) with sounds that are similar to titles or repeated phrases in well-known songs, and build around them. For a recent contest I wrote a “Hey Jude” parody about Greta Thunberg, ending each verse with “Greta” instead of “better.” That’s going to help a reader figure out how the parody matches the song, since there’s no audio. I also try hard to match the parody’s rhythm with the original; the reader shouldn’t have to think, “Now how does this line fit?” What do you do when not Inviting? Lots of things! As was the case in the last interview, I’m still a federal lawyer and still have two kids, now 10 and 7, and still play ultimate Frisbee, dabble in improv comedy, and keep busy in various roles at church. I’ve lately gotten more active in OEDILF, the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, which the Invite uses every August for a contest as it steadily progresses through the alphabet. I always submit my entries to OEDILF after the contest is over, and also offer suggestions to other writers in the website’s workshopping process. AD Any notable experiences with people who saw your name in the Invite? I recently wrote a parody about gerrymandering (see below) and got a nice note from the head of One Virginia, an anti-gerrymandering organization, thanking me for raising awareness of the issue! Other Invite hey-aren’t-yous have included federal lawyers at the FDIC and at other agencies, fellow churchgoers, elementary school friends I hadn’t heard from in 30-plus years, and at least one teacher at my daughter’s school. Do your kids think you’re famous? Don’t think so! If I could only start hanging around with Cookie Monster or Captain Underpants … Favorite past inks: Week 1163, spell a word backward and define the result: MUGELBBUB: A demon who tortures souls after sticking their shoes to the floor. Week 1166, Questionable Journalism: Sentence from the paper: Two days before Christmas, a trust called DE First Holdings was quietly formed in Delaware, where corporations are required to reveal little about their workings. Q. What does “The Night Before Christmas” sound like when retold by Bernie Sanders? AD Week 1195, change spacing or punctuation in a movie title: “Snow: White”: From the “First Things First” series of nature documentaries. Week 1196, combine two halves of hyphenated words into a new word: Evangelifunctory: Paying lip service to conservative Christian principles. “Before introducing Mr. Trump, Mr. Falwell made some evangelifunctory remarks about upholding strong family values.” Week 1223, sensationalized headlines for mundane stories: MANY D.C. RESIDENTS ARE WEDDED TO COUSINS! Redskins fans want star quarterback Kirk Cousins to stay with the team Week 1247, lines from reimagined movies: “The Cider House Rules”: “Man oh man, this is one awesome cider house.” Week 1248, “confessions”: I sometimes sneak up behind my co-workers and scare them by popping a paper bag. Look, you’ve got to find ways to pass the time when you’re in the Secret Service. AD Week 1262, crossword clues: BARR: Second item on a pirate’s daily to-do list, after “A. Get up” Week 1278, grandfoals: The Ego Has Landed x Jirque du Soleil = I Am My Sunshine Week 1339, song parodies about the news: To “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”: Have yourself a gerrymandered district, draw some artful lines; Make it look like 12 exploding porcupines. Have yourself a gerrymandered district, slice and dice the votes: Safe seat, even if they catch you screwing goats. Once we’d choose folks who stood for us; “Go do good for us,” we said — Threw out those who were abusing us. Now they’re choosing us instead. Draw it up so you can’t be defeated, be you saint or heel, ’Cause John Roberts says that this is no big deal, So have yourself a seat no one can ever steal. Week 1306, holiday song parodies about the news: To “Frosty the Snowman”: Toss me the dough, man, there’s a mistress with a tale, She’ll describe your groin — better give some coin, Keep the tabloids off her trail. AD Toss me the dough, man, there’s a chick we need to pay, Says she spanked your bum, dude, but she’ll keep mum, We’ll just need an NDA. There surely is some magic when we spread around the bucks, We squelch the stories from the broads that the Donald goes and makes love to. Toss me the dough, man; we’ll make sure these seeds don’t sprout. Pay a trifling fee, and you’ll be home free, ’cause we’ll never get found out. ---- And another milestone in Loserdom! Last week, as Duncan reached his 500th blot of ink, Jesse Frankovich broke a record I thought would never fall: He got 180 blots of ink in a single “Loser year” (roughly March to March), finally passing Brendan Beary’s mark in the mid-2000s, back before there was an entry limit and before I could judge the entries without knowing who’d written them. And this week, Jesse’s at 181; and according to Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan, there’s one more week to go in Year 27. AD And we’d better order a Hall of Fame key card for ... Frank Osen has 490 blots as of last week, according to the standings. Plus another one today. Oy! Next week: A Meet the Parentheses with Longtime Loser Steve Honley as he passes the 100-ink mark. If you’re a regular Loser and would like to introduce yourself to Greater Loserdom, drop me a line. The Staake deck: Results of Week 1368 I’m certain that most of this week’s interpretations of the four Bob Staake cartoons from Week 1368 would never have been thought of by Bob himself. The spots outside the window in Cartoon A? King Kong’s boxers, a Purple-People Eater, the Dalmatian of hell, a pack of dog noses, and big blots of non-Invite ink. Not to mention fodder for a nice pun on “periods.” That last one worked perfectly for Sam Mertens, who, still in his superb rookie year, gets his third Invite win and his 47th (and 48th) ink. And a previous Rookie of the Year, Danielle Nowlin, is a runner-up this week, along with Jeff Contompasis’s congressional pun, “High on the Hill was the Lonely Voteherd” — the favorite of my Style Invitational Devotees co-admin Alex Blackwood, and similar jokes about “the Last Pillar of Democracy” by Stephen Dudzik and Ellen Ryan. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choice of Sam’s Picture A entry. He also singled out Jack McCombs’s King Kong boxers, Kevin Dopart’s “Invisible Man” allusion for the empty basket in Picture B, Bruce Niedt’s “lostling,” Jonathan Jensen’s HOV lane, and Steve Smith’s allusion to the recent cowardly censorship by the National Archives. We lucked out on the print page this week! The cartoon captions will appear on a page with color in this Sunday’s Arts & Style section. Otherwise, First Offender Kathleen Delano’s joke about the Purple-People Eater wouldn’t have made much sense to a reader looking at a gray-faced woman in Cartoon A. Pithy please: This week's Balliol rhymes I expect all you Loserbards to be conducting all your conversations, yelling at your kids, etc., in the meter ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM, once you start working on the Week 1372 “Balliol rhymes.” And iamb quite optimistic that you’ll come up with a variety of zingy verses, especially because you get to double the length if you like. The original Oxford undergraduates who published their “Masque of Balliol” — is that where “sophomoric” comes from? — replaced the vowels in their targets’ names with hyphens in mock-disguise; I’d consider the same joke except that perhaps not all of the names would be clear enough, and also just that, eh, not all that funny. It’s easy enough for me to go one way or the other at the last minute. The newsletter's working — finally! Be sure to sign up. As I’ve noted in past weeks, I’m now using a new service to send the once-a-week email notification containing a link to the Invitational and Conversational. So even if you’d been getting the email every Thursday for years and years, please take a moment to sign up at tinyletter.com*TheEmpress. It won’t ask you for any personal data, not even your name. (If it tells you that you’re already signed up, that’s because I added you myself — I couldn’t bear to let you forget the Invite for even a week.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1373, published March 1, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1373: Would buy again! The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s new contest and results Steve Honley always dresses appropriately — in the noodly beanie he won in Week 1180 — when he plays piano at Loser events. This one was the January 2019 Post-Post-Holiday Party. Steve's featured this week in our Meet the Parentheses section below. (Dean Evangelista) By Pat Myers Feb. 27, 2020 at 3:43 p.m. EST Style Invitational Week 1373 is the fifth time around for our contest for funny reviews of products listed on Amazon.com — and we still haven’t been told to knock it off by The Guy Who Signs My Checks (well, ultimately). I love contests like this because we can do them every year or so, and we’re not much likely to exhaust the list of usable products. For inspiration and guidance for what we’re looking for, I include some classic ink right at the top of this week’s column. Here are links to the results to all four previous Amazon contests, with one classic from each: Week 960, 2012 (scroll past the week’s new contest): Morton Iodized Salt, 26oz.: Yum! This tastes just like McDonald’s french fries, but it’s not fried and has no fat at all! (Gregory Koch, then a college student) Week 1098, 2014: AD Pringles: They’re the best rehydrated potato flake, maltodextrin, disodium inosinate, monosodium glutamate, wheat, corn and potato flour, pressed amalgamate chiplike food product on the market! I’d eat them even if they didn’t have “natural flavors.” (Warren Tanabe) Week 1244, 2017: Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Foil: It really works to block UFO thought control! The proof is in the anagram: WALL UP YOUR MIND FROM ALIENS! (Jesse Frankovich) Week 1321, 2019: 12-pack of men’s white cotton handkerchiefs: Who would have guessed that carrying my mucus in my pocket all day could be so stylish? (David Kleinbard) Note that I gave a guideline — not a strict limit — that 75 words would be long for an Invite entry. And I have run some “reviews” at that length; I’ve even run one in the form of a song parody (see Barry Koch’s three-verse ode to his C-O-M-B to the tune of “YMCA” in Week 960). But most of the ink does go to shorter entries. As always, the extra length has to merit the extra space it takes up. AD ADVERTISING To err is humor*: The typo jokes of Week 1369 *A headline that got ink for Jesse Frankovich in Week 1285, and almost got ink for someone else this week (see the section “Subbed heads” below) The results of Week 1369 mark my 833rd (or thereabouts) straight contest as Empress of The Style Invitational. So, so many times I’ve worried that the contest won’t work out — it’s too restrictive, it’s too vague, it’s too screedy, it’s too erudite, it’s too duplicative — and then I’m proved colossally wrong by a hundred classic entries, most of which I can’t even award with ink because there were just too many. Week 1369 was not that contest. The challenge to tell a joke involving a typo or misheard word proved a struggle for almost everyone: Much of the humor either was either painfully obvious, spelled out anticlimactically for the reader, or involved a substituted word that would never have been used or misheard accidentally. AD So I have special admiration for the Losers who avoided those pitfalls and got ink this week. Frank Osen approaches the brink of that 500-ink Hall of Fame mark (the Loser Stats will be updated this weekend, I’m told) with his 22nd Invite win, and our first and last joke playing off Corona beer and coronavirus — you listening, people?; and Hildy Zampella totally deserves the monkey-butt tissue dispenser with the week’s most creative take on the “typo” concept. Once again, Post Managing Editor (newsroom second-in-command) Cameron Barr decreed “it’s fine” when asked to rule on an Invite taste question, this one the anecdote by First Offender Dave Davies on his little nephew who couldn’t pronounce “pushy” clearly. (I was ready to rewrite it coyly, but was glad I didn’t have to.) On the other hand, I decided myself that The Washington Post just shouldn’t “quote” Sen. Lindsey Graham, even “mistakenly,” as wishing the president “his heartiest fellations,” though it was one of the few entries this week that truly made me laugh. Still, that’s an unprintable for Duncan Stevens. AD Meet the Parentheses: (Steve Honley, Washington) We return to our occasional series of Losers More or Less Interviewing Themselves. This time it’s to note the 100-ink mark achieved by Steve Honley, whom local Losers know best as our generous Perennial Loser Party Pianist, and out-of-town Losers don’t know at all, because he’s not, alas, in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group. Steve read over some earlier Meet the Parentheses installments and worked up the following “interview.” Age: Old enough to appreciate the wisdom of the David Mamet quote: “Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.” (For realz: I’ll turn 60 in August.) Official Loser Anagram (a.k.a. Granola Smear): Svelte Honey. Back when the Invitational used my full name, Steven Alan Honley (I wonder how much money The Post has saved over the years by eliminating those five characters), I had an even more flattering Smear, but alas, I haven’t been able to reconstruct it. I know it included “loyal.” AD What brought me to the Invite: Peer pressure. Out of uncharacteristic humility, I didn’t enter any contests for the first decade or so of its existence; the standard of humor was so high that I was honestly intimidated. But several friends kept encouraging me to throw my crap, I mean hat, in the ring, sagely observing that “You gotta play to lose!” And in 2002 I did, and scored my first ink, in Week 447. What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? I’ve taken the “Jeopardy” online test five times, and made it to the audition stage twice, but gotten no further. The fifth time was in January, so my fingers are crossed this one will be the charm. What do you do when you’re not composing Invite entries? After careers as a State Department Foreign Service officer (1985-1997) and editor in chief of The Foreign Service Journal, the American Foreign Service Association’s monthly magazine (2001-2014), I’m now enjoying life as a semiretired musician, editor and writer. I’ve been music director at my church for nearly 26 years, and also sing in or accompany three area choruses. And for more than a decade now, I’ve run the longest-running local LGBTQ book group, Bookmen DC, which started in 1999. When not doing those things, I spend as much time as I can with my amazing partner of 16 years, Joe. AD Besides your 100 blots of ink and your “Jeopardy” non-appearances, what else do you brag about at Loser parties? I visited all seven continents during my diplomatic career, and stood at the South Pole on New Year’s Eve 1988. Some favorite entries: From Week 1151 (snarky notes to “glassbowls”): This one got second place: Dear Constantly Cheery Glassbowl: It’s true that frowning takes more muscles than smiling. But it’s well worth the extra effort. From Week 1246 (Questionable Journalism, one of my very favorite contests), I won my first Lose Cannon with this one: A. “I would say I don’t usually love red and browns together.” Q. What Donald Trump comment got the U.N. Security Council meeting off to a terrible start? And an honorable mention in the same contest: A. “What is your impression of President Xi Jinping?” AD Q. What question strikes terror in the hearts of Chinese comedians? My second Lose Cannon was for my “Year in Preview” prediction in Week 1260: Oct. 12: Columbus, Ohio, renames itself Genocidal European, Ohio. What’s your favorite non-inking entry? I know that the competition for the horse-name contests is fierce, but three years later, I’m still disappointed that this “grandfoal” from Week 1226 didn’t get ink: REMBrandt x Rubenesque Chance = IfItPaintBaroque. (Want to introduce yourself to the Greater Loser Community? If your name has appeared in the Invitational fairly often over the years — or you’re a new person and getting pretty regular ink — drop me a line. If you have lots and lots of ink, you practically owe me one of these.) Subbed heads This week’s headline for the results, Kevin Dopart’s “Blunderachievers,” and honorable-mentions subhead, Jesse Frankovich’s “Oops C’s,” while both very cute, weren’t my initial choices: This morning I first published the head “To Err Is Humor” and the subhead “Typo Negatives,” crediting the latter to three different entrants — until one alert Loser pointed out to me that both headlines had been used in earlier Invite contests. In fact, “Typo Negatives” got ink in both Week 1115 and Week 1297 — both for Roy Ashley. And today Roy almost got it three times running. AD I should have caught this repetition myself, because it’s now much easier to do so, now that Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan maintains his Super-Duper “All Invitational Text” file at NRARS.org. You can search for anything throughout the whole document and if your term is there, you’ll see it highlighted in color. There’s just one drawback to it: The file can take a long time to load on a computer; on mine, the text goes blank and needs to be refreshed if I don’t keep working on it. But I just learned from Ultra-Loser Jesse Frankovich that there’s an easy fix, at least if you’re using Chrome (don’t know how this works on other browsers, but I assume it’s similar). He does this all the time, ever since he himself got credit for a previously used headline: If you right-click anywhere on that All Invitational Text file, you can “Save as …” a text file that’s downloaded to your computer. Because it doesn’t have to keep “talking” to the Internet, the loading and search will work much faster, either as a plain-text file (in Notepad) or as a document in Word. This file will be out of date by next week, but it takes so little time and effort to create it — surely less than it takes to think of a list of titles, let alone neologisms and other entries that might have already been done — that it’s worth doing every week. Next Loser sighting: March 15, Mrs. K’s Toll House I won’t be able to make the March 15 Loser Brunch, but I can tell you from our brunch there a year or two ago that the venerable restaurant in close-in Silver Spring is a lovely spot; it’s like a big old Grandma’s house with lush gardens outside. We had our own private room bedecked with antiques. It has a large buffet featuring both breakfast and lunch dishes. RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). ====================================================================== WEEK 1374, published March 8, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1374: Hip-hopping through history The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s contest and results Then-9-year-old James Yanovitch, along with his little brother, performing mom Amanda's “Santa vs. Raffi” rap for Week 993 of The Style Invitational in 2012. We hope they'd like to do another one for this week's contest, Week 1374. See the video below. By Pat Myers March 5, 2020 at 4:40 p.m. EST Once again The Style Invitational assures the world — and reminds itself — that we do indeed partake of the 21st century. (Well, some of us.) We even did all the way back in, well, 2012. Be gentle. Week 1374 is our second homage to Epic Rap Battles of History, the video series begun amateurishly by “Nice Peter” Shukoff and “EpicLLOYD” Ahlquist in 2010 and now an award-winning franchise with 14.7 million YouTube subscribers. The conceit, which has stayed pretty much intact, is that two real or fictional characters, usually with something or other in common, trash-talk each other in a battle of rhymes. The ERB videos are lots of fun. The lyrics, though, even when performed are, well, not Loser-caliber. As witty writing goes, they’re way out of the league of Weird Al Yankovic, who’s just astonishingly talented on several levels. The reason that today’s Bob Staake cartoon is of Sigmund Freud vs. Mother Teresa while the example is of Guy Fawkes vs. Che Guevara: I couldn’t find a pair of good enough, usable* rhymes in Siggy-Terry, and so I went with the better ones of Guy-Che, even though many readers probably aren’t familiar with at least one of the combatants. (*This, the cleverest line, was too tasteless and rhymed terribly: Sigmund: “An exception to my theory! I can’t believe this!* Here we have a Mother that no one wants to sleep with!”) AD ADVERTISING So it’s a good thing we have lots of Losers who are precisely Loser-caliber in the witty-writing department. I’m confident we’ll have lots of fun rhymes, and I’m hopeful that we’ll get a few videos as well. Even eight years ago, Loser Amanda Yanovitch sent in a delightful video complete with (highly useful) subtitles. Note that I’m giving you an extra week to do a video; the deadline is March 23 rather than March 16 for the just-words rhymes. The subtitles are a no-go? That should be all right in this contest if you speak clearly; for song parodies they’re almost essential. My only reservation is that the subject matter — trash-talking x famous people — could overlap with a contest whose results haven’t run yet: the “Balliol rhymes” of Week 1372. But this one involves pairs of people, and the pairing might be one of the wittier elements, so I’m optimistic. One big word of advice: Do not write in dialect, beyond the occasional “yo,” “mo’,” etc. Thank you. AD Here’s a bunch of what got ink in Week 993, November 2012. You can read the rest here. The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Aunt Jemima vs. Mrs. Butterworth: Aunt J: You got an old-lady voice that always sounds so proper! Always hating on the leading runny pancake topper! You say you’re thick and rich, now that’s hard to chew — You’re just a talking plastic bottle! I’ll recycle you! Mrs. B: You’re better than me, huh? You’d better check your label: It’s not just me who’s putting hexametaphosphate on the table! You’re just jealous of the squeezing that I get every day — You’re an aunt, but I’m a Mrs., and that’s all I’m gonna say! (Amanda Yanovitch, Midlothian, Va.) 2. First Witch from “Macbeth”: You wrote a few old cookbooks. So? Big freakin’ deal! In my cauldron I am makin’ a more exotic meal! Julia Child: I spit upon your bat and on your tongue of dog; AD (But I confess: That there is one luscious-looking frog!) (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) 3. Pontius Pilate: We’ve been at this for hours, and I’d like to go home. Traffic’s getting pretty heavy on all roads that lead to Rome. Jesus: You need to practice patience and become more unselfconscious That my Father named me Jesus and your father named you Pontius. Pilate: Naming is irrelevant! They say you walk on water! (My life’d be so much easier if Mary’d had a daughter!) Jesus: Have you seen my halo, Pontius? It’s as if my head were skylit! The biggest diff between us, bro, is that God is my pilot. (Christopher Lamora, Guatemala City) 4. John Grisham: My immense success just goes to show what’s achievable When you have no talent — it’s really unbelievable! Dan Brown: You think you have no talent? Let me tell you, suckah, AD I can’t write for dirt and I can’t even rhyme! (Andrew Ballard, London) Under raps: Honorable mentions Abominable Snowman: You think you’re gross? I’m grosser, and indomitable! And furthermore, folks tell me I’m abominable. Medusa: My snaky locks are writhing like spaghetti; Come take a look! You ain’t seen nuthin’, yeti! (Beverley Sharp) Adam: “Try this fruit!” says you, my rib-stealing be-otch! Now the Original Sinna’s gotta fig-leaf his cre-otch. Eve: For the very first man, yo’ head is way second-rate — You’d be outta luck, playa, if I’d a choice in my mate. (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.) Easter Bunny: “Your North Pole ice is melting fast, and Mrs. Claus has sung at last! Your slave-kept elves will all applaud when kids find out that you’re a fraud.” Santa Claus: “I have no fear, you furry freak, who lays the eggs for hide-and-seek! AD When those kids learn the same ’bout you, in no time you’ll be Brunswick stew.” (Mark Raffman, Reston) Santa vs. Raffi (Amanda Yanovitch, featuring James and Bruce Yanovitch, [then] ages 9 and 7) --- Kanye West: Interruption! Interruption! I gotta get a word in! The fact you beat Beyoncé’s just a little bit absurd, an’ — Taylor Swift: Yo, Westie, maybe country music’s not your thing, But there’s two of us onstage right now, and only one can sing. (Christopher Lamora) Neil Armstrong: You presidents, you’re all the same, But one small step assured my fame! Gerald Ford: I run the show, command our troops; I’ve taken LOTS of steps, and (OOPS!) . . . (Beverley Sharp) Julia Child: You baked your aunt in a brioche? Your taste in food, mon Dieu, très gauche! Dear gastro-fool, when eating Auntie: Pecorino or chianti? AD Hannibal Lecter: I’ll carve your face in bas-relief, you massive, pompous side of beef! Take heed or I’ll remove your heart, frappé it in my Cuisinart! (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) Thomas Edison: Nikky-boy, you worked for me, I am the boss. I got Direct profits, you pulled a loss. I’m the Wizard of Menlo, with patents that burgeon, You’re a footnote of history, and you died a virgin. Nikola Tesla: You may have done some experiments but I did all your math. Maybe you should experiment with a lightbulb in the bath. It may be a shock to you, we’re Alternating today: Your current gets a D, while my current gets an A. (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) Thor: You’re still just a human; I’m a legendary god. Get as tall as you like; you’ll make a nice lightning rod. Bruce Banner: Go ahead, bring your lightning and you’ll lose in a flash AD As I grind you to . . . oh, forget the rap. HULK SMASH! (Stephen Gilberg, Washington) Ha*low be thy name*: The results of Week 1370 *Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich Right from the start, the Week 1370 contest was much more fun to judge than the previous week’s typo-jokes: not because all the entries were wonderful, but because a lot of them were. The contest asked you to write something about a person using only the letters in that person’s name. The challenge is nowhere as restrictive as an anagram contest, since you may repeat letters and also not use some letters, but with a working alphabet of a dozen letters or so, and sometimes significantly fewer — Kim Jung Un offers a mere seven — “This was HARD,” noted one Loser who boasts tons of ink from other Invite contests. But I wasn’t using some scale based on the number of name-letters: Instead, I looked for entries that were funny and fun to read, and didn’t force the reader to slog through it, trying to puzzle out what it was talking about. (One that fell into the latter camp: Here’s just half of one for Vladimir Putin: “Ritual: Implant Puritan in inapt rumina. Train pliant unlaid in lap. Plum unit. Lip plant. Martini, minutia... Rapt pant....”) AD I was never worried that I’d have enough good material — I figured that I could fill the page with entries from a handful of our anagram savants alone — but I was surprised at how much depth there was: many good entries were robbed of ink, especially variations on the entries I chose. Frank Osen’s Florida Man edged out Sam Mertens’s; Chris Doyle’s runner-up of Stormy Daniels was the best of at least three very good ones. As he did on several earlier contests, Longtime Loser Gary Crockett proved utterly invaluable for volunteering to validate all the entries with a program he designed. I sent him my seriously misnamed shortlist yesterday afternoon and he sent it back to me minutes later, with numerous letters, capitalized and marked in red, that were not in the people’s names: an R for Monica Lewinsky, an O for Ernest Hemingway, a B (in “deplorables”) that wasn’t any of the letters of “President Donald John Trump.” And yes, though I didn’t know it yet, one of Gary’s entries did make my cut. And yes, it does use all the right letters. Of course, the contest was finished before — and published minutes before — Sen. Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the presidential race this morning. But Melissa Balmain’s Lose Cannon-winning entry works as a postmortem on her candidacy as well. Pete Buttigieg and Mike Bloomberg also “suspended” their candidacies after the entry deadline, but just a few days ago, and I didn’t see any reason to pull the excellent inking entries about them. (Also not going to get into quibbles that Buttigieg can no longer be titled “Mayor.”) This is about the millionth win for Melissa, and the millionty-millionth runners-up for Chris Doyle and Jesse Frankovich. So I’ll just note the great week for rookie Steve Smith, who got three blots of ink today (I can’t tell you Steve’s total ink accumulation because the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, is temporarily down; I refer to Elden Carnahan’s magnum opus about 10 times a day, and I can’t wait until it’s all back up — should be very soon.) What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood was partial to Melissa’s winner and Chris’s Stormy Daniels tour de force, as well as to Frank Mann’s gestapolemic Stephen Miller as well as to Steve Smith’s "“I agree.” (Angry Twitter rant by T.) “I no longer agree.” Because Doug reads the Invite before I add the Web-only entries, he didn’t see the amazingly readable synopsis of “Hamilton” by Matt Monitto (which vetted perfectly except for one expendable S). BTW, “Alexander Hamilton” has only 11 unique letters. I read it out loud with delight to the Royal Consort, taking only one 15-minute intermission. And, yes, a whole lot of people sent entries for “Pat Myers,” with several in suck-up mode. Really, did you think I’d run “Smart, pretty Empress”? (Although I did blush at “Smart, pert Empress, pretty temptress — marry me!”) ====================================================================== WEEK 1375, published March 15, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1375: Quipped from the headlines The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s contest and results Once again we had a bounteous crop of neologisms from our contest using ScrabbleGrams “racks.” The Empress reviews them later in this column. Once again we had a bounteous crop of neologisms from our contest using ScrabbleGrams “racks.” The Empress reviews them later in this column. By Pat Myers March 12, 2020 at 4:27 p.m. EDT Hello from the Empress’s domicile, Mount Vermin! Hooray for remote publishing! Actually, I almost always publish The Style Invitational from home on Thursdays; I usually go downtown to the Washington Post newsroom only on Tuesdays to mail prizes, make printouts, etc. But everyone at The Post who doesn’t require special equipment has been asked to stay home for the rest of March. The only way this should affect you as a Loser is if you’re a super-successful one: The next three weeks of second-place prizes — the “Meh” cuff links, the George H.W. Bush family paper doll book, and, ironically, the body-fluid medical cleanup kit — are ensconced in my desk downtown. So John Hutchins’s French cuffs, if he has any, will have to remained un-mehed for a few more weeks after he scored them this morning with his neologism “airpat” (for what Biden is being encouraged to do these days instead of hugs, shoulder squeezes, etc.). Also, I’d rather not ship the runner-up Loser mugs until I can do it from the office at the beginning of April (I hope!); I can do the Grossery Bags and probably the Lose Cannons from home. If you’re getting a magnet or Fir Stink, you’ll get it more or less on the regular schedule. With an interesting postage stamp! Bank regulations: Guidelines for this week’s contest Our perennial Mess With Our Heads contest, in which you write a bank headline, or subtitle, that humorously interprets a real headline published over the next 12 days, has morphed a bit in various ways since I ran the first one in 2004 — but the drill’s exactly the same as it was last year, and the year before. AD ADVERTISING And so I’m going to send you right over to Style Conversational Week 1327, from last April, which in turn signals Week 1269, and guess what that one does? And instead I’ll share some classic bank heads from over the years. If you don’t subscribe to The Post — and you absolutely should, especially since a digital subscription costs half what the New York Times does, and (unlike the NYT) it includes recipes and crosswords — the links to the Conversationals probably won’t work for you. So below are some FAQs I copied from the earlier Convos, with a few references to this year’s dates and examples. What counts as a headline? In a nutshell, it’s anything above the text of an article or ad, as well as a one-line link to another article, as on the paper’s home page. [You may also use a bank head itself as your headline.] AD Do I have to use every word in the headline? No, but the section you do use can’t mean something hugely different on its own [“City Passes Out Supplies to Residents” can’t become “City Passes Out”], and you can’t string together unconnected parts of the headline. Can I change the punctuation or capitalization in the headline? You can’t change the punctuation. For capitalization, you can in the following case: If the headline, like The Post’s current heads, is “downstyle” (capitalized like a sentence rather than a title) and there’s a proper name in the hed that you’d like to reinterpret as a plain ol’ common noun (say “Accord” as an agreement rather than a Honda), then you can write the whole head as upstyle, as in a book title. If the head is upstyle to begin with, then just leave it that way. AD Can I use the headings that appear in other online stuff besides newspapers? You can if it has a date on it and it falls within the required window [March 12-23]. Very helpful to me: Copy the URL (website address) and put it underneath your entry (or at the bottom of the whole submission). DO NOT EMBED IT into the headline itself; I’ll see a bunch of garble. One more thing: Sometimes online headlines are ephemeral, especially on a publication’s home page; if it no longer exists, I’ll rely on your honor. But don’t rewrite headlines to make them work for your joke; remember: honor. I can’t check every last headline. Blue-chip banks: Classic headlines from past years One from each year from 2004 through 2016. Compelling Body of Art* Simon Explains Real Reason for Reunion With Garfunkel (Michelle Stupak, 2004, winner of the first Mess With Our Heads contest) AD Ravens Just Miss* Attempt to Rap on Chamber Door; Instead Crash Into Window (Jonathan Guberman, 2005) ‘It Felt Like a Good Place to Start a Family’* Couple Arrested for Lewd Conduct at Mattress Store (Jane Auerbach, 2006) American’s Dream Comes True*Man, 37, Shows Up Naked and Totally Unprepared for Meeting (Michael Levy, 2008) Obama Defends New Tack in Afghanistan* Says Geneva Convention Technically Bans Only Thumbscrews (Peter Metrinko, 2009) Saudis may get huge arms deal* Landmark ‘oil for spinach’ accord signed (Elden Carnahan, 2010 winner) ‘Thanks for bringing him home’* Nats fan expresses gratitude for rare RBI (Jeff Contompasis, 2011, before the Washington Nationals became good) Obama reaches out to middle-class voters in Colorado* GOP accuses president of ‘inappropriate touching’ (David Genser, 2012) AD Arkansas offers tourists a much-needed escape* Thousands accept, flee back to home states (Frank Osen, 2013) Five interesting things about the Maryland lieutenant governor debate* Okay, we did have to make up three of them (Bird Waring, 2014) Carly Fiorina subdued in victory lap after debate* Police allege “she looked black” (Stephen Litterst, 2015) The ugliest, most appalling spectacle in American politics* Remembering Rick Perry’s ‘smart glasses’ (Todd DeLap, 2016) Here are links to some whole sets of results; scroll or jump down past that week’s new contest if necessary. They’re all hilarious reads. The PDFs are not behind the paywall but require some scrolling. Results of Week 1327, 2019: Post page; PDF of Web page Results of Week 1269, 2018: Post page; PDF of Web page. Results of Week 1191, 2016: Post page; PDF of Web page AD Results of Week 987, 2012: Post page; plain-text version Har Scrabble*: The results of Week 1371 *Winning headline from 2015, by Osen*Dopart*Doyle; I don’t want to use up a non-inking entry that might be used next time “Too many to name!” That was the reply of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood when I asked him this morning for his favorite entries this week for the seventh running of The Tile Invitational, our contest for finding new words in ScrabbleGrams racks (taken from the old “Big Book of ScrabbleGrams”). Now, Doug was running about 18 hours late with the Invite after I failed to get it to him yesterday before he finished work, and so maybe he was brushing me off in the most gracious way. But it was a very good week; it was hard for me to trim my list to “only” 39 entries. (Thanks to Alex Blackwood, my co-admin in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, for reading my shortlist and helping me make those final cuts.) AD Even with 45 seven-letter sets to choose from — and the words could also be six or five letters — there was a bit of duplication of neologisms, including the eventual winner, “Hersay,” and also “pre-MAGA,” “map rage,” “sharey,” “nanabod,” “claaaps,” “batmon,” among others. But the majority of today’s inking entries were unique words. Thanks to all but a couple of people [sighs] for formatting the entries as I’d asked — starting with the letter set, then the neologism, then the definition on the same line. This let me sort the list alphabetically, line by line, and end up with all the entries from a single set bunched together. Great timing for Lose Cannon winner Duncan Stevens, who submitted his “hersay” entry — "“19 women have accused me of harassment? That’s just hersay” — on Feb. 24. Just yesterday, of course, a similar argument by Harvey Weinstein was roundly rejected by the judge, who sent him away for 23 years. Likewise, John Hutchins’s “airpat” developed a second layer of meaning during this coronavirus crisis. Jonathan Jensen’s “pre-MAGA” definition — “Back when you could still talk to your brother-in-law at Thanksgiving” — was my favorite among several. And it’s the first trip to the Losers’ Circle (10th ink in all) for rookie Marli Melton for her imaginative example of “unblame.” Off the Rack: Unprintables from Week 1371: AD I actually was going to run NADPAL as the male equivalent of “bosom buddies,” but too many people had the same idea! But here are a few that wouldn’t have flown; some were designated “Convo only” by their writers. AADILWY > WAYLAID: Completely f***ed! (Jon Gearhart) ABELMNU > LUBEMAN; AADELMR > REAMLAD: Proctologists by day, crime-fighting duo by night. (Jeff Shirley) EIMNOOS > — IN SOME: What fits “You ..., you ooze some” — the inside of a Hallmark card for getting an STD. (Sam Mertens) And finally, from Hildy Zampella (!!): NANABOD: Attribute of a GILF. Hildy is not yet a nana, and therefore has not yet received her GILF card. But when ... ====================================================================== WEEK 1376, published March 22, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1376: Get lit at home The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s Shakespeare contest and inking Balliol rhymes “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”: Bob Staake's illustration for Style Invitational Week 1278 in 2018, our last Shakespeare-themed contest. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”: Bob Staake's illustration for Style Invitational Week 1278 in 2018, our last Shakespeare-themed contest. By Pat Myers March 19, 2020 at 4:44 p.m. EDT Hello from Mount Vermin, the Imperial Palace deep in the D.C. suburbs. Last week I reported here that I’d be in exile from my just-once-a-week-anyway visit to the Post newsroom through the end of March; it’s pretty clear by now that we’re talking months. Still, I’m not banned from the building entirely; I plan to drive downtown this weekend to retrieve the several weeks’ worth of second prizes that are in my desk drawer, and also to send out some already won Lose Cannons and Loser Mugs. After that, I figure I’ll go once a month for the duration. I’m trying to avoid standing in lines inside my local post office to mail packages; a Grossery Bag, it turns out, I can put in my mailbox with three stamps, so it’s okay. So thanks for your patience if your prize requires special mailing. I’m also grateful to those recidivist Losers who’ve already have enough of this year’s honorable-mention magnets and will be satisfied with my usual letter sent as an email attachment; I have just an inkjet printer at home, and the letters are apt to bleed if you so much as look at them sadly. I promise to write some personalized snark on the email, just as I usually do on the snailular version, and it’ll even be legible. By my count, this would apply to most of the week’s honorable mentions. But if you really want that magnet — one Loser told me that, yes, he wants as many as possible so he can strive to match Jesse Frankovich’s prize-covered refrigerator — let me know and I’ll mail it to you. No biggie. AD --- Hey, teachers and home-schooling parents: Here’s something for your smartass kids (not to mention smartass you) that’s fun and educational — and quite possibly a useful object lesson on dealing with callous rejection: In this week’s Style Invitational, Week 1376, you add some dialogue into a Shakespeare play in the voice of some new character — real, fictional, old, modern. In the examples given by Hall of Fame Loser Duncan Stevens, who suggested the contest, that dialogue consists of an answer to some line taken out of context in a Shakespeare play, though I’m open to other approaches, as long as we’re not talking hundreds of words; the print version of the Invite just isn’t set up for big blocks of type. The low-tech but comprehensive website Open Source Shakespeare has everything, and you can search on words you might want to joke on. This contest will have some overlap, though in a different format, with Week 1275 (April 2018), also suggested by Duncan. That was a variation on our recurring Questionable Journalism contest: Choose any line from Shakespeare and follow it, A & Q style, with a question that the line might humorously answer. Here are some of the inking entries from that contest; see the whole set of results here. AD GOOD WILL PUNNING: THE SHAKESPEAREAN A & Q OF WEEK 1275 In Week 1275 the Empress asked you to quote a line from Shakespeare, then supply a question that quote might answer. Many entries reminded us how often Bardy quotes are regularly used as jokes — “too, too solid flesh” for dieters, “loved not wisely but too well” for STDs, etc. — but as usual, the Loser Community fortunately labour’d to outjest. Fourth place: A. “Give not this rotten orange to your friend.” (“Much Ado About Nothing”)* Q: “Shall I introduce Donald to my pal Melania?” (Thor Rudebeck, Chicago) Third place: A. “Dog!” (“Troilus and Cressida”)* Q: Mr. President, for your last question on your cognitive assessment: Is this a dog, or a dog? (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.) Second place: A. “By my soul I swear, there is no power in the tongue of man to alter me.” (“The Merchant of Venice”)* Q. What were the sadly inaccurate last words of the Tootsie Pop? (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.) AD And the winner of the Lose Cannon: A. “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.” (“Romeo and Juliet”)Q, “Why does McCain care about my bone spurs, anyway?” (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) Let slip the dogs: Honorable mentions Which of you shall we say doth love us most? (“King Lear”) How shall we begin the Cabinet meeting, Mr. President? (Gil Glass, Washington) Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow … (“Macbeth”)Honey, when will you fix the screen door? (Dinah Rokach, Silver Spring, Md.) I crave your highness’ pardon. (“Antony and Cleopatra”) What’s the best-selling Hallmark card in Washington these days? (Robert Schechter, Dix Hills, N.Y.) Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. (Sonnet 18) No, seriously. What did you get me for Mother’s Day? (Danielle Nowlin) AD Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones … (“As You Like It”) Are we all set up for the church scavenger hunt? (Claire Walsh, Herndon, Va.) Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, and make me travel forth without my cloak, to let base clouds o’ertake me? (Sonnet 34)What’s the most common complaint in Topper Shutt’s inbox? (Kathleen DeBold, Burtonsville, Md.) I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word. (“The Merchant of Venice”)How did the D.C. Council member respond when his colleague explained the term “anti-Semitism” to him? (Rick Haynes, Boynton Beach, Fla.) Your means are very slender, and your waste is great. (“Henry IV, Part II”) Why do I keep running out of toilet paper? (Jeff Shirley, Richmond, Va.) To boot, and boot! (“King Lear”) What’s the motto of Windows 10? (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) AD From the School of Bard Mocks*: The results of Week 1372 *Too-long non-inking headline by Steve Smith When 148-time Loser Matt Monitto suggested we do a contest echoing “Balliol rhymes” — a term new to me — I was concerned that the very short format of four lines, four beats a line, might not allow for enough creativity and our usual mordant humor, and so I added the option of a two-verse rhyme in Week 1372. But all of today’s inking entries are but a single verse each. The submission deadline for these poems was March 2, which seems like an eternity ago this month. Coronavirus was already a crisis on these shores as well as worldwide (except to the president and his enablers) but it had not yet taken the entire country hostage. On March 2, Sen. Amy Klobuchar ended her presidential candidacy; Pete Buttigieg pulled out the day before. But Mike Bloomberg wouldn’t give up for three more days. And Tom Brady wouldn’t pack his beach cleats for Tampa Bay until just two days ago. AD One reason we have such a long turnaround between the posting and results of the contest is that there is no other judge; if I get sick or “hit by a bus,” as a previous Post editor put it, there could be a cushion where I could miss a little work and still finish the Invite on time. But I’m rethinking this; I’m pretty sure that we could regularly go to a submission deadline that’s a week closer to the results; I already do it that way for more elaborate contests like song parodies and videos. (Remember, you still have till Monday night, March 23, to submit a “rap battle of history” video for Week 1374.) It’s yet another Lose Cannon — her nineteenth win — for Nan Reiner, who is back with us with gusto after a long absence with health issues, taking the artillery with a jab at Gordon Sondland, a non-diplomat who got named ambassador to the E.U. with the qualification of having given his pal Trump a nice six-figure donation, then was thrown under the bus when he actually honored a subpoena from Congress and told about his now-famous phone call about the Ukraine “investigation.” I’m the slippery Gordon Sondland; AD Bought my way into Fake-Blond-Land. Spilled the beans, then got the sack — I want my million dollars back. Fellow Loserbard Melissa Balmain wrote my favorite among a number of good rhymes about Mitch McConnell (including two others that rhymed his name with “Don’ll”). And then we have two unfamiliar names in the Losers’ Circle: It’s just the sixth blot of Invite ink for Francesca Kelly, who’s been entering just now and again since the Czarist era, but her fourth-place finish is her second ink “above the fold.” And it’s just the second week of the Invitational for Alex Steelsmith, a writer and painter in Hawaii who earned the Fir Stink for his first ink just yesterday. Alex sent a long list of Balliols, several of which made my shortlist, so I hope he’s around for good. Can’to — an unprintable from Week 1372: I’m sure that there were other Balliol poems submitted that wouldn’t pass The Post’s taste test, but here’s the one that I flagged. Kevin Dopart got an honorable mention this week for his rhyme about Roger Stone that referred to the crony convict’s tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back. There was also this one — by, as it turns out, Nan Reiner. I award it the Scarlet Letter. AD I’m Roger, fop in bowler hats, And suits of zoot, and shoes with spats. In prison garb I won’t look slick, But all the guys can see my Dick. Will we ever see each other? As of now, we have a potluck Loser brunch scheduled for Sam Mertens’s house for Sunday, April 26. Obviously we’ll have to see what’s going on a month from now. The Flushies are set for Saturday, June 13, which does seem more promising. We’ll keep you posted — stay with us and please look out for yourself and those around you. ====================================================================== WEEK 1377, published March 29, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1377: Make us laugh The Empress of The Style Invitational on humor and resourcefulness during trying times “Perfect for a night of Internet dating”: An evening gown made of those CDs that used to come in the mail for signing up to AOL. That was the example for our 2004 contest to reuse certain items that were lying around the house; we have a similar contest in this week's Style Invitational. (Illustration by Bob Staake for The Washington Post, 2004) “Perfect for a night of Internet dating”: An evening gown made of those CDs that used to come in the mail for signing up to AOL. That was the example for our 2004 contest to reuse certain items that were lying around the house; we have a similar contest in this week's Style Invitational. (Illustration by Bob Staake for The Washington Post, 2004) By Pat Myers March 26, 2020 at 4:35 p.m. EDT I’m not gonna lie: It’s hard not to be on edge right now. Anxiety, helplessness and anger are natural, all-organic smile-defeaters. But it’s healthy for us to be able to laugh, to help others to laugh, even to laugh ruefully. Our duty to society! Our self-made medicine! Presenting and judging Style Invitational contests during this global pandemic reminded me, of course, of the comparably earth-shattering events of Sept. 11, 2001. I wouldn’t become the Empress for another two years and some, but earlier that year I had filled in as “Auxiliary Czar,” judging a dozen contests while the Czar was off writing a screenplay, and also did several of them — without attribution, it seems — in late fall of the same year. But it was the Czar on duty the week of 9*11, and those following. I looked back on those days in my Style Conversational column of Sept. 11, 2014, from which I’ll quote a bit here: AD ADVERTISING Uh, “Happy September 11” isn’t quite right … In the Sept. 18, 2001, Washington Post, on the front page of the Style section, Gene Weingarten came out as the editor of The Style Invitational (though not as the anonymous Czar) in an essay headlined “Not Funny: The Rules of Humor Changed on Sept. 11.” Gene noted that it had taken more than five days for him to see any online jokes about the attacks — an interval that even back then was uncharacteristically restrained. “Last week,” Gene said, “The Post decided to publish as scheduled its Sunday humor contest, the Style Invitational, which I edit. This feature is not famous for its political sensitivity, but this weekend I found myself culling from the results any entries that suggested any cognitive weaknesses in the president of the United States." AD The Sept. 16 Invitational had already been produced; the contest's production deadlines were earlier then. It asked for Rodney Dangerfield-style “no respect” jokes. But the next contest, Sept. 23, contained this complete set of directions: “Make us laugh." Gene offered to reflect on that Sept. 18, 2001, essay, and his sudden (if temporary) ban on George W. Bush jokes that had been submitted for contests in process: “A few things about this column, and the decision. I remember cutting at least two Bush-is-stupid jokes, for these related reasons: The first was simply a matter of way-too-soon. The second was that people were genuinely fearful about what would come next. Third, people were truly invested in hoping that this new president of ours was smarter and more competent than they suspected he was. I didn’t want to publish anything, for a week at least, that might extinguish that small flicker of hope. And finally, even if I had judged that a Bush joke was okay to use, I didn’t think it was fair to do that to the entrants who had composed it before 9*11 and who might well want to disavow it in light of events.”. AD Gene turned out to be wrong, I think, in declaring that “it won’t be the same,” that the rules of humor had changed permanently; the Bush-critical jokes were back in the Invite well before the end of the president’s first term. But I see that a full nine months after 9*11, the results of a contest for “a haiku summarizing the career of an American politician” contained none about President Bush. And now by 2020, those “changed rules” — certainly those mandating a gentler, more forgiving tone toward our nation’s leaders — have long been flushed down the toilet. When your “leader” is an unashamedly childish, petty, spiteful, nasty, autocratic liar, it’s incumbent upon us not to let him have the last word. And there’s nothing wrong with talking back with wit and humor. And when your adversary is a nasty, autocratic virus, we might as well shake our Purelled fists — and shoot it a latexed finger — the same way. “The Empress as I Imagine Her,” a sculpture by Kevin Mellema submitted as an entry for Week 550. Those haunting eyes were cut from AOL sign-up CDs. “The Empress as I Imagine Her,” a sculpture by Kevin Mellema submitted as an entry for Week 550. Those haunting eyes were cut from AOL sign-up CDs. (Julia Ewan*The Washington Post ) Make the best of it: This week’s contest, Week 1377 Casting about for ideas for this week’s contest, Week 1377, I asked for suggestions from members of the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group. Among the 61 comments in the thread was from 113-time Loser Ward Kay: “Some sort of found art project for reusing items in your house.” Ward got a little blot of Invite ink all the way back in 1994, but didn’t show up again till 2009, and so he wouldn’t have remembered Style Invitational Week 550. Headlined “Spring Cleaning” and inspired by the newly crowned Empress’s inability to throw anything away, the March 2004 contest (PDF here) listed a bunch of items that tended to pile up around her house — plastic milk jugs; those little rectangular bread bag closures; Washington Post plastic delivery bags; AOL sign-up CDs that come in the mail (remember?); coffee cans; packing peanuts; worn-out disposable razors — and asked for creative uses for these or other “household thingies.” Surely I remember this contest so well because of one particular entry I received: It was from the contest suggester, Kevin Mellema, who left it off at the Post building. Kevin had never met me or seen my picture, but captured me uncannily with a milk bottle face, razor nose, bread clip earrings, coffee can crown, green and pink packing peanuts inside for skin tone, and of course those perfectly cut and set AOL CDs for the haunting eyes. I gave it an honorable mention because I thought I’d seem too vain and susceptible to flattery if I’d given it a top prize (Kevin, I owe you one). But I did get Post photographer Julia Ewan to take it into the newsroom studio, put it on a pedestal, and give it a proper showcase. I kept the sculpture on my desk through various office moves until it eventually fell apart many years later. The actual Empress, sporting donated-prize headwear at a 2015 Loser brunch. The actual Empress, sporting donated-prize headwear at a 2015 Loser brunch. (Nan Reiner*Pat Myers) The top ink from Week 550 (complete results here): AD Third runner-up: Washington Post delivery bag: A great stocking mask for the bank robber who longs to win a Darwin Award. (Steve Fahey, Kensington; Josh Borken, Bloomington, Minn.) Second runner-up: Loser Scott Campisi, clearly with way too much time on his hands in Wake Village, Tex., sent in this photo of a little car he fashioned from a milk jug and a few other things, which he sent scooting across the room by stomping on inflated Texarkana Gazette delivery bags, as his sweat socks demonstrate: First runner-up, the winner of the duck-motif wine bottle and shoe brush: Old AOL sign-up disks that come in the mail: If your pet snake just got fixed and you want to make sure the area will heal properly, feed his head through the middle of the CD. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) And the winner of the Inker: Stand an empty coffee can on the ground. Prop two chopsticks against the can and a third one across the mouth. Glue a CD covered with duck sauce to the top chopstick. The mouse crawls up a chopstick and onto the CD for the duck sauce. The CD flips over, sending the mouse into the can, trapped by the CD on top. The world beats a path to your door. (Bird Waring, New York) AD I assume you don’t have any AOL CDs left, but how many of you still have VHS tapes? Snark plugs*: The product ‘reviews’ of Week 1373 *Headline for the Week 1244 results, by Chris Doyle and Jesse Frankovich; I don’t want to use up good entries here that could be used next time I swear that when I came up with seven random items to “review” in Week 1373 of The Style Invitational — including this particularly strappy men’s thong — I was not yet reading about a shortage of coronavirus face masks. But a couple of weeks later, everyone clearly had N95 on the brain; the many entries suggesting putting the thong to antiviral use ended up canceling one another out in this week’s results, our first week in which covid-19 has made a significant mark. In the introduction to the results, I listed some of the recurring ideas submitted too often to credit. In other cases, though, I chose my favorite from different tellings of the same gag: Gary Crockett’s take on “nonstick spatula,” for example — “I’ve been frustrated all my life trying to turn my eggs with a stick. This nonstick works much better. Five stars and two thumbs nondown” — beat out several other jokes about sticks. And Dave Prevar’s winner about using the spatula for both swatting flies and grilling hamburgers was just a little zingier than one suggesting cleaning a litter box and then making breakfast. AD It’s the fifth Invite win for Dave, who’s best known to the Loser Community as a main organizer of the annual Flushies awards, but his first Lose Cannon; his last win was back in 2015 when we were awarding the Inkin’ Memorial. Dave hasn’t been entering so much anymore, so maybe this ink will encourage him to up that 362-blot total. It’s also a return for Martin Bancroft, whose 82 inks include 11 “above the fold.” The rest of the Losers’ Circle is occupied by a pair of relative newbies who’ve both gone Full Invite: Jon Ketzner (last year’s Rookie of the Year) and Sam Mertens (the upcoming one) have 104 blots of ink between them. One theme I didn’t go to at all: the trope about hitting someone’s husband with a frying pan. Not only is it timeworn past the days of Punch and Judy, but — here’s a handy Loser tip — I just don’t think jokes about beating someone up are very funny. (One person lauded the skillet thus: “I used it to whack the rat three times over the head, managed to completely crush its skull which was very satisfying.” He added a note that it was a true story. If you all out there find this funny, there you have it.) What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood singled out as faves Gary Crockett’s stick*nonstick joke; Danielle Nowlin’s and Bird Waring’s reviews of the unicorn headband; and the thong reviews by John O’Byrne, David Smith and First Offender H. Dudley Davidson. AD Next Loser sighting … ideas? Obviously the Loser Community won’t be breaking corporeal bread together anytime soon. The scheduled April 26 Loser Brunch potluck is fated for postponement, and we’d have to have a national turn of fortune to be able to have the annual awards “banquet”*parodyfest, the Flushies, on the scheduled June 13. Fortunately we live in the age of Skype and Hangouts and Zoom, and maybe there’s a way to stage a virtual gathering while we wait to see one another in the (for many of us increased) flesh. My little synagogue is trying a Zoom service tomorrow night, and if that works, we’re going to try for a Zoomseder as well on the second night of Passover. My big question mark is whether a bunch of people can sing together, or if a time lag would make us sound even more out of whack than usual. Anyone who’s savvy about online gatherings and would like to help make a group sing work, let me know. ====================================================================== WEEK 1378, published April 5, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1378: Singing against the fear The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s parody contest and rap-battle results Sam Mertens (ft. Isaac Mertens) in “Jethro Tull vs. Jethro Tull.” Sam's rap battle video between the 18th-century agriculturalist and the rock band didn't get Style Invitational ink this week, but it's featured below — especially to laud the mad clarinet skillz of Isaac, who just turned 10. Sam Mertens (ft. Isaac Mertens) in “Jethro Tull vs. Jethro Tull.” Sam's rap battle video between the 18th-century agriculturalist and the rock band didn't get Style Invitational ink this week, but it's featured below — especially to laud the mad clarinet skillz of Isaac, who just turned 10. By Pat Myers April 2, 2020 at 5:03 p.m. EDT Well, it’s a sunny day, at least, here at Mount Vermin, the Empress’s bunker. (Last night’s find: a totally white dead stink bug. Turns out that it had been encased in some bodycon spider web.) Song parodies about the coronavirus and coronavirus-adjacent topics are being forwarded to me constantly. Some of them are good. (Can Randy Rainbow possibly get any better?) A lot of them are lame. The results of this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1378, are guaranteed to be good. Because all of our parody contests, since I started running them in November 2004, have been good. I shouldn’t have to say this, but: We are in the midst of a horrifying pandemic, overflowing with both tragedy and fear. And anger. And helplessness. And depression. I strongly believe, with evidence I see every day on social media and simply among friends, that humor helps us face our situation, helps bring a smile, if a wistful one. But for heaven’s sake: It’s emphatically not the time for sick humor, for anything making light of the power of this virus and the toll it has taken on our fellow human beings. AD Meanwhile, if you’re not a regular entrant of the Invite’s parody contests, take a moment to read the guidelines and tips that I included in the Week 1357 Conversational (which in turn had been lifted from an earlier one). Use this link and scroll down a couple of inches to the subhead “Play it again.” Remember that you have an extra week to send your songs; the deadline is April 20. This not only gives you more time to work on them, but there’s less chance that they’ll be dated when the results are posted online 10 days later. The War of the Razzes*: The rap battles of Week 1374 *Non-inking headline by Tom Witte, who also had the week’s inking headline, “Heavy-Wit Bouts” My running line about The Style Invitational’s humor is that it mixes “haughty and potty,” sometimes in a single joke. Perhaps no other contest exemplifies that principle as much as our take on the popular Epic Rap Battles of History, which itself draws much of its humor from juxtaposing this most popular, even affectedly “street” genre — not just rap, but trash-talking rap — with subject matter that its audience tends not to encounter outside textbooks. AD And the Invite takes the conceit to another level: Unlike the ERB folks, who are also offering up creative video production, costumes, etc., we place a premium on witty verse: rhymes that really work, meter that’s sharply consistent. I did, in a nod to the genre, relax that demand a bit for this genre (especially on videos, where assonant vowel sounds compensate for a not-quite rhyme). But while I had to search through dozens of ERB raps to find a pair of couplets I felt were clever enough on paper to use as an example four weeks ago, my shortlist for Week 1374 brimmed with inkworthy rhymes, at least a dozen more poems than I could reasonably use in this week’s results (I fit 14 on the print page, and 24 — including two videos — online). Sorry, Hegel vs. Kant! Rodin vs. Degas! Picasso vs. Bob Ross! John Lennon vs. Vladimir Putin! Bourbon vs. Scotch! It’s the 14th Style Invitational win — and Ink No. 444 (and 445, for his fabulous honorable-mentions subhead, “Peanut Eminems”) — for Gary Crockett, who matched up Andrew Jackson and Harriet Tubman, vying for face-space on the $20 bill. Bill Dorner’s Curie vs. Curie wins him that coveted Seattle Space Needle snow globe with a ring toss in it. But also be sure to scroll down and check out his impressive and fun video about polio vaccine pioneers Salk and Sabin. Yon Perennials Duncan Stevens and Jesse Frankovich fill out this week’s Losers’ Circle; both submitted long lists of entries, any of which out-ERBed ERB. (But of course, it’s a different venue. As Duncan (B.A., Swarthmore; J.D., Northwestern) readily acknowledges: “I thought about doing videos, but then YouTube told me that if I uploaded a video of myself rapping, they would have to take down their entire website and commit ritual suicide. And possibly nuke the servers from orbit.” What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, who read the print entries, “liked the winner and runners-up, and most of the losers too,” singling out two honorable mentions by Kevin Dopart: his Battle of the Unqualified Scions, Ivanka and Hunter, and the Your Mama joke in Picasso vs. Michelangelo. AD ADVERTISING I did get one entry that, while not exactly inkworthy writing by Rookie Sensation Sam Mertens, clearly demanded airing here. Turn your volume up when Sam walks away from his phone, and enjoy 1 minute 12 seconds of Jethro Tull, agricultural pioneer, and Jethro Tull, classic-rock band — and especially the clarinet-for-flute lick by Isaac Mertens, who just turned 10. You rocked it, Isaac! Also note the setting of the video: The secluded acreage of Chez Mertens was supposed to be the site of our April Loser Brunch, and then for our June 13 Flushies potluck banquet and awards. The brunch, of course, is toast; since not that much planning is required for the Flushies, we’ll make a decision later about whether to postpone it till fall. And happy Passover! Check out Loser Barbara Sarshik’s New 'n' Improved website PassoverSongParodies.com, Including the brand-new “Will We Be Having Our Seder,” to “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”: “I’m feeling grumpy and grouchy* So tell me please, Doctor Fauci …” Barbara offers them all to everyone free. ====================================================================== WEEK 1379, published April 12, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1379: Zing, zing a song The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s column and results -- and the end of an amazing streak. The Queen — as opposed to Queen — looks out over Piccadilly Circus in London today. Briton Michelle Christophorou used both British icons in her winning entry for The Style Invitational's “Mess With Our Heads” contest. The Queen — as opposed to Queen — looks out over Piccadilly Circus in London today. Briton Michelle Christophorou used both British icons in her winning entry for The Style Invitational's “Mess With Our Heads” contest. (Peter Summers*AFP*Getty Images) By Pat Myers April 9, 2020 at 5:12 p.m. EDT Hi, everyone — happy Passover, Almost Easter, Almost Almost Ramadan … I hope you’re still finding things to laugh about through your multi-layer face masks, including today’s winning and Losing bank heads of Week 1375. The Mess With Our Heads contest is always one of my favorites to judge, both because there are always lots of funny entries and because they make fun of old-time newspaper headline writing, a craft I had used at least sometimes during my decades as a Style section copy editor (though Style heads were usually more like pun-heavy book titles). The usual approach of Mess With Our Heads is to read a different meaning into one more key words in a perfectly understandable headline, then write a funny bank head based on the misreading. While I allowed the Losers to use heads from any publication dated within the contest dates, lots of people used The Post, which resulted in several instances where a bunch of good entries canceled one another out: five entries about “remote lessons” (in using the remote), “Demands for midwives rises amid coronavirus crisis” (and even more in nine months). Other times I chose my favorite wording: Sam Mertens’s entry about Jazzercise topped 10 others about “thinning the jail population.” It’s the first Lose Cannon, and just the sixth blot of Loser Ink ever, for Michelle Christophorou of the U.K., who confused those British icons Queen and The Queen to perfect effect. In second place is brand-new phenom Alex Steelsmith of Hawaii, who has inked in four of his first five weeks, including three today; I never will think of Meals on Wheels again without the mental picture of a homebound diner trying to steady a spinning tray. John Hutchins nabs Ink No. 129 (and his 15th “above the fold”) with his play on Karla Miller’s “Work Advice” headline about a burpy, self-talking co-worker, and Jeff Shirley elevates a frequently used “Lab” joke with an especially endearing bank head. AD ADVERTISING I’m hoping that no one will be upset about the few headlines that played on serious subject matter; “Many who died had health problems* Captain Obvious releases annual report” (Frank Mann) was the only one that mentioned deaths. I didn’t use headlines about specific cases, such as “At Wash. nursing home, missed opportunities to curb exposure* Inspectors find geezers streaking through facilities.” Um, 29 geezers died there. In general non-disease crudity, I almost dared to use Neal Starkman’s “Pork noodle soup* Trump offers sex tips for quarantined men,” which did make me burst out laughing. (I especially fall for jokes that turn a noun phrase into a sentence, or similar changes in parts of speech.) What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood thought all four top winners were especially funny, and also singled out “What’s Still Open in D.C.” (presidential piehole, Lawrence McGuire), Frank Mann’s “Many who died,” Jon Ketzner’s fart joke in “Openings that just went poof,” Gary Crockett’s play on “model,” and Steve Honley’s “How to cook if cooped up with the kids” (advice from the “Hansel and Gretel” witch). Doug, who’s been working with me since, gosh, at least 25 years, adds about today’s groaner-pun example from Week 347: “I think snorted at 'Chattanooga Jews’ chews” 20 years ago and did again today." Why is this week not like all other weeks? Almost two years ago, May 10, 2018, the results of Week 1275 — a contest for pairing a line from Shakespeare with a question of your own — was, unsurprisingly, full of clever zingers: “A. “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.”* Q. “Why does McCain care about my bone spurs, anyway?” (Brendan Beary) AD What was surprising was something missing: the name of Jesse Frankovich, who had roared into the Invite about 2 1*2 years earlier, scoring well over 100 blots of ink per year, almost always multiple inks in a week. Jesse had gotten ink 8 weeks out of the previous 10. But for Jesse, 8 of 10 clearly wasn’t squat. He resumed his ink blotting the next week with three inking limericks — and after that, his name never failed to appear, week after week. He demolished the 59-week record held by Brendan Beary for more than a decade, and kept going … Until: Today — exactly 100 weeks later — Jesse Frankovich failed to get ink in The Style Invitational. I wasn’t aware of this when I winnowed my short list of bank heads for this week’s results, since I don’t see the entrants’ names until I’m ready to put them on the page, at which point I look them up. But as I filled in the names, I did notice the omission. And then I checked Jesse’s list of entries, which unusually for him were well short of the “full dance card” of the maximum 25. They were good, though, and a couple of them were on my shortlist. But I didn’t see any that I felt were more deserving than my choices. AD Franko-Bros’ opinions may differ. So in honor of Jesse’s streak-break, I present all his “noinks” — his non-inking entries — for Week 1375. Real head: Plastic surgeon donates spare equipment for Metro Detroit hospitals to fight coronavirus* Bank head: Squeezing silicone breast implants may help relieve stress caused by pandemic This is not a holiday period — it’s a national emergency* Husbands across the country brace for spending that time of the month in isolation with their wives Experts explain what it means to ‘flatten the curve’* Fitness gurus highlight the benefits of losing that belly Why Toilet Paper?* It’s cheap, easy to throw, and just plain funny, pranksters say The 5 Best Smart Scales [as in bathroom scales]* President boasts he tops them all What History Says About Investing in Bear Markets* Consider these lessons before adding honey and pic-a-nic baskets to your portfolio AD What does love do to our brains?* Cooking a romantic meal for that special zombie in your life Another milestone that we’ll note more next week: With his honorable mention this week, Frank Osen scores Ink No. 500, becoming the 15th member of the Style Invitational Hall of Fame, just a few weeks after Duncan Stevens sprinted to the threshold. We’ll look at some of Frank’s Greatest Hits next week. (I hope I find that picture of him and his prize alligator-foot back scratcher.) Pun Is the Loserest: This Week’s Contest, Week 1379 I was working on a neologism contest for this week when I got an email from Duncan Stevens suggesting a contest that combined two mainstays of the Invite oeuvre: puns and song titles*lyrics. And his example — How is Trump like Elvis’s “Hound Dog”? ‘Quine all the time” — was so timely, perhaps ephemeral, that I catapulted it straight into production for Week 1379. (And I’m not sure that example would have worked without the cartoon spelling out what “’quine” meant.) AD I (and the format of the print Invite) tend to prefer pithy jokes to the discursive storytelling type, but this time I think it’d be fun to include both types. For inspiration and guidance on the latter, here are some of the winners of two contests for “feghoots,” stories whose punchline is an elaborate pun. The Czar’s introduction of the results of Week 347 (2000) rags on about all the creaky old jokes that people had put their own names to. That was pre-Google, folks. I don’t want to make the same speech about the Steal Invitational. Here are the complete results of Week 347 (plain text file; scroll down past the new contest) and Week 1100 (2014) . And here are a few excerpts: Report FROM WEEK XIV (347), in which you were asked to contrive elaborate scenarios that end in painful puns. As usual for a contest such as this, the Steal Invitationalists were out in force, submitting anciently unoriginal jokes as their own: You can’t heat your kayak and have it, too; with fronds like that, who needs anemones; I can see Claire Lee now, Lorraine has gone; transporting gulls over a staid lion for immortal porpoises; only Hugh can prevent florist friars; picking bunions on a Sesame Street bus; repaint and thin no more; making an obscene clone fall; and of course, the creakiest, rheumiest granddaddy of them all: No pun in ten did. We are pretty sure those below are original. AD Second Runner-Up: Maggie Thatcher went to see the doctor about a painful boil. The doctor told his nurse to administer a local anesthetic and let him know when she was ready for treatment. When the nurse returned, the doctor said: “Is Thatcher Fine? I’ll Lance Her.” (Chris Doyle, Burke) First Runner-Up: Lithuania’s King Lothar loved golf. Competing in a tournament at the famed Pair of Dice golf course in Las Vegas, Lothar and his partner finished the 18th hole leading the field at one stroke over par. Waiting nervously in the clubhouse, however, he received bad news about his rivals’ results: “They played Pair of Dice and put up a par, King Lot.” (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) And the winner of the huge men’s underpants: Two park rangers are making their rounds in the Rockies when they discover a guy named Nathan erecting an oil rig on the side of a mountain. He explains that he has been inspired by those ads on the radio, and has decided to drill for beer. The rangers are going to issue a citation, but decide to do something crueler: let him try. Winking to his partner, one ranger observes that since the mountain won’t really be injured, “Why don’t we just let Nate here take its Coors?” (Bill Strider, Gaithersburg) AD GAME OF GROANS: STORY PUNS FROM WEEK 1100 In Week 1100 we asked for feghoots — little stories that end in a pun on some well-known line or expression. The format of the Invitational demands very little stories; perhaps we’ll call them fhts. Warning: These puns are outrageous groaners. It’s part of the genre. The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Despite trying and trying and trying and not getting any early action on WMDs, Operation Iraqi Freedom did ultimately nab Hussein and many of his henchmen. But after the former Iraqi president was hanged, Dubya nixed the plan to transfer the rest of the inner circle to Guantánamo. “Political opposition is too great,” he said. “I can’t Gitmo Saddam’s faction.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) 2nd place and the tiny rubbery brain and plastic nose: The famed businessman Victor Kiam told a story about his service in World War II: “At the Battle of the Bulge, a colonel kept ordering waves of grunts like me out of the trench we were in, only to see them cut down by cannon fire. So I shouted, “Hey, why are you doing that?” He replied, “Look, Kiam, you’re fodder.” (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) AD 3rd place: Yet another reason for Americans’ expanding waistlines — this time it’s the recent craze of adding fatty fish to your diet. They may be getting lots of omega-3 and all that, but still, their butts for the grease of cod go wide. (Marc Shapiro, Alexandria, Va.) 4th place: The place: Heaven. The event: the annual cook-off. This year, Chinese. The team: the inventor of the sewing machine, the grande dame of the Grand Ole Opry, the founder of what is now Zimbabwe, and Charles Gulden of condiment fame. The group was just about to complete its pièce de résistance when in flew the Angel in Charge to announce that time was up: “Howe, Minnie, Rhodes, Mustard Man – wok down!” (Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.) Dispatch from our Dublin Bureau I got an email this morning from Longtime Loser John O’Byrne of Dublin, whom we took out to an Irish pub in Washington years ago on one of his visits to the States. Hi Pat — What a lovely surprise to receive your letter this morning - the first one (of any kind) for over a week! We have been in lockdown for the past fortnight. The over-70s (our demographic) are not being allowed to step outside the door, regardless of their state of health. The under-70s can walk once a day to shop for essentials but not beyond 2kms from home. We’ve been told today that these restrictions will last another 2*3 weeks, at least. My wife and I are slowly turning into vegetables! We have our son staying with us who is great at shopping and negotiating the police checkpoints. Amidst all this, we are in the midst of new government formation - a coalition of some sort. Your letter is a great tonic - we’re not even receiving bills or flyers anymore! We really appreciate the efforts put into getting out the Post each day. The quality of the journalism is exceptional. I particularly enjoy reading the e-Replica edition. So there’s a lot of electoral excitement heading your way - let’s hope Joe can carry the day. Trump’s daily clown act comes across as sicker and sicker. Anyway, enjoy your freedom walks, and keep safe. Best wishes John Happy Springtime Holiday of Choice, everyone — I can’t wait to see all your song parodies. (I’ve already heard from almost 70 entrants, many of them brand new!) ====================================================================== WEEK 1380, published April 19, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1380: Speaking Frankly The Empress of The Style Invitational on our newest Hall of Famer, (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) The Empress “knighting” Frank Osen — actually, presenting the alligator-head back scratcher that he'd just won as a Style Invitational prize — at the 2014 West Chester Poetry Conference, where I was part of a panel about song parodies. Frank was there as an actual poet. The Empress “knighting” Frank Osen — actually, presenting the alligator-head back scratcher that he'd just won as a Style Invitational prize — at the 2014 West Chester Poetry Conference, where I was part of a panel about song parodies. Frank was there as an actual poet. (Mark Holt) By Pat Myers April 16, 2020 at 4:46 p.m. EDT I didn’t realize until I’d posted the results of Style Invitational Week 1375 last week — and someone pointed it out in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group — that we had a new member of the Invite Hall of Fame: Frank Osen had blotted up his 500th ink, less than two months after Duncan Stevens loped across its threshold. Frank first made his mark on the Invite in 2011, immediately snaring a runner-up spot in a contest to replace the last three lines in a 1800s Edward Lear limerick with your own (note that that’s it’s Lear, not Frank, “rhyming” “casement” and “amazement”): There was an old man at a casement Who held up his hands in amazement: “My not wearing pants Explains all their rants, And, perhaps, what that one woman’s gaze meant.” Frank came for the poetry contests — his collection “Virtue Big as Sin” is the winner of the Able Muse Prize — but stayed for all the yuks: Within weeks, Frank’s name was a fixture the results of all manner (or unmanner) of contests, ending up in the Losers’ Circle seemingly more often than not — he’s now won the contest 22 times, and has been a runner-up 55 times. He was the 2013 Loser of the Year (he flew in from Pasadena just to pick up his plaque at the Flushies “banquet”). And four years ago this month, I featured Frank — who then had amassed half his 500 inks of today — in the Conversational’s occasional “Meet the Parentheses.” I’ll run it again here, along with an update from Frank, along with an “Osen’s Eleven” — a list of some of his favorite entries from over the years. AD ADVERTISING From Style Conversational Week 1172, April 2014: (Frank stuck closely to the Empress’s Q&A template.) Age: In two years I’ll be wandering around Loser brunches asking if you’ll still need me or feed me. Where you live: When I went back for the Flushies at Danielle Nowlin’s house [in 2013], Losers serenaded me with Nan Reiner and Mark Raffman’s “Little Old Loser From Pasadena,” which was very enjoyable until the room really got into the “Go, Loser, Go, Loser, Go” refrain. Your official Loser anagram: “Senna Fork,” which makes me wish I’d included my middle name; then I could have had something poetic like Noon’s Far Dark Fens. [Can you guess Frank’s middle name?] What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? Perhaps three people know I wrote some poems and a book that won stuff, so I summarize my career by reference to three favorite poets: (1) executive and corporate counsel (Wallace Stevens phase); (2) nervous, over-invested manager of real estate (Robert Frost period); and (3) cranky, misanthropic librarian (Philip Larkin years). I’m still enjoying the last of these at the Huntington Library, where I can walk to work. My wonderful wife and I have three perfect children, a well-mannered dog and a sociopathic cat. Both dog (Milo) and cat (Humphrey) insist on walking me around the block each evening, but only Milo helps me with SI entries. AD What brought you to Loserdom? I blame Robert Schechter, whom I knew from The Spectator, New Statesman and The Oldie, British publications that feature humor*poetry competitions where I used to win real money. At some point, he probably realized I could only handle one contest a week and mentioned the SI. So while he still regularly pulls in 25 quid per Brit-comp, I’m now enthralled by a tiny pile of refrigerator magnets. What are two entries you’d like to share? That would be whatever the Empress didn’t print last week. I brood about those and hoard them until the “Enter any contest” contest each year. Then I pull them out, reread each one and reluctantly conclude she really does know what she’s doing—until the next week. But among those that were published … The first one only made it to the Conversational; it was for Week 1046, where we were to offer a bogus explanation for the origin of a popular expression: A 19th-century courtesan was renowned for pleasuring clients, using only her left foot. She wasn’t as dexterous with the right, so word would spread whenever bursitis forced her to switch feet. Thus, today, if an experience isn’t quite satisfactory, we often say we “got off on the wrong foot.” AD And this got ink in Week 1119 (connect two items on a list), but the Empress bowdlerized the last line for the print version. Here’s the original; the items were an Elizabethan sonnet and a three-cupped bra: The more I see of Man, the more I feel That Eve was never fashioned from his chest, But vice versa, in this sort of deal: God first made Woman with an extra breast And knew that she was fair, but Eve said, Nay! My crowded bosom is a needless strain. God saw her point and threw the middle breast away, Forgetting it until He came again. Then Eve declared: Each creature hath a mate But me, and, Deity, I’m getting bored! So God replied, You’re right, I shall create A Man from you, and Eve cried, Thank you, Lord! Then God said: Hold off thanking Me, a bit. Let’s see, where did I put that useless tit? What’s an example of something you’ve done that confirms your Loserosity? When I was in the first grade, I was on Art Linkletter’s TV show, in which he’d regularly bring kids on and ask them questions, hoping for guilelessly funny answers. AD Asked how my parents met, I said that when my father was in the Marines, he went to see my mother and “the next thing you know, they were lovers.” Art then asked what my mother did (she was a university professor). I said, “She irons, makes peanut butter sandwiches and watches TV all day.” He looked out at the audience and asked, “Is that your mother over there, trying to crawl under the chair?” So, you see, I honestly come by my proclivity for leaden and tasteless humor. What’s your favorite color? Off. And now, Frank checked in with us yesterday with this update: Still enjoying my job at the Huntington Library, though I no longer walk to work, since we’ve downsized to a tiny house in far west Pasadena, where we have a 1*19 interest in an adjacent lake that’s so small, no one knows whether its name is Johnson or Johnston. We welcomed our first grandchild, Sofia, in November, and professional doting has since been curtailing my SI-time. AD I was recently asked to give advice to a writing seminar at my children’s old school and realized this is the sum total of my useful advice: Regular participation in contests like the SI is a great way to hone an ability to shape words to a desired effect, spark creativity and keep writing when you may need inspiration. I’m really grateful for the SI’s many collateral benefits, not the least of which is the Loser community, which is so important at times like these — stay healthy, Losers! Osen’s Eleven: Some of Frank’s favorite entries of the past 500 Week 1047 (Write a bank head to an actual news headline): Arkansas offers tourists a much-needed escape* Thousands accept, flee back to home states Week 1076 (Double Dactyl poems) from 2014, but oddly topical: Slimmery-flimmery, Mehmet C. Oz, MD, AD Flogs coffee extract as fat-burning fuel, Senators recommend, Hyper-emphatically, That he be labeled a Great Weight Loss Tool. Week 1080 (as a tribute to the legendary bad poet William McGonagall, write an overwrought poem): Stolen Tillamook Minivans ‘Twas a muensterous crime, when some curd made a-whey With three Tillamook Cheese vans around Monterey. Cops were soon on the queso, and right on his heels, They ricotta all of the hijacked cheese wheels. The thief smelled a trappe, said “Cheese it!” and bleu, Leaving one stolen van, burned when fondue. But police still Maytag him, now that they’re tracking Al “Mas” Carpone, for the Monterey-jacking. Week 1087 (Write a comical course description): 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. AD Week 1091 (A good idea that, with a small change, is a bad idea): Good idea: Give a bowl of irises to your wife. Bad idea: Give Ebola viruses to your wife. Week 1217 (Combine two businesses and name the hybrid): Home protection service*celebrity hairstylist: A Mighty Fortress*Scissor God. Week 1272 (Updated curses in the Yiddish tradition): May your dog develop commitment issues. Week 1328 (Retell a classic tale, as written by another): Chapter 10 of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” as told by Lou Reed: Huckleberry came from St. Petersburg, M-O, Him and Jim just drifted with the flow, Wore a dress on the down-low, Jim said, honey, go, go, go, Said, hey, Huck, take a raft to the wild side … “Oedipus Rex,” by Allan Sherman: Goodbye Faddah, Hello Muddah, I slew one and wed the uddah, When my judgment got less hazy, AD I gouged out both my eyeballs and went crazy. Week 1284 (Compare two items from the list supplied): Oscar Wilde vs. Kim Jong Un’s Porta-John: While Oscar was renowned for shafts of wit .... And from this year, Week 1372 (Balliol rhymes): My name is Mitt, or Willard Romney; Though, once I was my party’s nom’nee, Last month I flexed my spinal bone And now I eat my lunch alone. Sidelong glances: This Week’s Contest, Week 1380 This week’s contest, Week 1380, was suggested to me a while back as a much harder one: The example that my friend Kenji Thielstrom supplied was “PAN [DEM] IC: If you remove Democrats from a pandemic, you get panic.” Not only was that particular epigram overly partisan for Invite purposes, but its concept requires you to find a term in which you reveal not just a word in the center, but another word in the halves flanking it. If you do happen to find such nifty examples, certainly feel free to include them (and note it) as entries for Week 1380. But I’ll be perfectly satisfied if the extracted block of letters doesn’t mean anything in itself, as long as the remaining word — formed by the letters on the left and right (or possibly one side or the other) — relates to the full original. This is the inversion of our perennial “air quotes” contest, in which you put quotes around a word that relates to the whole (e.g., Nin"com"poop: CEO of a failed Internet company — Chuck Smith). My concern with this week’s contest is getting the reader to easily see the word and disregard the middle. Please — I spelled this out on this week’s entry form (wapo.st*enter-invite-1380; no paywall) but not in the contest text itself: The Post’s entry-form system doesn’t allow for any special formatting: no boldface, italics, strike-throughs, different-size fonts. So please don’t do it, or I might see garble all over your entries. I’ll do the boldface, perhaps strike-throughs, when I post the results. You can use capitals vs. lowercase, and you could put spaces between the middle and sides of the words. Or just tell me what word you’re extracting. It doesn’t matter to me because I’ll need to format each entry manually regardless. If your entry uses the left or right side of the word rather than the middle, it’d be good if you check the results of previous air-quotes contests, since many of the inking entries are one-side. Here are plain-text links to at least most of them. (Alternatively, go to NRARS.org and click on “All Invitational Text” — one giant text file — and search on “air quotes.”) Week 336, Part 1* Part 2 Week 405 Week 826 Week 1280 Week 1355 Week 1359 Mush up your Shakespeare*: The results of Week 1376 *Non-inking (too long) headline by Chris Doyle Our Week 1376 contest to add a character, with an appropriate line of dialogue, to a Shakespeare play, ended up much like our results of Week 1275 (2018) and Week 1329 (2019) — but with all different quotes and, alas, with brand-new topical subject matter. I found plenty of entries to laugh over, far more than I could reasonably share this week. It’s the eighth Invite win for Mike Gips, and his 27th ink “above the fold” among his 264 total blots, but it’s his first Lose Cannon trophy; Mike hasn’t Invited much in the past few years. Not so with the rest of this week’s Losers’ Circle: Mark Raffman, Jeff Contompasis and, to a saner degree, Frank Mann rack up even more Loser Crappe for their runner-up finishes. Notable among this week’s honorable mentions: TWO big-deal genuine Shakespearean actors. It’s the 32nd ink for Longtime Loser Marni Penning Coleman, founder of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival and a frequent cast member on many area stages; and the second blot for Newish Loser Rick Foucheux, a D.C. theater legend who wrapped up his 35-year career in 2017 by playing King Lear. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood chose his faves this week from among the honorable mentions: Duncan Stevens’s “urg’d conference” Zoom joke; Sam Mertens’s “No” as Mitch McConnell’s reply to “But, notwithstanding, haste; make no delay: We may effect this business yet ere day”; Duncan’s turning “I will turn diseases to commodity” into a dig at stock-selling Sen. Richard Burr; Nan Reiner’s retort to overconfident Macbeth by scrappy Coronavirus; and Bill Dorner’s rhyming regret about “the Empress’ love.” Parodies are streaming in! And from so many new names. I’m going to start looking at the earlier submissions — I’ve already received entries 117 songwriters (some with multiple songs) — but you have till next Monday, April 20. ====================================================================== WEEK 1381, published April 26, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1381: Leading from behind Rookie Sam Mertens becomes Loser of the Year by finishing in 9th place This year's Flushies winners probably won't get a chance to receive their plaques at the annual spring*summer potluck, but our fingers are still crossed for fall. This year's Flushies winners probably won't get a chance to receive their plaques at the annual spring*summer potluck, but our fingers are still crossed for fall. (Bob S) By Pat Myers April 23, 2020 at 5:25 p.m. EDT The Style Invitational has a hold on some people. Almost a year ago exactly, the results of Week 1323 — a contest to chop the beginning and*or end from a movie title — included this honorable mention: [T]ANGLED: Rapunzel is trapped in the Leaning Tower of Pisa. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md., a First Offender) Four weeks later, there were two bank headlines: On Capitol Hill, some Trump officials are testifying for an audience of one* ‘Typical ratings for us,’ says C-Span Evans says he will stop outside consulting, legal work* Council member to switch to trusted insiders, illegal activities And then, over the next year, Sam Mertens’s name appeared more often than not in The Style Invitational’s weekly results, which are lovingly logged and analyzed each week since 1993 by Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan in the Loser Stats: 34 different weeks, for an impressive total of 49 blots of ink — far and away the Rookie of the Year. AD But that wasn’t all. Sam’s 49 inks also qualified him for what amounts to the biggest deal in Loserdom: Loser of the Year for Year 27. But only because the name of the award is especially apt: Since Elden enacted a one-and-out rule a full 12 years ago, the Loser of the Year has only once been the year’s highest-scoring entrant, and that was a tie. And that’s because, to my eternal delight, so many of the Invite’s high-scorers keep high-scoring, year after year, crafting up to 25 Invitational entries virtually every week in wildly differing humor genres. And so this year, Sam is the top-scoring Loser for Year 27 except for, oh, Jesse Frankovich, Duncan Stevens, Chris Doyle, Mark Raffman, Frank Osen, Kevin Dopart, Jeff Contompasis and Gary Crockett. (And among them, only Chris and Kevin were the top-scoring entrants the years they won.) And given his current performance — seven inks in the past three weeks — it’s totally likely that he’ll be outscoring the Year 28 winner next March. Sam, who works on the technical side of a D.C.-based media organization, describes himself as “a fairly boring family guy who tries to dote on his kids, both the one who likes publicity and the one who runs screaming from it. We’re relatively recent transplants to this rural community, the Spencerville area of Montgomery County, Md., still trying to figure out what to do with the 6 acres we happened upon, but recent events have given us some ideas. AD “I had been an off-and-on follower of the Style Invite for years, but only submitted something once, I think in 2012, which went nowhere. That put me on the mailing list, however, and I’d finally had enough of reading weekly results and thinking “I could do this,” so one week I sent in a bunch of submissions for truncated movie titles. One made HM. After that, the OCD kicked in. I figure it’s safer than a crack pipe or a gambling addiction, so, what the heck.” Were we in the usual world, Elden and I would be presenting Sam with a laminated foam-board plaque with a Bob Staake cartoon on it at the 25th annual Flushies: the awards shindig presented by the Losers, with a little help from me in recent years to send out the invitations. And we’d be singing a Loser-penned song parody in his honor. This year’s event was slated for mid-June, but the chances for a gathering of 50-some people by then seems nil. We’re still hoping to do something in the fall, but who knows? I’ll keep you posted. Some other honorees and milestones we’d be Flushing: AD Top-Grossing Loser: Jesse Frankovich finished the year with a record-shattering 184 blots of ink. This is Jesse’s third straight year in the top spot. But it was the year before that when he was named Loser of the Year; that’s when he finished behind Chris Doyle. Most Cantinkerous: This plaque goes to the Loser who’s accumulated the most ink over the years without ever winning first place. Once again, extending his lead quite a bit, it’s Kyle Hendrickson, with 110 blots of ink, including 10 runners-up, but never a victory. Really, Kyle, I hope you fall off the list this year — keep trying. Most Imporved: (Intentional typo, in honor of a package of “New and Imporved Smorked Beef Rectum” that was once offered as an Invite prize) Jonathan Jensen zoomed from 8 inks the previous year to 26. These milestones get no plaques; instead, Elden writes each Loser’s name on a roll of toilet paper and tosses at the recipient. We couldn’t spare the TP anyway, so these will be virtual: AD Reaching 50 inks: Ivars Kuskevics, Rob Wolf, Ellen Ryan, Seth Tucker Reaching 100: Frank Mann, Todd DeLap, Steve Honley, Michelle Stupak, Neal Starkman, Ann Martin 200: Jon Gearhart; 400: Gary Crockett; 500: Duncan Stevens (who’d also passed 400 in the same Loser year); 600: Mark Raffman. Jesse Frankovich (who’d also passed 500); 700: Jeffrey Contompasis, Beverley Sharp; 1,500: Kevin Dopart And: 2,200: Chris Doyle, who leads the Invite’s second-highest scorer, Tom Witte (last year’s Loser of the Year), by more than 600 blots. Thank you from my bottom, um the bottom of my heart, all you crazy people. We might as well do spring: This week’s fictoid contest This week’s contest, Week 1381, for fictoids about spring and things that happen (or happened) in spring, is in the tradition of at least 17 false-trivia contests we’ve done over the years: They’re spoofing those lists of Fascinating Facts to Know and Tell that the nerdier among us (MEEEEEE) used to read incessantly and bore our would-be friends with. AD For inspiration, you can see all these contests at once now on the Trivia subset of Elden’s Master Contest List. And in the latest improvement to Elden’s indispensable archive, there’s a link to the results as well, on the same line as the contest. So if you wanted, say, to see the results of the fashion-trivia contest, scroll down to Week 1253, then slide over to the far right of the same line and see the results. They’re all plain-text and PDF copies and won’t hit The Post’s paywall. Speaking of nerdy: Hall of Fame Loser Jeff Contompasis noticed a problem right away this morning with today’s first example: that Australian children hunt eggs from the Easter Platypus. It wasn’t the joke, it was its use in this particular contest: In Australia, Easter isn’t in spring! It’s in autumn! Whoops. It’s a good thing we’re a humor contest and this week’s contest is about being inaccurate, though, because I loved both Royal Consort Mark Holt’s idea and Bob Staake’s cartoon, complete with kangaroo-pouch basket. Sick Degrees of Separation*: The results of Week 1378 *Non-inking headline by Kevin Dopart AD In Week 1378, as we all continued to hunker down in our respective hunker-bunkers, I asked for ideas for games, activities, crafts, artworks, etc., that you could do with stuff lying around the house. I had my fingers crossed for some gallery-quality sculpture made out of toilet paper and Instacart receipts, but I settled for Kevin Dopart’s row of socially distant paper dolls. And Dave Prevar’s weird, scarecrow-like masked “Warning Man.” And Bruce Yanovitch’s Tolkienesque map of the exotic world of his family’s kitchen. But my favorite entries this week were verbal, all reflecting our stultifying*unnerving lives as we stare at the walls, create wide physical spaces around ourselves, get on each other’s nerves yet still wish we could be closer. It’s the fifth win and 184th blot of ink for John O’Byrne of Dublin, who’s a great fan of the U.S. and, until recently, its politics. John, who started entering the Invite back in the 1990s, attended two Flushies lunches on his stateside visits, and we also once took him to the Irish pub Dubliners in Washington. Perhaps when the world turns right side up again we’ll see him once more. AD Dan Helming’s pithy concept of Socially Distant Twister gave me one of my few laugh-out-loud moments this week — what a mental picture! — while the other runners-up, while Kevin Dopart’s scavenger hunt for the WiFi password reminded me how much worse we’d be right now without Internet access, and Sam Mertens’s idea of a warm latex glove as a human-contact substitute was almost poignant. What Doug Dug: Among the faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood this week were Allen Haywood’s “Exercise Challenge” to see how much junk you can consume during one workout video; Duncan Stevens’s hot-potato-type “Budminton” with an increasingly shaken up can of beer; Frank Osen’s home-schooling parent-teacher night; and Kevin Dopart’s fantasy of Mount Flushmore, a TP statue depicting “all the best” presidents (Franklin Pierce and downhill from there). Well, I know what I’ll be doing all weekend … I’ll be reading — and sometimes listening to and watching — the hundreds and hundreds of song parodies (and some originals on video) on Life in the Age of Corona, our Week 1378 contest. I received 231 entry forms — our previous song contest brought in 169 — and I know that some of those forms contain several individual parodies. The bar will obviously be very high, and it’s inevitable that lots of good songs won’t get ink. Maybe we can have a Zoom singalong afterward! AD The deadline for the songs was this past Tuesday, but if you’ve already sent in a song and you’d like more time to make it into a well-edited video (or improve on one you’ve already sent), let me know ASAP (email me) and I can take it as late as Monday, April 27. This is especially true if the video has the lyrics as subtitles, because then I won’t have to block out space to run them in text. And next week … A week from Saturday, May 3, was supposed to be the date of this year’s Kentucky Derby. The race has been postponed to September, but I didn’t want to wait till then for our most heavily entered contest of the year, the “breeding” of horse names. So next week, we’ll be playing the ponies, but not using the usual 100 of this year’s Triple Crown nominees; we’ll do that when the race is actually scheduled. Instead I’ll be using another set of names; I’ve gotten some good suggestions from the Losers on the Style Invitational Devotees page, but don’t want to tell you a week ahead of time. ====================================================================== WEEK 1382, published May 3, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1382: The Triple Corona We turn to history to produce our herd of racehorses for this year’s ‘foal breeding’ contest 1932 Kentucky Derby winner Burgoo King — who's sure to be a popular “sire” in this week's Style Invitational. He was named for a Kentucky grocer known for his burgoo, a spicy stew served in the South. 1932 Kentucky Derby winner Burgoo King — who's sure to be a popular “sire” in this week's Style Invitational. He was named for a Kentucky grocer known for his burgoo, a spicy stew served in the South. By Pat Myers April 30, 2020 at 5:08 p.m. EDT I don’t care if the whole world is shut down: We have to play those ponies. If indeed the 146th Kentucky Derby is run on its new date of Saturday, Sept. 5 — I hope it does: it’s never once been canceled — The Style Invitational can do its regular contest then. But for now, Week 1382, we turn to the winners of yesteryear, which in terms of the Derby has a big yester indeed. The game’s exactly the same: Based on the principle that racehorses are often named to reflect their parentage — e.g., 1944 Derby winner Pensive was the sire of the 1949 winner, Ponder — the contest asks you to choose any two names on the list, even though almost all are male and some in fact are gelded males, and “breed” them to produce a “foal” that cleverly incorporates both names, often with a pun. Normally I choose the 100 names from the 400 or so 3-year-olds nominated for that year’s Triple Crown races; this year’s nomination period has been extended indefinitely. The foal name contest is consistently the most heavily entered Invite contest of the year, with around 4,000 total entries from 300 to 400 submissions. Many people send in the maximum of 25 names; before I instituted an entry limit, a few crazies would send in well over 100; one Mary Lee Fox Roe holds the record, once submitting 650 entries in a single week. Some people (like Mary Lee) enter the horse contest (and its spinoff, the “grandfoals”) every year, but only the horse contest. AD Despite the number of entries and the same weekly deadline I always have, I always look forward to the horse contests — because I know that there will be loads of super-clever material from which to choose. My job has become exponentially easier for me since Loser Jonathan Hardis offered, a number of years ago, to sort the entries for me with the help of a program he devised, and has helped me out every year since. (It’s even possible that if everyone follows the simple directions in this week’s entry form, I can do this myself without having to bother Jonathan.) I chose the 100 horses we’re using this week by deleting 45 that seemed less “fertile” for the game ahead: horses named for obscure people, or unfamiliar foreign words, names too much like other names. I left some horses’ names because they’re so famous: Secretariat, for example. And I couldn’t bear to drop Lucky Debonair, winner of the first Derby that I remember watching, as a horse-crazy little girl in 1965. If you’re not familiar with the Invite’s horse name contests, you really should check out some of the previous results, both to get an idea of what we’re looking for and to just enjoy the level of wordplay. There’s a special page just for the horses on Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List at NRARS.org. Each row of the table links to both that week’s contest and, now, on a right-hand column, to the results of that contest, in either plain text or a PDF of the Post print or Web page, all the way back to the first contest, Week 113 in 1995. AD Meanwhile, here are a few winners from the 2019 crop: 4. Easy Shot x Code of Honor = Can’t, Miss (Danielle Nowlin) 3. Castle Casanova x Maximum Security = Romeo in Joliet (Steve Smith; Jonathan Paul) 2. Kingly x Plug and Play = The Royal Wii (John Hutchins) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Improbable x Skywriting = WillYouDivorceMe? (Bill Dorner) And what the heck, one from 10 years ago (Week 810): 4. Street Car x Rocket to the Moon = Stellaaaar! (Mark Eckenwiler) 3. Pitched Perfectly x Danger to Society = Criminal in Tent (Susan Thompson) 2. Pitched Perfectly x Gone Astray = Don Larceny (Andrew Hoenig) And the winner of the Inker: Sir Phenomenal x Empire State = Knight Who Says NY (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park) Okay, onnnne more — twenty years ago (Week 320): 5. Sailor’s Warning x Cartel: Avast Conspiracy (Susan Reese) AD 4. Black Mercury x Forestry: Hg a Tree (Jennifer Hart) 3. Answer Lively x Ghost Story: Phantom of the Oprah (Catherine Hagman) 2. Polish Pianist x Drama Critic: Show Pan (David Genser) And the winner of the William Donald Schaefer plate: Breathtaking View x King of Scat: Awe Crap. (Dante D. Bruno) Reminder once again: Don’t give your foal a name that’s a third name on the list. People do this every single year and it’s not a clever enough trick to get ink. Will we do a “grandfoals” contest four weeks from now in which you breed any two of this contest’s inking entries? We’ll see. Probably. Sing Around the Rosie*: The results of the Week 1378 song contest *Non-inking headline by Kevin Dopart, alluding to the theory that the children’s song with “ashes, ashes, all fall down” was about the Great Plague of 1665 that devastated London. AD My delight in the cleverness of the foal names — as well as my disappointment in having to toss so much good material — is multiplied exponentially when it comes to our song parody contests. It certainly was for this week’s results, for songs on the theme of “Life in the Time of Corona.” I received hundreds and hundreds (I didn’t count) of parodies and a few originals from 231 people, and spent hour after hour listening to the melodies on YouTube as I read the lyrics, and watched at least 25 videos. As always, there’s much more material that deserves to be shared. And so in the coming days, I’ll post some “noinks,” as the Losers call them — entries that didn’t get ink — in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, with the hashtag #coronaparody. So you can enter that hashtag in the search bar at the left of the page and, if all goes well, you’ll be able to find everything I post. (The Devs are about a dozen members short of 2,000; join as No. 2000 and they’ll do something extra-special for you, more than the usual Anagramming of Your Name.) I’ll start with the first noink on Friday morning, May 1. My editor’s worry when I posted the contest — for fear that it would produce a slew of sick humor making light of death and misery — wasn’t realized; almost all of them focused either on light tangential topics (Zoom meetings without pants; not getting your hair done) or on barbs flicked expertly at the nation’s leadership. And a few were poignant; I’m thinking of First Offender Richard Zorowitz’s “Another hundred people don’t get off of a train,” about the eerie emptiness of a stricken New York. In fact, many of the songs were of the “come on, people, we can do it!” attitude, almost rah-rah. While this week’s top winners are all fixtures of the Invitational — Loserbards Mark Raffman, Hildy Zampella, Beverley Sharp and Jesse Frankovich are frequent denizens of the Losers’ Circle — we welcome some terrific First Offenders this week, three of them on video: Jonathan Miller, a Chicago-based choral conductor, sent in a number of entertaining parodies filmed at various locations of his home including his bathroom, as well as the original bluesy number that gets him ink today. Wayne Wilentz, who offered up the parody of Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen” — hey, it’s just “too easy” because you didn’t think of it, did you? — is a D.C.-based jazz keyboardist and teacher. And Fiona Smith, who sang a song from the musical “The Drowsy Chaperone,” is a theater person at Walt Whitman High in Bethesda, Md. I hope we hear from them all again. AD My one disappointment in the final results was that I’d hoped to use at least some newish material for the source songs. But it just didn’t work out that way: Except for the second-place parody, Lee Ann Womack’s country-pop “I Hope You Dance” (2000 — a song I didn’t know before), and Fiona’s “Drowsy Chaperone” song (1998, brought to Broadway in 2006), all the originals are a full generation old, and most of them much older. Perhaps it’s that show tunes and other old-style songs tend to have a square, verselike structure, with a clear ending, that translates better to a printed page. Many rock, pop and rap songs, on the other hand, really need to be performed, not read in a block of text. They’re often full of short repeated phrases that are great to hear but not so much fun to read. (Also, there’s just the physical length: I received a well-done parody of “My Shot” from “Hamilton” that ran 1,000 words — about the length of a usual week’s entire Style Invitational column.) As more and more music fans become skilled at making music videos, I’m predicting that the Invite will be able to feature more takeoffs on current music. Future Weird Als: Put 'em right here. ====================================================================== WEEK 1383, published May 10, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1383: Unpunning the puns For the benefit of non-fogies, the Empress explains the song title puns in Style Invitational Week 1379 Rihanna, whose 2007 “Umbrella” is one of the few 21st-century songs punned on in Style Invitational Week 1379. Rihanna, whose 2007 “Umbrella” is one of the few 21st-century songs punned on in Style Invitational Week 1379. (Kevin Winter*Getty Images) By Pat Myers May 7, 2020 at 3:43 p.m. EDT When I post the results of a Style Invitational song parody contest online — like last week’s winners for songs on “life in the Age of Corona” — I embed a link above each song to a recording of the original, so readers can listen to the melody while they read the parody lyrics, and even sing along. I should have done something similar for the results of Week 1379 — as became clear when I posted this week’s column online this morning and some of the earliest readers messaged me that they didn’t get which songs the jokes were punning on. So here you go. The contest asked for jokes whose punchline was a pun on either the title or lyric of a song, and as with many Style Invitational contests involving music, most of the entries alluded to songs of an earlier time — often several decades back into the previous millennium, which happens, amazingly, to coincide with the years that the Empress did most of her song memorization. She did, however, include a few songs of somewhat recent vintage, only to find that her predecessor, The Czar, had never heard — or heard of — “Old Town Road,” a song that headed last year’s Top 40 for 19 straight weeks. AD ADVERTISING So here’s the answer key. Don’t consider your personal intelligence insulted. The Lose Cannon winner, by Chris Doyle: buzzed in flattened Baton Rouge waitin’ for a crane. That’s a play on busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin’ for a train, the first line of “Me and Bobby McGee,” written by Kris Kristofferson and made famous by Janis Joplin when her recording was released in 1971, shortly after her death. Chris mentioned “McGee’s” as the cannabis shop that falls on the trapped couple. (Link to audio.) This is the fifty-ninth win for The Style Invitational’s most inking Loser. And his four blots of ink this week give him an unfathomable total of 2,216. 2. Ken Liss’s tale of an allergic paranoid convinced that Ranger ops keep pollen on my head: That’s Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, the first No. 1 song of the 1970s. Written by the great Burt Bacharach and Hal David as theme music for the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and recorded by country singer B.J. Thomas, who robs the song of its jazz qualities. (This is, by the way, only the second blot of Invite ink ever for Ken Liss -- so, since he won the Fir Stink air freshener for his First Ink back in Week 1337, and a tiny electronic screaming goat this time for second place, Ken has yet to win a Loser magnet. Keep trying, Ken!) AD 3. Yay, the 21st century: Michelle Christophorou’s ode to an overly sun-tanned wife, that “there’s no place better than under my umber Ella,” plays off the line You can stand under my umbrella in the 2007 song “Umbrella” by Rihanna. (Video clip here at the relevant point) 4. Hildy Zampella, who was a runner-up last week with her parody of “I Hope You Dance,” ends her tale of an NFL referee who takes his job home with him with the exasperated plea "You don’t have to live like a ref, Eugene” as in You don’t have to live like a refugee, from the 1980 song “Refugee” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. (Video at the money spot.) As do some of this week’s inking entries, John Glenn (no) sets up his shaggy-dog joke with a reference to the song’s performer, in a totally fictitious anecdote about Brian Wilson as a prizewinning omelet maker: “I’m picking up goodbye rations; she’s giving me egg citations.” As in I’m picking up good vibrations; she’s giving me excitations from the Beach Boys’ best song, “Good Vibrations” from 1966. AD Kevin Dopart uses another totally bogus anecdote, about a mishap involving cases of beer at a Bruce Springsteen concert, to cue Blonde Dead by the Light, in honor of Springsteen’s 1973 song Blinded by the Light, from his very first album. (The chorus, which Bruce takes forever to get to.) What do you call the evening when Dick Cheney retired and the Secret Service escorted him to an undisclosed location in Florida? The night they drove old Dick C down. Alex Steelsmith on The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, a 1969 song by J. Robbie Robertson of The Band and a hit for Joan Baez in 1971 — surely the protest singer’s only song that sympathizes with a Southerner in the Civil War. Ward Kay got the week’s seemingly obligatory jab at the Trumpian Tanning Bed with He can’t read my ocher face.” as in He can’t read my poker face, in Lady Gaga’s 2008 “Poker Face.” AD What did Joan Jett call her private Pacific atoll? Isle of Rock and Roll. (Duncan Stevens) Joan Jett, who spent her teen years in the D.C. suburb of Rockville, Md., had her biggest hit with a cover of I Love Rock and Roll in 1982. Steve Smith’s chimp-walks-into-a-bar joke ends with “I’m her ape, old man! I’m Henry” plays off I’m her eighth old man, I’m 'Enery,” the next-to-last line of the one-verse Henry VIII, I Am, a 1910 British music hall novelty song that was a 1965 hit for British Invasion moptops Herman’s Hermits in America (but wasn’t released in the U.K.). Jerry Birchmore’s lament for missing square dancing during the pandemic, It’s the end of the whirls as we know it, references It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine), the 1987 R.E.M. song. Sam Mertens’s groaner “The ants are. My friend is blowin’ in the wind” — okay, that one I’m not doing. AD Also Lawrence McGuire’s “You can’t always get what you wand.” It fell to Frank Osen, born in 1954, to get ink with a reference to the only non-oldie in the bunch with an admittedly tortured fish story: “I’m gonna toss my hake to the old round toad” is a spooneristic take on I’m gonna take my horse to the old town road, the first line of “Old Town Road,” the runaway hit of 2019. There was plenty of “Man of La Mancha” setup to place Alex Steelsmith’s To march into hell for a heavenly clause into the context of “The Impossible Dream.” To march into hell for a heavenly cause is Joe Darion’s great line from the song in which Don Quixote tells of his, well, quixotic quest. Kevin Dopart set up his joke with “sand and hills and rocks and things,” another line from A Horse With No Name, the 1971 song by the band America that’s been called a description of taking heroin by someone who’s never taken heroin — to A course with yo’ name. AD Jonathan Jensen uses the name of a real restaurant, the famed Hyman’s Seafood in Charleston, S.C., to lend credence to his otherwise bogus story about Lucille Ball ending with “Lucy’s in disguise at Hyman’s!” which has no other connection to the 1967 Beatles song Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. What did Jerry Lee Lewis say after reading the president’s Twitter feed? “Goodness gracious, great bawls of ire!” Jesse Frankovich on, duh, Goodness gracious, great balls of fire, from Lewis’s 1957 rock-'n’-roller. Jeff Shirley turned 42 bottles of beer on the wall, 42 bottles of beer — from about 57 verses into “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” as an inspirational call to defend the nation’s capital from the British in 1814, Fortitude battles our fear on the Mall. Fortitude battles our fear. Chris Doyle put Carrie Underwood and her real-life sister Shanna into an Italian restaurant to have Carrie plead, “Gee, sis, take the veal!” as a play on Underwood’s 2005 song Jesus Take the Wheel. AD Sarah Walsh, on the other hand, went far afield from “My Fair Lady” with her story on searching for oil fields with “Just Kuwait, when we dig in, just Kuwait” as in Just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait, from Eliza Doolittle’s revenge-fantasy song for her unbearable mentor. In the category of puns that just revel in their absurdity, Duncan Stevens got ink with a ridiculous list of chores — “Parse lease. Aid Roes. Marry in time” — to pun on the refrain “Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme” from Simon and Garfunkel’s setting of the folk song “Scarborough Fair.” (See below for an even more ridiculous entry from Duncan.) Chris Doyle’s fake anecdote about Brit Hume — actually from D.C. and not Hoboken, N.J. — got him to How Can Hume End Hoboken Art? with no other connection to the horrible 1971 hit by the Bee Gees How Can You Mend a Broken Heart. AD I had no idea that Broadway musical star Joanna Gleason was the daughter of “Let’s Make a Deal” host Monty Hall until I checked out Elliott Shevin’s story bringing him to the tortured pun from the Monty Halls of Zumba: the two shoes of triple-A, evoking the first line of the Marines’ Hymn, From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. Bruce Springsteen will no doubt be pleased to get a second song this week, with Eric Nelkin’s burnin’ the ewe essay, a groaner on Born in the USA. Jesse Rifkin also voyaged into Absurdland with the fun of watching “digital videos of cardiovascular surgeries” so he could do Total e-clips of the heart, a play on the 1983 Bonnie Tyler song. Jesse, who regularly teases the Empress and Losers about their ancient vintage, was born a decade after this song. Mark Raffman worked hard to avoid not to use the words in the punchline for his setup to chest nuts boasting in an old Penn flier, in an anecdote that didn’t otherwise relate to Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, the opening line of “The Christmas Song,” the 1945, uh, chestnut by (Jewish) Mel Torme. Why did the White House communications aide say he couldn’t take it anymore? “Every day it’s endless schemes and secret threats of MAGA scenes.” Chris Doyle plays on the opening of the second verse of “Homeward Bound” by Simon and Garfunkel: Every day’s an endless stream of cigarette and magazines. And last: What did the Empress say after staying up until 3 a.m. reading Invite entries? “It’s been a har-daze night.” (Jesse Frankovich) Beverley Sharp brought back “My Fair Lady” to get in the last word this week, with the exasperated Empress on chewing out the Losers: “I groaned and cussed ’em to their face.” That’s a nod to Henry Higgins’s admission that maybe he kind of likes Eliza after all, I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face. --- Yeah, some of these puns were a bit of a stretch — as in Mrs. Incredible is a bit of a stretch — but nowhere a much as many of the non-inking entries were this week. There was “this is dedicated to the one olive,” as in “the one I love.” There was “The Vaccine’s More Grim,” whose writer explained was a pun on “The Marine Corps Hymn.” There was “Don’t hold me closer, tiny distancer.” But for the ultimate in contrivance, I offer you this one by Duncan Stevens: President Lincoln and Pat Myers (who had seen better times) met up at Mr. T’s cafe with bottles of Gatorade. The waiter was offended, and informed them loudly that he’d urinated in the teapot. Stricken, they beseeched the owner to help them, but he demanded a painting of the ultraviolet spectrum, laundry detergent, a sheep, an omelet and a bottle of Bordeaux. Emile Zola recorded these events: Abie, seedy E have G. ‘Eh, chai, Jake? ‘K?’ Yell: ‘Um, an’ a pee.’ ‘Cure us, T!” “UV daub, All, ewe, eggs, wine.”—Z. Okay, that’s enough for today. If you’re unfamiliar with our Questionable Journalism contests and are thinking of entering this week’s contest, Week 1383, take a look (no paywall) on the special “Questions” page of the Master Contest List at NRARS.org. Click on any of the QJ contests — the links to the results are on the right side of the row — to see text files of earlier results. Or just look at our Losers’ Circle from February 2019: Fourth place: Sentence in a Post story: She suggests keeping 12, and her preference is for all matching mugs for a calmer look. Question it might answer: How does Marie Kondo recommend that police departments organize their “Most Wanted” posters? (Steve Honley) Third place: Post story: A cloud can amplify global warming, or it can limit it, depending on what kind of cloud it is, and its size, location, thickness, duration, etc. Q: How did the first draft of “Both Sides Now” start? (Duncan Stevens) Second place: A. Tip-off is 7 p.m. Q. So you think the Mueller report is going to be leaked? (Drew Bennett) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: A. “I was tasked with the job of stopping the run and I do take pride in that.” Q. So, Mr. Putin, you admit sabotaging the Clinton campaign? (Beverley Sharp) Meanwhile, keep sending in those “foal” names for Week 1382 -- you have till midnight (wherever you are) Monday, May 11. I already have lots 'n' lots! ====================================================================== WEEK 1384, published May 17, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1384: Ta-DUH! It’s a stupid-question contest The winner of the Week 217 stupid-question contest, in 1997, got a scale model of the human prostate, much like this one. The winner of this week's stupid-question contest gets merely the Lose Cannon trophy. The winner of the Week 217 stupid-question contest, in 1997, got a scale model of the human prostate, much like this one. The winner of this week's stupid-question contest gets merely the Lose Cannon trophy. By Pat Myers May 14, 2020 at 4:31 p.m. EDT This week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1384, was inspired by a suggestion from Loser Dan Helming for a contest for stupid restaurant takeout orders during our social-distancing period. That seemed a bit narrow in scope, but I liked the mentally healthy, socially constructive idea, in these Trying Times, of snarkily mocking people’s stupid comments in a broader context. The Invite has asked for questions many times; in fact, there’s a whole page of Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List, a.k.a. The Great Time Suck, for the category of “Questions.” Many of the listings are for our recurring Questionable Journalism contest, which we did last week for Week 1383 and is still running through Monday, May 18, but there are also several in the dumb-question genre. From the Questions page you now can click on links not only to each contest announcement, but, on the right side of each row, to the results. Here’s a selection of ink from contests in 1997 and 2014. First on the list is Week 217, back in the era of the Invite’s founder, The Czar of The Style Invitational: AD Report from Week 217, in which you were asked to disprove the old maxim that there are no dumb questions. Despite our warning to the contrary, many people submitted tired old jokes, and some tired new jokes, such as why people call those things “hemorrhoids” instead of “asteroids.” Sixth Runner-Up: Excuse me, does this pharmacy carry that “date rape” drug? (Russell Beland, Springfield) Fifth Runner-Up: Why do people drive so close in front of me? Don’t they realize it’s dangerous? (Jerry Ewing, Fairfax) Fourth Runner-Up: Just where do you get off telling me what to do, Your Honor? (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Third Runner-Up: Do I, like, have a shot at boinking you? (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) [Tom’s Invite specialty of sex humor, especially in the persona of a womanizing cad, was already well established by 1997; e.g., for a 1994 contest for a sentence that will never be uttered: “Go ahead, have dessert. I am quite confident that sex with you will be worth a $93 dinner tab.”] AD Second Runner-Up: Are you sure that’s a spaceship behind the comet? Because I wouldn’t want to make a mistake here. Okay, swell. Just checking. (Paul Styrene, Olney; John Kammer, Herndon) [This referred to the 1997 tragedy of the Heaven’s Gate cult, whose leader persuaded 39 people to kill themselves so that they would be transported to a spaceship that he said would accompany the imminent Hale-Bopp Comet. The Invite has been trafficking in dark humor for a very long time.] First Runner-Up: If you are not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat? (Dave Ferry, Leesburg) And the winner of the demonstration-model prostate gland: If I win this week, can I have the $75 instead of the prostate gland? (Edith Eisenberg, Potomac) [Edith’s win was the second and last of her blots of ink. Once you’ve got the gland, why look for anything more?] AD Selected honorable mentions: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if he had a Stanley gasoline-powered wood chucker? (John Kammer, Herndon) You know when you check off on your taxes to pay for the presidential campaign and they say it won’t cost you anything? Well, why can’t they do that and get rid of the whole budget deficit in one fell swoop? (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.) What color codpiece do you think goes with this outfit? (Roy Ashley, Washington) Why doesn’t it tickle when I tickle myself, but it hurts when I stick a fork in my eye? (Niels Hoven, Silver Spring) Did people in the olden days realize what fuddy-duddies they were? (Andy Spitzler, Baltimore) Are Ice-T and Ice Cube related? (Don Frese, Baltimore) What do they do with the candy cobs? (Mike Connaghan, Gaithersburg) Doesn’t it count that I was thinking of you the whole time? (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) AD Why did you sit down if the seat was up? (Joe Ponessa, Philadelphia) I know who killed Nicole Simpson. But who killed Ron Goldman? (Bob Dalton, Beaumont, Tex.) Does this crack come with a money-back guarantee? (J.F. Martin, Hoover, Ala.) Do you think Mike Nesmith might replace John if the money was right? (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) If a hole in the street is a manhole, is a hole in a man a streethole? (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) And Last: Why should we spare you the questions about who is buried in Grant’s Tomb and why you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway? (Hank Wallace, Washington) And then … the Czar ran a contest to answer the inking questions! (Should we, four weeks from now? I’ll have to see if they look remotely promising for answers; that’s not how I’ll pick the winners, though. Rhetorical questions clearly wouldn’t work, even if they worked for the initial contest.) AD Report from Week 220, in which we asked you to answer any of the winning Dumb Questions from Week 117 [sic!]: Third Runner-Up: Are you sure that is a UFO behind the comet? Have I ever steered you wrong? I mean, besides that castration thing. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) [Yes, another thing the Heaven’s Gate leader did.] Second Runner-Up: Do you think Mike Nesmith might replace John if the money was right? I dunno. How much money do you think it would take to get him into the casket? (Kevin Cuddihy, Fairfax) First Runner-Up: Excuse me, does this pharmacy carry that “date rape” drug? Yes sir, we have a new improved version. It is this watermelon-size suppository. The man takes it. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia) And the winner of the Beldar Conehead doll: Are Ice-T and Ice Cube related? Actually, they are married. But I hear it is on the rocks. (David Kleinbard, Silver Spring) AD Honorable Mentions: What does the “A” in UVA stand for? Well, the U is for University, so the V must be for “of” and the A for Virginia. It’s in Latin. (Russ Beland, Springfield) Why doesn’t it tickle when I tickle myself, but it hurts when I stick a fork in my eye? You are obviously using the wrong fork. — Judith Martin [Miss Manners], Washington (J.F. Martin, Hoover, Ala.) Did people in the olden days realize what fuddy-duddies they were? No. They were too busy chasing the whippersnappers off their front lawns. (Paul Styrene, Olney) Does this crack come with a money-back guarantee? C’mon lady, I’m a married man. I’m just tryin’ to fix your sink trap here. (Peyton Coyner, Afton) Do I, like, have a shot at boinking you? Sorry, I don’t believe in mating outside my species. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) AD — No, I am saving myself for Tom Witte of the Style Invitational. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Why should we spare you the questions about who is buried in Grant’s Tomb and why you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway? Because the Czar has the greatest sense of humor in the world, and presides over the last true meritocracy. His time is not to be wasted with unoriginal spewings from lazy minds, except for the old “Why are animals made of meat?” question that has been banging around the Internet and that Dave Ferry slipped past him. (Sarah Worcester, Bowie) ---- And let’s jump forward to 2014, with more selected ink (which were complete with links so that people in 2020 would be able to get the references): In Week 1081 the Empress asked you to give us some stupid questions that would be even funnier than the sincerely stupid ones on the Yahoo Answers site. As with last week’s bad-poetry results, some entries were disqualified for not being stupid enough; the best of these was from Rob Huffman: If NASA could put a man on the moon, why couldn’t they make a better fake orange juice than Tang? AD The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: How do you say “Don’t claw the sofa” in Siamese? (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) 2nd place and the breast-shaped milk mug: I don’t understand those “take a penny*leave a penny” jars near cash registers. If you take somebody’s penny and leave one of your own, then what’s the point? (Scott Poyer, Annapolis, Md.) 3rd place: Do these new glasses make my brain look big? — Rick Perry, Austin (Gary Crockett) 4th place: Why do people argue about which came first: the chicken or the egg? Everyone knows you need a chicken to produce an egg! (Frank Mann, Washington) Past their d’oh date: honorable mentions Can I still clap along if I feel like a room without a ceiling? (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) I’m a vegetarian, so I wondered if I need to take that bloody thing out of green olives. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) What’s with this letter from my bank saying there’s no money in my checking account? I still have LOTS of checks in my checkbook! (Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.) Can I save twice as much on my car insurance if I take 30 minutes? (Mark Raffman) I know chicken fingers are really made from the toes, since, duh, chickens don’t have fingers. But where do the nuggets come from? Is it the stuff they … ew, is that even sanitary? (Gregory Koch, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.) Was Johns Hopkins University named for twins? (Gary F. Suggars, Baltimore, a First Offender) My prescription bottle says, “Do not operate heavy machinery.” Will Obamacare pay for someone to do my laundry? (Robyn Carlson, Keyser, W.Va.) How do all my neighbors get their dogs to poop into their Washington Post bags? I can never get the timing right with Ginger. Does anyone else have this problem, or is it just cockapoos? (Ivars Kuskevics. Takoma Park, Md.) If your life flashes before your eyes when you’re dying, well, suppose you did a whole lot of stuff — will it be a really long flash, or it just doesn’t get all the way through, or what? (Steve Honley, Washington) I want to see “A Christmas Carol” at Ford’s Theatre, but do you really think it’s safe? I heard they had a bad incident there. (Rob Wolf, Gaithersburg, Md.) Has anyone brought a stepladder up Mount Everest to set a new record? (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) Why do people sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” when they’re already at the ballgame? (John Kupiec, Fairfax, Va.) How can you tell a male hurricane from a female? (Bird Waring, Larchmont, N.Y.) Where does The Style Invitational get its jokes from? Is it the Internet? I bet it is, because sometimes I see the same stuff there that’s in the Invitational. (Luther Jett, Washington Grove, Md., a First Offender) That last one could be taken in two ways: One, that, as we’ve seen, jokes from the Internet occasionally wind up in the Invitational, mostly because people innocently thought of the same idea, but very, very rarely (I’m looking at you, Loser Who’s Still Entering) the person stole the joke. The other way to take it is that whole lists Style Invitational entries (usually from the 1990s) are ubiquitous online, like this set of neologisms, this set of new meanings for real words, and these analogies or similes from Week 120, often attributed to high school students. And at least once, both: Someone sent me — I should have saved it, because I’ve forgotten the details — one of the words or analogies from one of those lists, as an Invite entry. Don’t do this for Week 1384! Omission accomplished*: The results of Week 1380 *Non-inking headline submitted by both Tom Witte and Jesse Frankovich Kenji Thielstrom's original suggestion for the contest that became Week 1380. Kenji Thielstrom's original suggestion for the contest that became Week 1380. Back in March, my friend Kenji Thielstrom, a regular reader of the Invitational, sent me the graphic pictured here as a contest idea: As it spells out, if you take the “Dem” out of “pandemic,” you’re left with “panic.” Very cool idea (if, in this case, too partisan) but a very tall order to find in a word or term not only a related word, but one in the middle AND one, in parts, flanking it. Finding the word in the middle is a challenge we’ve done many times, with our “air quotes” contests (most recently the results of Week 1355; winner, by Hildy Zampella: H"USB"and: Consider yourself lucky if you get it right on the first try). But we’d never done the opposite — to find a word on the two sides of the deletion. (I did end up allowing the left or right half to be chopped as well.) I was sure that it would yield good material, but I had a logistical concern: how to keep the reader focused only on the letters to the sides, and not look at all at the now irrelevant material that’s front and center? So I decided to do a triple contrast: (a) capital letters on the ends, lowercase for the rest; (b) boldface for the ends, lightface for the rest; and (c) actually striking out the discarded letters. It was a formatting headache that required several fixes to get totally right, but I’m pleased at the results online, and hopeful for the print page, which is in smaller and sans serif type, and which we’ll see in newsprint on Saturday. (Meanwhile, the new Post system I use for the Conversational doesn’t even allow for strike-throughs, which is why I’ll use parentheses below. Yeah, I know.) Not surprisingly, the entry pool was full of political jabs; in the final list, I found myself rearranging the order of the entries so it wouldn’t be a wearying barrage of bad-leader bad-leader bad-leader. More surprisingly, the ink was spread around to nearly 40 Losers among the 51 entries (though Gary Crockett’s four blots of ink squirt him past the 450-mark inexorably toward the Hall of Fame). Kevin Dopart’s L(eadersh) IP — “service provided to the states by the White House” gave him his 29th Invite win and, with the honorable mention for POT(ato fung) US, “a blight that can ruin a country,” his 1,531st blot of ink. On a saner but still very impressive level, second place Jeff Hazle, whose CLASSrooM was one of the few neologisms, rather than existing terms, among the entries, makes his 19th trip to the Losers’ Circle with his 119th (and 120th) ink. And this week’s other runners-up, Chuck Helwig and David Peckarsky, are relative newbies, with 12 and 36 inks, respectively, though both have scored “above the fold in the past.” Also exciting: First Offender Emma Daley vaults over the One Hit Wonders charts to debut with two honorable mentions: GROcery shopPING, to feel around on the top shelf for one more mac and cheese (something that this altitude-challenged Empress knows well) and SPeaker of the hOUSE, “Just because I’m the only other person here doesn’t mean I always want to listen to you.” Super debut, Emma — bring it on! What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me on my choices for the winner and runners-up this week, and also singled out Raymond Gallucci’s BOOostER for apostate Redskins fans; Sam Mertens’s PENitenCE for what the impeaching Democrats would have gotten; and William Kennard’s INject household cleANER, “Trump’s advice, day by day.” NOthing wrong with these in any WAY: The unprintables: First, I’d chosen this one by Jesse Frankovich as an honorable mention but it was axed by the managing editor. I can’t argue with that, though; even considering who it is, there are some things The Washington Post shouldn’t say (even attributed to anonymous people) about the president of the United States: GO( **** yourse) LF: What taxpayers say when they find out what the president spends their money on. Then there was this one by Tom Witte that I’d considered running online, but figured it’s better here, and not just because the singular and plural didn’t agree: PENItentiarieS: Something that is not always welcome where it is placed. And then we had these two from Gary Crockett: climAXES: They cause falling wood; and TumescENT: A fabric structure supported by a pole. The hits kept on coming: More covid parodies from Week 1378 on Facebook Two weeks ago, when I published about 20 song parody lyrics and videos about Life in the Age of Corona (results of Week 1378), I lamented robbing so many good songs of ink, and promised in this column that I’d post some of them in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group in the coming days. And so I really hope you’ll check out the sixteen extra parodies (including videos) that you can find by searching for #coronaparody in the group (or by, I hope, clicking right here). If you count the Likes and heart emoji and whatnot, the most popular of the 16 was this “noink” by Jesse Frankovich to — what else — the Major General’s Song in the voice of Covid-19 Itself: I am the very model of a novel viral pathogen; I represent how humans have incited nature’s wrath again. The rapid rate at which I spread from host to host is warranting The people all around the world to stay at home in quarantine. To be alone for weeks on end will give a person's psyche fits, But hey, I’m kinda cute with all my little reddish spiky bits. For underestimating me I have to thank the president; To say that I was serious he was a bit too hesitant. A million-plus Americans so far have tested positive; Of health and economic devastation I am causative. If Donald thinks I’m beaten then he ought to do his math again — I am the very model of a novel viral pathogen! ---- So Maryland is starting to open up this week! Could we have a June 14 Flushies picnic after all? Well, let’s see what transpires … Meanwhile, see you next week. ====================================================================== WEEK 1385, published May 24, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1385: Punning in place The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s column and results A map of the “world” according to the theories of the Greek polymath Posidonius (150—130 BCE) and drawn in 1628 by cartographers Petrus Bertius and Melchior Tavernier. From Wikipedia. A map of the “world” according to the theories of the Greek polymath Posidonius (150—130 BCE) and drawn in 1628 by cartographers Petrus Bertius and Melchior Tavernier. From Wikipedia. By Pat Myers May 21, 2020 at 4:53 p.m. EDT I’ve been a little anxious today ever since I posted this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1385: I was worried that some eagle-eyed Loser and Invite historian would pipe up, “You forgot Week ---!” But it’s been several hours now and my assertion seems to stand that of all the contests we’ve done that asked readers to change a name slightly, none of them had been specifically about place names. But this contest is, as suggester Ken Gallant put it, “back to SI’s roots,” perhaps its stock in trade: to change a word or name by one letter, or similarly slightly, and define the result. Note that for this contest I didn’t insist on that single-letter change (to add a letter, delete a letter, substitute another letter, or transpose two letters); instead, I asked that you “change any place name slightly,” leaving room for you (and, more important, me) to decide what “slightly” is. To me, it comes down to the new term’s recognizability: Just as with our neologism contests in general, the reader of your new word should realize what the original term was, or else there’s no joke. Sometimes the definition can hint at the original, but in general the most effective neologisms sound something like the words they’re playing on. The example I gave in the instruction is “Parts”; it’s just a one-letter change from “Paris,” but it sounds so different that the reader is easily lost. But if you said “Parts, France” and then made some further allusion in the definition, it might work. AD Similarly, you can’t start with a place name that the reader isn’t likely to know. So if you change, say, Accokeek (small town in Maryland) to Quackokeek as a haven for shady doctors, the sound is fine, but if you don’t know from Accokeek, you’re not going to get the wordplay. On the other hand, I’m not insisting that your description has to relate in some way to the original place. Almost all of our inking neologisms do, but it’s possible to be funny without that connection. In fact, the “Liffs” below draw their humor from being totally unrelated to the place names. We already have required that the changed word be another place name, so that’s some connection right there. These questions popped up about Week 1385 this morning from the Style Invitational Devotees: Can the place name be fictional? Sure, go ahead. Again, the reader needs to get the reference. (Explaining it to me in a long parenthetical after your entry, as some of y’all do, enlightens me but doesn’t make your joke better.) AD Is a street name a place name? Nah. Let’s stick to geographical entities such as countries, regions, states, towns, I guess mountain ranges, rivers, etc., and not streets, buildings, institutions, etc. And though the following inking entries will not work for this week’s contest, I figured it was a good enough opportunity to share some classic Invitiana on place names. First, selected ink from two contests for “Liffs,” which repurpose actual place names into novel words. You can see the complete results here (1996) and here (2013). Report from Week 147, in which you were asked to come up with Liffs, whimsical new definitions for cities, towns or other geographic locations. Yes, many, many people described “Peoria” as that ecstatic feeling one gets from relieving a full bladder. Sixth Runner-Up: Anchorage — n. The often inane banter that takes place among talking heads on the evening news. (Michael J. Hammer, Washington) [Mike Hammer, a longtime horse racing buff, was the Loser who suggested our annual horse name “breeding” contest] AD Fifth Runner-Up: Toronto — n. A Canadian Mountie’s faithful companion. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge; Bob Sarecky, Centreville) Fourth Runner-Up: Altoona — n. The mythical place comic strip characters go when their creators retire. (Mark Jeantheau, Germantown) Third Runner-Up: Bora Bora — n. A tiresome person who keeps repeating himself. (Paul Kondis, Alexandria) Second Runner-Up: Manchester — n., usu. vulgar. A woman with a small bosom. (Tommy Litz, Bowie) First Runner-Up: Assateague — n. The condition in which one tires of sitting in the same position for too long. (Bob Sarecky, Centreville) And the winner of the Jim Bakker inspirational audio tape: Sacramento — n. A Communion wafer that purifies both the soul and the breath. (Dave Harstad, Arlington) Selected honorable mentions: Illinois — n. The ability of the chronically sick to get on one’s nerves. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) AD Babylonia — n. A spiel used by sleazy, fast-talking salesmen (Example: “He was giving me a line of Babylonia”). (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Eufala — n. The high experienced by bungee jumpers. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Pijijiapan (Mexico) — v. To clumsily type on a keyboard such that many letters are repeated. (Stephen Dudzik, Silver Spring) Gorky — adj. Used to describe Russian nerds. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Bethesda — n. The sound nasal spray makes when you squeeze the bottle (Joyce Rains, Bethesda) Waterloo — v. To pee in the pool. (Tommy Litz, Bowie) And Last: Andalusia — The final honorable mention in a contest. (Joseph Romm, Washington) And the redo in 2013: The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Tarpon Springs: Serta’s most budget-priced mattress. (Joel Knanishu, Rock Island, Ill.) 2. Sheboygan: Pvt. Manning, reconsidering? (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) AD 3. Gabon: An unlimited calling plan. (Steven Alan Honley, Washington) 4. Nicaragua: A special water that helps you quit smoking. (David Bruskin, Woodland Hills, Calif., a First Offender) Lowcales: Honorable mentions Antietam: Picnic foods. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.; John McCooey, Rehoboth Beach, Del.) Bogota: A buy-one, get-one promotion by a breast augmentation clinic. (Joel Knanishu) Boise: Jay Z Jr. (Jeff Hazle, Woodbridge; Eric Ries, Bethesda) Bolivia: Doghouse on the White House grounds. (Danielle Nowlin, Woodbridge) Cameroon: A tourist oblivious to the dozen other people waiting to take the same picture. (Trevor Kerr, Chesapeake, Va.) Cancun: Appalachian convenience food. (Mike Gips, Bethesda) The Catskills: Little “presents” of mice on your doorstep. (Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.) AD Chattanooga: To converse in Early Neanderthal. (John Glenn, Tyler, Tex.) Chinook: The dimple at the bottom of Cary Grant’s face. (Dan O’Day, Alexandria) Curaçao: Step 1 in making a football. (Beverley Sharp) Dubai: A place where extravagant consumerism is the highest ideal, e.g., Dubai. (Mike Gips) Grosse Pointe: Miley’s foam finger. (Jim Stiles, Rockville) Jakarta: What nightclub owners ask the door staff when a 17-year-old girl tries to sneak in. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Juneau: Not kosher. (Nan Reiner, Alexandria) Kalamazoo: A place to see squid in their natural habitat. (Edmund Conti, Raleigh, N.C.) Kyrgyzstan: A place to display your kyrgyz. (Danielle Nowlin) And Last: Luzon: The heightened state of immature or scatological humor. “I’ve got nothing for Week 1040 — I gotta get my Luzon.” (Brendan Beary) AD --- Another perennial contest theme is to combine two words or names — or long strings of them. One of my first contests was to combine two or more towns and describe their joint venture. Here are some highlights from Week 546 from 2004, which I headlined “A Nice Pair of Cities.” (Complete list here.) As opposed to a contest like this week’s, it didn’t much matter whether the town was well known. Second runner-up: The Kissimmee (Fla.)-Ona (Ore.)-Butts (Mo.) Career Development Center (Jeff Nadler, New York) First runner-up, the winner of the Gotta Go fake call-waiting sound machine: The Watton-Hellam-Ida-Ware (Mich., Pa., Okla., Mass.) “Dress for Success” Seminar (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) And the winner of the Inker: The Pierce-Naples-Garner-Hurt-Lake-Kell-Venice-Yankton (Fla., Fla., N.C., Va., Miss., Ill., Calif., S.D.) Festival of Body Decoration (Dudley Thompson, Raleigh) AD Honorable Mentions: The Enid-Laredo-Yoder-Aldine (Okla., Tex., Wyo., Tex.) National Palindrome Competition (Chris Doyle) The Mystic (Conn.)-Chickasaw (Ala.)-Helper (Utah) Magicians’ Assistants’ Conference (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) Islip (N.Y.), Crane Neck (N.Y.) & Sioux City (Iowa) Personal Injury Associates (Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls) The Pray-Novice-Pilot-Cando-Landing (Mont., Tex., Va., N.D., N.J.) Air Phobia Support Group (Russell Beland, Springfield) The Minnehaha (Wash.)-Van (W.Va.) Clown Car Factory (Bruce W. Alter, Fairfax Station) The Tightwad-Bosses-Skidoo-Withee-Golden-Parachute (Mo., Va., Calif., Wash., Miss., Colo.) Commission on Executive Pay (Chris Doyle) The Hartselle (Ala.)-Gypsum (Colo.) Convention of Used-Car Salesmen (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) The Whypo (N.M.)-Nott (Ky.)-Rich (Ky.) Conference on Income Inequities (Elden Carnahan) The Quigley-Robbins-Tudor-Bat Cave (La., N.C., Calif., N.C.) Emergency Response Team (Dudley Thompson) The Eighty-Four (Pa.)-Fifty-Six (Ark.)-Ninety Six (S.C.) Center for Obesity Studies (Brendan Beary) — Surely, slightly altered place names appear in many of the Invite’s neologism results. Searching through Elden Carnahan’s “All Invitational Text” master file on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, I found that while there was no entry for “Wastington,” I’d offered it in 2013 in a list of neologism entries from earlier contests that needed better definitions. Four weeks later, I didn’t run any for “Wastington.” So maybe there’s still some blindingly good description that you could write for it. Hoax springs eternal*: The springtime fictoids of Week 1381 *Non-inking headline by Jon Gearhart Part 2 of our four-part Lies of the Season series of contests continued with a fun string of falsehoods about the vernal equinox and related events. A number of Losers had mentioned in the Facebook group that they’d had trouble with Week 1381 — and there were indeed a number of jokes in the pile that struggled mightily but in vain to be funny — but I’m happy with the 30 or so stalks of spring wheat that juddered out of the Empress’s thresher. Okay, some of them weren’t strictly about spring — e.g., Jon Ketzner’s was about the past tense of the verb “to spring” — but it’s springtime and the living is easy, at least given the uneasiness. It’s the third Lose Cannon for Jonathan Jensen, who didn’t start Inviting till Week 1287. Jonathan’s entry was about the cancellation of this year’s White House Easter Egg Roll left the president with all these commemorative wooden eggs for the kiddies imprinted with “Impeachment is a HOAX.” Jonathan’s egg quote had initially continued, “Democrats have egg on their faces!” But I thought it worked better without the extra line, even at the cost of comically lame wordplay. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood cited a string of faves this week, beginning with Danielle Nowlin’s runner-up noting that while days after the equinox usually increase by two minutes, starting in March 2020 the months increased by 45 days. The rest came from the honorable mentions this week: Bruce Alter’s “venal equinox” to open congressional bribery season; Kevin Dopart’s saying that the first signs of spring in Houston are stolen, as well of his March 3, April 4 and May 5 as being A-Day, B-Day and C-Day; Frank Mann having Trump “clarify” his “Happy Good Friday” tweet; Jeff Shirley’s definition of a zyrtec as a Polish word for sneezing jag; Mark Raffman’s take-you-a-sec fictoid that Freud celebrated Mother’s Day on Feb. 14; and Bill Dorner’s revelation that every spring, Jeff Bezos “molts his thick black lustrous hair.” If Bill’s next Amazon delivery is left in front of his car wheel, we’ll know why. Some administrative good news Last Friday a memo went out to Post staffers announcing that the downtown building would be essentially closed through Labor Day, and that while the lights and all were still on and the machines operating, they didn’t want us coming in without a very important reason. I assumed that mailing some Loser a mug was not a very important reason, and begged for patience from those who won some item that needed packaging. Thanks also to all of the recidivist winners who volunteered to forgo their magnets and receive their “prize letter” by email so I didn’t have to run my rinky-dink home printer into the ground. But yesterday I was told by newsroom administrative honcho Tracy Grant that it would be fine for me to continue to come in once a month and do the accumulated mailings and printing, as long as I filled out a form, had my temperature checked by security workers, and wore a mask the whole time. So this Sunday or Monday afternoon, I plan to drive down to K Street and catch up on the Lose Cannons, second prizes and Loser Mugs that are desperately awaited by their winners. And while I’m at it, if you got ink last week in Week 1380 and you’re on the email list, I’ll mail you an actual dead-tree letter and a magnet. But not again for another month. Sorry about my blabbering exuberance: At the end of last week’s Style Conversational, I mused that since the D.C. area was starting to reopen, maybe we could have that June 14 Flag Day Flushies picnic after all. Which alarmed, to put it mildly, Loser Sam Mertens, who was supposed to host it at his house. No! Yeah, no. Let’s see what we’re doing this fall. And now it’s on to the foals — around 3,900 entries to Week 1382. Good thing I adore coffee. ====================================================================== WEEK 1386, published May 31, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1386: Still in the running The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s winning foal names and grandfoal contest 1916 Kentucky Derby winner George Smith with the famed jockey Johnny Loftus aboard. George Smith got ink for Loser George Smith in this week's Style Invitational. More about this in today's column. 1916 Kentucky Derby winner George Smith with the famed jockey Johnny Loftus aboard. George Smith got ink for Loser George Smith in this week's Style Invitational. More about this in today's column. (Churchill Downs Inc. via Wikipedia) By Pat Myers May 28, 2020 at 4:48 p.m. EDT So did you submit a “foal” name — or 25 — in Week 1382 of The Style Invitational, to be cruelly snubbed by the Empress in favor for one of the 70 names given ink in this week’s results? Life is so unfair. Actually, most likely this week’s inking entries were more clever than at least most of yours. As I read through my giant list of all 3,889 names — from 355 submissions — I didn’t have too much trouble ruling out 90 percent of them. For one thing, even with 4,950 possible pairings among the 100 former Kentucky Derby horses listed, there were (as always) numerous occasions of Warped Minds Thinking Alike: Kauai King x Assault = Hawaiian Punch? Excellent, inkworthy entry … except that there were 10 of them. Breeding Omar Khayyam with Sea Hero or Spend a Buck or Foolish Pleasure to produce Ruby Yacht or something like it? Seventeen of you. Various combinations of Hindoo, Whiskery and Chant to sire Hairy Krishna? Nine times over. AD Not everything was clever, though. Some of the entries played it entirely straight, with no discernible joke, o or wordplay, such as Ben Brush x Joe Cotton = Brushed Cotton or Dark Star x Big Brown = Big Star. (Then again, that’s more like how racehorses’ parentage really tends to be acknowledged, if at all: Seattle Slew’s mating with Incantation, for example, produced Seattle Song.) Others made a connection with a point but without humor, like Forward Pass x Assault = Harvey Weinstein, or Swaps x Needles = AIDS. Our knees were not slapped. Names that might have had good jokes but were a struggle to read also didn’t make this cut, such as Assault x Affirmed = Sothatwasn’taYes? But lots and lots of good ideas were out there. Remember that I said I first scrapped 90 percent of the names? That means that I did mark as potentially inkworthy almost 400 names. And of course your horse was on that list! (I don’t really know; I didn’t look up the authors until I was down to my final cut.) From my initial cut of 384 I then cut to 94, then to the 70 that got ink today. A lot of clever horses never made it to the finish line. It might be illustrative to show you just some of the entries I received as offspring of the 1888 Derby winner Macbeth II (which, using what turned out to be an unreliable source, I’d written as “MacBeth II” in my initial list). In addition to the four Macbeth II entries that got ink today — including first and second place — I received 125 others, including these that allude to various aspects of the play: “Out, damn’d spot!,” “Double double, toil and trouble,” “sound and fury,” “eye of newt,” “Lay on, Macduff,” “Sleep no more,” “when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane,” the superstition of calling it “The Scottish Play” rather than its name, the noble titles like Thane, characters like King Duncan and Banquo and the Three Witches. AD Kingman x Macbeth II = Regally in Thane Apollo x Macbeth II = Chicken a la King Macbeth II x Lookout = Out Damned Spotter Macbeth II x Typhoon II = Gael Force IV Macbeth II x Old Rosebud = Citizen Thane Macbeth II x Regret = Birnam Wouldn’t Macbeth II x Johnstown = Bubble, Bubble Black Gold x Macbeth II = Oil and Trouble Macbeth II x Bubbling Over = Scotch & Soda Macbeth II x Bubbling Over = Shakesbeer Bubbling Over x Macbeth II = Witches III Macbeth II x Whiskery = Dramatic Paws Macbeth II x Whiskery* or Animal Kingdom = Sound and Furry Macbeth II x Whiskery = The Beard of Avon Macbeth II x Burgoo King = Lay On MacDonalds War Admiral x Macbeth II = Aye-Aye of Newt Macbeth II x Whirlaway = Duncan Yoyos Macbeth II x Hoop, Jr. = In, Damned Shot Macbeth II x Citation = WelcomeBackCawdor Forward Pass x Macbeth II = The Scottish Play AD Macbeth II x Northern Dancer = The Scottish Plié Macbeth II x Kauai King = The Scottish Lei Unbridled x Macbeth II = The Skittish Play Smarty Jones x Macbeth II = The Snottish Play I’ll Have Another x Macbeth II = TheScottishReplay Kauai King x Macbeth II = BeachBlanketBanquo Dust Commander x Macbeth II = Sweep No More! Macbeth II x Foolish Pleasure = Dunce Inane Affirmed x Macbeth II = Aye of Newt Macbeth II x Unbridled = Scot Free Macbeth II x Big Brown = Damned Spot Macbeth II x Orb = Shakesphere Macbeth II x California Chrome = Out, Spam Dot! Always Dreaming x Macbeth II = Fantasy Highland … and many more. The inking entries: Kauai King x Macbeth II = Aloha, Damn’d Spot (Neal Starkman, second place) Black Gold x Macbeth II = MeTarSand, YouThane (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif., first place) Macbeth II x Whiskery = Stubble Stubble (Tom Witte; Jesse Frankovich) AD Macbeth II x Bubbling Over = Toilet Trouble (Jonathan Jensen; Jesse Frankovich) Frank Osen’s winner — his 23rd first-place Invite finish — was an easy pick for me, one of the few entries that made me laugh out loud and read it to the Royal Consort, teleworking next to me out on the deck. But I also found it funny that Neal Starkman replaced the “Out!” of the insanely raging Lady Macbeth with the mellow “Aloha, Damn’d Spot” for that indelible 102nd blot of ink. And I just enjoyed the elegance of “Fred Austere” and “Play NYSE” of Mary McNamara and Chris Doyle of their runners-up. While Everyone Knows Chris, this is just the 13th (and 14th) ink for Mary, though it’s already her third runner-up. I’ll be sending out a LOT of magnets — and three FirStinks — this week, not only to the Usual Suspects but also to several Losers who tend to show up these days only for the horses, including Jonathan Paul, who got three excellent inks; Mia Wyatt; John Winant; Harvey Smith; Malcolm Fleschner; Laurie Brink; Beth Morgan; riding-manual author Steve Price; and equine vet Sarah Jay. It was fun, after choosing the horses, to look up the entrants’ names and discover that they were back, and on their game, yet again. (Famed Horse Names Entrant of Yore Mary Lee Fox Roe, who back in the day before the 25-entry limit once sent 600 entries for one contest, submitted only three entries this year and, alas, came up empty.) AD What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me on Frank’s winning entry, and also especially liked Steve Smith’s “Madam C. Jaywalker,” Mia Wyatt’s “Will & Grace,” John Winant’s “Victor Kiam” as a play on Omar Khayyam and Whiskery, Jesse Rifkin’s “Purple Drain,” Jonathan Paul’s “IMHOtep,” “George Smith Jr.” by the actual George Smith Jr. (see item below) and the final “No Ink Again” from Steve Offutt and Frank Mann, who won’t have Sunday Silence after all. And this just in: The deposed Czar of The Style Invitational, who in two separate instances in the last few months thought the whole list of winners was so awful that I shouldn’t have run any of them (he was so wrong), called this week’s results “a joy from top to bottom.” He is so right. A Horse With His Name: George Smith I admit that when I was choosing the 100 Derby winners for this contest, from all 145, I chose 1916′s George Smith in the hope that (George Smith, Frederick, Md.), 22-time Loser, might want to send in an entry. AD And sure enough, my list of entries included these: “George Smith X Silver Charm = George Smith Jr. (me)” “Aristides X George Smith = Anatomy Lab Partners (true)” “George Smith X Stone Street = College Roommates (true)” These were the only three entries in my entire sorted list of 4,000 whose authorship I could be sure of. And so I sent George an email, asking: “What? You had a college roommate named Stone Street?” And he wrote back the next day to explain: Dear Pat, My anatomy lab partner was Aristides (Ted) Alevizatos (University of Maryland med class of 1960) and my college roommate for 2 years was Harrison Stone. (Washington & Lee class of 1956). Amazing coincidence, right. Thank you, George Smith (not the horse) I — and the rest of the Loser Community — haven’t yet had the opportunity to meet Dr. Smith, an internist for more than 50 years in the historic town of Frederick, 50 miles north of Washington, even though we’ve had our Loserfest weekend there twice. I hope we’ll be able to Once This Is Over. He sounds delightful and fascinating in this interview with Frederick Magazine in 2018, at age 83. My favorite part was his recalling how his Loserly knack for wordplay came in handy as a first-year medical student: AD “During my first semester in school we were given a cadaver to dissect. I was one of four students on a team. Some in our group were very good at dissecting. Me? Not so much. I was put in charge of making up the mnemonics that would allow us to recall the names of bones and other organs for use during classroom exams.” And now, another time around the track: The Grandfoals So now you get to play with these 70 names for some pun-on-pun action in Week 1386. As promised, below is an alphabetical list of the names that you can copy out. The grandfoal contest is a bit different from the first round in a few ways: First, there are always fewer entrants and entries (usually about half the first round), so you have a better chance of ink. But because so many of them already contain puns, it’s virtually impossible to incorporate every element of both names into your foal name, especially if it’s going to be funny. AD For further inspiration and guidance, not to mention a big time-suck, you can peruse the results of all the previous winners of the grandfoal (and foal) contests — in plain text or PDF, but paywall-free — on the “Horses” page of Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. But let’s look at a few of last year’s inking grandfoals right here, the top four winners. WillYouDivorceMe? x Mack the Spatula = Ex Over Easy (Jonathan Paul) uses “divorce” and “spatula” while ignoring “Mack” and its obvious antecedent, “Mack the Knife.” No problem there, still totally clever. Pence on Fire x Brazen Overtures = Let’s Have Lunch (Diane Lucitt). This one arguably incorporates all the elements: While it doesn’t use the antecedent of “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” it reworks “Pence on fire” to mean arousal, to mock the vice president once again about his reported fearful refusal to have an unchaperoned business lunch with a woman. Cruella de Villa x Pretentious Op-Ed = 101 Dull Mentions (John Hutchins). This one goes back to the initial reference, the “101 Dalmatians” villain Cruella De Vil, while ignoring the “villa” in the grandfoal name; while in general that’s not the best idea for grandfoals, it works here, perhaps because the “-la” is so small in the name. Then of course there’s the hilarious use of the movie pun as a wicked description of a pretentious op-ed essay. El Choppo x Can’t, Miss = El Floppo (Jeff Hazle). This entry, which won the Lose Cannon, is in what I call the “operational” form: Parent 1 is altered into Grandfoal by Parent 2. (For some reason, we have few inking entries in this form this year, though it’s often a great idea.) And except for not acknowledging the reference of El Chapo, the drug lord, it uses all the elements. Some of this week’s foal names just might not work for the grandfoals contest. That’s why I’m giving you 70 of them (well, that and because I couldn’t bring myself to rob this week’s inking entries). And no, even after judging 15 grandfoal contests, I never give a thought to whether a foal name will be useful as a parent. So get back up on the horse and try again with these ponies, and I’ll see you next week. Aloha, Damn’d Spot Au! Au! Au! Avast! Waistland Bro Bye Bye Blackbird Cairopractor Cat’s MeOW Citizen Kanye Coupon Quipper Courtier Pounder Dacha-cha Discount Mohel Doink! Dollar General Dolor Store Ex-prez Checkout Extremely Average Eye for an Eye Fakir News Flatley Denied Fred Austere GandhiWithTheWind George Smith Jr. Get a Quarter Back Give It Arrest Gonedhi Hawaii 5-0 Henry Thinkler Henry Twinkler Hindon’t Hold My Hair If Only I Had TP! IMHOtep Joe Maimeth Killer Ap Killer Apse Liberate [state]! Madam C. Jaywalker Make Up Your Mind! Man of La Mantra MeTarSand, YouThane “Mr. Prez” Is Fine No Ink Again No Mask for Me No Runs No Eros O.K. Bloomer O.K. Boomer One Hit Wonder Oprah Wind-Free Play NYSE Pokés Purple Drain Roomba With a View Sack Second-Worst Ever See No Weevil Shaq in the Woods SilenceOf-TheLEMs Single Ply Stubble Stubble Tank Array The Holly & the IV Toilet Trouble Top Gum Uh, Houston … Victor Kiam Water Mitty Welles Far Go Will & Grace Wolf Blitzer ====================================================================== WEEK 1387, published June 7, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1387: Selected shorter subjects The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s contest and results. “Fifty arms, no brain at all”: Loser Chris Doyle repurposed this description of a starfish in Style Invitational Week 1383 to refer to the participants in an “American Patriot Rally” who tried to storm the Michigan State Capitol on April 30 to demand the right to expose their possibly diseased mouths in supermarkets. “Fifty arms, no brain at all”: Loser Chris Doyle repurposed this description of a starfish in Style Invitational Week 1383 to refer to the participants in an “American Patriot Rally” who tried to storm the Michigan State Capitol on April 30 to demand the right to expose their possibly diseased mouths in supermarkets. (Jeff Kowalsky*AFP*Getty Images) By Pat Myers June 4, 2020 at 5:20 p.m. EDT I still haven’t finished adding to my mailing list the dozens of new entrants to Week 1385, the Style Invitational contest posted two weeks ago that asked readers to change a place name slightly, then define the new place. Usually a contest brings me eight or 10 new people (or people who last entered so long ago that I don’t have a record of it), so I’m of course thrilled that the Invite continues to find new readers and new members of the Loser Community. Why so many newbies — and so many more entrants in total — for that contest rather than, say, Week 1383, Questionable Journalism, whose results run today? I’ll posit that it’s simply easier to do: A glance at a map can give you fodder for dozens of geographical puns; you don’t have to diligently page through the newspaper or website to look for a good sentence to cleverly misinterpret into a joke. And I’m predicting another gusher of entries with this week’s contest, Week 1387, suggested by Invite on the Brain Duncan Stevens along with several fine examples. Duncan reminded the Empress that a year ago, Week 1323 asked readers to trim the beginning and*or end of a movie title. Now, he said, how about if we excise the middle? (Since the Invite was posted this morning, I’ve already been asked to clarify: May the letters be omitted from the beginning or end, or just the middle? To clarify: The middle. By which I mean somewhere after the first letter and somewhere before the last one, not necessarily the dead center. People!) I noted atop the hilarious results of last year’s contest that I’d received “thousands of entries — the Empress might have set a new coffee consumption record.” Feel free to lay them on me again, folks — I love coffee. AD This week’s contest should complement Week 1323, to yang its li’l yin, and shouldn’t cause much duplication of entries between them. But I did run a contest back in 2010 for which there could be a slight overlap. Week 871 (full results here in plain text) — which was such a bonanza that I ran more results two weeks later — asked the Losers to change a movie title by one letter: to add a letter, to substitute a different letter, to switch two letters’ places … or to delete a letter. So don’t send in these inking entries from 2010: Third place: The Blair Itch Project: Amateur filmmakers realize that before shooting in the woods, they should have learned what poison ivy looks like. (Deborah Gilbert, in her only blot of Invite ink ever) Bob & Carol & Ted & Lice: Swinging suburbanites get more than they bargained for from sleeping around with the neighbors. (Michael Duffy) AD The Bother From Another Planet: ALF, the Movie. (Todd Carton) Moonstuck: An impudent teenager meets his match when he tangles with an automatic car window. (Beverley Sharp) 10 Dalmatians: Cruella wins. (Craig Dykstra) Note that the above results don’t show the letters which letter was omitted, as opposed to this week’s examples, which have them in brackets. In the results I linked to the originals; maybe I’ll do that again. But it’s possible that titles with a big block of letters missing might just be too confusing; the ones above were missing just one character. Since I originally posted the Invite this morning, I added a clarification in the directions that you may change spacing or capitalization. And: Action! Deform of a Question*: The results of Week 1383 *The headline for my first Questionable Journalism contest, in 2004; I don’t want to use a non-inking entry here that could get ink next time. AD I’ve never been disappointed with the results of our Questionable Journalism contest, and those from Week 1383 were the typical hoot. Though well under 200 Losers entered, many of them sent long lists of entries, and my shortlist ran 12 closely spaced pages. Though I allowed any publication dating from the entry window, most of the entries were from The Washington Post, and so there was a bit of duplication among the entries; “Fifty arms, no brain at all” brought multiple efforts, for instance. But since readers could look through 12 days’ worth of papers and Web pages, the duplication was more thematic: several zombie jokes, several jokes playing on “numbers” as anesthesiologists; much toilet paper humor. I tended to favor more concise and conversational writing over long discursions. It's the third win and 93rd blot of ink for Lose Cannoneer Ellen Raphaeli: A. The District will open 20 voting centers from May 22 to June 2 so voters can stagger the days they go to the polls. Q. What's being done to encourage drunks to vote?” I'd met Ellen a couple of times at long-ago Loser brunches but health issues have kept her away from Loser events in recent years; I'm glad that she's sharing her wit again and — When All This Is Past Us — hope she'll be able to join us at our next wild shindig. The runners-up — Invite legends Kevin Dopart and Tom Witte, and legend-in-training Sam Mertens — are all in their element in contests like this. This week’s Exciting New Discovery has to be First Offender Hannah Seidel, who gets to leap right over that One-Hit Wonders list with two blots of ink today: AD A. At the moment, social distancing is the only effective countermeasure. Q. How do I get my parents to stop asking me when I’m going to give them grandchildren? A. Harrison has been offering free group challenges each month that are open to anyone; the goal is to accrue as many points as possible. Q. Why was nutritionist Rhonda Harrison fired from her job at Weight Watchers? It’s rare but not astonishing when a First Offender gets two blots of ink. The thing about Hannah, though, was that I discovered, when looking up her entries to see who’d written them, that four more of her entries were on my shortlist, and just as she’d written them, no tweakage. Welcome to Loserdom, Hannah, and send more! What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood was with me with all four top winners, and also singled out Hannah Seidel’s pestering-for-grandchilden, Duncan Stevens picking up on the wackiness of “playing hockey on the trampoline; Kevin Dopart’s elevation of the “movement” poop joke with a play on the president’s often self-touted gut instinct; Tom Panther’s long “he dumped me” quote working perfectly as a line from umpteen White House Dumpee memoirs; and John Hutchins’s play on “reproducibility.” AD Don't even ask: The unprintables: There weren't too many really risque entries for Week 1383 — renowned Shocker of the Empress Tom Witte didn't even send any — but there were a few that couldn't run in the Invite, or were asked by their authors to be hidden down here. A. “For a while, they were erected in the polo field at West Potomac Park.” Q. What briefly replaced the “P Street Beach” as Washington’s favorite gay cruising spot? (Steve Honley) A. In-and-out is better with an indoor environment. Q. What’s on the sex-ed curriculum regarding indecent exposure laws? (Duncan Stevens) A. We’re cleaning the balls after every workout. Q. Mr. Gym Manager, is it true that you’re now insisting on spot-bathing each of your male clients? (Duncan Stevens) And Bill Dorner found some against-Post-rules unbleeped language from readers of Tom Boswell’s online sports chat: A. “I am a selfish A[unbleeped] and my No Mask status proves it.” Q. How did Mike Pence explain his maskless visit to the Mayo Clinic? AD Okay, guys — I have had a nasty case of Bad Technology all day; even the IT people couldn’t save this column from disappearing three times. I’ll try to catch up with typos and other mistakes once it’s safely online. Stay safe and sane, everyone — and in the midst of this nightmare, take a little break with The Style Invitational. Laugh at a poop joke. ====================================================================== WEEK 1388, published June 14, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1388: Calling the Lunatic Fringe Fecal Grin Unit The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s anagram contest and results “Why are my neighbor’s black-eyed Susans staring at me?” That quarantine-addled query is a runner-up this week for First Offender Paul Duffy in our contest for stupid questions.*Photo from Intrinsic Perennial Gardens, Hebron, Ill. “Why are my neighbor’s black-eyed Susans staring at me?” That quarantine-addled query is a runner-up this week for First Offender Paul Duffy in our contest for stupid questions.*Photo from Intrinsic Perennial Gardens, Hebron, Ill. By Pat Myers June 11, 2020 at 4:36 p.m. EDT The headline above contains the fabulous anagram phrase that got ink for Dave Prevar as the very last entry in Week 955, in 2010: “Lunatic fringe fecal grin unit: Euphemism for Style Invitational Losers.” Dave’s entry could have been used within the generous parameters of this week’s Invite contest, Week 1388, which asks you to “create a business, product, organization or similar entity that contains a word, name or phrase and its anagram, and describe it.” Suggester Jeff Contompasis’s “Allergy Gallery,” from the same contest, fit well enough to use as one of his examples this week, for sure. I concede that I’m not sure what “similar” means in a list including both “product” and “organization,” but it at least distinguishes it from most of the nifty results of Week 955, which don’t fit Week 1388 but which I’ll share with you here for inspiration or at least entertainment. It’s really a classic set of results (and it’s so heartening to see how many of the Losers that week 10 years ago are still active in the Invite). Report from Week 955, in which we asked you to pair a word or short phrase with its anagram — the same letters rearranged — and define the resulting phrase: Many of you offered “Republican crab lineup” as a description of this year’s GOP presidential candidates, and a “mother’s thermos” as a warm-milk jug. AD The winner of the Inker: New York wonkery: One thing they can’t claim is superior to D.C.’s. (Nancy Schwalb, Washington) 2. Winner of the Talking Fortune Teller Calendar: He-moron hormone: Testosterone. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) 3. Satellite radio salaried toilet: Howard Stern. (Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.) 4. Knits stink: What happens when heavy sweaters wear heavy sweaters. (Marian Carlsson, Lexington, Va.) Minor loons beneath: Honorable mentions The Democrats are here! Here come the rats, dear!: Pre-dinner-party comments overheard at the Carville-Matalin house (Gordon Cobb, Atlanta, a First Offender [Gordon has now blotted up 22 inks]) Leadership dealership: One-stop shopping for all your public-official-buying needs. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.; Larry Gray, Union Bridge, Md.) Went Newt: Answered an embarrassing question by attacking the questioner. (John Glenn, Tyler, Tex.) AD Allergy gallery: The Museum of Natural Histamine. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) Most inane Minnesota: Land of Michele Bachmann and Jesse Ventura (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) Liberal ire ball: A Democratic convention. (Bird Waring, Larchmont, N.Y.) Sexting gets nix: What Anthony Weiner learned the hard way. (Dave Coutts, Severna Park, Md.) Mitt Romney memory tint: Rose-colored historical fact-spinning. (Roger Stone, Gaithersburg, Md.) Pedestrian pedantries: What a walking encyclopedia spouts. (Chris Doyle) Flesh shelf: “Love handle” is a more charitable term. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) Super Bowl bowel spur: Affliction caused by too many visits to the Seven-Layer Bean Dip tray. (Anne Paris, Arlington, Va.) Considerate desecration: Taking time to clean up the paint spills after spraying hate slogans on a house of worship. (Larry Gray) AD Tom Brady’s tardy mobs: The Patriots’ offensive line trying to protect its quarterback. (Mike Bergen, Rockville, Md., a First Offender [ … and we never heard from him again]) Rid-of-Al Florida: Election 2004. (Ann Martin, Bracknell, England) TSA SAT: Knife is to stab as cupcake is to … (Liza Recto, Lexington Park, Md., a First Offender [she got one more blot a few years later but was active for a while in our Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook]) Democratic micro cadet: Michael Dukakis posing in that tank. (David Smith, Santa Cruz, Calif.) Blind-as-a-bat stab-and-bail: Congressional fiscal policy. (Judy Blanchard, Novi, Mich.) Has-been banshee: Roseanne Barr. (Larry Gray) “Sex and the City,” Sixty ’n’ cheated: Aging flirts get just deserts. (Stephen Gold, Glasgow, Scotland) Shoe hose: What I need after playing 18 holes of golf in goose season. (Mairzy Salander, Arlington, Va.) AD Inconsistent non-scientist: Global-warming denier who buys flood insurance just in case. (Gary Crockett) Solicit colitis: “Would you like fries with that?” (Nancy Schwalb) Liberal braille: Read my pips: Mo’ new taxes. (Jeff Contompasis) Hereto hetero: Just now coming out. (Chris Doyle) Purple Rain Urinal Prep: Specially developed for testing the royal wee. (John McCooey, Rehoboth Beach, Del.) [This one would have worked this week — but, alas, it’s off the market.] Mean amen: “Damn right!” (Brad Alexander, Wanneroo, Australia) Thermos mothers: They insulate their children against any potential bit of trouble. (Carol Ostrow, Laurel, Md.) Open? Nope: What Marianne said to Newt. (Dave Zarrow, Reston, Va.) [That year, Newt Gingrich married his aide Callista Bisek, with whom he had been having a six-year affair while married to Marianne. In an interview with Esquire, Marianne said Newt had proposed that she just tolerate his mistress; Marianne got a divorce.] AD Republican presidential debate — Undateable, crippled inebriates: An unusually biased program description on the TV Guide channel. (Jason Russo, Annandale, Va.) Reaganomics magic reason: How the 1 percent explain that giving them more money helps the economy. (Jason Russo) Yoda day-o: “Come the daylight, go home me want to.” (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.) Colonist coin-slot: The cleavage that resulted when Yankees got too big for their breeches. (Phyllis Reinhard, East Fallowfield, Pa.) Sheesh, she’s “he”: The sudden realization that your date is a transvestite. (Chris Doyle) Faltered deflater: “Doctor, it’s been more than four hours …” (Denise Sudell, Cheverly, Md., a First Offender) Constipation inaction post: Oversharing on Facebook. (Larry Yungk, Arlington, Va.) And Last: The Style Invitational ha to intestinal levity: Another poop joke gets ink. (John Holder, Charlotte) AD And Even Laster: Lunatic fringe fecal grin unit: Euphemism for Style Invitational Losers. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis) The rule of dumb*: The stupid questions of Week 1384 *A headline submitted by several people for this week’s results, but was already the headline for another stupid-thing contest in 2003 Lord knows, it’s easy to say stupid things. But it’s harder to cleverly say stupid things. And this week we have 42 of them in the results of Week 1384, which sought stupid questions, “especially ones reflecting Our Current Situation.” Too many people to credit individually asked if their masks made them look fat — instead, I used Kyle Hendrickson’s more general “Do you want to know if you look fat in that …?” It was exciting to discover lots of new*almost new names among this week’s Losers — including all three runners-up — as well as one very well known old name: an honorable mention for (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge, Va.), who was the Invitational’s most famous and successful entrant in its early years, even prompting The Post to run a long article about him in the Sunday Style section, in a 1995 spoof of big magazine profiles that aim to discover the real person behind the celebrity. Chuck stopped entering the Invite many years ago but has continued to attend numerous Loser parties, invite us to see performances of his one-act plays, and stay in touch on Facebook. Keep Inviting, Chuck! AD But our Losers’ Circle this week boasts three welcome squirts of fresh blood: Okay, Kevin Dopart wins the whole contest for the thirtieth time. But it’s just the second blot of Invite ink for second-place Loser Bill Bouyer of Florida, who just debuted with a horse name two weeks ago (Chant x Real Quiet = Make Up Your Mind!) and this week asked blithely, “Anyone want to carpool over with me to the testing site?” So that means that Bill, who got his first-ink FirStink air “freshener” last time and the “ear guards” as this week’s second-place gag prize, still hasn’t won a dang Loser magnet. Keep trying, Bill — just be an eensy bit less funny. And in third place is a genuine First Offender: Paul Duffy, who with "“Why are my neighbor’s black-eyed Susans staring at me?” either playfully evokes the creeping madness produces by months of covid-mandated isolation or is just a leeetle bit paranoid. I mean, everyone knows that it’s white baneberry that’s staring at us. Paul gets his choice of a Loser mug or our Whole Fools Grossery Bag along with his FirStink. Compared with Bill and Paul, Marli Melton is an old hand at the Invite. Her 13th blot of ink, and her second “above the fold,” is a gloriously terrible pickup line: “Don’t you think I look a lot more manly without that stupid mask?” AD We also have two more First Offenders this week, Lil Tompkins and Wendy Sheng. I hope they’re all back to get the real prizes. Losers onstage! A real stage! See the Riccardis Saturday evening If you missed the fabulously hilarious cabaret show by Losers Sandy and Richard Riccardi in Baltimore last summer, here’s a chance to see them in concert without even paying to park: Saturday evening, June 13, at 8 p.m., they’ll be performing their parodies and other funny songs onstage — in front of an empty house — at White Horse Black Mountain in Asheville, N.C., where they’ve recently relocated from California. It’s free but there’s a way to send them some bucks, which the Riccardis will share with the “really starving” venue. Sandy, who’s gotten Invite ink with several of her videos done with her hub the pianist — like this “Les Miz” parody from this past December — just posted what might be her best parody yet: “Bunker Baby,” a taunt at Our Courageous Leader, to “Broadway Baby” from the musical “Follies.” I hope she’ll do it Saturday night! --- And now, on to judging Week 1385, our contest to slightly change a place name and describe the new place. I just counted the entries: 2,350. I should call it The Burden of Atlas. I’ll no doubt bring a big vat of ink to you next Thursday. Meanwhile, you have several more days to work on Week 1387, the contest to delete one or more (consecutive) letters from a movie title. And a week after that for this week’s anagram “entities.” I’ll let you stop for a couple of hours to watch Sandy and Richard. ====================================================================== WEEK 1389, published June 21, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1389: Atlas Mugged The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s geography puns and new TankaWanka contest “Infinitum,” a work by artist Ben Sack of Leesburg, Va. With another twist on geography — a pun on “Tiananmen Square” — Ben is this week's Style Invitational Lose Cannon winner, and a First Offender to boot. “Infinitum,” a work by artist Ben Sack of Leesburg, Va. With another twist on geography — a pun on “Tiananmen Square” — Ben is this week's Style Invitational Lose Cannon winner, and a First Offender to boot. (Ben Sack) By Pat Myers June 18, 2020 at 4:20 p.m. EDT I’m going to tell you: I really didn’t care much for about 2,250 of the entries to Week 1385 of The Style Invitational, the contest to slightly alter a place name and describe the new place. I’d look at whole pages of my master list of entries (I sorted them alphabetically this week, so individual Losers’ submissions were scattered all over the list) and I wouldn’t check off anything to add to my shortlist: So, so many of the descriptions were overly obvious, or humorless, or strained in a mighty effort to be clever. I went so far as to send two extra pictures to Eddie, the Invite’s layout guy for the print paper, in case we had to fill up the page because there wouldn’t be enough good entries. But — and regular readers of The Style Conversational know where I’m going here — those 2,250 entries were irrelevant. Because I’d received 2,350 entries. AD And once I’d heartlessly said “thank you very much” to the also-rans and sent them on their way, I realized that I had at least 100 clever, funny, novel wordplays to choose from (and about half of them destined to be robbed of ink. Yes, of course, all of your non-inking entries were in that second half). So yesterday I told Eddie, “Never mind,” and filled the page to brimming with 46 place names in the results of Week 1385 — four of them, including the winner, by First Offenders. I had bounced a list of about 60 names off my predecessor, the Czar, to help make the final cuts. It was an easy choice to name the winner, though: “Tea ‘n’ a Mint Square,” which, according to one X.J., is a lovely park where nothing bad has ever happened. Some years ago, the Royal Consort and I hosted a high school exchange student from Shenzhen, China; we learned during her year with us that she (and likely her parents) had no idea of what had happened there in 1989. (She now lives and works in California.) And what a pleasant surprise to discover that it was by a First Offender, Ben Sack of Leesburg, Va. AD Last night, I Googled his name and discovered that the thirtyish Ben is an artist of renown, with gallery representation, solo shows, the whole schmear — and with such fascinating artworks: meticulous yet fantastical pen-and-ink renderings of dense, towering cities in aerial view. Here’s how he describes the work “Infinitum” (2016) at the top of this page: “It’s a kind of rhapsody on a metropolitan theme. Massive buildings drawn minutely, a meditation and play upon perspective and the infinities it opens. Each building a note, the roads a rhythm, a symphony of dots and dashes tying histories together and bridging rivers of time.” Yeah. And speaking of rhythm and dots and dashes, catch this entrancing time-lapse video from his website, set to Saint-Saens’s “Danse Macabre.” In an email this morning, Ben noted a previous Invite connection — his parents are friends with Losers Mark and Claudia Raffman. Small town! AD Our three runners-up this week aren’t First Offenders, but almost: It’s the fifth blot of ink, and the first “above the fold,” for Ed Scarbrough, who sent up his own home base, Germantown, Md., into Germ Man Town to honor Dr. Fauci. And just the third for Ken Liss (Ohaha, Nebraska, where they’re slow to get the joke); his second was also a runner-up, the song pun “Ranger ops keep pollen on my head.” In fact, it falls to Ryan Martinez to be the veteran of this week’s Losers’ Circle; Ryan, who’s still in his rookie year, gets Ink No. 8 with Napless, connecting the Italian and Floridian Napleses. (Sorry, the many of you who did the Nipples, Italy, joke.) What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood told me he also liked the four top winners, and also singled out Alpacastan, hiding place of Osama bin Llama (Gregory Koch); Bantucket, no limericks allowed! (Gary Crockett); Cyberia, where Putin banishes ineffective trolls and hackers (Ray Gallucci, Chris Murphy); Fucson, “pronounced Foo-sahn!” (Jesse Aronson); and Pencilvania, the nation’s No. 2 tourist destination (Danielle Nowlin, Pia Palamidessi). Don’t Go There: Unprintables. Alas, this week I didn’t single out any entries that would have gotten ink if The Post didn’t have those pesky taste standards. You got Tittsburgh; you’ve got Awphucket, R.I. Nah. AD The headline for this column, “Atlas Mugged,” was submitted by both Chris Doyle and Jeff Contompasis. Tanka gas*: This week’s new contest *Headline by Danielle Nowlin from 2015 In November 2015, a California police officer pulled over a car that was creeping along at 24 mph in a 35 mph zone — then noticed that nobody was driving it. The cop didn't give the Google Autonomous Vehicle a ticket; after all, as Nan Reiner noted in her winning TankaWanka poem shortly afterward, the car was white. (Zandr Milewski) In November 2015, a California police officer pulled over a car that was creeping along at 24 mph in a 35 mph zone — then noticed that nobody was driving it. The cop didn't give the Google Autonomous Vehicle a ticket; after all, as Nan Reiner noted in her winning TankaWanka poem shortly afterward, the car was white. (Zandr Milewski) Google self-driving car pulled over for driving too slowly, impeding traffic California fuzz Stopped a car, and found it was Driving by itself. Gave a warning, didn’t cite. Need I say the car was white? (Nan Reiner, Boca Raton, Fla., 2015) Style Invitational humor that plays off that week’s headlines can be ephemeral, something that leaves you scratching your head a few weeks later, wondering what already forgotten event it was referring to. But as Nan’s Inkin’ Memorial-winning TankaWanka II entry illustrates, some “news” just keeps on going. Holy moly, do you think you have enough subject matter right now for a five-line verse? AD The specifications for what we’re calling TankaWanka are spelled out in the instructions: 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. (I can be a bit flexible about what’s a syllable; “aren’t,” for example, could be one or two, depending on what you need.) At least two of the lines must rhyme with each other; I’d figured that those two should be the final two, serving as a punchline, but we’ve had many inking TankaWanka that rhymed other lines. Besides Nan’s winner, here are some inking entries from our three previous TankaWanka contests. You can see full, paywall-free sets of results by searching for “Tanka” on the Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. Then click on one of the links on the right side of that row (plain text or PDF). Or see them on The Post’s pages from the links below. Please forgive the excess line spacing within the verses; there’s still no way to overrule that on this new publishing system that The Post is still developing (I use a different system on the Invite itself). AD A sampling From Week 1095, November 2014: The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: On “Gamergate,” harassment of women in the gaming world: Gamer dweebs all say Girls are not supposed to play. Hey, guys: Get a clue. We have learned what we can do With our joysticks, without you. (Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.) 2nd place: Midterm votes are done: Optimism’s fading fast That the folks who won Somehow will — unlike the last — See that more than gas gets passed. (Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.) 3rd place: Sunni on Shia, Russian troops in Crimea, Ebola, ISIS, Worldwide crisis and drama — As per Fox: Thanks, Obama! (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) The conservative Wing of the Catholic Church Was left in the lurch. The libs are ecstatic in Pope Francis’s Vatican. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) In Eastern Ukraine The Russians foment trouble Surreptitiously. They’re hiding their mischief well — Says Putin: “Donetsk, don’t tell.” (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) Fake classes for jocks At UNC Chapel Hill? Imagine our shock That (pick any college name) Was not busted for the same. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) Sarah Palin hopes To run for office again. The GOP needs, So she says, to have “more guts.” (What they don’t need is more nuts.) (Chris Doyle) And though I am on record as vowing that no “hot air” jokes about Congress, etc., will get ink in The Style Invitational, Kevin Dopart got this one in. (But that’s it! No more!) Defective air bags In cars across the country Pose a threat for some. But the air bags you should fear Are those elected this year. (Kevin Dopart) From Week 1148, December 2015 3rd place: Coywolf, coyote-wolf hybrid, sees population boom Wolf, in search of mate, Struck out, then said, “You know what? Coyotes look great!” Fairy tale changes wryly When Riding Hood meets Wile E. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) 2nd place: Nationals lose manager choice over too-low offer “Bud Black is our guy! He can run our pitching staff!” But they made a gaffe With their offer so mulish — Penny-wise and mound-foolish. (Perry Beider, Silver Spring, Md.) Asian leaders meet China’s Xi Jinping And Taiwan’s Ma Ying-jeou met; There should be an ad: “Spacious meeting room to let — The historic Ma-Xi pad.”(Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) From Week 1231, July 2017 4th place Superhero films Keep making box office news. Why? Not hard to see:We wish our troubles could be Wrapped up in a great “S” cape. (Perry Beider, Silver Spring, Md.) 2nd place “Hello, Cabinet! Tell me how much you love me!” Each of them complied. Thought: Having fewer suck-ups Might produce fewer … organizational failures. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Cabinet meeting, Filled with yes-men all bleating Fealty to their Don. You suck up to El Jefe Or land in Deep Covfefe. (Nan Reiner) ‘Millions doubt global warming’: “Science” says, “It’s hot!” So ’14’s “the hottest!” first, Then ’15 topped that, Then, for heat, ’16’s the worst! See? They can’t keep their facts straight! (Elden Carnahan, Laurel, Md.) So go for it — and don’t forget the other contest that’s running, to pair a word or phrase with its anagram and make it the name of a business, product, etc. Like “Legato Gelato.” Lay 'em on me! ====================================================================== WEEK 1390, published June 28, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1390: Thinning the herd The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s grandfoals, the new contest, and our new set of Loser Magnets Bob Staake's original take for the “No 'Bility' magnet. I decided that we'd better go with something less violent and more celebratory. I was fine with being depicted as a Sarah Huckabee Sanders look-alike, though. Bob Staake's original take for the “No 'Bility' magnet. I decided that we'd better go with something less violent and more celebratory. I was fine with being depicted as a Sarah Huckabee Sanders look-alike, though. By Pat Myers June 25, 2020 at 4:51 p.m. EDT Add to list Today’s results of the 15th annual Style Invitational “grandfoals” contest (Week 1386) are, like those from the “foal” contest four weeks earlier, contain dozens of clever wordplays selected from hundreds of clever wordplays among thousands of, um, entries. As in past years, the grandfoal entries numbered around 2,000, about half the entry field for the first contest, which this year featured 100 winners of the Kentucky Derby, dating back to 1875. (I hope you’re back in September, when we’ll do it all over again with the usual breeding pool, this year’s crop of Triple Crown nominees, in conjunction with the postponed Derby.) The task of judging the 2,000 entries — and before it, the 4,000 — has been made immeasurably more manageable for me by the generosity and great skill of Loser Jonathan Hardis, a physicist for the National Institute of Standards and Technology who each year takes my raw list combining all the entries (but without the Losers’ names), runs a program he designed, and returns it to me a few hours later with the combinations for each “parent” horse grouped together and changed into a consistent format, no matter what crazy way the entrant wrote it. (In general, the Losers have become much better in following the asked-for format, and for that we both thank you greatly.) To say that Jonathan went Above and Beyond — even discounting the fact that he’s nuts to do this favor at all — is wild understatement. For example, he’s so used to Losers’ misspelling the parent names that he directed his program to anticipate them. AD For instance, Jonathan explains what he did with the grandfoal entries for “Cairopractor” (American Pharoah x Carry Back): “I had set up the match on Cairopractor to be: C[hairo]{3,6}pract[aeo]r. In other words, even if [the Loser’s] spell check corrected the entry to “chiropractor,” or someone scrambled the letters in “airo, or ended the word with -ar or -er, all of those variants were going to match.” BUT that still wasn’t enough to meet the challenge from the Loser who, in five separate entries, went with “Cairoproctor.” (The same entrant, however, did notice he’d written “Oprah Wind-Flee” instead of “Wind-Free” and sent a correction.) “Now, thanks to that mystery person,” Jonathan noted, “the match is now: C[hairo]{3,6}pr[ao]ct[aeo]r.” Hey, people, how about just spelling the names right? Looking up who wrote which entry is one of the last steps in the judging process, after I’ve made my picks. And so I was delighted that I’d chosen one of Jonathan’s own entries, “Stubble Stubble x Tank Array = Rubble Rubble,” to finish in second place, for Jonathan’s 65th blot of all-time Invite ink. (I know it’s going to break his heart that this week’s second prize, the socks with a horse hoof motif, got delayed or lost in transit and I had to order them from China all over again, which means they probably won’t mosey up to my mailbox for another month.) AD Jonathan has been entering the Invite for about a decade, but only sporadically; he’s never had more than a handful of inking entries in a year. This week’s winner, on the other hand, goes back to Week 104 (1995): Steve Fahey ran up the lion’s share of his 192 blots during the Invite’s Czarist era, returning to regular Loserdom only recently after retiring from his long career as a sports medicine physician at the University of Maryland. What appealed to me most about his winning entry, “Avast! Waistland x Make Up Your Mind! = Bulge 'n’ Waffle” — in addition to the fact that no one else sent an entry even resembling it — was the switch of “waffle” not just in meaning but in part of speech, from noun to verb. The remaining members of this week’s Losers circle are an old hand at horse breeding and a brand-new one: Harvey Smith has gotten ink almost every year since 2005, but just a few at a time, and almost always for horse names — including “Spend a Buck x Forward Pass = Get a Quarter Back” in this year’s foal contest. This time he scores with that rarefied genre of Invite drollery, the bris joke, “Discount Mohel x Coupon Quipper = 80% Off.” And Hannah Seidel made a splash just three weeks ago when she got two blots of ink as a First Offender in Week 1383′s Questionable Journalism contest. She still hasn’t won an honorable-mention magnet. and instead must choose between the Grossery Bag and the Loser Mug for “Au! Au! Au! x Extremely Average = Oh. Oh. Oh.” Hannah’s entry is what I call an operational name: Horse A x Horse B = Modification of A or B. There were surprisingly few foal entries in this form in Week 1382; we have a number of them this week. Another is this one from George Smith: Flatley Denied x “Mr. Prez” Is Fine = “Mr. Prez” is Lyin. AD What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood thought we had a very good crop of grandfoals this year. He liked all the top winners and also singled out Francis Canavan’s ““Mr. Prez” Is Fine x Avast! Waistland = BLOTUS”; Aloha, Damn’d Spot x If Only I Had TP! = Wipeout (Lee Graham); Bro x Play NYSE = Broke (Jonathan Jensen); Cat’s MeOW x “Mr. Prez” Is Fine = Purrs Before Swine (Laurie Brink); and another Au entry, Extremely Average x Au! Au! Au! = So So-So (Pamela Love). Among the 61 entries getting ink this week, I showed a few variations on a single joke, like “Flush in the Pan” by Eric Nelkin and “Flash in the Pun” by Rob Huffman. both playing off One-Hit Wonder. But here’s a bigger set: The foal Hawaii 5-0 (Kauai King x Shut Out) was used in 81 entries — well shy of the (surprise!) most fertile Toilet Trouble (Macbeth II x Bubbling Over), who bred 183 foals. But many of those 81 played on the signature tagline of the TV police procedural of 1968-80 and revived in 2010. AD Six Losers submitted the straightforward “Give It Arrest x Hawaii 5-0 = Book ’Em, Danno,” though just one had the proper comma, and none, interestingly, went with “Book Him” or “Book ’im,” which was what Detective Steve McGarrett was really directing his assistant; he was arresting individual bad guys, not rounding ’em up en masse. See this montage of video clips.) And then the variations: Hawaii 5-0 x Coupon Quipper = Book ’Em Danno (Dave Letizia adds a play on “book”) Hawaii 5-0 x “Mr. Prez” Is Fine = Book’em Donno (Rob Wolf) Hawaii 5-0 x MeTarSand, YouThane = Book ‘em, Than-o (Richard Franklin) Aloha, Damn’d Spot x Hawaii 5-0 = Book ‘Em, Banquo (Gina Smith) 28 002 Hawaii 5-0 x Aloha, Damn’d Spot = Book ’em Damno (Bill Dorner) 028 015 Hawaii 5-0 x Dollar General = Buck ’em, Dan-o (Jon Gearhart) AD 028 017 Ex-prez Checkout x Hawaii 5-0 = CheckbookHimDano (Pamela Love) 028 018 Hawaii 5-0 x Extremely Average = Hug ’em, Dano (Lee Graham; I didn’t get this one) Hawaii 5-0 x Make Up Your Mind! = Book ’em? Dunno. (George Thompson, Jeff Contompasis. This made my shortlist.) Man of La Mantra x Hawaii 5-0 = Danno Quixote (David Peckarsky. This did also.) Hawaii 5-0 x One Hit Wonder = Book em, Don Ho (Frank Mann) MeTarSand, YouThane x Hawaii 5-0 = Him Danno (Mary McNamara) Hawaii 5-0 x Purple Drain = Book ’m, Drano (Jonathan Hardis, Mary Kappus, J.D. Berry; oh, there’s one entry that uses the comma and avoids using the contraction for “them”) Besides “Danno” puns, there were numerous other notable non-inking entries using “Hawaii 5-0.” Among them: Hawaii 5-0 x Make Up Your Mind! = Pick Your Poi, Son (Chris Doyle) AD Hawaii 5-0 x Liberate [state]! = D.C. 51 (Mike Hammer) Hawaii 5-0 x Au! Au! Au! = LuAuAuAu! (Steve Price) Hawaii 5-0 x Avast! Waistland = Jack Lard (Rob Wolf) Eye for an Eye x Hawaii 5-0 = Torah! Torah! Torah! (J.D. Berry) Hawaii 5-0 x Stubble Stubble = The Fuzz (Jeff Contompasis) Hawaii 5-0 x Stubble Stubble = 5 O’Clock Shadow (Jonathan Jensen, Jeff Shirley, Michelle Christophorou) Hawaii 5-0 x Get a Quarter Back = $49.75 (Roy Ashley) Will & Grace x Hawaii 5-0 = Ampersandy (Pamela Love) So we’ll definitely be back with another run around the track in September. Whether we’ll also have grandfoals — to make four horse contests in the same year: Well, we’ll see. Speaking of novel pairings: This week’s contest, Week 1390 I’m not a math person, as they say, but I think I counted 21 previous Invitational contests in which the Czar or I presented a list of a dozen or more random items and asked the Loser Community to explain how any two are alike or different. I counted from the “Differences” page of Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List, that indispensable time-suck, the Great Repository of Loseriana. AD If you’re new to this contest or would like a jolt of inspiration or just chuckles, click on any of the links on the far right side of the chart; those will show you the results of each contest listed, in either plain text or a PDF of the print or Web version of The Post’s page. And I’ll leave you this weekend with a few random classics from over the years. Beethoven, stone deaf, created serious music; Howard Stern, tone deaf, creates Sirius mucus. (Howard Mantle) XL jeggings: Big waistband width. BuzzFeed quizzes: Big bandwidth waste. (Jeff Contompasis) The difference between the next Redskins season and Ivory Soap: With the soap, at the end the owner will end up with a ring. An all-you-can-eat buffet and three inches of snow: In D.C., there’s a good chance that either will clog vital arteries. (Mike Gips) AD Clown Shoe Friday: Flopsy. Boris Johnson’s hair: Mopsy. Jockey shorts: Cotton tail. (Jesse Frankovich) That last one? Yeah, I said “any two.” But if you’re not so good at counting to 2, and you have something that good? Go for it. ====================================================================== WEEK 1391, published July 5, 2020 Style Conversational Week: Working out ‘gymgerly’ The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest, results and cartoon Bob Staake's first draft to illustrate the neologism “gymgerly,” referring to the abundance of caution used by people returning to the newly reopened gym. Bob Staake's first draft to illustrate the neologism “gymgerly,” referring to the abundance of caution used by people returning to the newly reopened gym. By Pat Myers July 2, 2020 at 5:08 p.m. EDT Add to list It was certainly eye-catching, drawing the reader into the picture. I’d sent The Style Invitational’s almost-forever illustrator, Bob Staake, the three neologisms that Loser Duncan Stevens had supplied for the contest he suggested and became Week 1391, for neologisms without a C, O, V, I or D (though Duncan had slyly defined all three in terms of the pandemic). It seemed to me that “gymgerly” — how one handles the equipment at the newly reopened Planet Fitness — lent itself most to a cartoon, and Bob agreed, sending me the sketch above. I loved Bob’s funny ideas on how one would act gymgerly — bench-pressing a giant barbell with your gloves fingertips; lofting yourself with a balloon to avoid contact with the treadmill. But I didn’t like the woman, even if her butt crack were covered (no way would The Post have printed it otherwise). For one thing, she wasn’t doing anything gymgerly; in fact, she was dragging a towel and seemed to be barefoot. And for another, face it, she was drawn to be exaggeratedly curvaceous in the hipsies, which faced the reader below a waist that would make Barbie look like Rosie O’Donnell. AD Bob explained that the woman was there not to be a third person acting gymgerly, but as a storytelling device to draw attention to the other two others. Bob explained that she’s “on the way to her Zumba class as she notices a guy who can bench-press 600 with his index fingers alone. … Having her pass by is both done to provide story line for the reader to fill in (what we good illustrators try to do in our work) as well as aesthetically fill an otherwise dead area from top to bottom.” Meanwhile, after Bob produced the revised sketch, I showed the first one to my predecessor, the Czar of The Style Invitational. “He’s right,” the Czar said of the inclusion of Zumba Woman. “Just lose the butt crack and you are fine.” So had he still been wielding the Scepter of Invite, you might well have seen the cartoon above atop your trusty Week 1391. A happy solution: Bob's final, with both characters acting “gymgerly." A happy solution: Bob's final, with both characters acting “gymgerly." (For The Washington Post) Bob and I have been working together virtually every week for the past 16 1*2 years, he always figures out a way to produce a creative and effective solution to address whatever concerns I had, even when he disagrees with them. My suggestion had been to have the woman wear a giant shield, big gloves, etc., but Bob knew that would be crowded and confusing in the small dimensions of the cartoon on the print page. Instead he ended up dropping the “story line” woman, and instead put the woman on the treadmill (with an extra balloon, for emphasis). AD ADVERTISING Now let’s just hope that barbell keeps bouncing off the guy’s fingers. Selected shortened subjects*: The results of Week 1387 *Non-inking headline by Kevin Dopart Week 1387 was another Duncan Stevens suggestion guaranteed to bring good results. The challenge was to “delete one or more letters (they must be consecutive) from the middle of a movie title, and describe the resulting new movie,” and the response was enormous: I counted 2,350 entries from 276 people. It was the kind of contest that benefited from sorting the entries alphabetically: That way I could look at all the plays on, say, “Gone With the Wind” at once. I also saved time by not looking at the hundred or so entries that began with a parenthesis, marking the deletion of first letters or words of the title; could “from the middle of a movie title” possibly be understood as including beginning of the movie title? Hint: no. So scratch all those. As well as the entries that dropped the last letters (sorry, this otherwise good one: “HUG(o): From the people who brought you Nightmare on Elm Street, a pandemic horror flick,” (Bill O’Brien) and those that ignored the direction “they must be consecutive.” AD I’m relieved that I asked for the full name of the movie, with the deleted letters set off by parentheses; most of the time it would have been clear without it, but not in the case of FECES, “F (ive easy pi) ECES” (Brendan Beary), or perhaps ROY’S BABY, “RO (osemary) Y’S BABY” (Jesse Frankovich), or THE CAN QUEEN, “THE (afri) CAN QUEEN” (as in the Kim Kardashian story, by First Offender Mark Nocera). I think the all-caps bold contrasting with lowercase lightface works in both the sans serif font in the print paper and the serif one (Georgia, I believe) online. I used parentheses around the deleted letters because brackets looked too much like lowercase L’s in sans serif. My “shortlist” ran on and on this week; I’d marked about a dozen entries as my very favorite, then left more than a hundred inkworthy entries in the dust as I filled the print page with 31 entries, then added a dozen others online. It’s the seventh Invite win for Sue Lin Chong, for THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD (st) ILL: Prequel of “The Three Months and Counting When the Earth Stood Ill,” but it was her first since all the way back in 2006. Sue Lin was one of the big stars of the Czarist era — she has close to 200 blots of ink — but took a long leave from the Invite until just recently. I’m thrilled she’s back. AD Another Star From Way Back — in fact, one of the few Losers to have scored Invite ink in every one of our 28 years — is Hall of Famer Stephen Dudzik in second place (FOUR (wed) DINGS AND A FUNERAL: A cautionary tale of what happens when you’re not careful with the mob boss’s car). Steve also, as far as I know, is the only Loser to have invited a tableful of fellow Losers to his wedding; it was just before my time, but I’ve visited Steve and the lovely Lequan several times when they’ve hosted Loser holiday parties out in Olney, Md. And one more Old Days veteran in this week’s Losers Circle: Fourth place goes to Frank Mullen III (of Ill.), who’s blotted up 49 inks since his debut way back in Week 438. Which makes third-place finisher Frank Mann, who’s been Losing for almost a decade now, a virtual greenhorn. On the other hand, I was jazzed to see last week’s First Offender Jeff Rackow back with more ink, and fellow noob Hannah Seidel, a runner-up last week, finally earning a magnet after a Fir Stink and a Loser Mug. I’ll continue sending out our 2019-20 honorable-mention magnets, “Too-Weak Notice” and “Certificate of (de) Merit,” until they run out. Then we should be good to go with the new “Punderachiever” and “No ‘Bility”; those of you regular Losers who’ve been forgoing the magnets and snail mail during the pandemic, thanks again — I’ll make sure you eventually get both new magnets for your future ink. AD What Doug Doug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood once again liked all four of the top winners (we worked together for many years on the Style section copy desk, and usually were on the same wavelength) and also singled out Mr. Sith Goes to Washington (Andrew Wells-Dang), No Count Old Men (Gary Crockett), Petty Woman (Jerry Birchmore) and “Ro (semar) y’s Baby (Jesse Frankovich using Eternal Fodder Judge Moore) made me laugh.” Missed the I-Rating — Unprintables from Week 1387: A few that wouldn’t have made it past the Invitational Taste Police. L (awrence of ar) ABIA: A British lieutenant helps the desert tribes tend to the toes of their camels. (Brendan Beary, my favorite of half a dozen with the same title) THE (40) 0 BLOWS: A young Parisian struggles with an unsuccessful love life. (Duncan Stevens, in a Convo-Only-designated entry) AD Also from Duncan: DEEP (Thr) OAT: A woman finds intense pleasure in swallowing breakfast cereal. And a Convo-only from Tom Witte: MARY POP(pin) S: A spinster is determined to lose her virginity. Hey, how about this week’s contest? If you’ve read even a few Style Invitational columns, you’ll have a feel for our neologism contests. Usually the new term is a pun on an existing word or name, with as clever an funny a definition as you can make. It’s a plus if the word could be used in the real world, and it’s great if you include the word in a funny sentence. If you’re new to the Invite, please take a few minutes to see some of the literally thousands of words we’ve added to the Loser Lexicon over our 27-plus years. One way (no paywall) to do that is to look at the “Words” page of the Master Contest List at NRARS.org, the Losers’ own website, then click on some of the links to the results on the right column of the chart. Not all the dozens of contests there are neologisms, but they’re easy to find in the descriptions. Then lay ‘em on me — but remember: No C’s, O’s, V’s, I’s or D’s. ====================================================================== WEEK 1392, published July 12, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1392: Devilish details The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s caption contest and anagram results Two honorable-mention captions from Week 1256 in 2017 that played on small details of Bob Staake's cartoons. Two honorable-mention captions from Week 1256 in 2017 that played on small details of Bob Staake's cartoons. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers July 9, 2020 at 5:13 p.m. EDT Add to list One of the differences between The Style Invitational’s cartoon caption contests — like Week 1392 today — and that of the New Yorker is that we run several entries, usually six to 10, for each cartoon. Not only does that practice give the Loser Community more chances of getting ink, but it lets the reader enjoy seeing a wide variety of interpretations of a single picture. (And multiply that by the four or five cartoons we run at a time.) It’s not too often, I concede, that any single caption that gets Invite ink could serve as a funny stand-alone cartoon. But that’s immaterial when the reader understands it as an ingenious response to “What is this thing about?” And even more to see half a dozen ingenious responses from all over the map. Because it’s fun to see the variety of approaches, I always encourage Bob to include ambiguous elements in his cartoons. Could that animal be seen as a dog and a bear? Could that tan-faced person be seen as either Nancy Pelosi or Muriel Bowser? What are those giant spots in the window? And running a list of entries lets me include a few that focus on small details in the pictures, often details that a reader might not even notice at first glance. Those entries don’t tend to win the whole contest, but they’re fun when they appear farther down the list of honorable mentions. At the top of this column are two HMs, both from Week 1256 in 2017, that make a reader say, “Oh! I didn’t even see that! Hah!” That approach would lose effect if I were to run several at a time along that line, so it’s not a surefire way to get ink (everyone knows that is only by Suck Up + Bribe). But you do get to submit 25 different entries, so maybe a joke about an obscure detail might work for one of the four cartoons in Week 1392. AD By the way, did you know that you can buy the original sketch ($80) or pen-and-ink art ($125) for one of Bob’s many hundreds of cartoons? He has a special link for Invite readers: www.bobstaake.com*si. FWIW, the other inking entries for those two cartoons: Picture A: Third place: Today’s death metal music goes right over Harvey’s head. (Jon Gearhart) It turns out that it wasn’t “his master’s voice” that kept Nipper staring at the Victrola. (David Garratt) Winthrop cleverly repurposed his old organ grinder. (Kevin Dopart) Contemplating Nana’s disappearance, Chuck suddenly realized why the device was called a gramophone. (Rob Huffman) Reginald occasionally lets his skeletons out of the closet for a dance party. (Tom Witte) Armand really wanted a Victrola, but could only afford a Vitriola. (Jeff Hazle) AD “Ethel, I said I wanted to hear ’76 TROMbones!' " (Hildy Zampella) Edison was irked by the ribbing — and femuring, skulling and pelvising — that he received over his new invention, the bonograph. (Christy Tosatto) PICTURE B: The winner of the Lose Cannon: Judge Moore regretted hitting on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. (Mark Raffman) “But Blair said that when I was in town I should look up his sister.” (Frank Osen) “And if you think this is weird, let me show you what’s in my briefcase.” (Duncan Stevens) Once again he lost his head and panted after the first pretty girl to walk by. (Dudley Thompson) “Baby, I’m head over heel for you.” (Joanne Free; Edward Gordon) “It’s called extreme ventriloquism — anyone can throw their voice . . .” (Jeff Shirley) “Madam, I was not staring at your chest. I am a leg man.” (Andrew Hoenig; Ward Kay) AD ADVERTISING Bill should have read the consent form for his knee replacement more carefully. (John Hutchins) No one was fooled by the guy shooting upskirt photos once the head fell off his dummy. (Tom Witte) “You should see my sister — she wears her heart on her sleeve.” (Steve Fahey) “Hey, baby, show me what you got!” yelled the knee jerk, hoping to get a reaction. (Art Grinath) Fred lost his malpractice suit after the judge ruled that his face functioned perfectly. (Dave Prevar) Greg suddenly realized why women weren't interested in him: His jacket was missing half of its lapels. (Duncan Stevens) The “Big Suit” worked for David Byrne but not so well for Peter Dinklage. (Bill Hilton, a First Offender) And Bill gets his second blot of ink this very week — as a runner-up. “If you see me walking down the street* My head on my thigh, my chin by my feet* Walk on by …” (Tom Witte) AD Meanwhile: I say it in the introduction to the contest and on the entry form: I’d like to judge all the Picture A entries together, then the B’s, etc. I could make you send them on different forms, but instead I’m asking only that you format each one like this: Picture A: Text of caption Picture C: Some other caption Picture A: Another caption NOT: Picture A a caption for A another caption for A OR 1. Picture A.: etc. Or (Picture A): etc. Don’t bother using boldface, italics, tabs, underlines, etc. None of that makes it through the entry form. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, specifically the inferior vena cava. BRING US SASS — A NAME: BUSINESS ANAGRAMS* from Week 1388 *Too-long-for-print non-inking entry by Chris Doyle, who did get the honorable-mention subhead, ONE-SMIRK MONIKERS Among the most jaw-droppingly clever humor that The Style Invitational has ever run has come from its numerous anagram contests; we’ve had anagrams of the presidential inaugural oath, various Bible quotes, even the entire Gettysburg Address. (All these from a single contest; those and more here). AD Week 1388 was a shorter-form challenge, but we can add it to the classics. With a lot of new Losers, to boot. Suggested by Jeff “Losing Is a Science” Contompasis, the contest asked to combine some word or phrase plus its anagram into some sort of business, product, entity, etc. I received about 1,500 entries from 180 Losers — and ended up with a “shortlist” of more than 100 inkworthies. Because most everyone filed the entries in the format I discuss above (I didn’t even ask!), I was able to sort all the entries alphabetically, which let me compare, say, both entries for ANAL GAS LASAGNA (both good, but I used a different “anal” joke and how many can I use?) and all five (not as great) for ANEMIC CINEMA. I marked a number of entries this week “BD” (for “better definition), referring to an interesting anagram whose description sold it short; I’m considering putting them all out there for the crowdmind in a future contest. The Invite’s anagram contests are often the domain of specialists. In the earlier contest mentioned above, Jeff Contompasis offered this anagram: AD Just give yet another large bucket of ink to Jesse Frankovich this week. = Geeky objective favors King of Nuts' cheekier wit. Uh, thanks a lot, jester. And yes, though it turned out to be Yet Again Kevin Dopart who walks off with the Lose Cannon for his ALIENS*MY ANUS INSANE ASYLUM, along with many of the Usual Suspects among the honorable mentions, the rest of this week’s Losers’ Circle are babes in the Invite woods: George Thompson, who wins the Lay’s Potato Chips socks (sorry, delivery delayed until at least July 22, I’m told) with BAD TO YOU AUTO BODY, gets just his fourth blot of Invite ink this week since his debut in Week 1323, and his first above the fold; while the other two runners-up, Bill Hilton and Byron Miller, just now hop off the One Hit Wonder list with their second inks of BACHELOR CARBHOLE and PATHETIC RUSE THERAPEUTICS, respectively. They get their choice of the Whole Fools Grossery Bag or, if they want to wait a few weeks, the Loser Mug. Let me know, guys. AD OOPS* POOS: Some otherwise good entries turned out not to be valid anagrams. For example, I had to scratch “Bad ‘n Continuous Idlers, Builders and Construction: Deadlines mean nothing to us” by Legitimate Hall of Famer Frank Osen. And even my broad parameters of “business, product, organization or similar entity” couldn’t encompass someone’s good-but “Second Wave= We caved, son. The uncertainty from facing certain bad reopenings.” What pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia, in for the vacationing Ace Doug Norwood, was partial to Kevin’s winner and Bill Hilton’s runner-up, and also to the HMs BOREDOM BEDROOM (Gary Crockett), CHARGE MUCH MEGACHURCH (Frank Mann) FAKE SCAM FACE MASK (also Frank Mann) and Roy Ashley’s NOSY LOCO COP COLONOSCOPY — one of two for that anagram. NO ON: The unprintables: Some anagrams that wouldn’t pass the taste*language bar for the Invitational: AD Bordello Doorbell: One ring for liquor in the front and two rings for poker in the rear. (Laura Clairmont) Boner Draw Wonderbra: Makes the boys really notice “the girls.” (Stephen Dudzik) Presidential Rat Penis Deli: Opened nearly four years ago with abhorrent and disgusting offerings, but some people could keep eating for another four. (Sam Mertens) Urine Cans Insurance: Worried you’ll be left without a pot to piss in? They can help. (Duncan Stevens) Vagina Crosspieces Vaping Accessories: Your number one source for the most excruciatingly uncomfortable smoking accouterments. (Sam Mertens) Still Running: No-COVID neologisms No reason to wait till the Monday night, July 13, deadline to file for Week 1391, our contest for new terms that don’t include a C, O, V, I or D. No reason to rush, either; you get zero advantage on this end from sending an early entry. Except if you run out of time on Monday ... ====================================================================== WEEK 1393, published July 19, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1393: Crowdsourced? Ow, scored crud? The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s re-anagram contest and TankaWanka results Given this week's list of anagram businesses, Bob Staake offered two sketches. This one for “Face Cafe” lost out to his zany but less creepy “Irate Face Cafeteria.” Given this week's list of anagram businesses, Bob Staake offered two sketches. This one for “Face Cafe” lost out to his zany but less creepy “Irate Face Cafeteria.” By Pat Myers July 16, 2020 at 4:45 p.m. EDT Add to list To be a Loser is to deal with the injustice of life. Witness this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1393. This week’s contest builds on Week 1388, which required the Loser Community to (a) coin a funny business or product name that comprised an anagram of itself: the second half of the name had to contain all the letters in the first half; and (b) give a clever description of it. The results of Week 1388, which ran last week, are an instant classic: dozens of elegant anagrams paired with equally clever descriptions. BOREDOM BEDROOM: The worst little whorehouse in Texas. (Gary Crockett) BURLY DREAM LUMBERYARD: Shop here, ladies, and you’ll never need a stud finder. (Jonathan Jensen) And those were honorable mentions! But for all those, and for the dozens of inkworthy others that made my shortlist but missed the final cut, I also kept finding clever, funny phrases that came up short only in a description that didn’t do them justice; I’d think: “Wow, this is great but there must be some really good thing to say about it.” (This happens when I judge neologism contests as well.) And I’d mark it “BD” for “needs a better definition.” AD When I sorted the entries out for my shortlist, there were 50 of them. So the injustice? The writers of this week’s anagrams — whose names I never did look up — get no ink, no credit for them. Yet whoever takes their creations and says some cute thing about it may well get the unfabulous prize. Yup, no fair. All I can say is: Yes, you’re more than welcome to try again with your own anagram. In past “reologism” contests, some Losers did indeed up their game and score the second time around. And what about those who had the good clever anagrams + definitions that didn’t get ink last week, the ones that aren’t included in this week’s list, because their description was strong, not likely to be improved on? If they’re not too topical, hold on to them for our annual retrospective contest in December. (I’m not going to show my shortlist, but yeah, I do think you were on it, with that entry you were so proud of.) AD While I didn’t research the provenance of this week’s 50 anagrams, I did look up the names of the Losers who’d submitted the anagrams that Bob Staake chose to draw this week: Jonathan Jensen and Jon Ketzner each sent me one for IRATE FACE CAFETERIA, which became the illustration for this week’s Invite, while both Erika Ettin and George Smith both submitted FACE CAFE, with which Bob immediately grossed me out (me after looking for 0.05 seconds: “I think we’d better go with the cafeteria”). By the way, did you know you can buy the original sketch ($80) or pen-and-ink art ($125) for these or hundreds of others of Bob’s Invite cartoons? He has a special link for Invite readers: www.bobstaake.com*si. If you’re trying to recall one from years ago and need some help figuring out when it ran, you can write to me and between Bob and me we can probably track it down. Reuters block*: The TankaWanka on the news from Week 1389 *Non-inking headline by Jon Gearhart AD I swear, I wasn’t in a sour mood — well, no sourer than my usual RBF self — when I read through the approximately 1,000 entries for Week 1389, our fourth TankaWanka challenge for five-line poems on the news. But I got the sense that with the exceptions published today, plus a few more, our regular and occasional Loserbards were struggling to find the funny in Our Crazy World and Our Um Remarkable Leader, at least when it came to distributing 31 syllables over five lines and throwing a rhyme in for good measure. The most notable exception would be Lose Cannoneer Mark Raffman, who accounted for four of the 16 poems that ran today. But in what’s been an inexplicable trend lately, the rest of the Losers’ Circle — the three runners-up — are all Invite rookies (or close) from the D.C. area who’ve made a big cannonball splash in the past few weeks. In second place we present Hannah Seidel, who got her first blot of ink six weeks ago and has made it “above the fold” twice along with several honorable mentions. Taking third place we have Wendy Shang, who got her first ink in Week 1384, five weeks ago, and now has three. And in fourth place is George Thompson, the veteran of the group, who debuted in Week 1319 and today scores his fifth blot (and sixth, with the last poem in today’s lineup). But this is George’s second straight week in the Losers’ Circle; last week he scored the second-prize Lay’s Potato Chips Bag Motif Socks with his anagram BAD TO YOU AUTO BODY. When wrote to George to tell him that the socks were still on a slow boat from China, I asked how he’d gotten got to know the Invite; “I can tell you exactly,” he remembered. It was the column that reported the results of Week 1239, a movie title mashup contest. The results “were so doggone laugh-out-loud funny. Made me aspire to the creation of something clever and enjoyable like that. It took me another year and a half before I finally got around to trying my hand at it, though.” Glad he did. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood is back from seeing the sights on his week of staycation, which are suspiciously like the sights at his workspace since March, but without the sights of last week’s Invite. Anyway, Doug’s faves this week were Mark Raffman’s winner; Sam Mertens’s about Trump’s less than ecstatic reaction to his Tulsa turnout; Duncan Stevens on the ill-fated Bible-waving photo op; and George Thompson’s self-diagnosis of a deficiency of Invite ink. Monthly, month on month on month … Posties got an email from Publisher Fred Ryan this week telling us not to get ready to come back to the office around Labor Day, as announced a couple of months ago. Now we’re told that the offices most likely won’t open up again until 2021. So for now, management is letting me come downtown one Sunday each month to mail prizes, use the printer, etc., and I’ll continue that practice for a while. But I might end up turning my woodland palace, Mount Vermin, into more of a shipping center, which means that I’ll take things to the post office more regularly. Meanwhile, the new Loser magnets just arrived yesterday. I’ll start sending them out to the honorably mentioned of Week 1390, the compare*contrast contest, whose results run next Thursday. Feeling a little sketchy? Don’t forget the caption contest! You have till midnight (wherever you are, and I don’t know where you are) Monday, July 21, to write a caption, or 25, for any of the Bob Staake creations in Week 1392. Bob has no idea what he’s drawn, so help him out here. ====================================================================== WEEK 1394, published July 26, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1394: Double features The Empress of The Style Invitational on ‘2 Movies, 1 Line’ and the compare*contrast results Bob Staake's alternative sketch for this week's contest, referring to this week's example linking “King Kong” and “Sleepless in Seattle” by the Empire State Building scene. Since Bob's other sketch incorporated both movies, “Three Men and a Baby” and “Dirty Dancing,” I went with that one. Bob Staake's alternative sketch for this week's contest, referring to this week's example linking “King Kong” and “Sleepless in Seattle” by the Empire State Building scene. Since Bob's other sketch incorporated both movies, “Three Men and a Baby” and “Dirty Dancing,” I went with that one. By Pat Myers July 23, 2020 at 4:32 p.m. EDT Add to list The “Movies” sublist of the Master Contest List of Style Invitational contests requires you to scroll several times from Week 26 in 1993 (name a “political person” and the TV or movie role in which he or she could have been cast) down to Week 1387 (delete one or more letters from the middle of a movie title and describe the new movie). Some of the contests play more off the title than the content of the movie itself, but others, like today’s Week 1394, require you and the reader to be at least superficially familiar with the movie (or play or TV show). This week’s contest, suggested by 150-time Loser Hildy Zampella, is one we’ve never done before, so I can’t share any ink from a previous contest. (Hildy’s examples, though, instantly convinced me of the contest’s potential.) So instead I’ll offer a sampling of a quarter-century of movie ink that’s more than just wordplay on titles. That first contest, Week 26 in way-pre-Google 1993, was as short-form as you can get, suggesting a name of someone who could be in a movie. Some of the results were wincingly lame, such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Granny in “The Beverly Hillbillies” or as the old lady Gladys in “Laugh-In.” But the results (PDF of microfilm here) were saved by five A-B sets of photos, with the win going to one like this: Early TV star Kukla and his doppelganger, 1990s secretary of state Warren Christopher, winning Week 26 (and the only ink ever) for Loser John Mazza. Early TV star Kukla and his doppelganger, 1990s secretary of state Warren Christopher, winning Week 26 (and the only ink ever) for Loser John Mazza. (The Washington Post) Week 399, in 2001, trafficked more in gender stereotypes than I’ve ever been comfortable with, but the results were funny once you accept the premise: “Write a short film description that could persuade a woman that the guy movie he wants to see is really close to being a gal movie, or vice versa.” Here’s some of the ink: AD Third runner-up: “Das Boot” — A group of co-workers worry about water retention. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park) Second runner-up: “Steel Magnolias” — Sally Field’s kidney is ripped from her body while she is still alive! (Sandra Hull, Arlington) First runner-up: “Titanic” — Leonardo DiCaprio dies. (Joe Morse, Charlottesville) And the winner of the Orrin Hatch CD: “Bambi” — Hunters bag a 150-pound doe with a single shot. (Robin D. Grove, Pasadena, Md.) Honorable Mentions: “The Wizard of Oz” — Good-looking babe mud-wrestles with pigs. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) “Pretty Woman” — A guy finds a whore who looks exactly like Julia Roberts. (Greg Forster, Reston” “The Great Escape” — Ol’ Bedroom Eyes Steve McQueen (“Love With the Proper Stranger”) stars in this soul-searching paean to dishing the dirt. (Bruce W. Alter, Fairfax Station) AD Readers who didn’t know that “Das Boot” involves a leaky submarine, or that “The Great Escape” is about making a tunnel through earth, might not have gotten Jonathan Paul’s or Bruce Alter’s entry, and that’s the risk with contests that requires the reader to know more than what’s on the page. Now, at least, I can add links to the online version for readers seeking an explanation. --- Week 423 (2001), also from the Czarist era (though I filled in for the Czar on judging duties that year, and might have done this one), relied largely on wordplay: “ … in which you were asked to replace a character in a movie with one from another movie, and explain how the movie would change.” Fourth Runner-Up: If Ben Kingsley’s Gandhi had played Darth Vader, the Empire wouldn’t have struck back. (Joseph Romm, Washington) AD Third Runner-Up: If Renton from “Trainspotting” had played Mary Poppins, it would have taken a spoon, a lighter, a belt and a syringe to make the medicine go down. (Jessica Henig, Takoma Park) Second Runner-Up: If Phil from “Groundhog Day” had played Scarlett O’Hara, tomorrow wouldn’t have been another day. (Chris Doyle, Burke) First Runner-Up: If Marlee Matlin’s character in “Children of a Lesser God” had played Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver,” it would have made a lot more sense for her to keep wondering, “Are you talking to me?” (Mike Edens, Canoga Park, Calif.) And the winner of the can of South Carolina Potted Possum: If Flipper, from “Flipper,” had starred in “Jaws,” then after eating people he could have scooted through the water backward on his tail balancing their heads on his nose. Cool. (Russell Beland, Springfield) AD Honorable Mentions: If C3PO replaced Mariah Carey in “Glitter,” there’d be fewer complaints about robotic acting. (Ray Aragon and Cynthia Coe, Bethesda) If one of the “Porky’s” gang had starred in “Psycho,” he’d have taken the knife and just cut a little peephole in the shower curtain. (Russell Beland, Springfield) If William Wallace of “Braveheart” had played any Woody Allen character, it would have actually made sense when he ended up with the girl. (Andrea Connell, Arlington) If James Bond had played “The Man in the Iron Mask,” he would have cut the mask away with his laser pen, escaped from jail with his exploding cuff links and floated away on his underpants-that-convert-to-a-helium-balloon. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) If Miss Piggy had played Debbie in “Debbie Does Dallas,” I, for one, would have asked for my money back. (Joseph Romm, Washington) AD If John Rambo had played the lead in “Saving Private Ryan,” it would have ended with Rambo and Hitler in sneering, shirtless hand-to-hand combat. (Bob Sorensen, Herndon) If Dudley Moore’s Arthur played Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” he would’ve yelled, “Look, Stella, I’ve ripped my shirt! I’ve ripped my bloody shirt off! Isn’t that the funniest thing ever?!!” (Mark Ross, Gaithersburg) Report From Week 693 [2007], in which we [the Empress] asked for fanciful sequels to actual movies.) Fourth place: “Bonnie and Clyde II”: The troopers just keep shooting into the car for another 127 minutes. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Third place: “Snakes on a Blimp”: Hey, what’s that hissing noise … hey, what’s that BIG hissing noise? (Beth Baniszewski, Somerville, Mass.) Second place, the winner of the nostril pencil sharpener and snot key chain: “Kramer vs. Kramer: The Next Generation”: Ted and Joanna reconcile and have another son. But little Cosmo goes terribly wrong. (Drew Bennett, Alexandria) AD ADVERTISING And the Winner of the Inker: “Gandhi II”: No more Mister Nice Guy! (Andy Bassett, New Plymouth, New Zealand) “It’s a Wonderful Life for You, Maybe”: An angel shows an elderly George Bailey how much happier everyone he knows would be without the burden of taking care of him. (Beth Baniszewski) “A Brief History of Time 2: Downforce”: When Stephen Hawking is dropped off a 20-story building as the result of a David Letterman prank gone horribly wrong, his valuable brain is transplanted into the nearest available body, which happens to be that of the guest immediately before Hawking, Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Andrew Malone, Washington) “The Other 603 Commandments”: Moses sits up there on Mount Sinai taking notes about such topics as pigeon sacrifice and whether bats are kosher. Except for the slightly racy Commandments 82 through 105, which cover forbidden sexual relations, the tale is a bit short of epic. (Andrew Schneider, Fairfax) AD “Upper West Side Story”: The remaining Jets grow up and become bond traders, taking ballet classes in their off-hours. (Ira Allen, Bethesda) “Brokeback Molehill”: Even in the rural West, some traditional attitudes are softening, so Ennis’s new love interest is just no big deal. (Russell Beland) “Rocky 13”: Rocky Balboa, now 92, winds up in the same nursing home as his nemesis Clubber Lang, 87. The rivalry is reignited after their wheelchairs bump on the way to bingo. They throw some Jell-O at each other, then take a nap. (Michael Levy, Silver Spring) “You’ve Got Spam”: Kathleen breaks up with Joe and fears she’ll never love again, until she starts a new e-mail relationship with a Nigerian banker. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) Groundhog Day II”: Only the title is different. (Ben Aronin, Washington) AD And finally, Week 1029 (2013) a contest to describe the plot of a movie in a song parody (one The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: “Porky’s” to “Be Our Guest” from “Beauty and the Beast”: See a chest! See a chest! Tops are coming off with zest! We’re awaiting an R-rating When we show another breast! Lots of girls! Lots of pranks! We’ll accept your humble thanks, We are loading up the sleaze Because we only aim to please! There’s not much plot to enjoy But for every teenage boy We deliver what you need to be impressed, So bring your fake ID, You’ll holler out with glee And see a chest! See a chest! See a chest! (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) “1984” to “Getting to Know You” from “The King and I”: Getting to know you, getting to know all about you, ‘Cause we have cameras watching whatever you do; Getting to know you, we can control you quite nicely; That is precisely our plan, it’s true! Getting to know you; you’ll never feel free and easy; We are recording e-ver-y word that you say; Haven’t you noticed? Suddenly you’re feeling queasy, Because we’re pros at wiretapping your flat; Guess who taught us to do that? NSA! (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) Are you a King Kong fan — or a Bob Staake fan in general? You can buy the sketch above, or sketches ($80) or pen-and-ink art ($125) for any of hundreds of Bob’s Invite cartoons. He has a special link for Invite readers: www.bobstaake.com*si. Some linkage may occur*: The results of Week 1390 *Honorable-mention entry for Week 1120 for the same contest, by Tom Witte “I thought that Loserdom outdid itself this week,” offered Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood about the results of Week 1390, our recurring contest to compare*contrast any two items from a random list we supply. I won’t dispute Doug’s assessment; my printout of inkworthy entries in my “shortlist” ran more than eight closely spaced pages. For several years now, I’ve been compiling the list with the help of an effusion of suggestions in a thread in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group (join and the Devs will anagram your name!) and I really do shoot for a random combination rather than trying to envision particular relationships between any of them. Then I just hope for the best, with the knowledge that the Loser Community always comes through. And while I did pad the list to a full 20 items, in case some turned out to be duds, I noticed last night that today’s inking entries incorporate every last item — something I’d made no effort to achieve. Dating all the way back to 1996, the compare*contrast contest tends to be one for the Usual Suspect Losers, and indeed, three of the four members of the Losers’ Circle this week — Lose Cannoneer Jesse Frankovich (“red neckwear”*"redneck wear”) and runners-up Mark Raffman (“best man isn’t there” at either the Zoom wedding or the Tulsa rally) and Jonathan Jensen (nasal swabs and Bolton’s ego: “Each is definitely irritating, but we can tolerate it if it helps defeat a deadly menace:) — get ink so often that I’ve memorized their mailing addresses for sending out their weekly swag. But it’s only the second appearance for third-place finisher Jack Doherty (“Rise again” for both Confederates and sourdough starter), who got his Fir Stink in November. And two of the honorably mentioned also get to hop off the One Hit Wonders list and onto the big grown-up Loser Stats table: Bill Cromwell, who debuted five weeks ago in Week 1385, and Spencer Lu, who last inked in … Week 602, 15 years ago. Our new Loser magnets for honorable mentions — “Punderachiever” and “No 'Bility” — have arrived and I’ll send them out to this week’s inking Losers unless you’d rather have one of the old ones, “Too-Weak Notice” or “Certificate of (de)Merit,” before they’re all gone. If so, please email me by Sunday, when I plan to go to the Post newsroom for my monthly visit and mail out the swag. Also, if you got ink this week but are so heavily awash in it that you don’t want any more stuff in the future, let me know and I’ll send you one of each magnet for this week’s ink, and I’ll just email you after that. What Doug Dug: It’s a bit misleading this week to say that the Ace singled out his favorite entries, because he mentioned so many of them: He “loved” all the top winners, plus Dave Shombert’s about the Angry Goldfish vs. Lincoln Memorial (“the Lincoln Memorial doesn’t look like a tiny version of the U.S. president’); “A Confederate statue and the last roll of toilet paper: The toilet paper is worth fighting for,” by Francis Canavan; all five of the digs at what today is officially named the Washington Football Team; and the various entries about the 2,300 Invite entries (the number I got for a contest a few weeks ago; this time it was more like 1,500). All better and staying that way Here’s a letter to the editor that The Post ran recently. It’s by 52-time Loser Jon Ketzner: “I had a pretty severe case of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, in the early spring. I survived it and have tested positive for the antibodies. It didn’t kill me, even though I’m right in its wheelhouse: a man in his 70s who could use some road work. More than a few folks think I’m bulletproof. I don’t. “I wear a face mask these days because it’s the polite thing to do, it can’t hurt and it’s required by many places. But mostly I wear a mask because in doing so I stand in solidarity with the great majority of Americans, and it’s nice to have that sense of shared and responsible community again, even if it’s only about something as trivial as a face covering. Maybe the mask will be a baby step back to a more civil, as well as safe, society. Jon S. Ketzner, Cumberland, Md. Thank you, Jon — and we’re so happy you’re in good shape again. ====================================================================== WEEK 1395, published August 2, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1395: Your add here The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s ‘plus one’ contest and neologism results A “queueueueueueue,” as Loser Edmund Conti put it in his inking neologism this week: Not very well distanced Atlanta voters waiting in line for hours in the Georgia primary election on June 9. A “queueueueueueue,” as Loser Edmund Conti put it in his inking neologism this week: Not very well distanced Atlanta voters waiting in line for hours in the Georgia primary election on June 9. (John Bazemore*AP) By Pat Myers July 30, 2020 at 5:27 p.m. EDT Add to list It was our cartoonist Bob Staake who remembered a Style Invitational contest similar to the one I’d just told him about, Week 1395 — to add a “plus-one” to a group that’s known by a number. It was then I found the results of Week 651, from back in 2006 (yes, I’d been Empress for a while by then, but hey, I can’t remember everything if I’m remembering all my phone numbers since birth, and what could me more useful than that?). It turned out, though, that the suggestion from Very Longtime Loser Art Grinath (although he hath indeed many times made us grinneth, it’s pronounced grin-ATH) was different enough from that contest — not to mention 14 years newer — that we could run it after all. Week 651 asked the Losers to add a character to a book or movie and explain how the plot would change. But most of the inking entries aren’t about any numbered group. And while Week 1395 allows for a movie whose title or plot featured some group known by a number — this week’s example of “Thirteen Angry Men” is an inking entry from that contest — it doesn’t have to be a movie or book. But let’s look back at some of the Week 651 entries anyway, just because they’re a fun read. AD ADVERTISING Fourth place: “Fun With Dick and Jane and Raskolnikov”: See Spot. See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Run, run, run. Run from the howling pangs of guilt that sear your soul. (Brendan Beary) Third place: The New Testament: Widely considered to be the least talented of the Thirteen Disciples, Ringo nonetheless lands all the hottest babes. (Pam Sweeney) [This would have worked for Week 1395 with a little recasting.] Second place: “Harold and the Purple Koran”: Harold uses his crayon to show kids the acceptable way of sketching Muhammad: Just draw his house and say he’s inside. (Kevin Dopart) And the Winner of the Inker: “Moby-Dick and Flipper”: After killing the whale that cost him his leg, Captain Ahab pursues the dolphin that once splashed him at Sea World. (Jay Shuck), Not Entirely Devoid of Merit: Honorable mentions AD “Back to the Future”: John DeLorean steals his namesake time machine to persuade his younger self to stay at GM, changing history so the DeLorean car no longer exists. Doc Brown and Marty McFly instead use a Ford Pinto, with tragic results. (John Johnston) “Harry Potter”: Late in the seventh book Harry learns he has a twin brother, Larry, who was separated from him at birth. Larry then tells Harry the story of his life, in extraordinary detail, through a whole new series of books, movies, action figures and backpacks. (Russell Beland) “Brokeback Jungle”: After Tarzan*Lord Greystoke returns to civilization, he meets Jane’s brother James. Tarzan then experiences feelings he doesn’t fully understand, although he has seen this sort of thing once or twice back among the bonobos … (Douglas Frank) “Cast Away Too”: A pair of fishnet stockings washes ashore on the island. Wilson the volleyball, longing for net, calls them Ginger and Mary Ann. These three disappear to the other side of the island, leaving the stranded FedEx engineer to seek solace from Little Buddy Coconut. (Wilson AD Varga) “Make Way for Ducklings”: Effete liberals hit the dirt as Dick Cheney pursues Mrs. Mallard and her family across Boston Common. (Kevin Dopart) “The Perfect Storm, With Pat Robertson”: With the help of his trusty sidekick God, the Reverend moves a super-typhoon from the North Atlantic to San Francisco Bay, where they’ve basically been asking for it. (Brendan Beary) Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H”: Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) is joined by his TV twin (Alan Alda), who drives down morale at the 4077th with his self-righteous moralizing about war and sexism. (John Johnston) “The Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse”: The Fifth, Willie Shoemaker, comes up just short in his furious last-minute charge, so the jockeys for the winning trifecta are Famine, Shoemaker and Pestilence. (Roy Ashley) “Gandhi and Norton”: As the Mahatma’s assistant, Art Carney spends hours trying in vain to prepare a simple rice dish. Gandhi finally explodes in a rage and punches him out. (Peter Metrinko) [“Honeymooners” character Ed Norton, bumbling foil to Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden] AD “No, Shoot THIS Piano Player”: Yanni takes over from Charles Aznavour in the barroom … (Bill Spencer) “Psycho”: Things don’t go as planned for Norman Bates when he surprises Janet Leigh and Lou Ferrigno in the shower. (Jeff Brechlin) “2001”: After HAL has killed all but one of the crew members, a HAL Corp. tech support staffer finally picks up the phone. (Pam Sweeney) “Woodstock”: That nerdy guy at work, the one who claims to have been at Woodstock, shows up in a shot of the audience. Well, I’ll be. (Russell Beland) “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Cuddles”: A man survives another day in a Stalinist work camp by talking to an imaginary six-foot chinchilla. (Andrew Hoenig) “One Fish, Five Thousand Fish”: Dr. Seuss adds Jesus to his book. (Peter Metrinko) “The Seven Musketeers”: Weary Porthos, Athos and Aramis welcome the fresh reinforcements. Now they can take on Cardinal Richelieu aided by Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po. (John Shea) AD “Thirteen Angry Men”: The jurors’ anger erupts into gunfire when Yosemite Sam cain’t stand no more infernal yammerin'. (Judith Cottrill, New York) And from the do-over contest the same year: “Richard III”: Mr. Ed joins the cast and becomes King of England. (Kevin Dopart) The Bible: Add the Wife of the Third Wise Man: Baby Jesus receives gifts of gold, frankincense and some adorable onesies. (Pam Sweeney) — For this week’s contest, the answers don’t have to be in a strict format; they might say “The Eleven Commandments” (or “The Eleventh Commandment”) rather than “The Ten Commandments Plus One”; different entries may well require different approaches to make the most of their humor and not waste space or slow down the joke. Meanwhile, while I don’t expect to be sorting out all the entries, it’s always helpful (except for songs and poems) not to put any line breaks within a single entry: That is, don’t hit Return after the title and put the description on a new line. Just use a colon and continue writing. Thankew! AD Syk Humer*: The no-C, O, V, I, D neologisms of Week 1391 *Non-inking headline by Jon Ketzner Despite the lament of at least one Loser that every single interesting new word turned out to require at least one C, O, V, I or D, I received a bumper crop of inkworthy any-other-letters neologisms for the Week 1391 contest. I’d specifically indicated that the topic of covid was in bounds, and many Losers seemed to take that as a hint: Sarah Walsh’s “emaskulate” entry was my choice among 10 of them. And what seems to be true in almost every contest these days, another large fraction of the entries were barbs about the president and his minions. (Too bad we were too late to address Sex With Demons Doctor.) I ended up running 38 entries from 28 Losers, including First Offenders Liz Siegenthaler Rubin and Ward Foeller (their FirStinks for their first inks will be on the way shortly) and Bumped From the One-Hit Wonder List Kate Sammons. And for the second week in a row, the Lose Cannon goes to Jesse Frankovich, in a rare but not hen’s-teeth-rare double, for “harangutan,” his inspired moniker for [duh], and the description “a large orange creature that spends all day bellowing at rivals in the other branches.” (Now if Jesse ends up winning next week, he’d have the first three-in-a-row hat trick since Chris Doyle pulled that off in Weeks 542-544 in 2004.) AD Duncan Stevens’s “Elephantasy” was similarly inspired; both that and “harangutan” deserve to be in widespread use. The other two runners-up concerned our pandemicized lives: Mike Caslin (in his 11th blot of ink, and second trip to the Losers’ Circle) on paper towels — “PeeTee” — as a TP substitute, and veteran Loser Mike Gips for “fleeway,” your escape route if someone encroaches on your social distance. What pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood starts a three-week vacation this week, but we’re delighted to have Also Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia filling in and offering his faves. Ponch singled out Duncan Stevens’s runner-up “Elephantasy” of mainstream Republicans that the president will start governing responsibly any day now; Dan Helming’s “F-fluent,” referring to the vocabulary that home-schooled tots are picking up from their stressed-out parents; Bob Kruger’s “Barrf: The gAG reflex”; Sarah Walsh’s “emaskulate: To diminish someone’s manhood by asking him not to infect his neighbors”; “Quaranteam: The concept that we are all in this together — an idea that was thoroughly debunked in March” (Frank Osen); and Danielle Nowlin’s twist: “Covidiot: That’s right, I used every single letter I have been told not to, AS IS MY RIGHT! FREEDOM!!!” What didn’t work so well: In every neologism contest I judge — “dozens” would be a very safe way to put it — some entries go wrong in the same ways. Here are a few uh-uhs: AD — Useless word: It’s really great when a neologism can be applied to a real-life situation. It’s usually not so great when it’s not. Like “Rampants: Trousers for male sheep.” If you’ll look down the list of this week’s results, you’ll see that almost every neologism refers to someone or something that really exists; one exception is Drew Bennett’s “Red Membranes” as an alternative name for what is now officially the Washington Football Team. [Day-after update: Whoops! Too late for the print edition, I removed Drew’s entry from the Invite because .... it has a D. D’oh.] — Hard-to-read word: I got this one this week: “Style Entryadyrabll.” It looked like Welsh. After puzzling it out for some time, I think it’s a play on “adorable.” But we don’t want readers to have trouble even being able to read the word. — (for a contest like this) Spelling changes just to fit the rules, not to add to the humor: For example: “Magagasger — A place where conspiracy theories are born.” The first part, Mada to Maga, works; but changing the rest of the place name from “gascar” to “gasger” (I don’t know why it wasn’t “gasgar” at least) is just misspelling it to avoid the prohibited C. — Not enough joke. “Affabull: Feigned pleasantries.” Great word that would have been inkworthy had it had a funny example of a feigned pleasantry. Also: Since the word it’s based on, “affable,” is an adjective, the definition would have worked better as an adjective, though you could argue that “bull,” as in BS, is a noun. Sometimes a straight description will work anyway; Jesse Frankovich almost got ink with “Assthmus: A thong.” — Using “shun” for “-tion.” I haven’t checked the archives, but I bet that very few neologisms have gotten ink with that pun. It just doesn’t sound right and it’s heavy-handed. This week I got 12 of them, including “puntuayshun” (also violating the convenient-spelling ban), “nayshun,” “temptashun,” “celebrashun,” “salvashun,” “relashun” and “represhun.” Maybe there’s an exception out there, but I’m almost certain to -tion them. ====================================================================== WEEK 1396, published August 9, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1396: Made you look! The Empress of The Style Invitational on the little details noted in Bob Staake’s cartoons Those three dots on the ground in all four Bob Staake cartoons? The two different “CC” logos at the restaurant? Chinless people? All these details were noted in our caption contest. Those three dots on the ground in all four Bob Staake cartoons? The two different “CC” logos at the restaurant? Chinless people? All these details were noted in our caption contest. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers August 6, 2020 at 4:27 p.m. EDT Add to list Four weeks ago in this column, I noted that in our many, many Style Invitational cartoon caption contests over the years, there are always a few entries — not usually the top winners; usually they’re honorable mentions — that note some little detail in a cartoon, one that a reader might not even have noticed. Perhaps the column inspired a large segment of the Loser Community to scrutinize Bob Staake’s four cartoons for Week 1392, whose results run today. I didn’t have room in the Invite to use all the inkworthy ones, so I thought I’d highlight some of them here in the Convo. By the way, thank you to all of you — more than 160 people — who answered my pleas for you to begin each entry with “Picture A,” “Picture B,” etc.; not to begin the line with a number, a bullet, etc.; and, most important, not to have that label on a different line from the entry itself. (Not so much thanks to the few of you who didn’t.) Your efforts enabled me to sort the entries electronically so that I could read all the hundreds of captions for each picture together. AD ADVERTISING As you might notice if you entered this contest, some ideas were submitted by lots of people, and I chose my favorite wording. Captions in the forms of quotes usually (not always) were more lively than descriptions of the characters or situations. A few people wrote whole paragraphs. tl; dr Picture A is for antennae One rather conspicuous detail in the restaurant scene was the waiter’s novel hairstyle. I got lots of entries about antennae; Nancy Della Rovere’s “you aliens” got ink, as did Lawrence McGuire’s about a washed-up Jiminy Cricket. Other inkworthy ideas noting the waiter’s do: “I’ll have the escargot … Ack!! So sorry, no offense, I’ll have the soup de jour.” (Janelle Gibb) “You mean to tell me that not only are you the head waiter, but also you’re the WiFi extender?” (John Kupiec) “You can just retract those mantennae right now, mister man! I’m a married woman!” (Rob Huffman) AD Thanks to an observant diner, Henri discovered where he’d left his fishing hooks. (Ellen Raphaeli) Francoise was so surprised to see her “Uncle Martin” waiting table that she spit out her petit pois. (Jeff Hazle) Jeff’s reference to “petit pois” (little peas) notes the three dots near the customer’s mouth; Chuck Smith got ink with the same dots with his entry “Unfortunately, the waiter did not understand the Ellipsis language.” Bob had originally included a sign that said “Covid Cafe”; I asked him to change it to “CC” so that people could interpret it differently. I did get several entries about Covid Cafe and Corona Cafe but also Culture Club, with waiter Adam Ant (by Richard Franklin) and even Chez Cafard (meaning “cockroach” in French but not English; way too obscure). And a play on just CC: “Given the name of the place, I’ll have the same as everyone else.” (Sam Mertens) But the most eagle-eyed on this detail was Jeff Contompasis, who had the customer saying, “I don’t understand why your towel’s logo doesn’t match the restaurant’s.” Finally, Barbara Turner called on her long experience in Staake contests to have the customer say to the waiter: “Do you realize you’re the first character with a chin that our artist has drawn in eight years?” It’s true — look at all the other characters! Image without a caption Picture B is disarming Before judging the contest, I hadn’t noticed that the woman who’s running through a supermarket was pushing her cart with one hand — because her other arm isn’t connected to her body. Jesse Frankovich and Richard Franklin both sent entries very much like “Quick — where can I find your arm reattachment supplies?” In fact, there were at least a half dozen arm jokes. I also especially liked the one by Danielle Nowlin that referred to both the shopper and the gesticulating store clerk: “Sir, don’t do that with your arm! That’s what happened to mine!” AD At least five other people diagnosed the emergency in another way: that the shopper desperately needed a bra. (Someone specifically asked for “women’s brassieres”; not going there) In fact, Mark Raffman noted Bob’s proclivity for dangleboobs with this entry for Cartoon D: “The new support bra in this package will — I guarantee it! — improve the comfort and appearance of the women in Pictures A, B, and C!” Picture D: Seat your can right here I don’t think there were any obscure details in Picture C, even though it was probably the weirdest of the four cartoons. A lot of people did plays on “upskirt photos,” calling them “upnostrils.” Some people made “mind in the gutter” jokes, perhaps confusing gutters with downspouts. Picture D, too, was pretty much upfront. Once you have a missing arm in Picture B, the legless back of a chair in D would have been anticlimactic. The main thing — and it was what I’d hoped for — was the ambiguous object sitting in the chair. In addition to the can, toilet paper, paper towels, Alexa, a number of Losers noted the small horizontal lines and labeled it a beaker or graduated cylinder. Some made “graduation” jokes along with it. AD Actually, many Losers seemed not to notice a key element: the microphone on the desk. Which to me ruled out the numerous entries that depicted a job interview. But what propitious timing to have a can*tube cartoon: It was an opportunity for runner-up Marni Penning Coleman to allude to the instant boycott of Goya Hispanic food after the company’s chief gushed about President Trump; and for Invite Hall of Famer Frank Osen to snag his 24th contest win with a play on “Bounty,” incorporating both the Paper Towel Snafu of 2017 and the recent presidential shrug about the revelation that the Russians offered payoffs to the Taliban for killing U.S. soldiers. Ooooh. And all together now … And one little similarity in all four pictures: Mrs. Drysdale’s dog has been very busy. He left three little presents in every single scene! (Bill Lieberman) AD What Pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia continues to fill in for Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood to offer his faves. This time Ponch went entirely to the honorable mentions: For A: “Will there be anyone else exposed to madam’s droplets for lunch today?” (Howard Walderman) and “Frankly, I liked it better when I could see you smirking.” (John McCooey). For B, the arm-reattachment joke; for C, Bill Dorner’s “peeking duct” pun and, from Kevin Dopart, “Conversations with M.C. Escher rarely lasted long”; and for D, Steve Fahey’s figure-it-out about the guest from “that famed film festival in the south of France … ” Oh, yeah, we have limericks! It’s the 17th straight year we’ve worked with OEDILF.com, the effort to produce at least one limerick for every word in the English language. On the home page, creator Chris Strolin points to a “mini-crisis” of fewer limericks — especially good limericks — being submitted lately, so we’re happy to gallop in anapestically to lend a hand, or at least a lot of galumphing feet. AD There are lots of words beginning with “ha-.” My only caveat is that the word needs to be “featured” in the limerick — and so a line like “I sure had a terrible day” wouldn’t work as a limerick for “had.” Instead of going into the same details here about how to do the lims, I’ve once again posted “Keep Your ’Rick Rolling,” my guide to limerick-writing, with large chunks lifted from OEDILF and, of course, the classic work of our Loserbards. If you have managed to read this column without being a Post subscriber, you can read a copy of the guide in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook. Along with the copy of this week’s Invitational, it’ll be at the top of the list of “Files” (link on the left side of the page); the link will also appear in the comment thread of the posting of the Invite at the top of the page. And if you don’t want to join the Devotees and can be patient, you can see a link by next week on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. (Elden’s also been posting copies of this column.) And while I can never pin down Bob Staake on which entries this week were his faves, I’ll give it another try. Remember, you can buy the original sketch ($80) or pen-and-ink art ($125) for one of these Bob cartoons — or hundreds of earlier ones. He has a special link for Invite readers: www.bobstaake.com*si. ====================================================================== WEEK 1397, published August 16, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1397: Desert isle discoveries The Empress ruminates all over (eww) this week’s Style Invitational contest and results The Lose Cannon -- inspired by a Trump tweet about Hillary Clinton -- has been The Style Invitational's first prize since 2017. If the incumbent loses in November, we'll need a different, but just as cheap, new trophy. On the same bases made for us by Loser Larry Gray. Suggestions welcome! The Lose Cannon -- inspired by a Trump tweet about Hillary Clinton -- has been The Style Invitational's first prize since 2017. If the incumbent loses in November, we'll need a different, but just as cheap, new trophy. On the same bases made for us by Loser Larry Gray. Suggestions welcome! (TWP) By Pat Myers August 13, 2020 at 5:21 p.m. EDT Just five weeks after our last Bob Staake cartoon contest — and a week after the results ran — we’re back with another one. This is a different animal, though: I got the idea after seeing David Sipress’s “Hey! You’re in the bike lane!” cartoon in a recent New Yorker. As I mention in the introduction to this week’s Style Invitational, Week 1397, I suggested to Bob that he draw up a Man in the Desert, Man on an Island, etc., and have the Loser Community try its collective, whole-lotta-fingered hand at the genre. And Bob came back with: How about if the Loser has the option of using someone else instead of Man? And so we have the four options of cartoon tropes this week, and you can populate each of the scenes as you wish (but not delete the bartender or psychiatrist). I’m not forbidding you to write the caption as a descriptive sentence, but such cartoons are always written as quotations or dialogue; you’d have to come up with something especially clever and funny for a non-quote to work. (But hey, Especially Clever and Funny are y’all’s middle names, or would be if your parents had been weird baby-namers. Go ahead and prove me wrong.) Note that this time I’m asking you to begin each entry with the LETTER of the cartoon: Not “Picture A,” just A:, with a colon. Then when I push Sort, I’ll get to squirm with delighted anticipation as Mister Word groups your caption for A: with all the other captions for A: AD Unless it’s essential to conveying the joke, you don’t need to explain that so-and-so is on the left, what the person is wearing, etc. When Bob Staake draws the winner (or, in the remote possibility that the winner is incredibly brilliant but not good for drawing, a runner-up), he’ll work that out himself. The caption isn’t required to be super-short, as the New Yorker would do it, but neither should it run for dozens of words. I’m looking forward to see what you come up with by Monday night, Aug. 24. REHASH PAT’S … TRASH HEAPS:* The results of Week 1393 *Non-inking headline by Kevin Dopart To avoid too much duplication and to allow for more creativity, many Style Invitational contests have two main elements: first, a new term for something; and second, a description of the term. Because we’re a humor contest, it’s often that second element that turns some clever wordplay into a funny joke; it essentially becomes the punchline. When I judge such contests, I often see some oh-wow neologisms whose definitions don’t quite measure up to them; I’ll mark them “BD,” for “needs better definition.” AD Our Week 1388 contest was an especially strong case in point, because the first part of the entry required so much cleverness in itself: The hard-to-explain challenge was to name a fictional business or product that was a self-anagram: All the letters in the first half of the name had to be rearranged to make the second half. I was blown away by the number and cleverness — and funniness — of the anagrams I received. And there were lots of spot-on descriptions as well, so many that the results of Week 1388 ran to 37 entries and still robbed perhaps dozens of other worthies of ink. But there were also all these anagrams that were so funny in themselves that they cried out to me, “Somebody out there has the perfect description for this.” And so, a week after the results ran, I rounded up dozens of the BDs for Week 1393 and offered them up to the Loser Community. And 156 Losers stepped up with lots of inspired ideas: This week’s results number 38 entries by almost as many different people, some of them incorporating their own self-anagrams into the definitions. Some of the anagrams ended up not yielding any more jokes — RICH MATTRESSES CHRISTMAS TREES was just too weird, I think — but most of them, including some that didn’t quite make the ink cut this week, showed that there can be benefits of humor by committee. Today in this column I was going to run the original definitions, but after I compiled the list I changed my mind; the only point in doing so would be to argue that they were improved on. Instead, below I’m going to credit the writers of those clever anagrams, something I didn’t do when I offered them up for Week 1393. No magnets or anything — not even chopped liver, as in the “asset decline delicatessen” — but a little shout-out, anyway. AD ADVERTISING First, a big shout-out to this week’s Lose Cannon winner, Edmund Conti, who at somewhere north of age 90 is surely the yeariest Loser ever to win first place in the Invite; Bill Bradford got ink right up to his final days at age 95, but he never won the whole contest. Edmund (loser anagram: NOT DIM DUNCE) has done it four times among his 109 blots of Invite ink, though it’s his first Lose Cannon. BY THE WAY: Note the caption at the top of today’s Conversational: Since “Lose Cannon” is based on Trump’s hapless name-calling tweet of Hillary Clinton, we’ll be in need of a new idea for a trophy if we get a different president next January, to follow in the tradition started by the Inker (half a pair of bookends, no longer made in the cheap version I used to buy) and followed by the Inkin’ Memorial bobblehead, also out of manufacture and, since 2017, the Lose Cannon. The cannon will be hard to top: It’s assembled by the Royal Consort from a little metal pencil-sharpener cannon that I get from a school supply company, attached to a fancy wooden base handcrafted by Loser Larry Gray in the barn on his 10-acre spread up in Middle of Nowhere, Md. Anyway, I welcome ideas for a replacement trophy, especially one that can use the dozens of extra bases we’d have in November. So not only does it have to fit on a 3-by-5-inch base, but it should also not cost more than about $6 in materials — the tangible value, if you’re anal enough to itemize your Loser swag. And of course, it should be funny. Ed Conti, I hope you’ll score one of those, too. AD ---- Now, back to this week’s results. The rest of this week’s Loser Circle is populated by other Invite regulars, none more so than Art Grinath, who scores his 69th ink “above the fold” among the more than 400 blots he’s amassed since his debut way back in the Invitational’s toddlerhood, 1995. Kathy El-Assal, who gets the second-place booby prize of Flying Pig Eau de Toilette spray — well, we don’t know, maybe it’ll be lovely — gets her seventh big-deal ink and a total of 61, while Almost a Rookie Steve Smith passes the 50-ink mark with his sixth winner or runner-up. What pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia, still filling in for Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, chose his favorites from this week’s honorable mentions: Stephen Dudzik’s “po’ boy” at the Asset Decline Delicatessen; Eric Nelkin and Jon Gearhart’s “side of flies” with Grub Masher Hamburgers; the Karen joke for Irate Face Cafeteria (Lee Graham, Bob Kruger) [I wonder if people reading the archives 10 years from now, or even five, will get the reference]; “McVichyssoise” as a soup made from cold french fries by First Offender Jeff Bryant; and Mike Ostapiej’s imagining of Cruelty Cutlery as what the Empress uses to trim the entry list. AD And if you got ink this week, here are the people to thank for inspiring your entry: Anal Gas Lasagna: Laura Clairmont, Frank Mullen III Asset Decline Delicatessen: Rick Haynes Atrophied Aphrodite: Sue Lin Chong “Can’t Act on Us” Accountants: Chris Damm Credit Naggers Greeting Cards: Steve Offutt Crooner Coroner: Bill Dorner Cruelty Cutlery: Bill Dorner Dead-or-Not Deodorant: Lil Tompkins Do-Not-Dare Deodorant: Beverley Sharp Emu Brains Submarine: David Garratt Evil Stone Novelties: Raymond Gallucci Grub Masher Hamburgers: Jon Gearhart . Happiest Epitaphs: Gary Crockett I’m-a-Stud Stadium: George Smith, George Thompson Ill Strides Distillers: Drew Bennett Insatiable Banalities: Hannah Seidel Irate Face Cafeteria: Jonathan Jensen, Jon Ketzner Larcenist Clarinets: Tim Kloth Liberal Braille: Bill Dorner AD Master Puker Supermarket: Mark Raffman Monster Mentors: Raymond Gallucci My Amusing Gymnasium: Stephen Dudzik, Jonathan Jensen Nice Chefs Ruin French Cuisine: Diane Lucitt One Ratty Attorney: Drew Bennett “Paint Bull Crap for Me” Republican Platform: Frank Mann Pedant Term Department: Jesse Frankovich Pudgier Raccoon Organic Produce: Byron Miller Real Idiot Editorial: Ellen Raphaeli Sweaty Anal Tort Attorneys at Law (also Anal Sweaty Tort): Jonathan Jensen, Rick Haynes Am Aghast MAGA Hats: Bill Dorner Auctioned Education: Gary Crockett, Rob Huffman “Be Sharp, Bro” Barbershop: Sarah Walsh, Bill Hilton Blaring Lard Bar and Grill: Beverley Sharp, Jon Gearhart Cheapo Arty Apothecary: Jon Ketzner Danger Garden: Seven people Decimal Medical: John McCooey, Noah Meyerson, Drew Bennett Face Cafe: George Smith, Erika Ettin AD Her Foul Amen Funeral Home: Mark Raffman Hip One iPhone: Frank Mann “I Bleed Humor” Home Builder: Chris Damm Order Guts Drugstore: Beverley Sharp Plasmoid Diplomas: Raymond Gallucci Rich Mattresses Christmas Trees: Chris Damm “Slime Our Arrogance” Marriage Counselor: Ward Kay Smart Shape Hamster Spa: Byron Miller Supersonic Percussion: John McCooey Tartan User Restaurant: Pete Morelewicz Tech Lover Chevrolet: Ray Gallucci Thousand Handouts: Gary Crockett Very Idle Delivery: Drew Bennett Western Wonk News Network: Steve Smith ====================================================================== WEEK 1398, published August 23, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1398: You can’t twin 'em all The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s movie-pairing results Cliff Robertson won an Oscar for his role in “Charly,” a 1968 adaptation of the novel “Flowers for Algernon,” in which an intellectually disabled man undergoes surgery that turns him into a genius — and the inspiration for Duncan Stevens's winning entry. Cliff Robertson won an Oscar for his role in “Charly,” a 1968 adaptation of the novel “Flowers for Algernon,” in which an intellectually disabled man undergoes surgery that turns him into a genius — and the inspiration for Duncan Stevens's winning entry. (Cinerama Releasing Corp.) By Pat Myers August 20, 2020 at 5:29 p.m. EDT Add to list *The headline “You Can’t Twin 'em All” was submitted as an honorable-mentions subhead by both Chris Doyle and Jesse Frankovich. I was excited four weeks ago to run Style Invitational Week 1394, a contest to supply a line of dialogue that would work in two different movies or TV shows, or to sum up two movies with a single description. I was a bit worried, though, that the results would be too obvious, not all that clever, and that the jokes wouldn’t work if readers hadn’t seen the films. But as usual, I found myself leaving plenty of inkworthy entries on yon cutting room floor after selecting 32 of them for this week’s results. And it was fun to look up the clips and articles I linked to that can help out a puzzled reader without explaining the joke to death. (Don’t worry, there are articles, not film footage, from the links to “Deliverance” and “Last Tango in Paris.”) AD More than most weeks, though, I faced a lot of duplication among the entries. On reflection, it’s not surprising: While there are hundreds on hundreds of films and TV shows that readers will recognize, there’s not an infinite list of iconic quotes from those movies. The contest didn’t require the use of a quote from an existing movie, but most of the entries used them. Here are some funny ideas that were all sent by too many people to credit individually. I don’t usually use an entry that’s been sent by more than two people, or occasionally three; these all had four or more of essentially the same joke. “Tomorrow is another day,” from “Gone With the Wind,” also for “Groundhog Day.” “I coulda had class”: From “On the Waterfront” and also “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” “You talkin’ to me?” “Taxi Driver” and “The Miracle Worker.” AD “Jaws” and “Titanic”: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” “We’ll always have Paris”: “Casablanca” and “Troy.” “Cool Hand Luke” and “Titanic”: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” “I’ll be back”: “The Terminator” and “The Passion of the Christ.” The final line from “Gone With the Wind” — “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again” — was paired more than a dozen times: more or less straightforwardly, with “Super Size Me,” “Stand by Me,” “Eat, Drink, Man, Woman,” “Julie and Julia,” “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”; or, more yuckily, with cannibal jokes: “Alive,” “Soylent Green” and, most frequently, “The Silence of the Lambs.” And “Say hello to my little friend” — Al Pacino’s reference in “Scarface” to his AR-15 (souped up with a grenade launcher) before he commenced with five solid minutes of blowing people up — was matched 18 times, from everything from “Howdy Doody” to “Of Mice and Men” to “Thumbelina” to “Austin Powers” (or “Snow White”) to “Boogie Nights,” “The Crying Game” and “Deep Throat.” AD But this week’s four top winners were all unique ideas, and all from veteran Losers (though this week’s results produced a bumper crop of four First Offenders — three more than last week, and four more than the week before that). Invite Hall of Famer Duncan Stevens not only suggested this week’s contest for a metaphor for 2020, but he takes also home the Lose Cannon trophy, his 15th first-place win, for his dig at the Current Occupant without using his name. My only concern was that readers might be less familiar with the movie title “Charly” rather than the book it was based on, “Flowers for Algernon,” so I used a link online. There was a “Flowers for Algernon” movie as well, from 2000, but it wasn’t a big deal and isn’t the Oscar-winner; in the print paper I list both titles. “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid” was paired numerous times with “Pretty Baby,” “Lolita,” etc. But only Gary Crockett paired it with the telescreen of “1984” as he ambles toward the 500-ink mark. Jeff Shirley gets the coy-dirty-joke award with “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” for “There’s Something About Mary.” And Hildy Zampella, who’d suggested the contest in the first place, offered a zingy simile between Jeds (Jedi?) Bartlet and Clampett and their problems with the people on the hill after each moves into the big, fancy house. What Doug Dug: Back from a three-week vacation that included traveling to idyllic Maine and not traveling from idyllic Hyattsville, Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood was in an agreeable mood yesterday, telling me that he agreed with me about all four “above the fold” entries, and also singled out, from the honorable mentions, Hildy’s “Harry Potter”*"Harry Met Sally” joke about faking it when the wand doesn’t work so well; Chris Doyle’s “butter you up” reference to “Last Tango in Paris”; and Sarah Walsh’s “really good bones” for the scripts of both “This Old House and Saw.” AD Congratulations to our First Offenders, some of whom have entered the Invite before, some total newbies: Susan Swanda with her “Mr. Wilson” for “Dennis the Menace” and “Cast Away”; Lori Smith, applying Scarlett O’Hara’s “I’ll think about that tomorrow” to “An Inconvenient Truth”; Wayne Debban, with his “take it out” pun for “Boogie Nights”; and Larry Rifkin — father of 35-time Loser Jesse Rifkin — with “I could have been some body” for “The Invisible Man.” Hope you’re all off the One-Hit Wonders stats list in no time. (Unprintable entries are at the bottom of this column. If such things upset you, please don’t read that section.) Your 2020 visions: This week’s contest In addition to Duncan Stevens’s “If 2020 were a …” examples for Week 1398 (deadline Aug. 31), our cartoonist Bob Staake did his own, my favorite of several ideas he offered. I’m offering a graphic option as well, but do realize that the odds are low that you’d get ink — especially in the print paper, where I’d most likely have room for a maximum of one graphic. (I had predicted I’d run no more than two total, but I might go back on my word if I end up with a few utterly brilliant and original memes that I could run online.) Do note that because of copyright issues, you can’t just pick up a photo from the Internet that’s not in the public domain; the best solution is to use your own photo. AD ADVERTISING Here are links to some right fine 2020 memes: “2020 Every Second” “My Plans vs. 2020″ “But the Memes Were Great” Me Being Prepared for 2020 Hey, you want to hear some dirt about the Invitational? The operative word is “hear”: Longtime Loser Mike Gips, who’s been working up a podcast in his professional field of computer security, also has the idea of starting a podcast about The Style Invitational, complete with interviews with guest Losers as well as the contest judge. I’ll keep you posted as Mike’s plans develop. You could weigh in on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook about any topics you’d like him to tackle. Rated N for Nope: The Unprintables: Among the funny entries that wouldn’t pass muster from the Taste Police, or ones that the authors themselves asked to be “Convo-only”: “Where no man has gone before”: “Star Trek” and “Lolita.” (Bill Lieberman) “Yippee-ki-yay, m-----f---er!” “Die Hard” and “Oedipus the King” (Tom Witte) “The Sword in the Stone” and “Knocked Up”: “I hope he pulls it out!” (Duncan Stevens) “Titanic” and “Deep Throat”: “She’s going down!” (Duncan Stevens) ====================================================================== WEEK 1399, published August 30, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1399: Yo, listen up A Longtime Style Invitational Loser is working on a podcast about the Invite Bob Staake's sketch for an illustration for “You're Invited,” Loser Mike Gips's planned podcast about The Style Invitational. Bob Staake's sketch for an illustration for “You're Invited,” Loser Mike Gips's planned podcast about The Style Invitational. (Bob Staake) By Pat Myers August 27, 2020 at 5:01 p.m. EDT Add to list We begin today with a bit of genuine news! Longtime Loser Mike Gips — Mike Gips of the 268 blots of Style Invitational ink — wrote to me a while back encouraging me to produce a podcast to supplement or replace this column. I was neck deep in contest entries at the moment (as in most moments) and said that I didn’t see that happening, given as I had zero knowledge or experience in podcasts beyond listening to them as I walk around my neighborhood. That’s okay, said Mike — he’d do it himself. He’d already begun a podcast about his career field of computer security, so he already had the equipment and know-how. Well, great! So this weekend, Mike is going to interview the Empress (remotely, duh) for the debut episode of “You’re Invited,” whenever that will be. And he’s looking for input, not to mention contributions. Here’s his invitation to y’all: “We have The Style Conversational. A Facebook group or two. The Flushies. Brunches. Secret societies I don’t belong to. But coming soon, what you didn’t know you need.....Style Invitational, the podcast! Wouldn’t you like to actually hear the Empress, your fellow losers, Bob Staake, and other members of the Loser Community. No? Well, I do. AD ADVERTISING I'm planning on hosting a 20-minute podcast, at least monthly but perhaps every two weeks or even weekly depending on interest and participation. Our first episode will be with our beloved E, who will be grilled on the dirty little secrets of the SI, why the prize magnets don't stick, and the way to guarantee ink with one little trick. Future episodes are expected to feature the week’s winner; other Losers; cartoonist Bob Staake; maybe the Empress’s predecessor, the Czar (if he can be coaxed out into the light); Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan; performances of Loser parodies; and whatever the masses demand. Already two legends have contributed. Bob Staake has done a cartoon for us, and Elden has agreed to host the podcast on nrars.org. And I have a mic, camera, headphones, and software I'm learning to use. AD I’d love input or assistance from the greater Loser Community. Is there any topic you’d like covered, any people you’d like to hear? If you have podcast skills, I could use help with editing, music, etc. Should it be podcast only, or should there be a webcast only? So many questions, so few inconsequential answers. Email me at mikegips (at) gmail (dot) com. I see that PodcastHosting.com says there are more than 1 million podcasts out there, and more than 29 million individual episodes. And given that a random Googling yielded a page called “10 Stationery Podcasts in 2018” — including “The Erasable Podcast: Johnny, Tim and Andy talk about stationery, but mainly pencils, and do a great job” — we might as well join the denizens of the ether. I was recently asked: “What is a podcast, anyway?” I like questions like that because they reassure me that I’m not the most untechie person on earth. Anyway, it’s basically a radio show, often a talk show, except that you get it through the Internet, at your convenience: I’ll make an announcement when a new episode drops, and you’ll be able to click on a link and listen on your phone or computer. AD So be sure to talk to Mike about what you’d like to hear, what might be some regular departments, any tips you have. And I’ll let you know about how it’s coming along. And yes, while Mike doesn’t actually look like Grandpa Munster (or, as he sees it, Tony the Tiger), Bob Staake’s sketch does bear a considerable resemblance to Mr. G. As far as I know, however, the “Dunz” is not supposed to be anyone but a generic Loser. (Or is it you?) The Style Augmentational*: The 'plus-ones’ of Week 1395 *Too-long headline entry by Jesse Frankovich I was confident that a contest to “add a ‘plus one’ to some familiar numerical grouping, true or fictional,” as suggested by Forever Loser Art Grinath, would fill the page with inkworthy entries. I hadn’t expected, though, that I’d hear from so many Losers, especially brand-new and very infrequent ones: For Week 1395, I heard from 240 people with a total of about 2,000 entries, way up from the 157 people of the previous contest, which was to supply a single line that might appear in two movies. AD Of those, this week’s results comprise 35 entries (all appear in both print and online) from 32 contestants, with a variety of interpretations of “plus one.” I have a nagging feeling that I answered someone’s question last week to suggest that I wouldn’t accept some numerical wordplay, and then ran someone else’s entry that was just like it. [Shrugs only a little sheepishly.] That’s why I like it that our primary prize is a 15-cent Loser Magnet. There was a LOT of duplication of the plus-ones; several of this week’s honorable mentions entries won by dint of their description. For instance, there were 11 entries for “Seven Brides for Eight Brothers” and 12 for “Eight Brides for Seven Brothers”; while a few made my shortlist (not the ones that disparaged Mormons), it was Hannah Seidel who got the ink with “Seven Brides for Eight Brothers: Sometimes you end up as the fifteenth wheel.” At least 20 Losers suggested the 51st way to leave your lover; John Glenn and Eric Nelkin scored respectively with “Say you’ve got the virus, Cyrus” and “Call out his vanity, Hannity!” All four “above the fold” entries were unique, however. Harold Mantle, who got his first blot of ink in Week 5 and drops by in little fits and starts of entering, gets Ink No. 66 by adding 1 to 1, in “the sound of two hands clapping,” what’s featured in the audio version of “Koans for Dummies.” Rookie phenom Michelle Christophorou, currently the most active member of the U.K. Loser Bureau, will probably get me yelled at by someone or other with her “Feeding of the 5,001.” Non-rookie phenom Chris Doyle scores the cool Houston Asterisks T-shirt (his — ready? — 241st winner or runner-up) with a delightful “Raven” parody about Four and Twenty-One Blackbirds. And Rob Cohen gets his third contest win, and his 87th blot total, with a play on “plus-1” itself; he used its actual meaning for “50 First Dates plus 1” — Mom chaperoning. AD We have a First Offender this week who’ll be skipping the One-Hit Wonders list in the Loser Stats: George Mason University grad student Adam Nubbe debuts with two honorables. And we have two Losers who’ve reappeared from the distant past: Mike Mason, who last got ink in 2008; and William Lomas, someone I almost dubbed a First Offender until I discovered that he got two blots of ink including a runner-up in Week 194, and only Week 1994, in 1996. (The contest was how to answer specific questions to advice columnists. “Second Runner-Up: My mother-in-law still has photos my husband’s ex-wife on her mantel. Should I say something? Signed, Miffed. Dear Miffed: Leave the picture on the mantel, but surround it with photographs of Hitler, Pol Pot, Charles Manson, and baby seals being clubbed.” Don’t make it another 24 years, Bill! What Doug Dug: The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood all came from the honorable mentions this week, and his first shout-out was to our newbie, Adam Nubbe: “The 50 states plus 1: [This entry blocked by the Republican Party].” Doug also singled out Eric Nelkin’s “Say you’ve got the virus, Cyrus,” John McCooey’s “Around the World in 81 Days: An inattentive Phileas Fogg trips on the international date line” (a title sent by eight Losers”; “Seven Habits of Highly Successful People plus One: 8. Be born to really rich parents,” from Art Grinath, who’d suggested the contest; and from our long-lost William Lomas: “Two Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Many thought McMurphy was faking it, but no one questioned the admission of Louie Gohmert.” 'Tis the season, kind of: Summer fictoids for Week 1399 The results of Week 1399 will run a few days after the autumn equinox, but I didn’t want to wait almost a whole year for this third in our series of Fictoids of the Season. As with all our fictoid contests, the entries usually spoof those books and listicles full of Fun Facts to Know and Tell. There’s now a whole page on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List devoted to links to our fictoid contests. Here are the top winners from the ones about winter and spring, earlier this year: AD Winter, from the results of Week 1360: 4. Snow in the Southern Hemisphere forms on the ground and falls upward, which explains why penguins are white on the bottom. (Andrew Wells-Dang) 3. A snowball’s chance in hell has increased greatly during the Trump administration. (Stephen Dudzik) 2. The inn that turned away Mary and Joseph is now a Marriott Bonvoy property. (Frank Mann) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Phi Kappa Rho fraternity at the University of Northwestern Maine canceled this year’s “yellow-snow” name-writing contest because college students no longer know how to use cursive. (Mark Raffman) Spring, from Week 1381, as we started our Age of Corona: 4. Typically after the vernal equinox an extra two minutes of daylight are added to each day, but beginning March 2020, an extra 45 days were added to each month. (Danielle Nowlin) AD 3. Plants can repel breeze-borne pollen by swaying to the left, or accept it by swaying right. (Sam Mertens) 2. Responding to a flattering comment by the Dutch prime minister last May, President Trump said: “He’s a very smart guy. He knows where to plant his tulips.” (Mark Raffman) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: When the White House Easter Egg Roll was canceled this year because of the pandemic, the president was left with crates full of wooden commemorative eggs with the slogan “Impeachment was a HOAX.” (Jonathan Jensen) As you can see, the link to the season is sometimes a wee bit tenuous. But the link to the funny is strong indeed. ====================================================================== WEEK 1400, published September 6, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1400: We got the horses right here The Empress of The Style Invitational on the actual-Derby foal contest and limerick results Belmont Stakes winner and big Kentucky Derby favorite Tiz the Law. Even though he'll be hard at work racing this weekend, Style Invitational readers can put him up to stud as one of the 100 names in the Week 1400 foal “breeding” contest. (And there are even two fillies this year, as if it mattered.) Belmont Stakes winner and big Kentucky Derby favorite Tiz the Law. Even though he'll be hard at work racing this weekend, Style Invitational readers can put him up to stud as one of the 100 names in the Week 1400 foal “breeding” contest. (And there are even two fillies this year, as if it mattered.) (Darron Cummings*AP) By Pat Myers September 3, 2020 at 5:16 p.m. EDT Add to list Of course, we didn’t have to have another foal-“breeding” contest this year; for Pete’s sake, we just did it 18 weeks ago — and the “grandfoal” encore four weeks later. But this contest always attracts so many devoted fans year after year, and since in May we used the names of previous Derby winners, since the race was postponed, we have a decent excuse to do it again with names that will actually be in the news this weekend — or 18 of them will. Usually, I put up the foal contest in early April so that the results run Derby weekend — and that’s before we know who’ll be in the race. I usually read up on the year’s hot prospects and choose maybe a third of the list in hopes that some of “our horses” will run in the Derby. This time, however, the 18-horse field is set (barring the not uncommon late scratch) and so I went ahead and put all those horses on the 100-name list, which is whittled down from around 400 nominees. (The horses were all born in 2017, so as always, it’s a totally fresh list.) If the foal contest is new to you, you’ll quickly get the idea from reading some past results. AD Here are the full results of Week 1382, and below are the four top winners. 4. Super Saver x Northern Dancer = Fred Austere (Mary McNamara, Washington) 3. Brokers Tip x Behave Yourself = Play NYSE (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) 2. Kauai King x Macbeth II = Aloha, Damn’d Spot (Neal Starkman, Seattle) 1, Black Gold x Macbeth II = MeTarSand, YouThane (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) More, you say? Then click on any of the manymany links on the “Horses” page of the Style Invitational Master Contest list, on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. We’re up! Listen to Episode 1 of the podcast ‘You’re Invited' Last Thursday in this column I announced that a podcast about The Style Invitational was being developed by Loser Michael Gips, and that he would be interviewing me over the weekend. That indeed happened; Mike and I enjoyed a long, long chat via Zoom on Saturday, on various aspects of the Invite. But I had no idea that by Tuesday morning, Mike would be sending me the link to Episode 1 of “You’re Invited,” consisting of our conversation — I was Guest No. 1 — edited down by about three-quarters (to around 30 minutes) but still covering the origin of The Style Invitational, the Empress’s judging routine, Mike’s favorite entries of the week, etc., all introduced with a George M. Cohan-flavored theme song written just for the podcast by Loser Jonathan Jensen: AD Word freaks, humor geeks, folks whose tongues are in their cheeks, Welcome to the Style Invitational. Misfits, wags and wits, folks who laugh at naughty bits, Here’s a show that’s fun and educational! You will meet our leading Losers and learn the way they think. Take their tips and maybe you will see your name in ink. Empress Pat, aristocrat, she’ll put out the welcome mat. So get in line and file in, Soon you will be smilin'. Welcome to the Style Invitational! Mike is looking into getting the podcast listed on the usual apps, but for now it’s super-easy to just click on the link at NRARS.org and you can listen on your computer, phone or tablet. (Oh, heck, here’s the link for Episode 1.) Among the Losers mentioned in the podcast when Mike read their entries and who couldn’t be tagged in Facebook: Art Grinath, John Glenn, Eric Nelkin. AD The next episode is coming right up next Tuesday at the latest, Mike tells me, and we’ll definitely want to hear that one: In Episode 2 Mike interviews Chris Doyle, the legendary wordsmith who has been smeared with more than 2,200 blots of ink — including 59 wins! — since he started entering the Invitational in earnest 20 years ago. Chris is also universally regarded as uncommonly generous and gracious to his fellow Losers, offering good words and helpful advice to many a contestant who’s chatted him up. Perhaps he’ll share his general approach to the horse name contest, or comment on how he goes about writing the untold thousands of limericks he’s written, all of them mechanically flawless and almost all of them jaw-droppingly clever. Other segments will include What Mike Liked and, correspondingly, What Our Guest Blessed, their faves from that week’s Invite. If you have some ideas or requests for the show, email me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll package them up and send them off to Mike. And thanks so much again, Mike, for sharing your bizarre passion with the rest of the world. (No, not the one about tropical-fish porn.) Losers inch into the light! Outdoor lunch and tour in Gettysburg, Oct. 18 In-person Loserdom has been on hiatus since March, of course; we postponed, then gave up on the Flushies, our annual awards “banquet” and songfest, and the monthly Loser Brunches became just memories of Previous Life. But Elden Carnahan, essentially the founder of Loserdom, posted this week in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group that Gettysburg, Pa., resident and tour guide (and 129-time Loser) Roger Dalrymple “offers to find a Gettysburg restaurant with outdoor dining, followed by the traditional tour of the battlefield with nontraditional social distancing. The tentative date is Sunday, October 18.” AD ADVERTISING Usually the year’s Loser brunch rotation features a spring or fall outing to Gettysburg, and the Royal Consort and I have enjoyed it several times over the years. And if this happens, I’d make a special effort to clear my schedule and drive up there, just to see and talk with you folks in person, even behind a mask. I’ll announce more details in coming weeks; if you’re interested or would like more information, email elden [dot] Carnahan [at] gmail [dot] com. a-HA moments*: The limericks of Week 1396 *Non-inking headline by Bill Dorner I had thought that Chris Strolin, editor of OEDILF, the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick form, was going to ask that I restrict this year’s Limerixicon (XVII!) to feature words beginning gr- to gz-. But fortunately, and of course appropriately, he sent a call out for “ha-” limericks this year. And the results of Week 1396 should provide him lots of choice material; I received around 800 limericks from more than 150 Losers, and I liked many more than the 26 entries that see ink today. AD As usual, however, some people swung far of the mark in both rhyme and meter, making me wonder if they’d ever heard “Hickory Dickory Dock” or had read the rhymes of Dr. Seuss. One limerick “rhymed” engaged, engraved, exchanged; another asks*crashed; another Orlando* banjo. And powerful*allowable. And Harris*premise. And I wish the writers of these lines would have said them out loud to note their missing “hickory-dickory-dock” at their core: How would you hear that BA-da-da BA-da-da BA rhythm if you read out loud “Hallmark and Amazon Prime fit the bill,” or “Yay! Kamala Harris is Joe Biden’s pick.” Or for the “dickory-dock” of Lines 3 and 4, “When they asked me how* I take my coffee now.” This week’s Losers’ Circle was fully stocked with veteran Loserbards: Melissa Balmain, editor of the online poetry journal Light, wins the Invite for the 13th time with one of her trademark winsome look at domestic woes — this time it’s the bad news a man might find in a hairbrush. And the rest of the “above the fold” ink went to three Hall of Famers: Chris Doyle used his signature style of a Line 5 pun on a familiar expression, Trump “beating a hasty retweet”; Duncan Stevens played on the welcome news that Washington’s NFL team had to give up “that godawful name” and so fans can sing “Hail Team” instead of the old fight song; and Mark Raffman’s not so ha-ha warning from Moscow on hacking. AD What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood’s faves of the week came from the honorable mentions: Gary Crockett’s “halitosis while wearing a mask,” Duncan Stevens’s sobriquet for You Know Who as the “harangue-a-tan,” and Perry Beider’s comparing two antique weapons, the mace and halberd, as a matter of “bash versus gore.” Go help OEDILF.com: Now that the Week 1400 results have run, feel free to submit your “ha-” limericks — inking or not — to OEDILF.com, the continuing and continuing and continuing project to assemble an entire English dictionary in which all the descriptions are limericks. Unlike the Empress, who just can’t, sorry, Chris Strolin and his band of volunteer editors will often patiently “workshop” your not-quite-perfect limerick with you until it can become one of the almost 110,000 (not a typo) that have been accepted into the OEDILF. All I ask: If you’re submitting a limerick that got Invite ink this week, please include a note to that effect in your submission, and OEDILF will credit the Invitational. It’s not a turf thing; I just want our name to get out there to all would-be Loserbards. AD So much bawdy, we held it against them: The unprintables: Limericks have a long tradition of being off-color, and Kevin Dopart did get some Web-only ink with his Mae West joke, but these otherwise inkworthy efforts would have been too much for the Invite: In a thousand porn movies I've starred, The sort in which no holds are barred. My mum said, “It's sleazy — Has it ever been easy?" So I told her, “It’s always been hard.” (Englishman Bob Turvey, who usually enters the Invitational once a year, for the Limerixicon) --- Your Mama, who hangs out at Fenway And weighs more than twenty-one men weigh, Is trying to sign up The whole Red Sox lineup — Plus one — for a locker room ten-way. (Sox fan Chris Doyle) --- And one more from Dr. Turvey: My tugboat friend said something droll, “When out on the pull it’s my goal, To grease my long cable So it is quite able To slide in and out the hawse-hole.” Ohh, nooooo. ====================================================================== WEEK 1401, published September 13, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1401: 166 Losers walk into a bar joke ... The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s cartoon results and new haiku contest Bob Staake's empty-set cartoons from Week 1397, inset, and his drawings of the top entry for each: clockwise from top left, idea and caption by Rob Cohen, Steve Smith, Duncan Stevens and Mike Gips. Bob Staake's empty-set cartoons from Week 1397, inset, and his drawings of the top entry for each: clockwise from top left, idea and caption by Rob Cohen, Steve Smith, Duncan Stevens and Mike Gips. By Pat Myers September 10, 2020 at 3:58 p.m. EDT Add to list Oh, I’m so jazzed about how well the Style Invitational Week 1397 contest came out today! Not only did the Loser community come up with lots of funny, fresh ideas for four hoary magazine-cartoon tropes — I knew y’all would do that — but our cartoonist Bob Staake volunteered to draw four individual cartoons for the top entries, in a style that mixes classic New Yorker with Bob’s own. Bob himself has frequently been published in the New Yorker — but not among the cartoons. He does covers. Like this. And this. And, most famously, this. Every week for the 16 1*2 years I’ve been Empress, I take the guy for granted. What a treasure. And yes, yes, dears, you’re all treasures too. Having an especially treasury month, Rob Cohen has now won his third and fourth Invite contests in the space of three weeks. His idea of a horde of distressed people swimming to the desert island — “Trump won!” — was Bob’s overwhelming favorite; he called it “brilliant” and said it really could be a New Yorker cartoon. The win plus an honorable mention this week, the “Mt. Everest” sign on the island, give him 90 blots of ink all-time. AD Second place goes to Mike Gips and his GPS in the desert, advising, “In 375 miles, crawl right.” There were other Waze jokes, but “crawl right” was the key. This and a joke about an eye-rolling Empress brings his ink total to 270 since Mike started Inviting back in 2003. (See below about his new Style Invitational podcast, “You’re Invited.”) Meteoric Rookie Steve Smith takes third with his Covid-Sensitive Dracula-at-the-bar joke, while Greg Dobbins takes fourth with the barkeep asking Putin to “name your poison." (Bob didn’t want to draw Putin because he didn’t want to resort to heavy-handed labeling to make it clear who he was.) (Did you know that Bob sells his Invitational sketches and finished art? He has a special page on his website for Invite people to contact him and order a cartoon: bobstaake.com*si . They’re always in black-and-white because he does the coloring in his ancient version of Photoshop.) What Doug dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood tells me he especially enjoyed this week’s contest, and who am I to doubt him? For faves he singled out the runner-up by Greg Dobbins’s Putin joke, along with Jeff Shirley’s man on the island sobbing as the “How to Tango” book washing up on the beach; Robyn Carlson’s priest coming into the bar and saying “Just once I wanted to walk in alone”; the psychiatrist diagnosing the rabbi, priest and minister, all sitting on the couch, as being in the wrong cartoon (similar entries by Jeff Shirley and Jon Gearhart); and Mike Gips’s cartoon with the Empress as the therapist advising a guy in a dunce cap. AD Beggaring description: An unprintable: Here’s one that others might love but I couldn’t, from Kevin Dopart for the desert setting: “Draw a Family Circus parody of Billy’s wandering dashed path — this time with a Billy skeleton at the end of the path'. Caption: ‘Daddy has the week off, so Dolly fills in and resolves her primogeniture issues.’” Call me a snowflake, but I can’t handle jokes (at least ones that are at all graphic) about dead children. I could never have worked for National Lampoon. ‘You’re Invited’ podcast Episode 2: Chris Doyle tells how he does it Did you catch last week’s premiere episode of the podcast about The Style Invitational? Host Mike Gips interviews me for half an hour. It’s lots of fun. But WAY better is Episode 2 of “You’re Invited,” which dropped, as we trying-to-be-current codgers say, this past Tuesday. And that’s because Mike spends the whole episode talking with the Invite’s most successful Loser by far, Chris Doyle — Chris Doyle of the 2,244 blots of Invite ink, including a ridiculous 59 first-place wins. AD You can see an index of all the episodes at bit.ly*invite-podcast. In an engaging voice that still betrays a bit of his New England roots, Chris touches on a variety of topics and dish, some of what was news to me: — I knew that Chris had been a mainstay the New York Magazine Competition, the inspiration for the Invite, until that contest folded in 2000 and he began entering the Invitational in earnest. I did not know that he’d gotten even more ink in that contest than he has in the Invite! And given that NY Mag had a one-entry-per-contest limit … well, he explains to Mike how he made that work. I also didn’t know that the contest’s retiring editor, Mary Ann Madden, had asked Chris to take it over. (Fortunately for us, he declined.) — Are you getting your entries together for Week 1400, our foal names contest? Chris tells how he takes on the ponies every year. (Systematically.) AD — Chris, who’s been retired for many years and now lives in the Dallas area, reflects on his wide-ranging musical tastes, evident in his Invite parodies ranging from old-timey tunes to country ballads to Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok.” — He tells about his two long-term round-the-world voyages with his wife, during which he’d send in his Invitational entries from whichever port town would have some Internet cafe during the early days of Ye Olde Information Superhighway. And the time when they were on a ferry between the islands of New Zealand, and it was foggy, and that week’s Invite asked you to use a phone book … — He offers his Secret to Lots of Ink. It does not involve bribes. Usually. Chris is so lively in his interview with Mike, so much more than I was. And Mike himself continues to ask friendly questions that keep the conversation flowing. He also reads his favorite entries from the past week’s contest, which last week were the “ha-”- word limericks. (Gary Crockett, prepare to blush.) What you So, so might you ink: This week’s joke haiku contest This week’s contest, Week 1401, was suggested by Longtime Loser (and last week’s winner) Melissa Balmain, who’d just published a haiku by L.A. comedy writer Paul Lander as a topical “Poem of the Week” from Light, the online poetry journal she edits. She shared it to the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, commenting, “Possible germ of an Invite idea?” Dang, it’s the whole package. Paul’s “How Hot Is It?" haiku — “It is so hot that* my iPhone now qualifies* as a Baked Apple” — became the example for the contest, thereby giving Paul his first blot of Invite ink in a contest that, until yesterday when I contacted him, he didn’t know existed. AD I was considering widening the scope of the contest to any one-liner joke fit into haiku form, but then figured that most any of the entries that we’ve run in our numerous haiku contests over the years could be termed jokes. So we’re going with the “X is so Y” type. Yes, you may vary the wording. As long as we have the “so” idea, we’re good. We’ve had two excellent “so” joke contests over the years, 24 years apart. One of them was one of the Invitational’s very first contests: Week 21 in 1993. Here are the results, beginning with the Czar rolling his eyes at some old chestnuts that were submitted along with the fresh stuff. Then, as now, topical humor was a good way to get ink. Of course, most of these run more than 17 syllables, but you can’t reuse these jokes anyway. Report from Week 21, in which you were asked to describe things through So-So comparison. “Ross Perot is so unusual, it’s said that when he was born they threw away the baby and raised the placenta.” A splendid joke, when it was first applied to Tiny Tim in 1968. And: “George Burns is so old that when he was born the Dead Sea was just sick.” This was originally said about George Bernard Shaw, who died in 1950. Fair warning: In the future, if you serve us chestnuts, we will roast you. AD Fifth Runner-Up: Donald Trump is so annoying that Amnesty International wants him beaten and locked up. (Tom Gearty, Washington) Fourth Runner-Up: D.C. streets are so badly maintained they have more potholes than Jerry Garcia’s sofa. (Robin D. Grove, Washington) Third Runner-Up: The Mississippi River has been so aggressive, it is now being called the Msissippi. (Pai Rosenthal, Sterling) Second Runner-Up: Joe McGinniss is so original he deserves to win the Style Invitational, Ted Kennedy thought to himself. (Tom Jedele, Laurel) [This was a dig at the author’s nasty 1993 book about the senator, which included lots of presumable mind-reading.] First Runner-Up: Bill Clinton has gained so much weight that I-495 has been renamed the Sansabeltway. (Paul Sabourin, Greenbelt) [Sabourin went on to become half of the cult-favorite comedy song duo Paul and Storm] AD And the winner of the Mortimer Snerd Ventriloquist’s Dummy: Jack Kent Cooke is so litigious that I’m not going to finish this thought. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) [Cooke was the owner of what’s now named the Washington Football Team; I don’t remember what this entry might be alluding to in particular, but in 1993 he was going through divorce litigation as well as trying to bill the state of Virginia millions for his efforts in trying to get the team moved there from Washington; it eventually ended up in Maryland in what was initially called Jack Kent Cooke Stadium.] Honorable Mentions: The White House staff is so young that the most common question on Air Force One is, “Are we there yet?” (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) The White House staff is so young they have to write home when they go to Camp David. (Paul B. Jacoby, Washington) AD The White House staff is so inexperienced that it has never “been” with another staff. (Meg Sullivan, Potomac) Spike Lee is so desperate for a crossover hit that he is filming “Dennis the Menace II Society.” (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Saddam Hussein is so evil he will have to pass an ethics test to get into Hell. (Leonard Osterman, Potomac) Mayor Kelly is so sensitive to sexual harassment that she refuses to accept mail addressed to “The Hon. Sharon Pratt Kelly” because she is no one’s “hon.” (Carol V. Strachan, Silver Spring) Washington streets have so many potholes, it’s like driving over a giant, deserted Whack-a-Mole game. (Paul Kondis, Alexandria) Don King has so much static in his hair, he electrocutes anyone who give him a noogie. (Audrey Kovalak, Springfield) The White House is so full of Arkansans they are cutting crescent moons in the restroom doors. (Forrest L. Miller, Rockville) Ross Perot is so paranoid his theories are laughed at by Oliver Stone. (Paul Sabourin, Greenbelt) [Maryland] Gov. Schaefer is so petty that he had “43” painted on his limo. (Greg Griswold, Falls Church) [I’m a weensy bit surprised that the Bronx-born Czar got this reference.] The Haft family is so dysfunctional that Herbert sold the family tree to Crown Books for pulp. (Christopher P. Nicholson, Arlington) [The very rich and flamboyant Haft family, whose various members owned D.C.'s Dart Drug and Crown Books, were constantly warring.] Dan Quayle is so dumb. (Chris Rooney, Reston) And Last: The Style Invitational is so popular that the next Supreme Court justice will be chosen on the basis of “humor and originality.” (Al Toner, Arlington) And Least: The Style Invitational is so funny I forgot to laugh. (Tony Buckley, Washington) And a quarter-century later (less than two months after the inauguration of you-know-who) … AND ‘SO’ WIT WAS WRITTEN: REPORT FROM WEEK 1215 In Week 1215 the Empress sought one-liners of the form “X is so Y that …” Once again, she didn’t tell the Loser Community to sling gibes at our president, but once again, those are what mostly were slung, big league. Perhaps a dozen entries offered that Trump is so self-centered that he thought the song was about him. 4th place: The Trump White House is so brazen, it’s offering foreign donors a night in the Putin Bedroom. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) 3rd place: My friend from Weight Watchers is so competitive that she always halves what I’m halving. (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) 2nd place and the toilet-shaped mug: Donald Trump’s hands are so tiny, the women he grabs don’t even notice. (Brian Allgar, Paris) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: My chiropractor is so unscrupulous, he charges Paul Ryan the same price as people who have backbones. (Jeff Shirley, Richmond, Va.) So close, yet so far: honorable mentions “The Bachelor” is so fixed, it ought to be called “The Gelding.” (Lawrence McGuire, Waldorf, Md.) Kellyanne Conway’s been so quiet lately that Richard Simmons is asking what’s happened to her. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) President Trump’s skin tone is so unusual, nothing rhymes with it. (Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.) John McCain is such a bold, independent-thinking maverick, he complains about Trump’s nominees before voting for them. (Duncan Stevens) Political correctness has gotten so out of control that the last time I ordered French toast at a diner, a millennial at the next table jumped up and started screaming, “Cultural appropriation! Cultural appropriation!” (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) Donald Trump is so great. #totallyriggedStyleInvitationalclaimsIbroketherules #aftereverythingIvedoneforthePost #suchanastyempress (Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.) The crowd was so huge at Trump’s inauguration that the Park Police considered setting up a second Porta-John. (Hildy Zampella, Falls Church, Va.) Kim Jong Un is so paranoid that his food taster has a food taster. (John O’Byrne, Dublin) America’s lawyers have been getting so much love for their help fighting the immigration ban, cabbies are giving them free rides to chase ambulances. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) Mitch McConnell is such a negative guy that his bobblehead shakes its head no. (Pie Snelson, Silver Spring, Md.) The insult was so trivial that even @realDonaldTrump wouldn’t respond to it. (Jeff Hazle, San Antonio) The movie was so awful that everyone in the theater stopped texting to watch in disbelief. (Hildy Zampella) Trump is so out of shape, he gets tired in conversations with foreign officials just pressing their buttons. (Dan Helming, Maplewood, N.J.) Donald Trump is so reckless he asked Kim Jong Un to pick him up at the airport. (David Kleinbard, Mamaroneck, N.Y.) Canadians are so angry about Trump’s travel ban, they are asking politely that it be repealed. (Mark Raffman) Donald Trump is such an inept fascist, he can’t even make Metro run on time. (Mark Raffman) The Old Woman in the Shoe had so many kids, she had to learn to multi-tsk. (Chris Doyle) President Trump is so self-absorbed, he thinks the word “meme” has two syllables. (Jesse Frankovich) Chuck Norris is so tough, his shower floor is strewn with Legos. (Chris Doyle) The Democrats have been so shut out of the governing process, they’re writing letters to their congressmen. (Dan Helming) The suspect’s rap sheet was so long that the police had to print it on the back of a CVS receipt. (Hildy Zampella) Kids are so ungenerous these days that mine always want me to pay them back every time I borrow a couple hundred dollars for beer and cigarettes. (Ivars Kuskevics, Takoma Park, Md.) Facebook is so polluted with political vitriol that my friends who voted for Trump and RUINED OUR COUNTRY (HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY NOW) don’t even pay attention to my posts anymore. (Mark Raffman) Donald Trump’s hands are so large that his skin has to stretch really thin to cover them. (Steve Glomb, Alexandria, Va.) Betty White is so old that when she says she saw “Hamilton,” she saw Hamilton. (Ira Allen, Bethesda, Md.) The night was so dark, democracy died. (Jeff Hazle) Your Mama’s been used so much that even this contest doesn’t want to touch her. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Keira Knightley is so thin, she could pass as Monday’s Washington Post. (Kevin Dopart) The Style Invitational’s readership is comprised of people so nitpicky that they’ve already mentally corrected the first part of this sentence to “composed of.” (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) And Last: The Empress is so objective that she reads entries with a blindfold on. (Kel Nagel, Salisbury, Md.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1402, published September 20, 2020 ====================================================================== WEEK 1403, published September 27, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1403: Do adjust your set The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s contest and results Bob Staake's cartoon from 2011 to illustrate Nan Reiner's parody of the “Brady Bunch” theme that told the tale of the “Gosselin Gang,” of the reality show “Kate Plus Eight.” We're back to TV shows with this week's contest — and you don't have to write a song. Bob Staake's cartoon from 2011 to illustrate Nan Reiner's parody of the “Brady Bunch” theme that told the tale of the “Gosselin Gang,” of the reality show “Kate Plus Eight.” We're back to TV shows with this week's contest — and you don't have to write a song. By Pat Myers September 24, 2020 at 5:29 p.m. EDT Add to list I personally don’t watch much TV. That’s a significant understatement, really: Whole weeks go by when I don’t turn it on; I barely know how to operate the remote. It’s not that I’m snobbish against television; I’m sure, in fact, that I’m missing out on lots of shows I’d enjoy. It’s just that sitting down in the living room in front of the screen hasn’t been part of my daily routine ever since I started working nights at The Post in 1982. (The Royal Consort and I have caught up on a few select series over the years through Netflix, etc., but we still, for example, haven’t gotten up to the last season of “The West Wing.”) But that doesn’t mean we can’t do TV humor in The Style Invitational, like this week’s contest, Week 1403, suggested by Newbie Loser Bill Bouyer. For one thing, My Friend Google can tell me lots of handy info about your favorite show. And for another, this contest’s conceit — updating the story line with a covid-19 theme or another current issue — especially lends itself to reaching back to older shows. While I often fret that the Invite’s humor is rooted stubbornly in the pop culture of the preceding century (especially in music references), the fact is that back then, the most popular TV shows were watched by vastly more people than any given one is these days (except the Super Bowl and some of its ilk). Hank Stuever, The Post’s TV critic, pointed out in an essay this week that the era of the shared TV experience may well be over, done in by the enormous quantity of programming and array of platforms that prevents even Hank, who’s paid to watch TV all day, from taking in. While the “Game of Thrones” finale has been seen by 19 million people — certainly a water-cooler number — it’s practically a niche audience compared with the 76 million who watched the “Seinfeld” finale in 1998. Or of “M*A*S*H,” to which 106 million viewers joined the group hug. So all I’m saying is to lay on me whatever you like. AD Week 1403 does require more than simple wordplay on the title, a tack that works for many of our contests. But we’ve had lots of successful ink in the past with contests about the actual content of the shows. Here’s one that asked to describe the show or movie in limerick form. Among the TV programs mentioned in the results of the results of Week 974: “Survivor” Contestants from Nome to Hoboken Will vie for a totem or token. It may defy reason — Its 20th season! The upshot: The tripe has now spoken. (Mike Gips) “The Big Bang Theory” Caltech’s a big deal on TV, And its physicist-nerds are the key. “The Big Bang Theory” speaks In the language of geeks: PhD = BMOC. (Chris Doyle) “I Dream of Jeannie” The love life of a brave astronaut’ll Be something a blond babe who’s hot’ll Enhance. She’ll entrance If she wears harem pants, AD Calls him “Master” and lives in a bottle. (Chris O’Carroll) “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” Do you know why the sisters Kardashian Have a show that they’re paid to look trashy in? The answer is sad: The world has gone mad, And talent has grown out of fashi-on. (Robert Schechter) And we even had a contest in which the Losers had to write whole theme songs, a la “The Beverly Hillbillies,” about a TV show, using any tune. The results were truly classic. You can see the complete results of Week 929 here; below are the top four winners. 1. “Kate Plus 8” (sung to the “Brady Bunch” theme) by Nan Reiner Here’s the story of a girl named Katie, Who was poor and living in a trailer park. All she wanted in her life was to be wealthy; On this she would embark. It’s the story of a man so shady He would happily exploit his kids and wife. AD ADVERTISING These two kindred spirits met and formed a couple, And so began their life. They went out and got a multiple conception, And resolved to get some bucks for their big bang, So they whelped and then they hawked their cute sextuplets: That’s the way they all became the Gosselin Gang. (The Gosselin Gang, the Gosselin Gang … ) But this fouled-up family couldn’t last forever: Jon was restless, and his wife was quite the shrew. When she caught him in the sack with other women, The Gosselin Gang was through. But the lady wasn’t gonna give up easy. On the gravy train she’d labored to create. She convinced the TV folks to keep it going: That’s the way they turned it into “Kate Plus Eight.” 2. A PBS Evening (to “Wonderful World”) by Brendan Beary The invasion of Normandy; Specials on seismology; Shows to help you make a greener house; AD A performance of “Die Fledermaus.” No one else has the shows we do, Yeah, but first we want to hear from you, So we need you to pick up the phone. It’s not easy here at PBS; Ledger sheets are an awful mess. Big-name sponsors are cutting back; It’s been tough to stay in the black. So the way we keep the lights turned on Is a nonstop cajole-athon, And we need you to pick up the phone. Well, pledge campaigns instead of commercials Seemed an even trade, But lately we’re holding them 24-7, Just to see the bills are paid … You can see we’re not getting rich; Viewers hate our bait-and-switch. You just want the shows we said we’d air — Moving coffee mugs will get us there. If you deadbeats don’t send the dough, Cookie Monster has to be let go, So we need you to pick up the phone. 3. “CSI” (to “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”) by Jeff Brechlin AD It’s a beautiful day for an autopsy! Let’s cut this guy open so we can see His intestines … and his liver. Then let’s open his stomach, what do you say? To see what he had with that chardonnay. Would you hand me … that skull chisel? I have always wanted to take a closer look inside, To roll my sleeves up, dig right in, and find out how they died. So I’ll pick up a scalpel, and you will too, We’ll damn the torpedoes and rip right through. Would you hand me … his left kidney? Let’s just cut him open. 4. “Toddlers and Tiaras” (to the “Mary Tyler Moore” theme) by Kathy Hardis Fraeman They can turn the world on with their smiles. (Maybe not the whole wide world, but certainly turn on the pedophiles.) With their makeup and fancy dresses We know that they’re wearing diapers and making messes. Toddlers and tiaras! Temper tantrums! AD Phony teeth and hair! The crazy-rant moms! B abies are told to shake their butts. Their mothers clearly must be nuts. Jestivation*: The summer fictoids of Week 1399 *Non-inking headline suggested by both Tom Witte and Chris Doyle As we also did for winter (Week 1360) and spring (1381), in Week 1399 we asked for fictoids, or fake trivia, about the summer, or things that happen (or happened) in summer. As this week’s results show, at least a couple dozen of you offered up some Fascinating Facts-not, though a lot of the non-inking entries seemed to be either straining to be funny or just off the mark. But Jeff Rackow was spot on with his revelation that cotton candy is now made of polyester — and wins the Lose Cannon as just his third blot of Invite ink; the other two were from this past summer. But to judge from his ink so far (plus some almosts) I’m expecting to memorize Jeff’s prize-mailing address. AD The rest of the Losers’ Circle was stocked with Familiars, as were the honorable mentions: Stephen Dudzik is one of a very few Losers to have blotted up ink in all 28 years of the Invite, starting in Week 7; Art Grinath dates from almost as far back, Week 106. Frank Osen waited until Week 938 to find us out in Pasadena, but has more than made up for lost time; and in recent weeks can’t stop winning the whole contest. There were a few entries that I was about to use until I realized that, even stretching like one of those rhythmic gymnasts, I couldn’t say they had anything to do with summer. One was from Steve: “The South Pacific atoll of Bikini is the only habitat of Bikini bikinis, an oddly shaped reptile with two lumps on its head and a triangular mouth.” Fake facts about bathing suits are summer. Fake facts about fake animals that look like bathing suits are not summer. AD Another I would have liked was from Rob Huffman, who I think was channeling our “Year in Preview” contest we do in December, “predicting” various events. “In June 1966, young tycoon Donald Trump throws out his ceremonial first tenant.” You didn’t get to just make up an event and arbitrarily say it happened in the summer. Opening Day in baseball is in April. And this one brought just a WOW from me, because it actually sounds all too true. It’s from Marli Melton, writing from fire-threatened Carmel Valley, Calif.: “Scientists have recently shown that trying to write humorous fictoids when it is 115 degrees F and smoky outside; beaches, theaters, and other cooling places are closed because of the pandemic; and there is no AC or nighttime cooling, is generally hopeless, even when you put ice cubes down your back every 10 minutes.” No AC! I hope things have cooled and cleared for you, Marli. What Doug Dug: The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood came from the honorable mentions: Mike Gips’s unfortunately named “Summer of Haight,” Kevin Dopart’s “Hurricane Sharpie,” Mark Raffman’s winner of the three-legged race at Chernobyl (one person); and Kevin’s political zinger about the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Duncan Stevens on his Secrets of Ink Success! Episode 4 of ‘You’re Invited’ Mike Gips’s new podcast all about The Style Invitational just dropped the latest episode Tuesday (after this it goes from weekly to a saner-for-all monthly). This time Mike interviews Hall of Fame Loser Duncan Stevens, who’s holding a Secretariat-like lead in this year’s standings over Usual Leader Jesse Frankovich, with 78 blots of ink just since March. Duncan tells about his casual start in the Invite not all that many years ago, how he started to take it seriously after co-workers would ask him why his name wasn’t in the paper that week, how he comes up with entries, and how he decides what to submit. The best part, though, is when he and Mike crack up over their favorites among last week’s Invite winners, and Duncan also offers up some favorites he’s savored while reading through the Invite archives. (Duh, he reads the Invite archives.) While Mike tells me that you should now be able to find You’re Invited on Apple Podcasts, you can always go to bit.ly*invite-podcast and find a list of all the half-hour shows. Well, it’s not as nice as a horse with backward legs, but … Bob Staake’s Stunner Did you all see Bob Staake’s sure-to-be-iconic New Yorker cover this week — and fittingly titled “Icons” — in memory of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg? It’s stunning. I’m glad that Bob finds these little jobs to do to supplement his Great Work of making Invite cartoons every week. By the way: Bob does sell his Invite art, and has a special page where you can buy an original sketch or your favorite pen-and-ink final (without the electronic coloring that’s done later on a scanned copy). It’s on his website at bobstaake.com*SI. Wishing those who celebrate Yom Kippur a rewarding fast, and remember that all of you get an extra day to file those 14-point Scrabble neologisms for Week 1402: Deadline is midnight Tuesday, Sept. 29. And on to judging 3,500 horse names! ====================================================================== WEEK 1404, published October 4, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1404: A foal and his mommy The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s contest and results Kentucky Derby winner Authentic got to “sire” two foal names in Style Invitational Week 1400, with the help of fellow Triple Crown nominees Spice Is Nice (an actual filly!) and Wrecking Crew. Kentucky Derby winner Authentic got to “sire” two foal names in Style Invitational Week 1400, with the help of fellow Triple Crown nominees Spice Is Nice (an actual filly!) and Wrecking Crew. (Darron Cummings*AP) By Pat Myers Oct. 1, 2020 at 5:37 p.m. EDT Add to list Well, I sure didn’t regret running two horse name contests in 2020 — three if you count the grandfoals. Since 1994, The Style Invitational has marked horse racing’s Triple Crown races each spring by inviting readers to “breed” any two names on a list of that year’s nominees, then name a “foal” that cleverly reflects the pairing of names. It’s always easy to do on a basic level, and so it always draws thousands of entries from several hundred readers, many of them sending a list of the maximum 25 combinations. But like just about everything else this year, the pandemic sent the Triple Crown schedule into cuckooland, with the Derby postponed from May to September, the Preakness till October, and the Belmont, usually last and longest, run first, but at a shorter length. What to do with the Invite: I wasn’t sure we’d get any Derby race at all, so back in May I went ahead with Week 1382, presenting a list of 100 previous Derby winners back to 1878 and putting them up for stud. The results were, as always, a delightful deluge of puns and other wordplay, sifted from almost 4,000 entries. And then, as usual, we had the encore “grandfoals” contest in which the inking entries were bred with one another, with similarly clever results. AD But sure enough, the Kentucky Derby did go off on Sept. 5, and I couldn’t resist playing the ponies one more time — with the usual list of this year’s 3-year-old nominees in Week 1400. But would readers want to contribute to yet another race around the track, especially if they didn’t get ink before? Yup, pretty much! I ended up with 3,451 entries from more than 300 Losers, and posted 70 of the best, from 59 different contestants, in this week’s results. (But still, I decided that a second grandfoal contest would be too much, even for me.) According to Loser Jonathan Hardis, who every year compiles all these often messy and misspelled entries into one perfectly sorted and arranged list, there were 1,889 different pairings of two horses (out of 4950 possible). Not so surprisingly, 228 separate entries employed the stud service of Hail to the Chief — most of them, alas, to uninspired venting like Charlatan x Hail to the Chief = 45. But HTTC did succeed with three progeny: Hail to the Chief x Close Shave = Stubble Genius (Rick Haynes), x American Baby = Mad Don and Child (Elizabeth Kline), and, yes, x Charlatan = Bone Spurious (Stephen Dudzik). On the other end of the stud spectrum, only 11 entries tried Caracaro, and Sam Mertens parlayed its sound into the inking Superfecto x Caracaro = Expiali-docious. AD As usual, most of the foals are puns, and a number of others are the “operative” variety, in which Horse A is modified by Horse B to produce Horse C. The third-place name, submitted separately by Laurie Brink and Duncan Stevens, is As Seen on TV x Censored = ** *een on TV. So is, in a different order, Laura Bennett Peterson’s As Seen on TV x Believe Now = Regret Later. My “shortlist,” as usual, numbered around 200 totally inkworthy entries. You very well may have been robbed of ink. If this is so, you may file a claim for the return of your steep entry fee. Or you can send your best “noink” again in December when I run the retrospective redo of the previous year’s contest. Maybe your entry was one of these clever ones? Ancient Land x Telephone Talker = Babble On Poe x Explosive (or Pneumatic) = The Tell-Tale Fart AD ADVERTISING As Seen on TV x Verb = Adverb Pneumatic x Semper Fi = Drill Sergeant Digital x Fort Knox = Goldfinger Poe x Gimme Some Mo = Nevermo Close Shave x Telephone Talker = Smooth Operator All very nice, all sent by too many people to credit — anywhere from four to 18 per foal. It is, to my surprise as I looked it up this morning, the very first Invite win for Longtime Loser Steve Langer, who’s achieved more fame (not to mention gratitude) in Loserdom by hosting, along with spouse Allison Fultz, the annual Losers’ Post Holiday Party every January for the past four years. ONE DAY we’ll return to the Langerfultzes! Anyway, Steve gets a Lose Cannon with Life on the Road x Villainous = RV Weinstein. The rest of the Losers’ Circle is populated by Invite Hall of Famers Chris Doyle and Duncan Stevens along with two people who mostly save themselves for the horse contests: Laurie Brink and Actual Horse Person Steve Price. AD I’m also delighted to discover that we have six First Offenders this week, which is exactly six more than we had last week. It’s evidence that funny, clever readers continue to find the Invitational and keep it fresh and vibrant. This week they’ll get the coveted Fir Stink, but I’m looking forward to mailing them real prizes once they score a second time. Didn’t get some of today’s inking entries? That’s okay — I don’t think that reflects badly on either you or the entries; people just have different ranges of knowledge. The Czar Himself, my predecessor, was unfamiliar with the term “jarhead” to mean a Marine, in Chris Doyle’s “Semper Fi x Well Connected = Jarhead Kushner.” You might not be familiar with Cardi B singing about her “money moves,” but her 2017 video of her earthy song “Bodak Yellow” has more than 900 million views. It’s a significant piece of popular culture. Jonathan Hardis has a fairly successful MO for figuring out the references: He Googles the horse name, with the pun, and MrMs Google, that crazy smart Bot That Will Take Over Our Minds, more often than not supplies the original name or expression being punned on — because it’s programmed to anticipate the stupidest of misspellings. For instance, as Jonathan recounted in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook this morning, he searched on Mark Raffman’s “Bomb in Gilead” and was instantly taken to a page about the beautiful spiritual “There Is a Balm in Gilead.” David Peckarsky’s “Little Bunny FU FU” made the smaller leap to the children’s song “Little Bunny Foo Foo.” I tried a few more: Our Lose Cannon-winning “RV Weinstein” sure enough brought up Harvey, Weinstein, but it didn’t figure out Laurence McGuire’s “Fauxnecia” as Phoenicia or Elizabeth Kline’s “Mad Don and Child” as Madonna and Child. “Notre Tame” straight out gave me “Notre Dame.” “Mayor Peat” evinced the polite “Did you mean Mayor Pete?” Not all that surprisingly, it had no trouble guessing whom “Jarhead Kushner” was referencing. AD Still, the point isn’t in making the reader do research to figure out an obscure reference — it’s to make the reader laugh at a joke. And I hope that any Invite reader could do that easily with the large majority of this week’s 70 inking foal names. Speaking of obscure references! This entry was fortunately accompanied by a note that at least kept me from wondering what I was missing: Wrecking Crew x Max Player = I Said “PLACE!” Loser Jeff Loren went on to explain: “think “The Sting” … “I said ‘Place it on Lucky Dan!’”; Wrecking Crew was the winner.” I had seen the movie “The Sting” as a middle-schooler when it came out in 1973, and perhaps several times since, but still had no idea. So out of curiosity I looked up the screenplay online and read the scene in which Studs Lonegan meant “place it” to mean bet on Lucky Dan to place, or finish second, but it’s misinterpreted and Lucky Dan does finish second and Studs loses $300,000. But actually, the winning horse in that race is named Syphon, not Wrecking Crew. Wrecking Crew is the winner in a different scene in which Lonegan doesn’t get his bet in on time. Whatever. It’s interesting that the horse Wrecking Crew on our list has the same name as a horse mentioned in one small scene in a 1973 movie, and props to Jeff for noticing, but this is not the basis for a joke. Appropriately for a breeding contest, I guess, I’m counting three Loser Families getting ink today: a brother and sister, a father and daughter, and a husband and wife. First Offender Susan Zarrow immediately jumps off the One Hit Wonders list with a two-ink debut to join brother Dave Zarrow, one of the very, very few Losers to have blotted up ink in all 28 of the Invite’s years so far (though not this week). Laurie Brink and her father, Bernard, enter the horse name contests every year, and at least one of them always gets ink; both of them do today. And both Hall of Fame Loser Mark Raffman and his wife, Claudia, score magnets today. Members of other multiple-Loser families getting ink this week include Jonathan Hardis, brother of Kathy Hardis Fraeman; Dudley Thompson, hub of Susan; and Brett Dimaio, spouse of Pia Palamidessi. And I think that First Offender Paul Madigan is affiliated with horse person Mia Wyatt. I hope that these Losers’ family rivalry isn’t too horribly cutthroat. AD What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me on all my choices for the top winners. And he also singled out Luke Baker’s Cardi O, First Offender Susan Zarrow’s Two Corinthians, Saint Nick, credited to both Claudia Raffman and Beryl Benderly; Rob Wolf’s The Real Dill, and Kathy Al-Assal’s BAM-boozle. This Punnish Inquisition*: This week’s contest, another Ask Backwards *By Seth Brown for a 2006 Ask Backwards Okay, it’s not really “Jeopardy!”; it’s more like Johnny Carson’s Carnac the Magnificent bit with Ed McMahon, or the regular segments on the British comedy show “Mock the Week.” But starting with the very first Ask Backwards in Week 24, 1993, for years we asked: “You are on ‘Jeopardy!’ Those are the answers. What are the questions?” So you can check out the Jeopardy page of the Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, and click on any of the dozens of links in the right columns, and for inspiration and guidance for this week’s contest, see classic entries like these: AD 2018: A. Grace at the Trumps’ Thanksgiving dinner.* Q. After Lisa at the White House Halloween party and Julie at the Veterans Day breakfast, whom did he grab next? (Jesse Frankovich) 2013: A. The Wicked Witch of the Waist*Q. Who said, “Bring me the girl, and the little dog, too — but substitute a small salad for the fries, and can I have the dressing on the side?” (Mark Raffman) 2009: A. Ferret booties. Q. According to a recent poll, what are most male ferrets interested in, way ahead of “good ferret personality” and “good ferret sense of humor”? (Tom Witte) 2004: A. Victoria’s Secret Broccoli. Q. What was the original title of “The Crying Game”? (Seth Brown) 2000: A. Lucy in the Sky With Diapers. Q. What song actually does contain the lyric “The girl with colitis goes by”? (Sandra Hull) 1998: A. Saddam and Eve. Q, Name two people who are famous for not having any brothers-in-law. (Sue Lin Chong) 1994: A. Spelling, Punctuation and Gas. Question: What are three things related to the use of a colon? (Chuck Smith) Like that! (The headline “A Foal and His Mommy” was a non-inking headline by Jon Gearhart for Week 1400.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1405, published October 11, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1405: Marching pun by pun in the grandfoal parade The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s ‘grandfoal’ contest and inking haiku jokes Trump adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle's screamspeech at this year's Republican National Convention is destined to end up all too soon in the Deep Dive category of Super Nerd 2020 Political Trivia. But for now it scores yet another blot of Invite ink, this week in a haiku by Duncan Stevens. Trump adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle's screamspeech at this year's Republican National Convention is destined to end up all too soon in the Deep Dive category of Super Nerd 2020 Political Trivia. But for now it scores yet another blot of Invite ink, this week in a haiku by Duncan Stevens. (Susan Walsh*AP) By Pat Myers Oct. 8, 2020 at 5:19 p.m. EDT Add to list It’s been such a crazy year. When I ran our first 2020 Style Invitational “foal breeding” contest in May, using the names of historical Kentucky Derby winners rather than the usual current Triple Crown nominees, I thought there was a strong chance that this year’s Derby, like so many other public events, would be not just postponed but ultimately canceled. But sure enough, the folks at Churchill Downs managed to pop open the starting gate for 15 horses on Sept. 5, after a four-month postponement. And so, what the heck, I ran the contest again, this time with the usual list of this year’s 3-year-olds. Both contests showered me with entries, about 4,000 in May and 3,500 in September, from more than 300 entrants each time. Also back in May — as we’ve been doing every year since 2006 — we followed up with the “grandfoals” contest, to “breed” any two of the names that got ink that week. As usual, the entry pool diminished by almost half from the previous month, but 2,000 entries are still a ton for an Invite contest (remember, I’m the only person who judges the entries, and I do like the occasional hour of sleep). But then sheez, I figured that Week 1382, Week 1386 AND Week 1400 would be enough horses for a while! So I ran one of our recurring Ask Backwards contests instead. But then sheez no. “When do we get to do the grandfoals for these horses?' I was asked by some of the more dedicated members of the Loser Community as soon as I printed the Week 1400 results. After that, I even heard from just-readers. And believe me, I’m not ordinarily besieged with requests for certain contests, and so here we are a week later with Week 1405, with the foal names compiled in a handy list. AD Though your odds of getting ink might be better in the grandfoal contest than in the first round because there will be fewer entries, coming up with a good name is a bit more challenging, because so many names on the 67-horse list are full of puns. For inspiration and guidance for this time around I thought I’d go over some of the grandfoal names that got ink this year. One note first: Usually, the grandfoal contest runs the same week as the results of the foal contest, so you can see the combination of names that produced the wordplay. Since we’re a week late, I encourage you to look back at last week’s results at wapo.st*invite1404 so you don’t end up running the same joke that produced the foal in the first place. So here are a few grandfoals from this past spring’s contest, Week 1386 (complete results here). AD Au! Au! Au! x Extremely Average = Oh. Oh. Oh. (Hannah Seidel) There have been lots of wordplays involving the abbreviations for chemical elements (Au is gold); this week we have Hg Wails. But Hannah’s grandfoal doesn’t have to be about gold, although it works on that level as well: Extremely Average also works as a transformer to reduce the exclamation points to periods. This one explicitly uses Au as gold, and also even the pun on the name of the legendary quarterback Joe Namath: Au! Au! Au! x Joe Maimeth = Gold Man Sacks (Hildy Zampella) Stubble Stubble x Tank Array = Rubble Rubble (Jonathan Hardis) Tank Array was originally a play on Tanqueray gin, but Jonathan ignores that easily, since it also works on a literal level. Avast! Waistland x Make Up Your Mind! = Bulge 'n' Waffle (Steve Fahey) That this entry won the Lose Cannon shows that you can ignore elements of the pun even when it doesn’t make sense on a purely literal level: I was able to read right over the maritime reference in “Avast! Waistland” (War Admiral x Middleground, by Roy Ashley) and enjoy Steve’s use of the already-a-pun “Waistland” toward “Bulge 'n’ Waffle.” AD Fred Austere x Top Gum = Gingervitis (Matt Monitto) Here Matt ignores the pun “Austere” in the first name and goes directly to the original Astaire (partner of Ginger Rogers), but then ignores the original “Top Gun” in the second element, using “gum.” All of those approaches work. What you don’t want to do is ignore the most conspicuous part of the name. For “Fred Austere,” for example, you could play on “austere” and ignore “Fred,” but you couldn’t just make a joke on “Fred.” How hai were they? The joke haiku of Week 1401 Given the thousands of entries that have poured in for some of our recent contests, I was a bit surprised to receive one of our smallest entry pools of late for Week 1401, our contest for jokes roughly in the “X is so Y” genre and written in haiku form, oversimplistically defined as merely three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Still, as this week’s results show, fewer entries don’t necessarily translate into weaker ink. AD While haiku — especially as we’re defining it — doesn’t present the challenges of rhyme and meter that most of our other verse and song challenges do, it clearly presented opportunities for incisive wit, including some mordant zingers that pushed the envelope of what we’re calling a joke. I tried to mix up the gallows humor of some topical entries with lighter, more playful fare. Frank Mann’s Lose Cannon winner — his third Invite win and 155th blot total, according to Elden Carnahan’s Loser Stats — falls into the first group for sure: “I’m so embarrassed …" — note the economy in not needing to say what he’s embarrassed about … “When I fly abroad I say* I’ve been deported.” Maybe because it doesn’t immediately seem that outlandish anymore? Among the runners-up: Steve Smith’s joke about blue-state mailboxes being turned into recycling cans brings him his eighth ink “above the fold” and 57th total; Sarah Walsh’s quarantine musing on Rapunzel is her second trip to the Losers’ Circle, and 27th (and with her honorable mention, 28th) ink all-time; and then there’s Duncan Stevens, Man of the Invite Hour, once again earning Invite swag that he’s sanely started to decline as he closes in on his 600th blot of ink, 62 of them above the fold. AD While contests with fewer entries usually have drawn mostly the Usual Suspects, I was delighted to find that we have a First Offender this week in Leif Picoult, who channeled the ever-busier political metaphor Pinocchio: “He’s so dishonest*That his nose campaigned across* Four swing states at once.” And Madelyn Rosenberg hops off the One Hit Wonders list in just three weeks with her joke about being so stressed, “my doctor asked. If I took my blood pressure* In an Instant Pot.” Minturn Wright, with his very dark joke about dead voters, took a little longer; his first ink was in Week 1040. We’re delighted that both now get to sit at the grown-ups’ table. Did you notice that some of the haiku begin with “He” rather than the person’s name? It’s just so obvious that the name doesn’t have to be uttered; I think less repetition reads better over 33 haiku. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood enjoyed all the top four haiku, and also singled out Mark Raffman’s “WAP” (“So NSFW* I’m SMFH”); Tom Witte’s " ‘Math for Dummies’ for Dummies”; and David Young’s sly “Such a narcissist* That in prison he’ll only* Print vanity plates.” Just halfscore days away: Outdoor Loser brunch*tour at Gettysburg Weather permitting, we’re still counting on having our first in-person Loser gathering since last winter: our annual visit to made-for-October Gettysburg, Pa., on Sunday, Oct. 18, where Loser Roger Dalrymple will greet us at the outdoor-seating area of the Appalachian Brewing Company pub on Steinwehr Avenue, followed by his annual expertly guided tour of the Civil War battlefield. The National Park Service’s visitor center*museum is open till 4, so perhaps we make a quick stop there as well. Roger is setting a noon starting time, but the pub won’t take reservations, so he hopes that someone could get there at 11:30 or so to help claim a couple of the picnic tables, where we’ll sit generously spaced. The Royal Consort and I plan to be there and hope to see lots more of you over your masks. As with all Loser events, anyone reading this is welcome; please RSVP to Roger at rogerandpam [at] comcast [dot] net and feel free to cc: me at pat.myers@washpost.com. ====================================================================== WEEK 1406, published October 18, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1406: We’re going down! The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s acrostic-poem contest and 14-Scrabble-point neologisms There aren't any Whole Foods stores to prank in West Plains, Mo., so 97-time Loser J. Larry Schott decided to display the good part of our current Grossery Bag, one of our prizes for runners-up, on his wall. That's Bob Staake's design with the jester's hat in place of the stylized leaf. If you'd like to buy an actual Staake Invite drawing to hang on your wall, see his special page at bobstaake.com*si. There aren't any Whole Foods stores to prank in West Plains, Mo., so 97-time Loser J. Larry Schott decided to display the good part of our current Grossery Bag, one of our prizes for runners-up, on his wall. That's Bob Staake's design with the jester's hat in place of the stylized leaf. If you'd like to buy an actual Staake Invite drawing to hang on your wall, see his special page at bobstaake.com*si. (J. Larry Schott) By Pat Myers Oct. 15, 2020 at 5:18 p.m. EDT Add to list As I mention this weekend in the introduction to Style Invitational Week 1406, this week’s contest might not be the best for an acrostic poem about, say, who’s ahead in the polls right now. Because the results will be published Nov. 12. I mean, suppose I had to put in brackets “[written when the candidate hadn’t lost yet].” I don’t know about y’all, but in these next 20 days or so, I’m going to be listening even less to anxiety-producing polls and predictions and voter interviews — my ballot is in — and more to other news, or even “news.” This isn’t to say that you can’t write about ongoing topics in the world right now. But do try to think about how it would read two weekends after Election Day. We did a contest a while back for acrostic limericks, a challenge that many found absurdly daunting. This week’s, however, has no requirements other than that the poem’s lines begin with letters that spell out something relevant — and of course that it be readable and entertaining. And, okay, humorous. And clever. Those qualities don’t require that the poem have well-crafted meter and*or rhyme, but meter and rhyme undeniably are elements of cleverness. AD Here are three of the inking limericks from Week 1332; see them all here. There now is a man (you know who) Who pours out his heart on the loo Each grudge he has held — Emphatic, misspelled — The musings of Whiny the Pooh. (Gary Crockett) --- Come and join me for dinner today! Have a lobster, foie gras, a filet! Even though it’s a date — And it’s gonna be great! — Perhaps you could offer to pay? (Beverley Sharp) --- No-nonsense Pelosi is known As the one who makes Trump look half-grown. Nancy sets him down hard, Catching Donnie off guard. You can tell she’s had kids of her own. (Jonathan Jensen) --- This week’s example is not from an earlier Invitational, but from the online poetry journal Light, which is sort of Invite-adjacent, given that its editor is 168-time Loser Melissa Balmain (who took it over upon the death of founder John Mella) and it’s featured the light verse of many Invitational regulars — or, as we call them, Loserbards. Like many journals in this age, Light used to be print-only and now is online-only. But in addition to the two voluminous issues that Light’s all-volunteer staff releases each year, it also presents numerous Poems of the Week based on recent news items. See the guidelines for submission here; like the Empress, Melissa and managing editor Kevin Durkin judge submissions without seeing the authors’ names. AD Mike Mesterson-Gibbons’s acrostic sonnet “A Hard-to-Swat Fly” was one of the Poems of the Week from Sept. 14. And to prove he’s no fluke, Mike — a professor emeritus of mathematics at Florida State, specializing in game theory — has another one featured in Light this very week: “An angry elk gored a Colorado man finishing a round of golf over the weekend” — CNN The golfer needs to understand the rut, Especially when bulls are on the green. Elks don’t much care if you just want to putt, If keen to steal their dames is how you’re seen! No golfer should be ignorant of how Golf carts sound like a serenader’s tune: Once bulls believe you’re coveting a cow, Forget about a quiet afternoon! … For golfing irons poking from a bag, Approaching in a golf cart on the grass, Not only look like antlers to a stag, Elks fear they’re in the harem-stealing class! AD … Lest you be gored by antlers hard as nails, Keep golf bags out of sight of rutting males! --- While we’re at it, also featured in this week’s Poems of the Week is this double dactyl by one of the legends of The Style Invitational, Brendan Beary, of the 1,084 blots of Invite ink and 39 outright wins, commemorating what might have been the most famous animal in the United States for a few days. Oh, Bugger “Pretty fly for a white guy: insect on Mike Pence’s head upstages vice-president” — The Guardian Higgledy piggledy Musca domestica, a.k.a. housefly, just proved what we knew; Entomological Jargon aside, it’s a Knack flies possess: how to Find Number 2. By the way: Light and the Invitational have similar submission rules: neither of us wants to run work that’s already been published. So don’t send your poem to both places. AD However, if you don’t get Invite ink on Nov. 12, feel free to submit it to Light without even mentioning an Invite connection. As veteran Losers know, lots of eminently inkworthy poems get robbed by the Invitational, because we don’t have enough space for all the good stuff, or perhaps I chose another poem on the same topic. (Obviously, the news in it can’t seem dated by then — another reason to choose a less time-sensitive topic.) KWIPS*: The 14-Scrabble-point neologisms of Week 1402 *Non-inking headline by Kevin Dopart, and yes, its letters total 14 points “God, how are people so creative with these?” was the immediate reaction of Alex Blackwood, my co-admin of the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, when I asked her to weigh in on my shortlist of neologisms from Week 1402. The Losers just always are, for the dozens upon dozens of new-word contests we’ve run in the Invite’s almost 28-year history. And because neologism entries tend not to take up much space on the printed page, I was able to run 42 inking entries, each of whose letters added up to 14 Scrabble points. AD The toughest obstacle for some Losers, in fact, involved counting up to 14: FOUR of the entries I was about to give ink to (including one that slipped through the cracks and actually made it online before someone alerted me) totaled either more or fewer than 14 points, tallied from the list of letter values I’d included in the contest directions. Also not getting ink, however, were people who just tacked on extra letters to make the point value correct, like “Antifalalaa: a protest movement that employs choral groups singing Christmas music.” The Losers’ Circle is full of Usual Suspects this week — three of the four are in the Invite Hall of Fame with more than 500 printed entries each — but it’s the first Lose Cannon for Stephen Dudzik with “buphoon: an ill wind from Washington that blows nobody any good.” Though Steve is one of the very few Losers to get ink in each of the Invite’s 28 years, and has almost 600 blots of ink, and though it’s his 13th win, it’s his very first Lose Cannon; his last first prize was an Inker trophy back in 2011. (And probably his last, since we’ll be replacing the cannons soon with a new design, one whose name doesn’t quote this president.) Tom Witte (“dumbrage”: ignorant indignation) is another of those Ink Every Year people, having debuted in Week 7. Tom’s 1,600-plus blots — many, many of them for neologisms — puts him only behind Chris Doyle on the all-time Loser Stats. And Jesse Frankovich (“shamnesia”: “Michael Cohen? Who?”) was the No. 1 Loser for the past three years, last year scoring a truly ridiculous 184 blots. Neither of them needs any more swag, I decree, at least until we make something new. AD Jonathan Jensen, who has more time on his hands these days since the Baltimore Symphony, for which he’s a bassist, is — like so much else — in the midst of a giant fermata, scored five blots of ink this week, including his first second-place spot (“Nagivation”: backseat driving), thus earning himself the fabulous Emergency Underpants and bottle of Pimp Oil car odor, perhaps the only thing that could overcome the Fir Stinks that we give First Offenders for their first inks. His windfall today boings Jonathan several places up the Loser Stats for a total of 66 blots of Ink since he started Inviting relatively recently in Week 1287. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choices for the Losers’ Circle and also singled out the honorable mentions bifecal (the glasses that Bill Dorner’s now looking out instead of rose-colored ones), Hululemon (Duncan Stevens’s store for shapeless sweatpants suitable for binge-watching from the couch) and Scotusball (the returning Mike Greene: “Political sporting event in which the rules change depending upon who has the whistle”). Last call for Gettysburg: All-outdoor Loser lunch*tour, Sunday, Oct. 18 Bring your mask for the first baby steps toward a physical Loser Community once again: A few of us are gathering in Gettysburg, Pa., this Sunday to have a spread-out outdoor lunch on the picnic tables of the Appalachian Brewing Company on Steinwehr Avenue, followed by a tour by Loser Roger Dalrymple of the battlefields. The weather is supposed to be perfect; lunch starts at noon. The Royal Consort and I hope to see your expressive eyebrows. As with all Loser events, anyone reading this is welcome; please RSVP to Roger at rogerandpam [at] comcast [dot] net and feel free to cc: me at pat.myers@washpost.com. This is the picture-perfect season for the Gettysburg countryside. Ooh! Celebrity guest judge! If you entered our Week 1404 Ask Backwards contest, I hope you submitted some good questions for the “answers” “Ken Jennings and Kylie Jenner” or “Alex Tribeca.” Because Ken Jennings himself — the 74-time “Jeopardy” champ and now career know-it-all — has agreed to weigh in on my shortlist of entries in those two categories. If you follow his quick wit on Twitter or listen to his and John Roderick’s offbeat-history podcast “Omnibus,” you’ll know that he and the Invite should be on the same wavelength. See some of you on Sunday! ====================================================================== WEEK 1407, published October 25, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1407: Ad astera The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s space-marketing contest and winning TV plots for 2020 “Earthy,” a passenger on an otherwise unmanned SpaceX rocket, sits in the Cupola of the International Space Station. That's where NASA will shoot ad photos for various commercial products, like Estee Lauder moisturizer. “Earthy,” a passenger on an otherwise unmanned SpaceX rocket, sits in the Cupola of the International Space Station. That's where NASA will shoot ad photos for various commercial products, like Estee Lauder moisturizer. (Anne McLain*NASA) By Pat Myers Oct. 22, 2020 at 5:11 p.m. EDT Add to list I heard an interview the other Sunday on NPR’s “Weekend Edition” with the acting director of the International Space Station, Robyn Gatens, about the recent shipment of Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair Synchronized Multi-Recovery Complex up to space — not to be used on the sleeping skin of the astronauts, but only to be marketed by them, in the form of photos to be used in Estee Lauder’s social-media ads. As I’ve tended to do for the past 17 years, I immediately thought: “Contest?” I don’t think The Style Invitational has done a contest just like Week 1407, in which you’re invited to come up with a slogan, pitch, jingle, whatever for a product placement or endorsement in space, a kindergarten, or several other unlikely venues. (Just be funny!) But the Invite does have some classic ink with advertising themes. Here’s a selection. Report from Week 910 [2011], in which we asked you to alter a well-known ad slogan slightly and assign it to someone else: Many suggested “You deserve a brake today” for Toyota, “We’ll leave the lights off for you” as perfect for Pepco, and, for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, “Look for the union libel.” AD The winner of the Inker: TSA airport security: If we don’t pet it, you don’t jet it. (Rachel Braun, Silver Spring, a First Offender) 2. Bud Selig: The boor that made Milwaukee famous. (Roy Ashley, Washington) 3. Nordic Flex: Your weak end just got better. (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park) 4. U.S. Postal Service: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there eventually.” (Trevor Kerr, Chesapeake, Va.) P.T. Barnum: You deserve a freak today. (Malcolm Fleschner, Palo Alto, Calif.) Next Day Blinds: Because love is not a spectator sport. (Dave Coutts, Severna Park, a First Offender) Rahm Emanuel: Let your finger do the talking. (Michael Greene, Alexandria) Charlie Sheen: Sometimes you feel like a nut. Other times you may also. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn) National Bar Association: Fee all that you can fee. (Dion Black, Washington; Paulette Rainie, McLean, a First Offender) AD Propecia: Say no to rugs. (Seth Tucker, Washington) The British monarchy: When it reigns, it bores. (Gary Crockett) Agriculture lobby: Please don’t squeeze the farmin’. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) Washington Fertility Center: When it absolutely, positively has to be their ova night. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) TSA: Reach out and touch someone’s … (Seth Tucker) Al’s shoeshine stand: Pardon me, do you have any stray poop on? (Dave Prevar, Annapolis) --- Week 1003 (2013) repurposed ad slogans without changing them: The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Find Your Own Road (Saab) for the D.C. snow removal office. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) 2. It Keeps Going and Going and Going (Energizer batteries) for Viper Car Alarms (Neal Starkman, Seattle) 3. If Only Everything in Life Were as Reliable as a Volkswagen (VW) for Viagra (Dana Austin, Falls Church, Va.) AD 4. Blow Your Own Bubble (Bubble Yum) for Fannie Mae (Steve Heyman, Chicago*) When It Absolutely, Positively Has to Be There Overnight (Federal Express) for Santa’s Workshop (Cheryl Davis, Arlington, Va.) Take Aim Against Cavities (Aim toothpaste) for the TSA (Brendan Beary) Cover the Earth (Sherwin-Williams) for BP (David Kleinbard, Jersey City) Sooner or Later, You’ll Own Generals (General Tire) for Lockheed Martin (Dion Black, Washington; Joe Godles, Bethesda, Md.) Born 1820, Still Going Strong (Johnnie Walker) for Hugh Hefner (Amanda Yanovitch, Midlothian, Va.) Think Outside the Box (Apple) for Maryland Cremation Services (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.; Jerry Birchmore, Springfield, Va.) Because That’s the Kind of Mom You Are (Rice Krispies) for Boone’s Farm (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) Like a Rock (Chevy trucks) for Bisquick (Ed Rader, Alexandria, Va.) AD Have It Your Way (Burger King) for the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (Susan Vavrick, Springfield, Va.) And back from my very first year as Empress, a simply contest for a sign or slogan for a business (Week 559, 2004): Fourth runner-up: Botox clinic: For That Frosty Mug Sensation! (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Third runner-up: Reddi-Wip: From Our Can to Yours (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) Second runner-up: Outside a mousetrap factory: Line Forms on Beaten Path (Russell Beland, Springfield) First runner-up, winner of the dead-minnow tie clip: Anesthesiologist: We Conk to Stupor (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) And the winner of the Inker: Sunshine Veggie Burgers and Dogs: You’ll Hardly Know You Aren’t Eating a Dead Animal (Eric Murphy, Chicago) Auto mechanic: If It Ain’t Broke, We Fix It (Russell Beland) AD Cicada Exterminators Inc.: 16-Year Guarantee! (Bill Clark, Kensington) Credit card company: We Take an Interest in You Forever (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.) Department of Motor Vehicles: We’re Not Happy Till You’re Not Happy! (Lynn Dawson, Centreville) Larry’s Lumberjacks: We’re Okay! (Peter Metrinko, Plymouth, Minn.) NRA: Guns Don’t Kill People. Sucking Chest Wounds Kill People. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Anger management clinic: Bilious and Bilious Served (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) Discount Funerals Inc.: A Little Slab’ll Do Ya (Allan Moore, Washington) Cover Girl Cosmetics: Because You’re Not as Pretty as You Think (Jean Sorensen) Dermatology clinic: A Watched Boil Never Pops (Peter Metrinko) Oncology clinic: We’re a Large Growth Company (Cecil J. Clark, Arlington) Urology clinic: Winning the Admiration of Our Peers (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) AD Eye, ear, nose and throat clinic: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil? We Can Help! (Dot Yufer, Newton, W.Va.) Tie shop: 10 Percent Off Your Neck’s Order (John O’Byrne, Dublin) Pooper Scoopers Inc.: Celebrating 35 Years in Business (Russell Beland) Endocrinology clinic: Gland Opening! (Brendan Beary) Podcast news! A special guest After a few weeks’ pause, the podcast “You’re Invited” will be back Tuesday morning, Oct. 27, with Episode 5: Host and longtime Loser Mike Gips will spend the half-hour with Gene Weingarten, founder of The Style Invitational and its Czar for the contest’s first 11 years. Gene has a few other claims to fame, like the two Pulitzer Prizes for feature writing, his long-running humor column in The Washington Post Magazine, his also long-running online chat on Tuesdays on washingtonpost.com, his daily comic strip “Barney and Clyde,” and his string of books, most recently the acclaimed “One Day,” in which he tracks down and tells a series of riveting tales about things that happened to have happened on the randomly chosen Dec. 28, 1986. But the Invite was a special passion for Gene, and I’m sure he’ll have lots to share about his Czardom as well as the current contest. AD Find the Gene interview (to be done tomorrow) next Tuesday — along with the four previous episodes — at bit.ly*invite-podcast or at Apple Podcasts. Viewer indiscretion advised*: The results of Week 1403 *Non-inking headline by Tom Witte As I’d predicted (and encouraged), it was the old stuff that was funniest to apply to the Covid Era in our Week 1403 contest (results here) for plots of TV series that focused on the coronavirus or other “highlights” of our current age. A shout-out to newbie Loser Bill Bouyer for suggesting the contest; unfortunately, I’ll have to hold off on giving him the usual suggestion prize of taking him out for ice cream, given that he lives in Florida. I’m glad that I broadened the topic from the virus to any current issue; this allowed for a lively variety of entertaining — though sometimes pretty dark — entries including the California wildfires, police malfeasance, QAnon, science denial, Zoom, Mean Ellen DeGeneres, and of course You Know Who and his lies, nepotism, compromising debt, and employees who are vampires. AD The contest brought out lots of new people — we have four First Offenders this week — and among the 165 who entered, many sent full 25-entry “dance cards,” as Loser Jeff Contompasis calls his. And many of them were clever, imaginative ideas; the printout of my “shortlist” ran almost 10 pages (last week it ran 4). And so many inkworthy entries — and entrants — got robbed this week even though the 34 inking entries are by 30 different Losers. He hasn’t been frequenting the Invitational like in the old days — as in 2005-06, when he scored 179 blots of ink just that year — but Brendan Beary clearly hasn’t lost a wit-step, as he proved with his … oh, it’s his FORTIETH first-place win! … for his teaser line for “All in the Family”: After a change of heart, the bigoted guy from Queens lets his meathead son-in-law be in charge of everything. Another Loser with roots back in the Czarist era — but has been inking it up since his return — is Sue Lin Chong, who wins (ha!) a funny face mask for her ironic take on the resourceful MacGyver: “The world hangs in the balance trying to find a way to protect itself from covid-19. But Angus faces his most daunting challenge yet: He has only a square of cloth and two elastic bands.” That’s Ink No. 191 for Sue Lin, and her 31st “above the fold.” And one more! While Allen Breon’s scenario of Elly May Clampett fleeing the L.A. wildfires brings him just his 12th blot of Invite Ink, the first one was in Week 86. MWAH, Allen! Compared with those three, runner-up Jon Gearhart is a babe in the Invite woods — but he’s been blotting up the ink more often than not ever since his debut in Week 1081. And given that Jon was recently in the hospital, his entry about Marcus Welby’s citing a near future without Obamacare carries an extra sting. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood tells me that he especially enjoyed Brendan Beary’s winner, Sue Lin Chong’s “MacGyver” joke and, from among the honorable mentions, Mike Phillips’s Zooming “Brady Bunch” (my choice among numerous Brady*Zoom entries), Duncan Stevens’s Buffy being daunted by fellow vamp Stephen Miller, Frank Mann’s fire-Obama “Apprentice,” Ben Aronin’s dark take on “The Cosby Show”; and Steve Smith’s dig at mean-boss Ellen. At least somewhat fitting and proper: The Losers take Gettysburg Longtime Loser and longtime Gettysburg tour guide Roger Dalrymple tells us about the buildup to the battle — it was pretty much accidental — at an early stop on the car-caravan tour. There were 16 of us in all. Longtime Loser and longtime Gettysburg tour guide Roger Dalrymple tells us about the buildup to the battle — it was pretty much accidental — at an early stop on the car-caravan tour. There were 16 of us in all. (Pat Myers*TWP) Loserdom took its first steps toward returning to a corporeal community when more than a dozen Losers and various auxiliaries joined the Royal Consort and me at the annual Loser Brunch in Gettysburg, Pa., where G’burger and Loser Roger Dalrymple had arranged for us to have an outdoor lunch and a tour of the battlefields, complete with the whole step-by-step story of what happened there in July 1863. Roger had even arranged for absolutely perfect weather — never a given in October, though he could count on the spectacular foliage of the Pennsylvania countryside. We commandeered four or five of the spaced-out picnic tables in the Appalachian Brewing Company’s beer garden, and I was able to present a Lose Cannon — so Civil Warry! — to last week’s winner, Stephen Dudzik, before we commenced on an all-afternoon drive-and-stop tour of various Week 1402 Lose Cannon winner Stephen Dudzik (in red), who's gotten ink in all of The Style Invitational's 28 years, appearing incognito with wife Lequan and the Royal Consort at the distanced Loser brunch. Week 1402 Lose Cannon winner Stephen Dudzik (in red), who's gotten ink in all of The Style Invitational's 28 years, appearing incognito with wife Lequan and the Royal Consort at the distanced Loser brunch. (TWP) battle sites and landmarks, at each stop getting a lesson from Roger (who’s been giving tours for many years) on the buildup, the fighting and the aftermath of those three horrible but consequential days. Aside from the fabulous fall setting and the enlightening afternoon, it just felt so good to be chatting up the Losers again, not to mention receiving numerous excellent second-place prizes from Marleen May — whose Petey P. Cup cuddly urine-sample beaker was immediately put into action this week — and Dave Prevar (hat! ridiculous board game! etc.!). It’s probably too late in the year to schedule another outside sit-down activity in 2020, but perhaps some Losers would like to gather for a hike or some other distant-droplet excursion? Let’s discuss. And of course, hope for Some Breakthrough for 2021. ====================================================================== WEEK 1408, published November 1, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1408: What’s wrong with this picture On the week’s ‘You’re Invited’ podcast, Gene Weingarten recalls a storied Style Invitational cartoon Bob Staake's cartoon for Style Invitational Week 99, February 1995, contained one “what's wrong with this picture” element that the Czar hadn't noticed. Gene Weingarten tells about it on the latest episode of the podcast “You're Invited." Bob Staake's cartoon for Style Invitational Week 99, February 1995, contained one “what's wrong with this picture” element that the Czar hadn't noticed. Gene Weingarten tells about it on the latest episode of the podcast “You're Invited." By Pat Myers Oct. 29, 2020 at 5:00 p.m. EDT Add to list After a few weeks off, the new podcast about The Style Invitational is back with a roar: This week’s episode of Mike Gips’s “You’re Invited” is an interview with Gene Weingarten, founder of the Invite and its coyly anonymous Czar until the Empress deposed him 11 years later in Week 536; listen to it at bit.ly*invite-podcast (the first four episodes are there as well). In the half-hour interview with Mike, Gene tells how he started the contest when he became editor of the Style section’s Sunday edition in 1993, transforming it from its old identity as the vestige of Style as the “women’s section” into a must-read mini-magazine with a big feature story (often true-crime), a personal essay, a humor column by Tony Kornheiser, and, of course, on Page 2, The Style Invitational, a “rip-off” of the old New York Magazine Competition born from “pure vengeance” for Gene’s failure to get ink for a single entry he’d submitted as an NYU student more than 20 years earlier. Mike asks Gene about his favorite and least favorite contests to judge, about memorable entries — Gene quotes by heart in his Bronx-born squawky voice an unprintable limerick about assisted-suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian (if YOU were the one who sent the entry including the word “tailpipe,” step forward and take credit!) — about his relationship with the Empress, and his idea for the perfect name for the Washington Football Team. AD But Gene’s most colorful, NSFW anecdote is one he also told to former Post writer Dave Kindred for his 2011 history of The Post, “Morning Miracle”: It involves the zany Bob Staake cartoon pictured above, for Week 99 in February 1995. It, another busy Staake cartoon, and a picture of the Mona Lisa were all shown that week; the challenge was to say “what is wrong with these pictures.” And with her mailed-in entry (yes, it was largely snail mail back then), regular contestant Jean Sorensen sent a copy of the cartoon above with one element circled. “Well, this is wrong …” Much angst ensued, followed by the perfect solution. Gene turns the anecdote into an example of excellent editorial management by the editor of Style at the time, the great Mary Hadar (who’s also largely responsible for my own career at The Post), and explains how Bob — “the greatest artist in the world,” says Gene — was able to continue as the Invite’s cartoonist to this day. AD l don’t know if Bob still has a copy of this ancient cartoon, but he does sell a lot of his Style Invitational illustrations, both the pencil sketches and the eventual pen-and-ink. See the special page on his website just for this: bobstaake.com*SI: You tell him which illo you’re interested in and he’ll check to see if it’s available. The results of Week 99, by the way (pdf from what looks like microfilm here), were not especially classic. None of the 13 inking entries noted that particular element, nor was it mentioned by the Czar. Most referred to the Mona Lisa picture. So maybe we won’t try this contest again. Jest askin’*: The results of Week 1404 *Headline from an earlier Ask Backwards contest; I don’t want to take any future possibilities out of commission here The Post's Style section front after Ken Jennings, center, won the GOAT tournament on "Jeopardy" back in January. The Post's Style section front after Ken Jennings, center, won the GOAT tournament on "Jeopardy" back in January. (The Washington Post) I wish I’d thought to contact Ken Jennings before I’d announced the “answers” for our Week 1404 Ask Backwards contest. If y’all had known he’d agree to weigh in on the questions submitted for “Ken Jennings and Kylie Jenner” and “Alex Tribeca,” perhaps you would have sent more than the 40 to 50 questions in each category (compared with more than 150 for the Washington team mascot). But I admit that the notion didn’t occur to me until after the submission deadline. AD I made Ken’s acquaintance through being a fan of “Omnibus,” a podcast he does with indie-rock name and fellow Seattle resident John Roderick, on offbeat historical topics old and recent — just one of a slew of enterprises into which the 74-time “Jeopardy” champ has parlayed his brainiosity, quick wit and snarky humor, all underlain with an almost comically wholesome, white-bread (but earnestly woke) persona — most recently as part of the “Jeopardy!” team itself in host Alex Trebek’s 37th season. Omnibus has a fan group on Facebook, and back in January when Style did a huge front-page feature on Jennings after he won the Greatest of All Time tournament, I posted a photo there of the page, and Ken contacted me to get a copy of the original. And when I emailed him a couple of weeks ago about looking at my shortlist for the two pertinent categories for 1404, he immediately agreed. He truly is a Nice Guy. By the way, I recommend his book “Planet Funny,” an examination of how our humor-soaked culture developed, and how every last thing these days, even the most serious matters, seems to require a funny, irreverent presentation -- a culture Ken himself contributes to with regular zingy tweets to his 450,000 followers. Anyway, once again I had far too many inkworthy entries than the 40 that run in today’s results. This inevitably happens when I put up so many categories (it’s crept up from the dozen that used to be used for this contest). On the other hand, though, with fewer categories comes more duplication; even with 18 categories this year, some of the best entries were duplicates; six people suggested that the name of the Washington Football Team’s mascot was The Washington Football Team’s Mascot. Numerous others suggested that it would be next on the president’s career path. AD Gary Crockett’s play on the Pledge of Allegiance to ask about The Republic Forwhichistan brings him his 15th Style Invitational win, and a few steps closer to the Hall of Fame with career inks 469, 470 and 471. Runners-up Rob Huffman, Jeff Hazle and, especially recently, Frank Mann are common names as well in Loserdom, but it’s the first ink “above the fold”-- and the eighth blot all-time — for Pia Palamidessi, one of a trio of entrants of late from the mountain town of Cumberland, Md. (she’s married to another of them, Brett Dimaio). On the heels of last week’s four First Offenders we have three more this week: great debuts from Joe McManus (Cabinet department: Internal Reality Service), Leila Boyer (Chris Wallace’s glasses used by Fox people to drink the Kool-Aid) and Gail Carter with “Elemenopee” as a letter in the slurry language of Forwhichistan. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me on the Losers’ Circle this week, enjoying all four top winners. He also singled out Sarah Jay’s guess that May 30, 2022 will mark the end of the current year; Kevin Dopart’s and Frank Mann’s “Art Flushing” (also noted by Ken Jennings); for “Downton Outhouse,” Beverley Sharp’s “line of ladies-in-waiting” and Chris Doyle and John O’Byrne’s “creepy Crawleys”; Mark Raffman’s tweet from @UnrealAbrahamLincoln trash-talking James Buchanan; and Frank Mann’s mascot “Owen Sixteen.” Bonus: ‘Beth’s Best: As the copy desk “slot,” Annabeth Carlson does a second read after Doug’s; Annabeth’s favorite was Sarah Jay’s 2022 question. Send what you can: This week’s contest, Week 1408 This week’s contest, Week 1408, is a close spinoff of Week 1254, in which you changed the name of a business by a single letter. (Results here, along with a gloriously dorky photo of Jeff Contompasis.) This time, though, we’re looking for charities and other nonprofits, and this time the change requirement isn’t so strict; it’s just not to change it so much that the original isn’t obvious. AD Another similar contest, which provided the “American Rung Association” example today that Bob chose to illustrate, dates from Christmas season of 2012, Week 977. That asked for dubious charities, and some of the inking entries were indeed tweaks on the names of real organizations. But many others weren’t. Here are some of the winners. 1. Washington Wizards Basketball Camp Foundation: Contributions help provide basketball lessons to actual Washington Wizards. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) 2. Bigots Defense Fund: Did you know that Bigo-Americans are the most oppressed minority group in America today? Please give generously — even you Jews. (Dixon Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.) 3. Shy Bladders Anonymous: A 12-step public restroom program. “Pee all that you can pee.” (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) 4. Tweeting Is Fundamental: Because today’s teenagers really need lessons in how to be more sarcastic. (David Genser, Poway, Calif.) AD So Others Might Cheat: This compassionate group provides cellphones, adult website memberships, and even money for motels to indigent married people who otherwise could not afford the joys of infidelity. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) National Trust for Histrionic Preservation: Show! Us! You! Care! (Anne Shively, Broadlands, Va.) The Terrorist Reformation Society: We help would-be terrorists turn their lives around by giving them the tools they need for a legitimate trade, such as fertilizer for farming, nails for building and bullets for hunting. (Scott Poyer, Annapolis, Md.) Plutocrats Anonymous: Brother, can you spare a diamond? (Chris Doyle) Graypeace: A commuter-centric organization focused on preventing the nation’s precious parking lots from being wiped out and turned into unpaved, undrivable space. (David Garratt, Silver City, N.M.) AD The VDW: Addressing the needs of our surviving veterans of America’s domestic wars. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) Floridians Lining Up to Fight Frostbite (FLUFF): We’re winning the battle — no reported cases last year! (Barry Koch, Catlett, Va.) Writer’s Block Relief Fund: Charity begins a tome. (Chris Doyle) Socks Without Partners: Every day thousands of socks across the country mysteriously lose their “sole mates” in washers and dryers, ending up forgotten in the backs of drawers, or humiliated by being used to buff the wax on cars. Please contribute to help these poor socks find a match. (Bill Nilsen, Arlington) While the deadline for Week 1408 is the usual week-from-Monday, note that the results will run a day early: Wednesday, Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving. And speaking of something to be thankful for: Let’s hope we do, next week. Happy Halloween, Time Change, and The Thing. See you next week, sanity permitting. ====================================================================== WEEK 1410, published November 15, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1410: Bzzzz! You’re out! The fly that took a close-up seat for the Pence-Harris debate on Oct. 7 has inspired all sorts of snarky buzz. But there's a limit on the nasty that The Post will print about the vice president, as the Empress found out while preparing the results of the Week 1406 acrostic-poem contest. The fly that took a close-up seat for the Pence-Harris debate on Oct. 7 has inspired all sorts of snarky buzz. But there's a limit on the nasty that The Post will print about the vice president, as the Empress found out while preparing the results of the Week 1406 acrostic-poem contest. (Patrick Semansky*AP) By Pat Myers November 12, 2020 at 4:31 p.m. EST Add to list Hi, everyone! I’m back after I skipped Conversating last week because of some household excitement — the Royal Consort is doing very well, considering, after suffering a mild stroke and getting to ride in the cool medevac helicopter. He’s now back home here at Mount Vermin and is dealing only with a loss of peripheral vision in one eye. He wasn’t even confused by any of last week’s inking grandfoal names, which can definitely put a cog in your cognition. Thanks enormously for so many kind words from the Loser Community. (A few words farther down about last week’s results.) In the spell of poetry: The acrostic verse of Week 1406 Inspired by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons’s sonnet “A Hard-to-Swat Fly” — a true story about a guy who ended up blowing up his house in pursuit of the elusive pest — I used it as the example for Week 1406, a contest for acrostic poems on the news, ones that spell out the subject in the first letter of each line. I knew, of course, that our Loserbards would quickly fill the Style Invitational page with devilishly clever verse — see the results for yourself. But I’d forgotten that there was front-page news about another fly: the merry muscid that perched blithely atop Vice President Pence’s whitecapped head for several minutes during his debate with Sen. Kamala Harris. And sure enough, I received this poem from Style Invitational Hall of Famer Duncan Stevens: AD Ode to Musca domestica Perched on Pence’s pate of snow, Earned acclaim and stole the show. Now we’ll all (if you’ll allow us) Celebrate your daring prowess: Enterprisingly, demurely, Found your way there, though you surely Lacked a guide; nearby no map is. You knew where the pile of crap is. Admiring its flawless construction, natural syntax and clever rhyme (allow us*prowess) and of course its punchline at the very end, I chose it as an honorable mention for this week’s results. But the poem’s elegant mechanics disabled my taste meter; calling the vice president of the United States a heap of excrement isn’t what The Washington Post wants to do. “It’s the definition of ad hominem,” argued Managing Editor Cameron Barr, and with that the fly was swatted. One could argue that the “pile” in question was what the Veep was saying, rather than his being. But Cameron has been exceedingly lenient when asked to rule on previous taste questions (“eh — it’s The Style Invitational”) and this was not the battle I thought worth picking. (Also, I learned later that Stephen Colbert made the same joke — “He’s so full of crap he’s attracting flies” — though with much less wit.) AD So poor Duncan will have to content himself with a mere ninety-seven blots of ink since Loser Year 28 began in March — an average of 3.6 printed entries per week. And you, dear reader, still are treated to two acrostic musings on the manual multitasking of Jeffrey Toobin. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood was especially partial this week to Gary Crockett’s double dactyl on MASKLESS, and to Mark Calandra’s tale of the report to the police of a homeless man who turned out to be a bronze statue of a sleeping Jesus. 'Tis one more season: This week’s contest, fall fictoids for Week 1410 Unlike our contest for fake trivia about summer, whose results ran at the end of September, Week 1410 will cough up our latest compendium of misinformation several weeks before the end of autumn. After tossing a bunch of entries last time, I made it explicitly clear in the instructions this week that when you lie that some event happened during the season, the event still has to relate to autumn somehow. So not like this entry for the Week 1399 summer fictoid contest: “The first office happy hour took place in Princeton, N.J., at 2 p.m. on June 8, 1934, when Einstein proved to his lab assistants that it had to be 5 o’clock somewhere.” Nope, not relating to the season, other relativity notwithstanding. AD In addition to this week’s examples, which came from fictoid contests about sports, food and clothing (ideas for new subjects welcome!), you can take guidance for Week 1410 from the results of the three previous season-themed ones, with a couple of examples from each (click on the link for full results): Week 1360 (winter) Snow in the Southern Hemisphere forms on the ground and “falls” upward, which explains why penguins are white on the bottom. (Andrew Wells-Dang) The inn that turned away Mary and Joseph is now a Marriott Bonvoy property. (Frank Mann) If the temperature drops below 10 degrees, the Washington Monument retracts a few feet underground. (Bruce Reynolds) Week 1381 (spring) Plants can repel breeze-borne pollen by swaying to the left, or accept it by swaying right. (Sam Mertens) During pollen season in Poland, a jag of uncontrolled sneezing is known as a zyrtec. (Jeff Shirley) AD Thousands of drivers descend on San Juan Capistrano, Calif., every March for the annual Opening of the Carwashes. (Bird Waring) Week 1399 (summer), just seven weeks ago: Virtually all “cotton candy” in the United States is now made of polyester. (Jeff Rackow) The planned Summer of Haight in San Francisco was a dud until the event got new promoters. (Mike Gips) The Inuit now have 38 ways to say, “Hot enough for ya?” (Frank Osen) Last legs: The grandfoals of Week 1405 Given that it was the unprecedented fourth of our horse name “breeding” contests in a single year, Week 1405′s challenge to breed any two inking names from Week 1400 brought in a remarkably healthy 2,000 entries (plus about 200 headline*subhead suggestions) from 203 Losers. The grandfoals are always more of a challenge because most of the names you’re working with are already puns, and there are just too many possible elements to incorporate all of them into your name. But as always, in Week 1405 the Losers came through with funny puns-on-puns (how can you not laugh at “Droolie Andrews”?), both the Invite veterans and two First Offenders, both horse-contest specialists and the enter-every-weekers (the four top winners this week are all spattered with lots of ink from a variety of Invite contests). AD One of the First Offenders this week may be a familiar name to Washington Post readers: Vinnie Perrone was The Post’s horse racing reporter for many years in the 1980s and ’90s, working alongside handicapper Andrew Beyer, before a decline in the sport’s popularity led the paper to slash its coverage. And I know Vinnie from even farther back; the Royal Consort and I worked with him on the University of Maryland daily paper, the Diamondback, in the late 1970s, where he was everyone’s favorite sweet guy (and co-sportswriter Norman Chad was everyone’s favorite not-as-sweet guy). I haven’t been in touch with Vinnie for decades, so I was positively thrilled to discover his name when I checked who’d written the entries I’d chosen; I didn’t even know he read the Invitational. What Doug Dug, grandfoals department: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood cited Kathy El-Assal’s first-place You Never Kohler (Hello, Mother x House of Flusher) and Steve Smith’s “Twerquemada” (Arraign in Spain x Cardi O) as his faves among the top winners. Doug also cited numerous honorable mentions: * *een on TV x Mad Don and Child = ***es Seen on TV (Mark Raffman) AD Amen Coroner x Art Corrector = More Titian (Chris Doyle) Blame the Dog x Avoid = Fartful Dodger (Lawrence McGuire, Jeff Contompasis) Darth Wader x Fire at Will = I Am Your Fodder (Rob Wolf) Drool Runnings x Expialidocious = Droolie Andrews (Greg Dobbins) KnowWellKnowWell x Bone Spurious = KnowWell Coward (John Winant, Scott Straub) By the way: If you won a magnet or First Ink in Week 1405, you may be one of the five or six people who will receive a line of garble right in the middle of the prize letter; evidently my Paste key was up to mischief when I wasn’t looking. Hey, it’s a collector’s item. ====================================================================== WEEK 1411, published November 22, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1411: Getting our wit together The Empress of The Style Invitational on the Invite’s long history of scatological humor A pair of millinerials: Foamy velveteen dragon hats from the Kennedy Center gift shop, both donated by Loser Dave Prevar, put the Invite's cuteness level over the top in this week's contest, with the Empress's 3-year-old neighbor Maxwell Matthews, as well as back in 2016 with Margaret Stevens (then 6), daughter of Loser Duncan. A pair of millinerials: Foamy velveteen dragon hats from the Kennedy Center gift shop, both donated by Loser Dave Prevar, put the Invite's cuteness level over the top in this week's contest, with the Empress's 3-year-old neighbor Maxwell Matthews, as well as back in 2016 with Margaret Stevens (then 6), daughter of Loser Duncan. (TWP) By Pat Myers November 19, 2020 at 4:36 p.m. EST Add to list Ad from space: “A great void. We make it happen. Ex-lax.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) It struck me that Kevin’s Lose Cannon winner for Week 1407 today (results here) is the epitome of Style Invitational humor: It’s a pun — a double pun, really: not just on “void,” but also “great,” as in great-big* great-fantastic. It plays off our culture, spoofing so well the terse, declamatory taglines of commercials; you can imagine, say, James Earl Jones’s authoritative voice intoning the slogan. And, of course: poop. Poop punning: It’s what we do. The Style Invitational. And what Kevin does is win the Invite: This week’s Lose Cannon gives him his 32nd first prize, and with two honorable mentions this week as well, he’s blotted up somewhere north of 1,560 Invitational inks. Scatological humor — usually but not always more sophisticated than your usual potty joke — has been a hallmark of The Style Invitational since its founding by the Czar in 1993. Here’s Gene Weingarten on the topic in his newly defunct weekly online chat, back in 2002: AD “I once gave a talk to American newspaper feature editors, and I began by asking ‘Why is poop funny'? Everyone laughed (thereby confirming the premise) but no one offered an explanation. My explanation was this: Humans spend much of their lives preening and posturing, pretending that we are a hugely sophisticated organism, greatly distanced from common beasts. And yet we all have to do this ludicrous thing. (It’s the same reason sex is funny.) Basically, we are pompous asses. And poop proves it.” The Czar’s attraction to bodily function humor was so immediately clear that Elden Carnahan got ink with this “and last” entry in Week 69: Principles of how the world works (1994): “Carnahan’s Rule Of Three: The longer one works to bring ironic Talmudic allusion and elegant Chaucerian wit to one’s entry, the greater the likelihood the winner will prominently feature “drool,” “snot” or “poopy.” After I ascended to the throne as Empress in December 2003, some in the Loser Community were concerned that a woman — or heck, a non-Weingarten — would be too prim to continue with the toilet jokes, but I don’t think I cut back on them to any great extent. (This week, we have not just Kevin’s Ex-lax joke but also Frank Mann’s space-set ad for Imodium: “You’ll never have to tell Houston you have a problem.”) AD Here’s just a small sampling of scatological humor — a stool sampling! hahahahah! — from the past 1,400 contests, found by searching on “Ex-lax,” “laxative,” “poop,” “toilet,” “log,” etc. Good idea: Shampoo. Bad idea: Shampoop. (Dave Zarrow) Good idea: Wash hands after using toilet. Bad idea: Wash hands using toilet. (Jay Snyder) Combine the beginning and end of two words: Ene-mans: Ex-Lax coffee cake. (Chris Doyle) Puns on book titles: What did we say when we were very young and constipated? We Need a Poo. (Chris Doyle) Insert product placements into biblical and other literary passages. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done. Thanks, Ex-Lax! (Russell Beland) Redefine a product name as a word: Ex-Lax: A listing of the shortcomings of a former spouse. (Randal Wetzel) AD Portmanteau words: Pooperfume: A scent so awful that they should have called it Chanel No. 2. (Chris Doyle) Warning labels: Camping toilet: “Do NOT void where prohibited.” (Kevin Dopart; Chris Doyle) A & Q with Shakespeare: A. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. (“The Merchant of Venice”) Q. What happens when you flush an airplane toilet? (Gary Crockett) Excuses to miss a day of work: “When I got up this morning, I took two Ex-Lax in addition to my Prozac. I can’t get off the john, but I feel good about it.” (Chuck Smith) A. Because It Didn’t Rhyme. Q. Why did Mother Goose reject the rhyme “Mary, Mary Quite Constipated”? (Jeff Brechlin) A. The Heimlich Manure. Q. What is the name of Henry Heimlich’s second most important contribution to emergency medicine, a procedure to alleviate acute constipation? (Chuck Smith) AD “Joint legislation” combining the names of two new members of Congress: The Castor-Corker Law to help prevent laxative overdoses. (Cited as submitted by too many people.) Redefine a word: Logarithm: A series of exertions on the john. (Vic Krysko) Move the last letter of a word to the beginning Scatalog: Improvised toilet paper. (Jeff Contompasis) Crapture: The bliss of becoming unconstipated, as in Philippians 1:22: “But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor.” (Kevin Dopart) Poems on spelling bee words: Jalap (JA-lupp), a laxative made from a Mexican plant With its purgative properties, jalap Sends you off to the loo at a gallop, For it's quite unsurpassed — In fact, it's a blast — At freeing a laggardly bowel up. (Frank Osen) “Untrue confessions”: I like to fill an unused poop bag with Tootsie Rolls and eat them at the dog park. (Frank Osen) AD In public toilets I belt out “Elmo’s Potty Time Song” to mask the gross sounds my body is making. (Chris Doyle) Foal names: Mate First American with King of Scat and name the foal Amerigo Vespoopi. (Jennifer Hart) Erudite humor that requires explanation: An American tourist in Italy is constipated for a week, but when he arrives in Florence, the water is better and his condition goes away. “With Firenze* like this,” he said, “who needs enemas?” *Firenze is the Italian word for Florence. Plays on foreign terms: Peeanissimo: The quieter volume you get from aiming at the side of the toilet bowl. (Dave Prevar) Cinquains: Swan, so Graceful, arches Its delicate neck and Wriggles its feathered rump as if To poop. (Bonnie Speary Devore) Questions children ask: Why is poop funny? Because all palindromes are funny, except radar and did. (Russell Beland) AD Replace a P in a word with another letter: Loseurs: Witty, sophisticated humorists pretending to be juvenile, crude boors with a poop fixation. (John McCooey) The difference between … an overactive bladder and a Loser magnet: One results in frequent thoughts of toilets; the other, from them. (Kevin Dopart) Analogies: Winning the Style Invitational is sort of like finding a flaming bag of dog poop on your porch. In fact, some weeks it’s EXACTLY like that. (Elden Carnahan) I don’t think that Kevin’s “void” joke will be used anytime soon by a laxative company, though personal-care ads have become way, er, cheekier over the years. The commercials for PooPourri toilet spray, for example, turn modesty on its head in the head. But some entries were beaten to the punch by reality: Several Losers, for example, suggested setting ads for birth control in a noisy kindergarten — much like the famous 2004 European commercial for Zazoo condoms, featuring a tyke who has a full-blown meltdown in the supermarket when Dad puts the candy back on the shelf. AD One theme I don’t use (and neither did the Czar): “soap” jokes about prison. We don’t run rape jokes. What Doug Dug: The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood this week included Kevin’s winning toilet-joke wordplay, Jonathan’s second-place Generic Team joke and, among the honorable mentions, Drew Bennett’s “ReadySkins,” Kevin’s cell*bars double pun for Verizon Wireless and prison; and, of course, Cutie Pie Maxwell Matthews, who lives across the street from me and was very eager to pose in that hat until I picked up my camera, then not so much. Coming to a bad end: This week’s contest, Week 1411 During the Invitational’s Czarist era, we actually just ripped off the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which has been run out of the English department at San Jose State since 1982. In Week 477 (2002) the Czar asked for exactly what the Bulwerians were asking for: bad opening lines to a (nonexistent) novel. I don’t think I’d much like it if some newspaper just copied an Invite contest while ours was going on (the B-W, named for the author who began a book “It was a dark and stormy night,” though he also coined such lines as “The pen is mightier than the sword,” runs all year round). So in 2008 I did the flip side — an ending to a novel — and a dozen years later, I’m giving it another round. You can see all the results to Week 788 here; below are the top winners and some honorable mentions. AD 4. As he left, the captain flashed a smile — a wide, satisfied grin with lips parted a quarter-inch, the right corner of the mouth raised slightly above the left, and a dry lower lip slightly stuck to the teeth — that defied description. (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis) 3. Oh, and by the way, Chapters 3, 8, 10 and part of 16 were all dreams, in case you hadn’t caught on. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) 2. First the infarction, then the ambulance ride, now going under the knife, he drifted away under anesthesia, humming Celine Dion’s tune “My Heart Will Go On.” But it didn’t. (Larry Miller, Rockville) And the Winner of the Inker — As the wail of the nearing sirens shook him awake, Todd rose from the charred remains of Rensfield Manor, wiped the ectoplasm from his brow and, stuffing the Amulet of Valtor inside his shirt, gazed ruefully at the venom-encrusted Sword of Darjan, realizing that this long night wasn’t over yet, because he still had a heck of a lot of explaining to do. (LuAnn Bishop, West Haven, Conn.) And Washington ceased to exist in a fireball that churned skyward like the gaseous plea of a whale that had ingested a crate of habanero peppers, red and yellow — the explosion, not the peppers, though habaneros, which are the world’s hottest, can in fact be red or yellow. Not that this mattered to the former residents of Washington, who were now mere dust particles; all they were was dust in the wind. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) Over the years, she became for Gary a fuzzy memory, until he had trouble even making out her features, though he was still pretty sure she was female and her name started with a B or R. (Jay Shuck) He had only 75 words to go on his contractually required novel of 50,000 words. A guy could say a lot in 75 words, like “Pudding is best when it’s warm.” He wondered whether to count hyphenated words as two words. Strange thoughts come to a fellow at times like these. Should he have written “50,000” as “fifty thousand”? He was close enough to count down: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. (Art Grinath) And here are the results, spread over two weeks, to the opening-line contest. Part 1 Week 479 CXLVI Invest Case Scenario The Vertical Bathtub Company Manufacturers of fine bathtubs in which you stand while bathing. The Hammock Barn Fine hammocks constructed entirely of pork products. Ye Olde Dental Associates Tooth care like when grandma was a girl. (Ask about our BYOB anesthesia options.) This week's contest: Suggest new companies in which it might be unwise to invest, as in the examples above. First-prize winner gets a sad-looking ceramic gorilla squatting on a copy of the Wall Street Journal. No, we don't know what it is supposed to mean, either. But when Margareta Metcalf of the Cordell Collection in Bethesda saw it, she held it for us, perhaps understanding -- with the innate genius that professional antique dealers possess -- that no one else on Earth would buy it. First runner-up wins the tacky but estimable Style Invitational Loser Pen. Other runners-up win the coveted Style Invitational Loser T-shirt. Honorable mentions get the mildly sought-after Style Invitational bumper sticker. Send your entries via fax to 202-334- 4312, or by e-mail to losers@washpost.com. U.S. mail entries are no longer accepted. Deadline is Monday, Nov. 18. All entries must include the week number of the contest and your name, postal address and telephone number. E-mail entries must include the week number in the subject field. Contests will be judged on the basis of humor and originality. All entries become the property of The Washington Post. Entries may be edited for taste or content. Results will be published in four weeks. No purchase required for entry. Employees of The Washington Post, and their immediate relatives, are not eligible for prizes. Pseudonymous entries will be disqualified. The revised title for next week's contest is by Chris Doyle of Forsyth, Mo. Report 1 from Week CXLIV (477): the first of two weeks' worth of Opening Lines of Very, Very Bad Novels. But first: How dumb is the Czar? So dumb he doesn't even realize that Gene Weingarten is shtupping his wife. (Bob Dalton, Arlington) Not bad. It won the emergency "How Dumb Is the Czar?" contest announced two weeks ago when it became apparent to the Czar that he had created a contest no one would win. Week CXLII, the results of which were to have been published today, required you to find funny hidden cabals in the news stories of the day. A daunting task. Too daunting. None of the measly 120 entries produced even a germ of an idea worthy of publication. Fortunately, you proved equally inept as writers of literature, in a good way. Today, the first of two weeks' worth of Opening Lines of Very, Very Bad Novels. Third Runner-Up: She awoke early and thought to herself, "Yet another day for me, Jennie Smith, here in Seattle, working as a secretary." She got up, went to the bathroom, reached for her hairbrush and used it, thinking, "I miss Sean, my son whom my husband (Jeff) now has custody of since our messy divorce in February 2001." (Fred Burggraf, Charlotte Hall, Md.) Second Runner-Up: When legendary actress and beauty Angelique Lafayette -- great-great-great-great-great-great- granddaughter of General Lafayette of Revolutionary War fame -- walked into the boardroom of the corporation she had suddenly inherited when her late lover and CEO, Piers Johnson, had died ignominiously in her bed after explosive lovemaking, there was nothing in her regal manner to suggest her overwhelming urge to urinate all over her expensive gray wool crepe Chanel suit. (Francesca Kelly, Rome) First Runner-Up: It was a bright and sunny night . . . (Marty McCullen, Gettysburg, Pa.) And the winner of the antique Martha Washington plate: I've never had a case more complex than the theft of the jade pillbox, nor a twist more shocking than the weepy eleventh-hour confession of the gardener, Mr. Rosebottom, and the strange events that followed in which his son, Elmer, was revealed to have provided the poison that killed Mrs. Dinglewood, with whom he had been having a secret affair for years. But perhaps I should begin at the beginning . . . (Brian Barrett, Bethesda) Honorable Mentions: Tina was depressed. She sat and stared out her window at the window across the street that seemed to reflect her staring out her own window. It made her reflect on her reflection, which, granted, at that distance was not clearly reflected. It was just like her life, she reflected. Always just a faint reflection of itself. This was all Jim's fault. (Shell Benson, Arlington) For as long as he could recall, Nikolai had been obsessed with the banjo. It was heavy and substantial, yet graceful -- ironically, not unlike a wood-and-metal, stringed version of the giant lollipops that had so tormented his dreams these past few weeks. (Rob Doherty, Alexandria) With the darkness absolute and the silence absoluter, Helen of deTROIt felt trapped. She felt like she was confined in a small crate, which she was, literally and metaphorically. The point is, this chick with the fiendishly clever name is stuck in a box, and she's got some things to say. You'll want to listen, trust me. (Mike Cozy, Silver Spring) It was a rainy and dark night and Wanda was ready to start a new life with her husband and their three loving children, Tyler, Gwen, McKenzie and Sasha . . . (Jeff Kern, Gaithersburg) A toe. Five toes, a foot. Three feet, a yard. Thirty yards, a neighborhood. A neighborhood where it would all happen. And it all depended on a single toe. A toe that held the fate of all mankind in its grasp, though its lack of opposable thumbs endangered everything. This toe was on the foot of the man who must win the marathon to save the world. (Eryk B. Nice, Ithaca, N.Y.) Her desire for him became enflamed as she imagined him possessing her totally, carrying her to new heights of erotic pleasure as her body responded by getting all heeby-jeeby. (Eryk B. Nice, Ithaca, N.Y.) Greg awoke from a fitful sleep to find that his hair had fallen out. Not the hair on his head . . . (Milo Sauer, Fairfax) Bob sat transfixed by Elizabeth's beauty. Her tiny fondue- colored eyes, the way her hair curled around her neck like the tail of a pig, and her breath that always smelled of walnuts gave him an uncomfortable churning sensation deep in his stomach, as if he urgently had to go to the bathroom. "Is this love?" a little voice, the one that sounded like a fish, asked him, not really expecting a reply. (Bird Waring, New York) Once upon a time -- my, what a trite turn of phrase! It calls to mind those fanciful yet simplistic stories of old -- most often a thinly disguised morality tale that causes the reader to groan aloud in anticipation of yet another retread of a worn-out and obvious theme. Well, anyway, once upon a time . . . (Amy Corbett Storch, Washington) Frank Jolson was as fat as a cheetah is fast. That is to say, if you could come up with some kind of mathematical equation where you could compare speed and weight, like some sort of vector thingy, and you assume that it's not like an old or lame cheetah, then the speed of the cheetah and the weight of Frank Jolson would be pretty close, if not the same, which is to say very much. (Brian Barrett, Bethesda) Part 2 Week 481 CXLVIII: Homonymphomania Gasolean: A crouching posture assumed at the pumps during the sniper spree. Communicashun: The "I won't dignify that accusation with a response" tactic adopted by a politician who is guilty of wrongdoing. Camaroddery: Male bonding over guns. This week's contest was suggested by Carl Northrop of Washington. Carl suggests that you create a new homonym of any existing word, and define it, as in the examples above. Warning: The new word must be spelled in such a way that it is obviously pronounced identically to the original word. First-prize winner gets a genuine photocopy of "John Train's Most Remarkable Names," a most remarkable book of true aptonyms and other noms-de-silliness. First runner-up wins the tacky but estimable Style Invitational Loser Pen. Other runners-up win the coveted Style Invitational Loser T-shirt. Honorable mentions get the mildly sought-after Style Invitational bumper sticker. Send your entries via fax to 202-334- 4312, or by e-mail to losers@washpost.com.U.S. mail entries are no longer accepted. Deadline is Monday, Dec. 2. All entries must include the week number of the contest and your name, postal address and telephone number. E-mail entries must include the week number in the subject field. Contests will be judged on the basis of humor and originality. All entries become the property of The Washington Post. Entries may be edited for taste or content. Results will be published in four weeks. No purchase required for entry. Employees of The Washington Post, and their immediate relatives, are not eligible for prizes. Pseudonymous entries will be disqualified. The revised title for next week's contest is by Jos. Romm of Washington. Report from Week 2 of Week CXLIV (477), in which you were to provide the opening lines to a very bad novel. As always, the line between very bad and very good sometimes blurs. And so no prize is awarded to Dennis McDermott of Hutchinson, Minn., who showed a few too many writerly moves with: Her silk blouse entered my office first, like a dead heat in a dirigible race . . . {diam}Third Runner-Up: Golde took a bite of her bagel. She chewed it slowly, and her husband could tell this was the precursor to some profound insight into the human condition. Swallowing, she leaned forward and said: "Pourquoi 'L'Affaire de la Famille' a-t-il un valet qui s'appelle French s'il n'est pas du tout franc{cedil}ais? Que c'est pretentieux, n'est-ce pas?" Her husband chuckled at the irony. (Bruce W. Alter, Fairfax Station) {diam}Second Runner-Up: There were these five guys hanging around and then one guy said to another guy, "Hey, what're you doin'?" and another guy looked around and said, "Not much," but the first guy wasn't talking to that guy, so he had to re-ask the other guy -- the first guy he was actually talking to -- "Hey, what're you doin'?" but by this point that other, second, guy had become interested with the logo on some completely other guy's shirt, causing immense frustration on the part of the first guy. (Seth Brown, Williamstown, Mass.) {diam}First Runner-Up: Dawn arrived like the dawn man dumping a load of fresh dawn on the front lawn. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park) {diam}And the winner of the "Maid in Manhattan" ostrich feather duster: The Kraut machine gun raked the bunker behind which Biff and the men hid. They were pinned down. The bullets whizzed by like projectiles shot from a gun. Each bullet carried death, but not if they missed, which they currently were doing. Biff was afraid that one of the bullets had his name on it, but he doubted that even the Germans were that anal-retentive to put individual names on bullets. Still, he kept his head down because it would have been ironic to be killed by a bullet with someone else's name on it. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) {diam}Honorable Mentions: Mr. Eddings waited at the corner for the streetlight to change, unaware that when his story was made into a major motion picture, this scene would be part of a later flashback, in which slow-motion cinematography from multiple angles accompanied by overly dramatic music would gradually reveal the complete stranger half a block away who was masterminding the kidnapping of his daughter. (Danny Bravman, Potomac) The motorcade with the president moved slowly down the street. Harold glanced up and saw the window open at the Texas School Book Depository. He pulled the Stinger missile system out of his duffel bag. He had not traveled back in time three decades unprepared. (Joseph Romm, Washington) As an erotic fiction writer, Felicia, with her small, perky breasts and ever-hard nipples, knew that any story could be saved by the inclusion of more titillating prose. Too bad there was no such quick fix for her own life, the author thought, her supple body stretched naked across the satin sheets of her bed, glistening with sweat from a just-finished workout to tone the compact muscles of her perfectly rounded buttocks. No, Fluffy was dead, the house about to be repossessed -- and no amount of boinking with well-endowed strangers was going to change that. (Sara Wright, New Haven, Conn.) Mary watched the train rumble off down the track, and as the powerful engine rushed into the gaping maw of the tunnel, she thought about her last night with Peter -- not so much because of the train*tunnel symbolism, for she and Peter shared the vegetable love noted in Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress," but because they had come to fierce words over the nature of symbolism itself, not that she didn't wish at times that Peter would simply shut up and get on track, so to speak. (Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls) He stared at her the way an antiques appraiser would stare at a roomful of antique furniture, her hair a delicately crafted lamp, her legs an inviting love seat with a tacky floral design, and her chest a chest of drawers, which is funny because although her drawers weren't on her chest, he was interested in getting into them as well. (Seth Brown, Williamstown, Mass.) Joe settled into his favorite chair and started reading his newly purchased novel, which began, "Howard settled into his favorite chair and started reading his newly purchased novel, which began . . ." (Jerry Pannullo, Kensington) He was the king of hearts, looking for a diamond in the rough, but alas, he had no aces up his sleeve. Some jack was giving him trouble tonight at the club downtown, but he knew how to handle this joker. Deal him out, call a spade a spade, and get on with the business of finding his queen. Though he wore a poker face, inside he was sure his luck would turn, the deck had to be stacked in his favor eventually, didn't it? (Colette Zanin, Greenbelt) The leggy blonde behind the desk spelled trouble with a capital T, not having her Word preferences set for autocaps, and unable to change the default. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park) Jack did not appreciate the gravity of the situation. He just didn't comprehend that every object exerts an attracting force of 6.6668 joules, independent of magnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces, and covalent bonds. He further didn't understand that the gravitational constant was not enough to counteract relativity (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared), and that, given the relative motion of him, and the bullet, (factoring in air resistance), he was (barring a space-time anomaly) about to be seriously hurt, or maybe killed. (Greg Krakower, New York) See you next WEDNESDAY (maybe) As always during Thanksgiving week, the online Invitational comes out a day early, on Wednesday. I expect to publish the Week 1412 contest and Week 1408 results next Wednesday morning; not sure yet whether there’ll be a Conversational. If not, have a safe and happy-as-you-can Thanksgiving. ====================================================================== WEEK 1412, published November 29, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1412: We’re scrambling! By Pat Myers November 25, 2020 at 5:21 p.m. EST Add to list Happy Just About Thanksgiving, everyone. I was going to skip this Conversational because of our 24-hours-early deadlines this week. But Style Invitational Week 1412 came together smoothly — until I clicked on “Publish to Web” this morning and learned about the massive outage at Amazon Web Services that hamstrung operations at The Post, as well as many other businesses all over the East Coast, all day long. So while I’m waiting, I’ll weigh in for just a bit about matters Invite. (We finally published the Invite at almost 5 p.m. Wednesday. I’ll update the online Invite with helpful links in the next 24 hours. ) SONG TITLE > GOT TINSEL? Loser Matt Monitto suggested a contest for anagrams of lines in holiday songs, which he’s planning to post each day in December as a musical “Advent calendar.” Anagrams are a heck of a challenge for most of us, so I broadened the options for Week 1412 to include titles as well as lyrics, and songs in any genre, not just holiday tunes. Still, the results will run online on Christmas Eve, and so I can guarantee that at least one amazing anagram of a carol lyric will get ink up high on the page. AD It’s not cheating to use anagram software, like the Anagram Artist download available at anagrammy.com, to keep track of which letters you’ve used in a long anagram and which ones still need to be used. And I really want you to use the validator at wordsmith.org*anagram. But as I note in the contest instructions, just an anagram of a short song title, with no lyric accompanying it, isn’t likely to get ink, since too many people will figure it out and submit it. So even though you can get two-word combinations from an anagram generator, they’re not going to get you a magnet on their own. We’ve done many anagram contests over the years, and they’ve always yielded some astonishing entries, like the entire Gettysburg Address turned into a paraphrase of it, by J.J. Gertler. But never, it seems, one to anagram song lines. And I’m sure that Post readers will eagerly unwrap them on Christmas Eve. AD JEST CAUSES: THE ‘CHARITIES’ OF WEEK 1408 Our Week 1408 contest, whose results run today, rests firmly in the tradition of The Style Invitational’s innumerable tweak-a-name contests, and prompted well over 200 Losers, including a lot of newbies, to enter. The 40 inking entries — including from three First Offenders — are my favorites of close to 2,000. While there are lots of charities and other nonprofits out there, entrants were clearly working from a list of the biggest names, and there was lots of duplication. Sometimes I gave joint credit for essentially the same idea. So if you also sent in “The Salivation Army,” but didn’t use the Pavlov angle, you are one of about 10. You know what seemed not to work? Puns on “cancer.” Also jokes like these: Take a Wish Foundation: Why should dying cancer kids get all the cool stuff? Enslave the Children: Fringe non-profit espousing strict interpretation of the Old Testament. AD It’s the third win and 94th (and 95th) blot of ink for John McCooey and his play on the Nature Conservancy. And it’s just the 11th blot of ink — but it’s already the third appearance “above the fold” for Terri Berg Smith. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood — whose headline “LAME DUCK PARDONS TURKEY” is getting him his deserved minutes of fame today — chose favorites from the honorable mentions: Duncan Stevens’s “Auntie Defamation League”; newbie John Klayman’s subtle “Capitol Food Bank,” with its “undeserved”-for-“underserved”; Chuck Smith and Zachary Levine’s “4-F Foundation”; and, from both Ben Shouse and Barry Herman, the “Pew-Pew-Pew Charitable Trusts.” The Invite’s biggest celebrity: A podcast interview with (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Just out: Episode 6 of “You’re Invited,” the podcast about The Style Invitational. This time host Mike Gips interviews Chuck Smith, who so greatly dominated the early years of the Invite that casual readers still ask about him. Chuck not only weighs in on both the early and current versions of the Invite — and names some of his favorite fellow Losers — but he also tells about his longtime gig writing gags for nationally published comic strips. Yes, the same “John Bobbitt for Microsoft” jokester wrots for “Dennis the Menace.” Hear the 30-minute interview now at bit.ly*invite-podcast. Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving, everyone — I have a great idea for using that leisure time. ====================================================================== WEEK 1413, published December 6, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1413: Our new not-so-big top -- the Clowning Achievement trophy The Style Invitational Empress on the Invite’s first-prize swag from the past 28 years. The Style Invitational's new first-prize trophy, the Clowning Achievement, replaces the Lose Cannon. The Style Invitational's new first-prize trophy, the Clowning Achievement, replaces the Lose Cannon. By Pat Myers Dec. 3, 2020 at 5:33 p.m. EST Add to list First prize in Week 1 of The Style Invitational was a Timex watch. The March 7, 1993, Sunday Style section of The Washington Post — a section drastically reimagined by brand-new editor Gene Weingarten — featured on its front page an essay titled “Noted With Disdain,” the first of what would become weekly “Noted With” pieces. It was by Gene himself, expressing said disdain for the undignified Ironman Triathlon watch, “thick as a brick and handsome as a hernia,” that the new President Clinton wore even to meetings at the United Nations. On Page F2 of that same Sunday Style section, an anonymously written contest asked readers for a new name for the Washington Redskins. “The first-prize winner gets an elegant Timex ‘Ironman Triathlon’ digital watch, valued at $39.” The 1990s were rich days for the newspaper industry; papers nationwide showed huge profits year after year, and the Sunday Post boasted a circulation of 1.2 million. Weren’t no big thing at all to give away a $40 watch one week, and an elaborate magician’s apparatus on another, and send your expense form off to accounting. The sometimes-bought, sometimes-donated prizes were awarded to winners throughout the Czar’s reign. But when the Empress deposed him in December 2003, she decided (possibly with contestants’ input) that the grand-prize winner of The Style Invitational should receive an award that conveyed: “I won a prize.” Even if it were a stupid prize. (The second-place people could get the gag gift, for which there was now no budget.) And so on Week 536, an anonymous Empress introduced herself as the new monarch, and the Inker as the first-prize trophy. Described as “mixed-media sculpture crafted of genuine bronzoid-looking AlabastriteTM and genuine paper paper bag,” it was actually half a pair of flimsy 7-inch-tall bookends in the image of “The Thinker,” the iconic (a.k.a. cliched) Rodin bronze, topped with what was supposed to look like a paper bag covering his head in embarrassment. The Style Invitational of Dec. 10, 2003, when the Empress deposed the Czar — that's supposed to be her scribbling out his blather and taking over below — and introduced the Inker, the first-place trophy. Except for a nasty habit of breaking into pieces in transit, being breathed on, etc., the Inker was a lovely prize. About once a year I’d order 25 pairs of the bookends, each time finding some novelty-decor vendor offering the best price at the time (I think they were $10 to $12 a pair). Then one evening in 2012, when I was down to just a couple of Inkers, the Alabastrite bookends were simply nowhere to be found; outlet after outlet was suddenly out of stock. Evidently the sole factory in China or Thailand had decided it had Thought enough. AD I had to scramble. After two days of wild Googling, I found my replacement: a spring-necked bobblehead of the Lincoln Memorial statue. Nice Washington angle, irreverence toward an American quasi-saint (but not tasteless, really), silly. I called Bobbleheads.com and asked how many they had. They’re not being made anymore, I was told. I ordered the rest of the stock: 15 Abes. But even I — a renowned fount of pessimism — thought that The Style Invitational probably wouldn’t fold four months hence. The happy ending was that just a couple of days later, Mr. Bobblehead called me and offered to commission a new run from the factory in China — if I’d buy 200 of them at once (he’d buy the remaining 50 to complete the factory’s minimum order). $12 apiece. I went to my editor at the time, Lynn Medford — who was a true fan of The Style Invitational. I explained that I wanted to buy four years of prizes at once. These were not golden days for the newspaper industry. These were the worst days. Circulation was half what it was in the 1990s. The classified advertising that had sustained a big part of the paper’s budget had virtually vanished (hey, Craigslist). I and hundreds of colleagues had already taken early retirement from our full-time jobs at The Post in several waves of buyouts; I was (and still am) doing the contest technically as a freelancer. Who could say what The Post would be running four years down the road? Or one year? What the heck, Lynn said. Go for it. The Inker's replacement, a spring-neck bobblehead of the Lincoln Memorial statue, lasted from 2012 until our special-order supply ran out in 2017. The Inker's replacement, a spring-neck bobblehead of the Lincoln Memorial statue, lasted from 2012 until our special-order supply ran out in 2017. (Pat Myers) The Inkin’ Memorial actually lasted us five years, since such chronic winners as Chris Doyle, Brendan Beary, Gary Crockett and several others declined to amass whole mantelsful of them. And then it was 2017. AD I don’t remember how I saw it so serendipitously, but right around then, I happened to see a tweet dating back to the 2016 campaign. Trump posted, verbatim, in July about the former secretary of state: “Hillary Clinton should not be given national security briefings in that she is a lose cannon with extraordinarily bad judgement & insticts.” Ding! The Lose Cannon was our first homemade trophy: The cannons were three-inch-long brass pencil sharpeners that I got from a school supply house, made classy-looking by the handsome hand-turned cherrywood bases graciously made by Loser and carpentry hobbyist Larry Gray. Larry even drove a big box of bases all the way down from northern Maryland to the Empress’s palace, Mount Vermin, and he and Royal Consort Mark Holt spent hours working out the best way to assemble the trophies. (The RC took over construction duties after that.) This past summer, I was finally running low on the bases, but Larry told me that he had another box of them prepared. This time, Mark and I made the day trip to visit Larry’s lovely farmlet in remote Union Bridge, Md., social-distancing ourselves under a huge shade tree. Larry gave us the bases, but made an excellent point: After that man is out of office, do we really want to keep referencing him? Inspired by a misspelled Trump tweet about Hillary Clinton, the homemade but handsome Lose Cannon, with bases custom-made by Loser Larry Gray, was awarded about 150 times from 2017 to last week. Inspired by a misspelled Trump tweet about Hillary Clinton, the homemade but handsome Lose Cannon, with bases custom-made by Loser Larry Gray, was awarded about 150 times from 2017 to last week. (Pat Myers) And so I stopped ordering cannons and held my breath, like the rest of the country, till Nov. 3. And in the meantime I consulted the Crowd in the form of the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, asking for suggestions for an inexpensive trophy (Lynn Medford has retired) that would fit on one of Larry’s 3-by-5-inch bases. This time, Super Duper Loser Kevin Dopart suggested perhaps a dunce cap, or a jester’s hat, with the title “Clowning Achievement.” I didn’t find a good hat, but I did happen to find one lot of 100 little disembodied, glummish clown heads — they looked so Loserly! And the RC made little dowel sections to attach them to the base (I vetoed his head-on-pike suggestion). AD ADVERTISING And so today, we award the first Clowning Achievement to Frank Osen — in his 27th Invite win. Though Frank long ago asked for no more swag deliveries, please, I hope that he’s keeping at least one of each iteration of the Style Invitational trophy. And it’s for an instant classic of an entry from Week 1408: the dropped-letter song title “MAGAritaville,” complete with a parody verse: “Don’t know the reasons We chose this Four Seasons — Since when have they had a horse manure aisle? But I can’t be moody ’Cause my name is Rudy And I also came here to sell you a pile.” One more thing: These 100 “retired” clown heads were the last ones in stock at this craft store. If I can’t find another set of same-size heads (or something else to match the Clowning Achievement slogan), this trophy will be over in just two years. What does the Loser Community think about limiting each individual recidivist winner to, say, two (three? one?) Clowners? AD Meanwhile, Week 1408 produced many dozen inkworthy truncated song titles; my “shortlist” ran seven pages. I finally cut the list off at 38 entries (several of them containing parody verses), but do remember that we’ll soon be having our annual retrospective contests in which you can reenter your favorite ink-robbed entries. This might be a good source. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood — still basking in the glow of love for his “Lame Duck Pardons Turkey” headline across the Style front last week — also voted for Frank’s “MAGAritaville,” and also singled out two from the honorable mentions, both by Duncan Stevens: “Twit and Shout” — code names for Don Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle — and “I Feel P(r)etty,” sung by Mr. You’re Fired: “It’s delicious how vicious I feel!' Could any year be verse? Let’s try the new ones of 2020 For the third year running, we’re asking for light verse featuring one or more of the 30-some terms supplied us by Merriam-Webster as some of the newly added words (and newer meanings of old words) to m-w.com for 2020. AD While there’s nothing wrong with using two or even more words on the list in a single poem, the contest is not a challenge to see how many terms you can force into a few lines. As always, I’m looking for readable, witty verse (“perfect” rhymes and clear meter are a big plus in light verse, although there are always exceptions) that makes some sort of point, observation or punchline by the end. For guidance and inspiration, here are links to the excellent inking entries from the past two years, plus the Lose Cannon winners right here: Week 1350, 2019 Week 1297, 2018 2018: I sent a letter to my love, admiring from afar, Returned! A hand-writ note above it said, “TL;DR.” Though some might think she’s blown me off, still I prefer to dream, My love’s response, in code (don’t scoff!) means: “True Love — Diane Rehm.” (Mark Raffman) AD 2019: This escape room’s the worst, everybody agrees; We feel trapped, with a lingering sense of unease That we’ll never get out of here, try as we may — We get sullen or spiteful, our nerves start to fray Till at last we’re released, overjoyed to survive … And we come every weekday, 8:30 to 5. (Brendan Beary) JefCon 30: It’s the latest ‘You’re Invited’ podcast Be sure to catch Mike Gips’s latest interview with an Invite figure. This time it’s a half-hour with Hall of Famer Jeff Contompasis, who exults in his persona of Ultra-Invite-Nerd, delving into odd bits of Loser arcana and telling about his patented Vitey-Sense about which contest will be coming up next. Most fascinating fact for me: Jeff got no ink for eight years until he changed his approach. (It was more than “Remember to hit Send” or “Money Order to Empress”). JefCon now has almost 800 blots. Listen to it and the six previous episodes (I went first) at bit.ly*invite-podcast or by looking for “You’re Invited” on Apple Podcasts or Pandora. ====================================================================== WEEK 1414, published December 13, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1414: YIP, YIP for 2021 The Empress of The Style Invitational on our Year in Preview contest International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach last month at Tokyo's National Stadium, where plans are still on for a 2021 Olympics in July. We don't REALLY predict that Rudy Giuliani will crash the caldron-lighting ceremony, claiming the fire is being fueled by stolen Trump ballots, but that's what they're saying … International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach last month at Tokyo's National Stadium, where plans are still on for a 2021 Olympics in July. We don't REALLY predict that Rudy Giuliani will crash the caldron-lighting ceremony, claiming the fire is being fueled by stolen Trump ballots, but that's what they're saying … (Behrouz Mehri*AP) By Pat Myers Dec. 10, 2020 at 5:05 p.m. EST Add to list Dave Barry will once again present his Year in Review — I believe it’ll run in the Dec. 27 Washington Post Magazine — and one easy prediction will be that it’ll be full of hilarious lines and running jokes for a not-so-hilarious year. But he’s going to have to one-up the lead for his 2019 YIR: It was an extremely eventful year. We are using “eventful” in the sense of “bad.” It was a year so eventful that every time another asteroid whizzed past the Earth, barely avoiding a collision that would have destroyed human civilization, we were not 100 percent certain it was good news. It was Dave’s annual chronicle that inspired Malcolm Fleschner, a Longtime Loser who currently is a producer for the online lefty channel The Young Turks, to take the same format into the future: a Year in Preview, for Culture Schlock, his humor column that used to appear in the San Jose Mercury News, which was one of the nation’s major newspapers until it was stripped down to its skivvies by the hedge fund that bought it. (Late-breaking news: Malcolm has brought back Culture Schlock just this week on the freelance platform Substack. I’m glad he didn’t do a Year in Preview!) AD And in turn, I ripped off Malcolm’s idea back in 2010, for a Loser-sourced YIP, and then again in 2017, at that point putting it on the must-do December contest calendar through the entire past administration, inviting Malcolm to do the examples. We’re a week late this year, actually; the results will run online Jan. 7, which means you probably don’t want to tell us what’ll happen on Jan. 1. For guidance and inspiration and of course laughs, here’s some ink from the previous years, along with links to the full lists: Week 898, 2010 (text version of complete results here): Winner of the Inker: April 11: President Obama begins a Rose Garden news conference by saying he loves spring and April is his favorite month. Bill O’Reilly fumes that Obama’s clear hatred of December is part of the War on Christmas, while Glenn Beck ominously reminds his viewers that Hitler was born in April. (Arthur C. Adams) AD Jan. 24: Rep. Michele Bachmann is removed from the Intelligence Committee when a vacancy occurs on the Stupidly Offensive Committee. (Ira Allen) March 15: WikiLeaks posts a classified document revealing that House Speaker John Boehner hides diced onions in his handkerchief. (Roy Ashley) April 1: Despite a slight breeze for most of the afternoon, not a single Pepco customer loses power. (Marty McCullen) From December 2017, Week 1264: Complete results April 28: In the seventh round, the Minnesota Vikings draft an end zone choreographer out of Juilliard. (Howard Walderman) Feb. 2: Punxsutawney Phil predicts an early end to winter. The White House immediately accuses him of “promoting a fake global-warming agenda” and cancels Groundhog Day. (John Hutchins) April 29: Following the administration’s decision to shrink the Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent, Navajo elders rename it Trumps Hands Park. (Frank Osen) AD And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Oct. 12: Columbus, Ohio, renames itself Genocidal European, Ohio. (Steve Honley) From Week 1311, December 2018: complete results June 6: The nation celebrates the 75th anniversary of D-Day. The president forgoes the trip to Normandy, citing jaw spurs. (Daniel Helming, Trenton, N.J.) Nov. 6: Beto O’Rourke loses election for dogcatcher, but his rousing concession speech vaults him to the lead in Democratic presidential primaries. (John Hutchins, Silver Spring, Md.) Feb. 11: Post Malone wins a Grammy for best mumbled-word album. (Jeff Contompasis) Sept. 22: The National Council of Teachers of English disbands after a violent battle over inserting a comma into MeToo. (Ira Allen, Bethesda) And the complete results of Week 1361, 2019: Fourth place: April 23: Focusing on players who will be seeing the most action, the Redskins draft punters in the first three rounds. (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.) AD Third place: Aug. 19: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has double knee replacement surgery after spending day after day praying for the president. (Jeff Hazle, San Antonio) Second place: Sept. 8: “(Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post)” appears for the 1 millionth time in The Washington Post. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: May 16: Concerns about covert pressure on Ukraine flare up anew when President Volodymyr Zelensky, reading from a script, calls Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.” (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) Jan. 7: Members of the National Pedantic Society wrap up a week of reminding people that the next decade technically doesn’t start until next January. (Chuck Helwig, Centreville, Va.) Jan. 20: To prove he is not prejudiced against people of color, President Trump invites this year’s winners of all five major beauty pageants to the White House for a meet-and-grab. (Jeff Shirley, Richmond, Va.) AD Feb. 2: The New England Patriots win another Super Bowl, aided by a mind control device surreptitiously implanted in the opposing quarterback’s helmet. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) Feb. 2: Stephen Miller sees his shadow, realizes too late he’s exposed to sunlight, and turns to dust. (Gary Crockett) Feb. 9: Emilia Clarke brings her dragon to the Oscars and commands it to set the stage ablaze as revenge for not getting a Best Actress nomination for “Last Christmas.” (Lee Graham, Rockville, Md.) Feb. 17: Following his annual physical, President Trump reports that he weighs 180, has a BMI of 23 and had a “perfect” Pap smear. (Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.) March 21: Trump demands an investigation into who ate his strawberries. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.) April 8: Exactly one year after his song reached No. 1, Lil Nas X discovers that he can’t no more. (Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va.) AD April 14: Attorney General William Barr travels to Albania, Paraguay and Burkina Faso as part of his evolving strategy to investigate the investigation of the investigators investigating the investigators of the investigated. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) April 21: Instead of putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, Trump announces his plan to issue a $3 bill featuring his own visage. (Burt Freiman, East Amherst, N.Y.) May 2: A horse whose name was chosen from the 2017 list of Style Invitational “foals” wins the Kentucky Derby. (Steve Fahey, Olney, Md.) May 8: On V-E Day, the Justice Department reveals that the Nazis were based not in Germany, but in Ukraine. (Gary Crockett) June 18: The Republican National Committee buys 300,000 copies of Donald Trump Jr.’s new book, “Nepotism for Dummies.” (Mark Raffman) AD June 27: President Trump officially declares his son a baron, because somebody said he couldn’t. (Dottie Gray, Alexandria, Va.) July 3: Donald Trump announces that, in lieu of the U.S. Olympic team, the United States will be represented in Tokyo by Rudy Giuliani. (Duncan Stevens) July 4: Trump’s “greatest fireworks show in the history of the world” concludes with nuclear detonations offshore from Mar-a-Lago. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) July 7: George and Kellyanne Conway leave each other for Mary Matalin and James Carville. (Steve Honley, Washington) July 14: At the Democratic National Convention, Nancy Pelosi looks stunned when someone suggests that she’s had enough facelifts. (Jon Ketzner) July 16: Phase 2 of Metro’s Silver Line finally opens, but the first train tragically collides with some low-altitude airborne swine. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) AD Aug. 13: In Chillicothe, Ohio, the first recorded use occurs of a surly eighth-grader saying “Okay, millennial” to his mom. (Jesse Rifkin) Aug. 26: Trump arrives onstage 10 minutes late for his speech at the Republican National Convention. A campaign aide later explains that Trump was busy flushing his toilet 15 times. (Duncan Stevens) Sept. 8: Justin Fairfax is forced to resign as Virginia’s lieutenant governor after yearbook photos show him wearing whiteface at a party while dressed as Michael Jackson. (Gregory Koch, Falls Church, Va.) Sept. 15: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demands that Cleveland’s NFL team be renamed the Persons of Color. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) Sept. 21: In another interview with the BBC, Prince Andrew admits to being pals with Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, Roman Polanski and Jeffrey Dahmer. Andrew says again, “I admit fully that my judgment was probably colored by my tendency to be too honorable.” (Jon Ketzner) Oct. 2: Having brought peace to the Middle East, Jared Kushner moves on to finding a cure for cancer. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) Oct. 11: Mike Pence acknowledges that he is gray. (David Kleinbard, Mamaroneck, N.Y.) Oct. 15: Variety announces that Tom Hanks will star in the new biopic about Tom Hanks. (Jon Ketzner) Oct. 21: Mike Pence, accompanied by his wife, has a conference with Nancy Pelosi. (Selma Ellis, Rolling Meadows, Ill.) Nov. 13: In an ad for Weight Watchers, Sir Mix-a-Lot admits that he can and was lying. (Bruce Alter, Fairfax Station, Va.) Nov. 26: In an attempt at cultural diversity, the Hallmark Channel presents its first Diwali movie, about a big-city woman who tries to buy Christmas lights in a small town near Mumbai. (Bruce Alter) Dec. 8: Trump fatally shoots a Macy’s Santa on Herald Square. But the stock market hits a new high the same day, so Republicans say that while regrettable, it’s not an impeachable offense. (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.) Dec. 12: In the fourth quarter of the Army-Navy Game, President Trump pardons the Army middle linebacker for unnecessary roughness. (Frank Mann, Washington) Dec. 26: Press secretary Stephanie Grisham reports that, for the fourth year in a row, the White House menorah has stayed lighted for 16 days. (Bruce Alter) The Invitational, invaluable intellectual resource that it is, does not present The Post’s only Year in Preview. Outlook, the Sunday opinion section, also does an annual YIP, inviting several of its writers and columnists “to think about the big stories, themes and questions that we’ll look back on this time next December.” And so last year’s installment (see the fun graphic), dated Dec. 26, 2019, wasn’t so much prediction as telling people what’s already planned for the coming year. Steven Zeitchik, the entertainment business reporter, marked the upcoming debuts of various new streaming services, such as Peacock and HBO Max, and noted that there’d be lots of new material coming out of Netflix, Hulu et al. But it would have been cooler had he said: “Netflix will gain 16 million subscribers in the space of three months because no one can go anywhere, and the nation will become obsessed with the fortunes of a mulleted, possibly murderous big-cat rancher who calls himself Joe Exotic.” Economics reporter Heather Long couldn’t have been expected to begin her sentence “Barring a pandemic that will kill 300,000 Americans and turn every workplace and retail outlet into a vector of death …” when she said, “The general expectation is that the longest expansion in U.S. history, which began in mid-2009, will last at least one more year.” Tony Romm got it just about right with this: “And if Trump loses the White House, the pressure will mount: Democratic contenders, especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have promised to unwind some of the mergers … such as Facebook’s purchases of the photo-sharing app Instagram and the messaging platform WhatsApp.” Warren isn’t measuring the Oval Office drapes, but just yesterday, Romm reported the news of the FTC plus 48 state attorneys general filing antitrust suits, the FTC explicitly asking that Facebook be forced to sell of Instagram and WhatsApp. Sports columnist Barry Svurluga noted Washingtonians’ strange feeling in 2019 of having multiple championship teams — the Nationals! The Capitals! The Mystics! For football, not so much. But: Though the team wouldn’t drop its name of Redskins till July — and though The Post still routinely used it — Svurluga clearly had decided that he wouldn’t use the slur himself: “It must be noted that the football team exists in a different reality, separate from the rest. It’s as if the expectations for Washington sports have been turned around — with the football team left behind. What awaits that outfit in 2020 — a new coach, for sure, and perhaps even new leadership above him — will be monitored closely.” Then, a month before sponsors’ pressure finally forced Horrible Owner Dan Snyder to cave, Svurluga wrote a column headlined “The Redskins’ name is the shameful statue of the NFL. Tear it down.” Fall-acies*: The autumn fictoids of Week 1410 This would have been the headline on this week’s results until I realized that about a dozen people had suggested it. It was the final stop on our past year’s fake-fact tour of the seasons, thanks to the suggestion of Jeff Contompasis, who earns a thank-you gift of some virtual ice cream. I heard from a relatively small group of 142 Losers who combed the fall season for jokes on Thanksgiving, Halloween, pumpkin spice, leaf blowers, Oktoberfest, and the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Press Conference. It was a cornucopia of ink (hold it straight up, is my advice) for Steve Smith, who scored our second-ever Clowning Achievement trophy, as well as three honorable mentions, for his Civil War* Goading for a Civil War joke. (Attention pedants: The telegram from Gen. Sherman to Lincoln actually was sent on Sept. 2, 1864. However, I decree that “fall” may encompass “meteorological fall.” Which begins Sept 1.) Steve, who’s listed in the Loser Stats as Steve “Potomac” Smith to distinguish him from the earlier, long-disappeared three-blotter Stephen “St. Mary’s City” Smith, gets his third Invite win since starting only in Week 1326, and he’s now up to 67 inks in all. On the other hand, our second-place guy this week, Steve Fahey, goes waaaay back to Week 104. Recently returned to Losing on a regular basis, Steve hits Ink No. 195 this week — and his 28th trip to the Losers’ Circle — with his groaner pun “Our mistress’ day.” On the other hand (we fortunately are very limb-er), it’s a First Offender in third place: that’s Erik Devereux, who explained that we didn’t know about that whole brood of fall cicadas because they sound exactly like leaf blowers. Erik gets his choice of Whole Fools bag or Loser Mug along with the Fir Stink for his First Ink. And to round out the Losers’ Circle with a cranberry sauce joke, it’s Jesse Frankovich, who gets to have symmetrical stats for at least a week: 15 wins, 14 second places, 14 thirds, and now 15 fourths. Marie Kondo has contacted me personally to plead that I not decrease Jesse’s joy by crowding his home with more crap. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood “loved” (he doesn’t use that word much about Invite entries) Sam Mertens’s information that French trick-or-treaters get cigarettes; Steve Smith’s about Pocahontas “having a plan for that” to solve Jamestown’s food shortage; and Eric Nelkin’s fact that Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday will lead to Ransomware Wednesday. Doug also singled out Duncan Stevens’s fictoid about Lincoln’s much longer Gettysburg Address (“people little noted nor long remembered what he said”), Amanda Yanovitch’s “weasel on the golf course” and Ward Kay’s Colonial tradition of Someone Beating the Lions on Thanksgiving. Well, it’s time for the Ceremonial Singeing of My Hair — happy Hanukkah, everyone. ====================================================================== WEEK 1415, published December 20, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1415: Slaphappy seconds The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s retrospective contest “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn” — a “six-word novel” often attributed to Hemingway but is probably older — was the inspiration for Seth Tucker's bad-novel ending in Week 1411. “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn” — a “six-word novel” often attributed to Hemingway but is probably older — was the inspiration for Seth Tucker's bad-novel ending in Week 1411. (Wikipedia, Creative Commons) By Pat Myers Dec. 17, 2020 at 4:20 p.m. EST Add to list The Empress done you wrong this year? Let her do it again this week with Style Invitational Week 1415, the first of our two second-chance contests, covering the first half of the ones we did since last year’s retrospective. I always enjoy running the do-overs because they show the variety of humor that we foist onto our hapless readers over the course of the year, and so I aim to run ink from lots of different contests, the one-line foal names up to the elaborate song parodies, along with a cartoon caption or other visual joke. (There are likely to be more short-form entries than long ones.) You can, as always, enter as many different contests as you like, as long as you don’t send me more than 25 entries in all. You’re free to send non-inking entries from previous weeks — sometimes highly inkworthy humor just gets robbed on an especially fruitful week — but they shouldn’t feel dated; a fabulous zinger about some ephemeral scandal from last March will likely fall flat now. Conversely, you’re more than welcome to play off the current news when writing new material for old contests — and two of the contests require you to use this week’s papers and websites. AD ADVERTISING The first Style Invitational do-over was Week 94, headlined “Weeks 1-93.” Jessica Steinhice — who’s still occasionally in the Invite as Jessica Steinhice Mathews — “suggests that you come up with a great answer to any previous Style Invitational contest, an answer you may have thought of after the contest deadline was over.” Fine, but this was January 1995! The Style Invitational was not on the Internet; it was just on rapidly decaying newsprint every Sunday for the preceding years. How, Mr. Czar of The Style Invitational, did you expect readers to track down or remember 93 previous contests? Gene Weingarten, who was so tight with the Czar that he has been seen swallowing his saliva, has no idea. Obviously Jessica Steinhice, already a Longtime Loser, clearly had some entries in mind already, but what about the people who didn’t keep clip files and lists of their old submissions? Not the Czar’s problem. He did not coddle. People in Washington like to win, and they’ll do what they need to do: go to the library and look up old copies, whatever. And sure enough, the results included entries for 16 different contests, back to Week 1 (New name for D.C.'s football team: the Prince symbol with a football on top — Kevin Mellema). And while only 12 Losers got ink that week — with such then-Obsessives as Kevin, Joseph Romm, Tom Witte, Elden Carnahan and Chuck Smith getting most of it — at least three people, including winner Gary McKethan, had never gotten ink before in The Style Invitational. But the Empress has never had the confidence to play hard to get, alas. As I promised in this week’s contest, below are links to the contests you may enter or reenter for Week 1415, along with the results, which you should check to make sure you’re not sending in a joke that already got ink. Please look at the instructions in the contests themselves; the summaries below aren’t necessarily complete. Do NOT send your entries to that week’s entry form! I think I closed all the forms, but in any case, wapo.st*enter-invite-1415 is the only form I’ll see. AD You know what would be great? If you began each entry with “Week [XXXX]” so I could sort the entries electronically. That’s with the word Week, not a counting number, not a bullet, not “Here’s the best one.” I love you guys! (Will that help?) (How about if I refused to look at the entries that didn’t begin with the week number? Hard to get, see?) If you can’t access the Post pages below for some reason, you can also go to the Master Contest List at the Losers’ own website, NRARS.org, and click on the various icons for PDFs of the print or online version of each week. Both there and here, remember to check the results of the contest you’re entering (or reentering), to make sure you’re not sending in the same joke: So just go to the far right column on the table to click on that week’s results (i.e., the results of Week 1382 are on the same row as the introduction to that contest; just look to the far right). Another way is to join the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, then, at the top of the page, click “More” and then “Files.” You’ll get an index, newest to oldest, of copies of the contests. AD The contests: Week 1360, fake trivia about winter (results) DO NOT ENTER Weeks 1361-1363 (the Year in Preview and last year’s retrospectives) Week 1364, creative clues for an already filled-in crossword (results) Week 1365, poems about people who died in 2019 (for this week, continue to write about people who died that year, not in 2020) (results) Week 1366, Tour de Fours: Think of a new term containing the letters L-I-A-R, next to one another (except for spaces between words) but in any order (results) Week 1367, pickup lines for people in particular professions (results) Week 1368, cartoon captions (results) Week 1369, jokes that involve a typo or something misheard (results) Week 1370, write something about someone, using only the letters in the person’s name (as often as you like); you may also include a short real or descriptive title, e.g., “Senator Kamala Harris” (results) AD Week 1371, new terms using five or more “tiles” from a given seven-letter ScrabbleGrams “rack” (results) Week 1372, old-style trash talk about a well-known person with Balliol rhymes. (results) Week 1373, reviews of everyday products listed on Amazon, including shoelaces and emery boards (results) Week 1374, trash-talking rhyming “rap battles” between two historical figures. (results) Week 1375, Mess With Our Heads: Choose a headline in The Post or another online or print publication — this week, they must be dated Dec. 17-28 — then reinterpret it by writing a “bank head,” or subtitle, that changes the meaning or comments wryly on it (results) Week 1376, add a character to a Shakespeare play (or one scene) and explain what happens or quote a little dialogue. (results) Week 1377, games and other activities to do while quarantining at home. (results) AD Week 1378, songs about Life in the Age of Corona, set to a well-known tune. Videos are also welcome (post them on YouTube, preferably hidden for now, and send me the link) but please also submit the lyrics. Videos may use original tunes, since readers won’t have to know them. (results) Week 1379, jokes whose punchline is a pun on a song title. (results) Week 1380, drop letters from a word to reveal a related word. (results) Week 1381, fake trivia about spring (results) Week 1382, “breed” the names of two Kentucky Derby winners to name a foal reflecting both names (results) Week 1383, Questionable Journalism: Choose any sentence from a print or online publication dated Dec. 17-28, 2020 (not the dates given in the directions!), and follow it with a question it could humorously answer. (results) AD Week 1384, stupid questions, especially in 2020 (results) Week 1385, change a place name slightly and describe the new place (results) Week 1386, “breed” any two inking names from Week 1382 and name the “grandfoal” (results) Week 1387, drop a letter or block of letters from the middle of a movie title and name the new movie (results) Loserdom: The Documentary! Either I had either never heard this or I entirely forgot it — both astonishing alternatives — until Every Year A Loser Dave Zarrow posted the artifact below in the Style Invitational Devotees group just this week. It’s a recording of a nine-minute feature about The Style Invitational, specifically the Loser Community, aired by D.C. public radio station WAMU-FM on Dec. 8, 1996. Reporter Annie Wu goes to a noisy Loser holiday brunch — Dave says it was at a party room in Jennifer Hart’s apartment house — and interviews Dave (“I am America’s funniest office products dealer”), Jennifer, Chuck Smith, Elden Carnahan and others, and features the Dueling Loser band leading the song parodies. Interspersed with the crowd scene is a separate interview with the anonymous Czar, who, as always, gives good quote. AD Dave turned the audio recording into a video with slide show (people’s faces, Loser T-shirts, etc.). It is a riot. (You may have to turn up your volume.) And now, 24 years later, we have the 2020 update — in the form of You’re Invited, a half-hour podcast in which Mike Gips interviews and clowns around with various Style Invitational figures; the seven episodes so far include Gene Weingarten, Chuck Smith, Duncan Stevens, Jeff Contompasis, Elden Carnahan, Chris Doyle and me. Get them all at bit.ly*invite-podcast. Coming to a bad end*: The results of Week 1411 *Non-inking headline suggested by both Jonathan Jensen and Jon Ketzner I’m generally wary of asking for “bad” examples of something — wouldn’t you rather read good? But there’s a long tradition of spoofing laughably bad writing, and so why not glom onto it? I may not be so creative, but — especially in my tiara — I’m positively glommorous. AD We didn’t flat out copy the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad first sentences to a novel, though the Invite did do that back in 2002; instead, Week 1411 asked for one or two bad final sentences. And it’s clear that a number of Invite readers are well steeped in the contents of high school literary magazines: I got to read lots of takes on “it was all a dream” endings, riding off into the sunset (“Hey, you’re supposed to be heading east!”). Not to mention the preposterous metaphors, redundancies, overexplanations, etc., that make bad writing so delicious if you don’t have to read more than two sentences at a time. It’s kind of a big week for Invite Rookie Hannah Seidel. Hannah scores her first win, and 13th ink in all, since she started Inviting in Week 1383, for her regretful-prisoner-fails-Mom prose: “The last thing I saw before the prison bars clanged shut was my mother’s face, weeping for her lost child, though after the prison bars clanged shut I could still see her face, just with big stripes of bars through it, and I felt tears run down my own cheeks too, leaving trails like bars down my face.” Nashville, start the songwriting. Lifetime: Options? But her Invite win outshines an only slightly less exciting development for Hannah. Approximately two hours after I sent this week’s Invitational to the copy desk on Wednesday afternoon, I noticed this Facebook post from Hannah from Monday: “Turns out the best Hanukkah present I’ve ever gotten was a (temporary) ring made out of tinfoil.” Mazel tov on your engagement, Hannah — your gift of a disembodied clown head on a plank will be in the mail soon. What Doug Doug: In addition to Hannah’s Clowning Achievement, Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood singled out Jon Ketzner’s account of the Amelia Earhardt story; Dave Airozo’s timely epiphany by Mariah Carey that she wants something more than You, like maybe a sable coat or a convertible; Art Grinath’s deftly clumsy use of adverbs (“I love you,” she said lovingly); Eric Nelkin’s special offer to deliver the Real Answer; and, not surprisingly to an editor, Mark Raffman’s Clueless Author Pulls Rank on Editor. Happy Last Day of Hanukkah, all — give me lots to read. ====================================================================== WEEK 1416, published December 27, 2020 Style Conversational Week 1416: Let’s do it again, again The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s 2020 retrospective contest Bob Staake's alternate sketch for this week's Style Invitational example. It's illustrating Frank Mann's take on the desert-island cartoon trope in Week 1397, one of the contests you're invited to try again this week. Bob Staake's alternate sketch for this week's Style Invitational example. It's illustrating Frank Mann's take on the desert-island cartoon trope in Week 1397, one of the contests you're invited to try again this week. By Pat Myers Dec. 23, 2020 at 4:30 p.m. EST Add to list The Style Invitational and Conversational are coming to you a day early this week, rather than on Christmas Eve, but it’s not as if you’d had to hold your breath about what this week’s contest would be. It’s understandable that you’d rather not look back on much of 2020 — except, of course, for the past year of Style Invitational contests. This week, Week 1416, is the second half of our annual Year in Redo, when you get a chance to send in an entry for that contest you’d meant to enter, or didn’t hear about the first time around. Or maybe you misspelled the song title you anagrammed in Week 1412, forcing the Empress to kill your otherwise boffo entry (this really happened) and you figured out a clever adjustment. Part 1 of the retrospective, Week 1415, covers Weeks 1360 to 1387 (minus three ineligible contests); and Part 2 is 1388 through 1412. Part 1 runs through Monday, Dec. 28; last week’s Style Conversational contains links to the first set of contests plus their results. And below are the ones for Part 2 (deadline Jan. 4). The mini-summaries below aren’t necessarily complete; they’re only reminders: Make sure you read the full directions from the contest itself. AD ADVERTISING One thing I noticed when looking through these contests for inking entries to use as examples: Trump is old news, and months-old jokes about him — which sometimes took up half the list of answers — are likely to seem dated, especially several weeks from now. Feel free to use of-the-moment references when entering these old contests; they’re much more likely to get ink than one about some ephemeral scandal from the Republican convention. I almost always use a cartoon caption as one of the inking entries for the retrospective, so feel free to enter Week 1392 or 1397. On the other hand, I use A caption; your chances for ink won’t be too high. At the bottom of the list are directions for people who can’t use the links. Week 1388: Create a business name that contains a word*phrase and its anagram, such as “Allergy Gallery: Museum of Natural Histamine” (results) AD Week 1389: TankaWanka: A poem about current events that has five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7 syllables and at least two rhyming lines. (results) Week 1390: From the random items on the list we supply, explain how any two are alike or different. (results) Week 1391: New words*phrases that do not contain a C, O, V, I or D. (results) Week 1392: Cartoon captions (results) Week 1393: Give funnier descriptions to any on a list of the non-inking entries from Week 1388 (results) Week 1394: Cite a line of dialogue (real or not), or give a description, that could work for two different movies, plays or TV shows (results) Week 1395: Add a “plus one” to some true or fictional numerical grouping, such as “The Ten Commandments Plus One” or “Thirteen Angry Men” (results) Week 1396: Limerixicon: Limericks featuring a word or name beginning with “ha-” (results) AD Week 1397: Give a fresh idea for any of four cartoon tropes including a desert island and a psychiatrist’s couch (results) Week 1398: Metaphors for the year 2020 (results) Week 1399: Fake trivia about summer or things that happen*have happened in summer (results) Week 1400: “Breed” any two of the 100 Triple Crown nominees on our list and name the foal to reflect both parents’ names (results) Week 1401: Haikus telling an “X is so Y” joke (results) Week 1402: New terms whose letters add to 14 points in Scrabble (results) Week 1403: Update an old TV show with a current (especially covid-centered) story line (results) Week 1404: Ask Backwards: We list the “answers”; you provide a question that one might answer (results) Week 1405: “Breed” any two of the inking foal names from Week 1400 and name the “grandfoal” (results) AD Week 1406: Acrostic poems on the news: The lines’ first letters spell out the subject or relevant word (results) Week 1407: Ads set in space, prison or several other unlikely venues (results) Week 1408: Slightly change the name of a charity or other nonprofit and describe the new cause (results) Week 1409: Drop a letter or consecutive letters from a song title and describe the new song, or quote some lyrics from it (results) Week 1410: Fake trivia about autumn (results) Week 1411: Badly written endings to a novel (results) Week 1412: Anagrams of song titles and lyrics (results) Repeating from last week: If you can’t access the Post pages above for some reason, you can also go to the Master Contest List at the Losers’ own website, NRARS.org, and click on the various icons for PDFs of the print or online version of each week. Both there and here, remember to check the results of the contest you’re entering (or reentering), to make sure you’re not sending in the same joke: So just go to the far right column on the table to click on that week’s results (i.e., the results of Week 1382 are on the same row as the introduction to that contest; just look to the far right). AD Another way is to join the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, then, at the top of the page, click “More” and then “Files.” You’ll get an index, newest to oldest, of copies of the contests. 'Grammy nominees*: The results of Week 1412 *Submitted as a headline by numerous entrants Contests featuring anagrams have become more and more frequent in the Invite in recent years: Our first was in Week 13, then 551, then 734 … but recently we’ve done them every year or two. The results of Week 1412 show why: The results are so impressively clever — astonishingly so, to a reader who isn’t already used to seeing these feats of letterdermain. I’m glad that I offered various options for anagrams: of the title of a song or a line from it, along with the option of some lyrics for the new title. I had a hunch that someone would submit an anagram of a whole verse, and in fact got a few from among the 120 or so entrants (some of whom sent 25 different submissions). And I liked mixing up the one-liners with the whole songs. Also, while I had predicted I’d be looking for at least a few holiday songs to feature, I also liked getting the rest-of-the-year fare as well, especially Chris Doyle’s “ACB” — as in Amy Coney Barrett — parodying the Jackson 5 bubblegummer “ABC.” AD It was so much fun to check the inking anagrams on the validator at wordsmith.org and watching the letters twirl around to signify that they works. Not so much fun to see the chart of big red lines that noted when a particular letter was used the wrong number of times. I had to toss some funny stuff. (And then I missed, until alerted, that a foreign-named song title was misspelled, thus ruining the anagram. I had to delete it.) This week’s Clowning Achievement winner, Englishman Tony Crafter, is brand-new to The Style Invitational — he’ll be getting his FirStink air “freshener” for his first ink, along with our new disembodied-clown-head trophy. I certainly hope that Tony sticks around for our other contests and becomes a regular Loser, but Week 1412 was especially suited to him, it turns out: Tony, a retired banker, has made a specialty of what he calls “songagrams” — anagramming, as he did here this week, the lyrics of a whole song into another song. A singable parody! Here’s an interview that Tony did in 2009 with the Anagram Times website, part of Wordsmith.org, about his passion — and here’s a pageful of links to his many songagrams, heavy on the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel, but also including a perfect parody of the hymn “Jerusalem” (“O did those feet in ancient time”): “Jam Rule Ends” begins, “And did roast beef in olden times* Fill gentle England’s gentle need ...”) Style Invitational legend Jesse Frankovich, who utterly dominated the Invitational for three years running, also came to us from the little subculture of anagram savants — then stayed to get ink after ink in a vast variety of our other humor contests. I’d love to see Tony join him. (He’d probably rather to enter our humour contests, but hey, I’m there for U.) AD What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me that the four top winners this week were “all inspired.” He also singled out Mark Raffman’s O Christmas Tree > O Sir Tech Master and David Smith’s The Twelve Days of Christmas > A RASH ELF TWEETS COVID MYTHS — one of only two Trump jokes this week (we’re weaning off). WON, AY? > NO WAY! The unprintables Yes, not only did several people anagram “O Christmas Tree” to “Erotic Hamsters.” Two of them sent song lyrics. O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, How lovely are your branches = Erotic hamsters, erotic hamsters: Worry, O bare lovely haunches (Kevin Dopart) And from Chris Doyle: Erotic hamsters? What delight! For Christmas there’s no better gift. I’ll keep them warm throughout the night Held tightly (if you catch my drift). Not to mention this parody of “Blues in the Night” from Jonathan Jensen: My daddy done told me, when I was pubescent, My daddy done told me, “Son, You’re gonna get urges, it’s normal and healthy, And it’s a whole lot of fun. There’s K-Y and skin cream, Whatever you choose, be sure that you use Some lubes in the night.” Here’s a sketchy gift idea for 2021 Looking for a Welcoming 2021 gift to yourself or another Invite fan? Remember that Bob Staake is offering his original work for the Invitational from over the past 27 years — both pencil sketches and finished pen-and-ink versions — to the Loser Community at this special page on his website: bobstaake.com*SI. You get in touch with him about the art you’re interested in buying, and he’ll check if he has it. A positively Beverley podcast — catch You’re Invited, Episode 8 Be sure to listen to Mike Gips’s positively delightful half-hour interview with Hall of Famer Beverley Sharp. Beverley talks about her first encounters with Loserdom, and how, using her own name instead of her married surname, she made an identity as a writer of wholesomely subversive humor of all stripes, without raising the eyebrows of the other ladies at church, or of her husband’s business clients. And how she filed Invite entries from cruise destinations around the world, including Mongolia (once they left their yurt and got to metropolitan Ulan Bator). Catch this episode and all the rest at bit.ly*invite-podcast. Wishing you all a happy holiday of your choice — and we’ll be back on our Thursday schedule next week, the morning of New Year’s Eve. ====================================================================== WEEK 1417, published January 3, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1417: Auld Lang sign-off The Empress on The Style Invitational’s annual obit poem contests Bob Staake's alternative sketch for today's cartoon, in which he played on the expression "dropping a dime” on someone — tattling to the authorities (as in a pay phone call) — by having Linda Tripp do that literally to Monica Lewinsky. Bob Staake's alternative sketch for today's cartoon, in which he played on the expression "dropping a dime” on someone — tattling to the authorities (as in a pay phone call) — by having Linda Tripp do that literally to Monica Lewinsky. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers Dec. 30, 2020 at 5:02 p.m. EST Add to list Since 1997, The Style Invitational has been doing contests commemorating the year’s new ex-people. In the first one, Week 243, The Czar asked specifically for comically badly written poems; he was inspired by an earnest ode on the recent death of Princess Diana, sent by a heartbroken woman in New Hampshire to various newspapers: “ … So loved was she by masses — so enthralled* We gave no pause when ‘mercy, please’ she called.” The winner in the bad-elegy contest, by Charlie Steinhice: Jacques Cousteau: The knit cap lies empty on the deck, The once-proud ship feels like a wreck. At his request, his last remains Will now become the ocean’s gains. With tear of eye and roll of drum, We feed the sharks. Farewell, old chum. Forward to January 4, 2004, three weeks after I had deposed that pesky old Czar and hopped into the cushy Invite Beanbag Throne: Week 539 asked simply: “Pay tribute in verse to someone who died in 2003.” I don’t have a record of my thinking at the time, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t want to encourage bad writing along with funny writing — or reject something because it wasn’t bad. (I just violated this principle with our bad-novel-endings contest, but it was a rare exception.) AD The Style Invitational's new first-prize trophy, the Clowning Achievement. What could we add to it for a Loser’s subsequent wins? The Style Invitational's new first-prize trophy, the Clowning Achievement. What could we add to it for a Loser’s subsequent wins? The winners that year — whooee, heavy on the puns. I’m glad that I hadn’t specified either bad writing or good writing! Winner of the Inker, by Bob Dalton: Idi, you were real Amin, Your passing we think swell. They’re laughing up in Heaven ’cause They know Uganda Hell. Second place, by Dave Zarrow: At 105, old Madame Chiang At last met her mortality. That’s got to be a record for A Taipei personality. Anyway, the Dead Letters contest, as it’s been called most years (also The Post’s Mortems, A RIP-Roaring Year and A Lit Obit of Fun) has been since then the Invite’s New Year’s tradition. Lately part of the fun is to find offbeat characters to write about, including those making the list of the Darwin Awards — people who found some spectacularly stupid route toward meeting their Maker, thus further sparing the gene pool. AD Here’s Beverley Sharp’s ode to one of last year’s Darwinians: Ronald Cyr, age 65, a most distrustful chap, Determined to defend his home, devised a booby trap. He rigged a handgun’s trigger so when opening the door, An unsuspecting burglar would be burgle-ing no more. His booby trap worked right on cue! The burglar, is he dead? No, Ronald absent-mindedly walked through the door instead. The moral’s not mysterious: Don’t mess with guns — they’re Cyrious. And from Frank Osen: Two Texans who tried to jump a drawbridge in their car: Unless your first name’s “Blues” and last name’s “Brothers,” Don’t race a drawbridge, if you have your druthers; The worst thing, falling short, is Often rigor mortis. But of course, anyone who died this year can be a worthy subject, as long as you have something to say that’s not treacly or gleefully morbid or likely to cause hurt to someone in particular. AD ADVERTISING Here are last year’s top winners: 4th place: Fred Cox (1938-2019), co-inventor of Nerf football His toy’s a neurologist’s dream — Soft footballs won’t get you concussed! If only pro leagues would adjust By issuing one to each team And swapping each stadium’s turf For 1.3 acres of Nerf. (Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.) 3rd place: Dan Robbins (1925-2019), inventor of the paint-by-numbers kit He’s gone to his eternal slumber In (7) Earth and (18) Umber. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) 2nd place: John Dingell (1926-2019), longest-serving member of Congress Of late Representative Dingell, A person with class might have said, “With statesmen in heaven you mingle!” Trump chose to be classless instead. To Dingell, with great veneration, We offer a toast, raise your cup to him! Though Trump gives him no admiration, One day he will surely look up to him. (Bill Dorner, Indianapolis) AD And the winner of the Lose Cannon: George Laurer (1925-2019), inventor of the bar code In the annals of science, no person did more To relieve the long lines in the grocery store Than did George Joseph Laurer, whose bar code allows Us to breeze through the checkout with no time to browse. But I wish that he’d minored in English in school And invented a bar-coded grammar-check tool To inform the unedified store-sign reviewer, This checkout’s for folks with “10 ITEMS OR FEWER.” (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) See the rest of the 2020 winners at wapo.st*invite1369. And while you’re at it, catch The 2019 winners. The 2018 winners The 2017 winners I hope you’re inspired: If there’s any part of 2020 we want to do honor to, it’s these. Lex appeal*: The new-word poems of Week 1413 *Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich AD Not surprisingly, the Loserbards who’ve blotted up so much ink with obit poems tended to ink up the joint in this week’s results, as well. The partial list given to us by the Merriam-Webster people of the year’s new words (and new meanings for old ones) was full of daunting multi-syllable terms like “iatrophobia” (fear of doctors), but our folks just took a look and said, aha! Double dactyl! It’s the — oh, my — 25th first-place win for Hall of Famer Mark Raffman, but it’s his first of our new trophy, the Clowning Achievement. As I’d mentioned earlier, there are only 100 of these babies, and I’d like to see them go to somewhere near 100 people. Loser Bruce Carlson wrote in with an idea: Is there something that a multiple winner could add to the Clowner to designate a second win, third win, etc.? Maybe a little necklace or sticker? Ideas are welcome. The trophy is small, though; the base is about 3 by 5 inches, and his (their?) head is perhaps the size of a pingpong ball. One difference from the photo is that the Royal Consort has elevated the head about an inch above the base on a little dowel. What Doug Dug: AD Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood drew his faves this week from the honorable mentions: Of the 17 poems he read in the print Invite, Doug singled out both takes on “deepfake,” by Melissa Balmain and Frank Mann; Hildy Zampella’s men-don’t-know-from-colors “greige”; Jonathan Jensen’s iambic-heptameter quatrain on the iambic hydroxychloroquine; and Melissa Does Melissophobia. 'Wow! No, I didn't see that!' I just heard this morning from First Offender Tony Crafter, who won last week’s song anagram contest, Week 1412, by rearranging every letter in three verses of “Away in a Manger” into a readable, almost singable rhyming poem. He emailed me from his home in England: “I don’t know if that contest is still running, but here’s another song.” “You didn’t know you won the contest?” I replied. “Wow! No, I didn’t see that! Mind you, I don’t seem to be able to get beyond the paywall so I probably couldn’t access the notification. I’m delighted, that’s quite an honour. Glad I contacted you!” AD Invite-lovers and People Who Care About the News: If you’re not one of The Post’s 3 million digital subscribers, there is an AMAZING deal going on for the first year: $29 for a whole year of virtually everything The Post offers online, which is even more than The Style Invitational! It’s something like 700 pieces of content a day. The usual price for a digital subscription to The Post is, I think, $130 — which isn’t a bad rate at all — it’s considerably cheaper than the NYT, which, I might remind you, has no Style Invitational. Click on this link for the last days of this promotion. But also, it’s supporting the journalism that The Post is doing around the world — a role made even more important by recent moves by the still-current administration to turn Voice of America into a regime-supporting organ. After the recession of the 2000s forced The Post to close many of its foreign and nationwide bureaus, it’s once again expanding: There are new, wide-ranging hub operations opening in London and Seoul that will be a basis for much more global coverage. AD But of course, its primary value is that it lets you see all the poop jokes in the Invite. Tripped up for a gift? Did you want to embellish the cover of your copy of the Starr report? Remember that Bob Staake is offering his original work for the Invitational from over the past 27 years — both pencil sketches and finished pen-and-ink versions — to the Loser Community at this special page on his website: bobstaake.com*SI. You get in touch with him about the art you’re interested in buying, and he’ll check if he has it. On a parting note: Thank you so much for continuing to share your sense of humor with me and with Post readers, and for being accommodating in waiting for prizes, accepting emailed “magnets,” etc. I do believe we’ll see each other in person next year. Please take care of yourselves till then. And on to 2021. ====================================================================== WEEK 1418, published January 10, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1418: Just inkin’ about tomorrow The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s Year in Preview results and new Tour de Fours contest Bob Staake was clearly inspired after he came up with “Alice in Wounderland” — she falls into a skateboard park — as an example for this week's Tour de Fours contest. The sketch he worked on Tuesday contained all the marvelous details of the final he finished Wednesday. Bob Staake was clearly inspired after he came up with “Alice in Wounderland” — she falls into a skateboard park — as an example for this week's Tour de Fours contest. The sketch he worked on Tuesday contained all the marvelous details of the final he finished Wednesday. By Pat Myers Jan. 7, 2021 at 4:33 p.m. EST Add to list Hello. I hope you’ve found something to smile about today. The shocking and shameful events of yesterday afternoon transpired while I was choosing the final winners of The Style Invitational’s Week 1414 Year in Preview. The TV ran in the next room here at home; my husband, who normally works on Capitol Hill, watched safely, though in shock, from the couch. A deadline is by far my most effective motivator, and I pared my wildly long “shortlist” — thank goodness I’d already read al the entries — with an eye toward producing a timeline of 2021 “events” that contained a variety of themes but also some similar entries that would serve as the equivalent of the running jokes that Dave Barry often threads through his beloved Year in Review pieces (here’s the 2020 version). Still, by midafternoon, as events grew more surreal, more dire, my list was still at 82 entries. It’s always been hard for me to toss inkworthy material, but I had to lose fully half of them. Fortunately, two very funny and obliging friends agreed to weigh in with their favorites; I’m guessing that they were craving some quick diversion from the horrors going down inside the Capitol, even if it did involve making light of some of those whose short- and long-term actions created the environment for them. AD And yay, it worked! Both Alex Blackwood, my co-admin for the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, and Malcolm Fleschner, whose own annual Year in Preview timelines “inspired” the Invite contests, quickly returned lists marked with stars for their favorites and even favoriter favorites. So what if their choices, more often than not, were totally different: three stars from one, zero from the other? (Fortunately, they were both good with my top winners; Malcolm would have downgraded one of them, but he was wrong.) They did, however, both put big stars on a dozen of the entries in addition to my Losers’ Circle choices; all of those are honorable mentions this week. And just about all the rest were starred by at least one of them. But I did end up exercising the Royal Prerogative and also gave ink to a few that both of them failed to appreciate. Which are which? Nah, I’m not going to tell you that. But if you’re a regular reader — or even if this week’s results are the first Invite entries you’ve ever seen — you realize that your favorites from the list don’t always match mine … or they almost never do. But I’m going to bet that a whole lot of you laughed at this week’s Clowning Achievement winner, by Steve Smith — the revelation that Even Too Crazy for Trump Attorney Sidney Powell turns out to be played by prankster Sacha Baron Cohen. I read that one to the Royal Consort yesterday, and he literally guffawed. Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood told me it was a LOL for him as well. And so Steve, if you can make multiple people laugh while their country’s ideals are being pulled out by the roots, you definitely deserve a disembodied clown head on a stick. Our current first prize, the Clowning Achievement trophy, has space on the base to mark subsequent wins. Our current first prize, the Clowning Achievement trophy, has space on the base to mark subsequent wins. (Pat Myers*TWP) It didn’t take long: Steve is our first winner of a second Clowner, the trophy that debuted in Week 1419, just five weeks ago. Steve already won in Week 1410, for his false trivia about autumn. I mentioned recently that since we’ll have only 100 of these trophies, I’d love for 100 different people to win them. But the RC and I have an idea, building on the suggestion of Loser Bruce Carlson to add something to the original trophy to denote subsequent wins: We’re going to work up a mini-pennant on a little “pole,” like one at a golf hole, with a 2, 3, etc., on the flag, that can be attached to the base of the trophy — heck, it could hold a whole mess of them, for the most Loserly. I think it could lend a festive circus atmosphere around our dejected clown head. So Steve, we’ll get that to you when we figure out the best design and way to attach it. AD What Else Doug Dug: In addition to Steve’s winner, Doug Norwood singled out Mark Raffman’s simultaneous Inauguration Day activities: the Biden swearing-in and the Trump cussing-out; Danielle Nowlin’s about T’s refusal to give up his presidential duties, insisting on still watching cable TV and playing golf; and Beryl Benderly’s prediction that The Post’s Fact Checker feature, in the name of gender diversity, replace its Pinocchio as a degree of dishonesty with the Kayleigh. UDON want to miss this week’s Tour de Fours contest It’s our 17th Tour of our Tour de Fours neologism contest, this time with the letter block UNDO, suggested by Hall of Fame Loser Jeff Contompasis as such an apt word for 2021. This contest has always produced lots of funny ink, often incorporating most of the block’s 24 possible permutations. The Master Contest List at NRARS.org — the Losers’ own website maintained by Elden Carnahan — has a special Tour de Fours page listing links to all 17 contest announcements and results, in your choice of plain text or PDFs of the print page and Web version, ever since Week 571 in 2004. Click here to enter that rabbit hole. AD Or just read these past top winners: From last year’s Tour de Fours, with the block LIAR: Nostrail: What inevitably drips down your face when you’ve got the sniffles in February and you’re wearing your big gloves. (Jeff Contompasis) Corialonus: Shakespeare rendered acceptable for delicate sensibilities. (Steve Honley) Heilraiser: The person in a political discussion who inevitably brings up a Hitler reference. (Gary Crockett) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Flopularity: When people flock to see a show just to revel in its badness. " 'Cats’ has proved so flopular that the theater added a midnight showing for stoners who want to creep out at Judi Dench’s fur-skin.” (Bill Dorner) From 2011 — TAXI: Punxatini: Special Groundhog Day cocktail made with ice-cold gin and a touch of furmouth. (Jeff Shirley) AD Imaxative: That gut-wrenching 3-D scene where the camera appears to go over the waterfall or off the cliff. (Dudley Thompson) A_XI_TY: The consuming fear that you’re about to blow it on “Wheel of Fortune.” (Chris Doyle) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Prophylaxity: The way to unplanned parenthood. (Ann Martin) And from 2007: SATR, to commemorate the Invite’s move from the Sunday Style section to the Saturday paper, which would last four years: First Rationalizer: Unofficial title of the White House press secretary. (Peter Metrinko) E-fenestration: Tossing out your old version of Windows. (Russell Beland) Retrash: To have a yard sale to get rid of all the junk you picked up at other people’s yard sales. (Dot Yufer) And the Winner of the Inker: Oughtacrats: People who have half a mind to solve all the world’s problems with their brilliant ideas, one of these days … (Tom Witte) AD Deadline is Monday night, Jan. 18 — no extension for the holiday, sorry. What, you were planning to go back to the office to use the fax machine? Coming soon on ‘You’re Invited’: A chat with Bob Staake “Alice in Wounderland,” Bob Staake’s example for this week’s “Tour de Fours” contest for terms featuring the letter block UNDO in any order, is one of my favorite Staake cartoons from Bob’s 27 years working on the Invite. When he suggested the phrase, I’d assumed he was planning an “apologies to” parody of the famed illustrations by Sir John Tenniel from the 1865 “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” But Bob went pure Bob, with a big exuberant splash of detail in every millimeter of the frame. (His Alice was based on the 1951 Disney version.) Next week, probably Wednesday, Jan. 13, Loser Mike Gips plans to drop his latest (ninth) episode of his Style Invitational podcast, “You’re Invited,” featuring a half-hour interview with Bob. I’m sure he’ll talk about the process of creating a Style Invitational cartoon, as well as how the Invite has played a part in his career for almost three decades, as Bob became nationally famous as a children’s book author, magazine cover artist, and even the star of a computer commercial. AD I’ll announce it here again next Thursday, but you can watch out for it — or catch up on Mike’s eight previous interviews of Invite notables — at bit.ly*invite-podcast, or on sites like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It’s all free. You could even own this week’s cartoon — either the pencil sketch or the pen-and-ink cartoon (in black-and-white; the coloring is done electronically). Bob has created a special link for Invite fans: go to bobstaake.com*SI and tell him what you’re interested in. — The headline “Just Inkin’ About Tomorrow” was a non-inking (too long) headline submitted for Week 1414 by Tom Witte. ====================================================================== WEEK 1419, published January 17, 2021 ====================================================================== WEEK 1420, published January 24, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1420: Back to the vocal point The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s song contest and retrospective results Style Invitational Loser rookie phenom Sarah Walsh (center, with teammates Ilana Short and Wes Hazard) vies with one of the “Jeopardy!” super-champions tonight at 9 on ABC's “The Chase,” a VERY hard trivia game to win. Chat with Sarah on Zoom before and after; see the details below. Style Invitational Loser rookie phenom Sarah Walsh (center, with teammates Ilana Short and Wes Hazard) vies with one of the “Jeopardy!” super-champions tonight at 9 on ABC's “The Chase,” a VERY hard trivia game to win. Chat with Sarah on Zoom before and after; see the details below. (Ron Batzdorff*ABC) By Pat Myers Jan. 21, 2021 at 4:54 p.m. EST Add to list Hi, everyone! I’m feeling happy! How about you! I was going to do an Inauguration-themed contest this week, but it didn’t work with my deadline to get Style Invitational Week 1420 to the copy desk. Next week we’ll do something. Anyway, it’s definitely time to do a song contest, which we usually run twice a year. When I was preparing Week 1416, a second shot at 25 contests from June through November 2020 (whose results run today), I realized that there was no song parody contest per se, though some intrepid souls recently accompanied their anagrams of a song title with a whole song reflecting the anagram: See today’s results, in which Mark Raffman rearranges the letters of “Stairway to Heaven” to make “I Vote, He Rants Away,” following it with a parody about the person we can now call Florida Man; and, at the end, Jonathan Jensen turning “La Vie en Rose” into “A Seine Lover,” complete with the mademoiselle jilted by her philandering beau. AD Indeed, our last real song contest was Week 1378 last April, for “songs about Life in the Age of Corona.” Who could have imagined that we’d still be in its grip? This time, the theme is “work songs.” It can have the function (at least in jest) of a sea chantey or prison gang chant, designed to keep everyone working together in sync and to keep spirits up. Or it can be more broadly just on the subject of some job or other. The Invite, of course, is steeped in topical humor, and I’d think there’d be ways to incorporate current events into your song, depending on what profession you choose to write about. The Week 1378 results were — as absolutely always with our song contests — terrific, and included a number of videos, ranging from a teenager singing from her bedroom to relatively lavish ones with titles and props. But as always, the lyrics are paramount. AD If you’re not a regular entrant of the Invite’s parody contests, take a moment to read the guidelines and tips that I included in the Week 1357 Conversational (which in turn had been lifted from an earlier one). Use this link and scroll down a couple of inches to the subhead “Play it again.” This addresses matters of length, structure, source music, rhyme and meter — what works best for a contest whose results are mostly read in text. Just remember not to use those dates for the deadlines — they’re from November 2019! Note that you have an extra week to send your songs; the deadline is Feb. 8. Not only will you have more time to work on them, but there’s less chance that they’ll be dated when the results are posted online 10 days later. If you have questions, feel free to contact me at pat.myers@washpost.com; catch my attention in the subject line with “question about song parody” or some such. Kook’s Tour 2020, Part 2: The results of Week 1416 I’m seeing lots of new entrants in our Joint Legislation contest, Week 1419 (deadline Monday, Jan. 26), so I’m glad they’ll also be treated to such a wide variety of Invite humor in our annual pair of retrospective contests. Just as in last week’s results for the first half of the year, Part 2, Week 1416, featured at least one entry from 19 different contests, this time featuring anagrams, limericks, metaphors for 2020, movie humor and more, in addition to the cartoon captions, neologisms, and foal names that appear once again. Some of the ink I remember reading in the original contests, and regretted not having room to run; others were clearly brand-new, reflecting the topics of the day. AD It’s the fourth win — but the first of our new Clowning Achievement trophies — for Jonathan Jensen, who takes the Clowner for his ingenious and Should Be in the Dictionary neologism “maganetic,” which Jonathan defines as “exerting a force so powerful that ordinary citizens can lose their marbles, and senators can lose their morals.” Actually, it’ll be Jonathan’s only Clowner; if he wins again, I’ll send him a little pennant on a pole, like a flag at a golf course, to mark the repeat win. It’ll have a 2 on it, or maybe a Roman numeral, so it won’t look like second place. I’m calling it the 100 Clowners for 100 Losers program. Jonathan’s win, along with his song parody at the end of the column, give him a total of 85 blots of Invite ink. And it’s the 112th ink for Ann Martin, who got the second-place dumpster-fire-motif mask for her ivory-tower anagram-name ACADEMIC DEMI-CACA. Dr. Martin, classical scholar, just might know of what she speaks. Mark Raffman’s famed for getting ink with parodies of “Be Our Guest,” as he did yet again just last week, but this week he taps “Stairway to Heaven,” anagrammed to “I Vote, He Rants Away.” And it was a banner week — three blots — for George Thompson, whose ink total boings from seven to 10. But three of them have been runners-up! George gets to choose between the Loser Mug and the Grossery Bag, or he could opt for a Vintage Magnet from before he started scoring ink less than two years ago. AD What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, who read the 34 entries that will appear in the print Post (there are 48 in all this week), singled out five entries from the honorable mentions as his faves: Jon Gearhart’s “sargasm,” the thrill of getting in a good zinger, and also his horse name “breeding” of Cool Runnings x Mr. Kringle = Jamaican a List?; Mark Raffman’s “Aunt Yermama” pancake syrup that’s high in fat but everyone uses — yet another in our long tradition of Your Mama jokes; Kevin Dopart’s anagram of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” to “Big Horny Women? You Bet!”; and Jon Ketzner’s sly joke about the psychiatrist and his patient. Cut to 'The Chase’ tonight with Loser Sarah Walsh Even though it was taped in November, you can still cheer on Sarah Walsh tonight on the third episode of “The Chase,” the new and very difficult trivia game on ABC at 9 Eastern time. Sarah, who’s one of the Invite’s leading lights lately, in her rookie year, will be going up against one of the three biggest “Jeopardy!” champs ever (she’s not allowed to tell us ahead of time which one). AD Freakishly — or maybe it makes sense, knowing how smart Our People are — last week’s episode also featured an Invite Loser, Beth Morgan of Palo Alto, Calif. Beth and her teammates were put up against the unbelievable trivia virtuoso James Holzhauer, and though Beth did extraordinarily well — despite a defective buzzer — her team couldn’t build up a big enough head start to keep Smirky James from mowing down their lead and finally denying them the $100,000. Sarah, who’s also been on “Jeopardy!” herself, had to go through four online auditions for “The Chase” before they flew her out to L.A. She did tell me it was great fun. Loser Andy Schotz has set up a Zoom room so we can chat with Sarah before and after, and type comments during. He’ll open it up around 8:30. Log on with THIS LINK. (Click on “Launch meeting” if it doesn’t come right up.) And next Tuesday evening: Zoom just to chat Style Invitational Devotee Ellen Goodman, a longtime fan of the contest and one of the first members of our Facebook group, has once again set up a Zoom chat for anyone who’s interested, It’s an “open house” — drop by or step away whenever — from 7:30 to 8:30 or a little later on Tuesday, Jan. 26. She did the first one as a dry run a few weeks back, and it was fun to meet some Losers for the first time, as well as some loyal fans, and to say hi to some of the regulars. Until we can have our Flushies awards and winter parties again, hey, it’s something. Here’s the link to Ellen’s Zoom. (Click on “Launch meeting” if it doesn’t come right up.) See some of you tonight! Any champagne left from yesterday? ====================================================================== WEEK 1421, published January 31, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1421: Altering address The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s word bank contest and obit poem results Sean Connery as Agent 007 and Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore in the 1964 movie “Goldfinger.” Both actors get the Style Invitational obit treatment in this week's results. Sean Connery as Agent 007 and Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore in the 1964 movie “Goldfinger.” Both actors get the Style Invitational obit treatment in this week's results. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios) By Pat Myers Jan. 28, 2021 at 4:51 p.m. EST Add to list “My small hands will get bigger — honestly, magnificent! — as long as I salute the one who controls my every move.” That was my example for Week 1214 of The Style Invitational in February 2017, the immediate progenitor of this week’s Invite contest, Week 1421. The “word bank” contest — to write something funny using only the words Trump used in his inaugural address (“1,433 words of pure … source material”) — did not specifically ask for political humor, or mockery of the new president, from the Loser Community. But obviously I wasn’t forbidding it, and the results — except for a few pop culture and sports jokes, including Mark Raffman’s runner-up about the Washington Nationals and the soon-to-exit Bryce Harper — were aimed squarely at the new occupant and his already huge array of aberrant behavior, including the incredibly divisive and exclusionary speech itself. AD It remains to be seen how we’ll be sending up the new president. I always planned to run the Alternaugural again, to illustrate how we’re here, just a few blocks away from the White House, and ready to have fun at the occupant’s expense. I’m not going to pretend that there’s an equivalence between these two inaugural addresses, or these two presidents, but surely we’ll find a way to take the new president’s lofty sentiments and twist them into something decidedly less inspiring*reassuring*sane. Whatever comes of them, they’ll be very different from the truly classic but very specific results of Week 1214. Click on the preceding link to see all the winners — including Michael Burch’s “translation” of the speech that runs a crazy 700 words. Below is a sampling of the ink, which, alas, turned out to be right on the mark for the next four years. Except for the fear of losing Bryce. Meh. Fourth place: “I will be a just and reasonable president to all of our citizens: Americans on the right, Americans on the far right, Americans on the radical right, and Americans striving to transition to the right or who promise to do so in an oath of total allegiance. Not so much to people in poverty, people from Washington, D.C., or anyone to the left of President Bush.” (John Hutchins) Third place: What is it like to be a Washington National? Many victories throughout the years, but never winning the Big One. With each historic fail, miseries and carnage. So much unrealized promise! Men, your time for success is now — it must be! Because in two years, when the magnificent young power fellow in right leaves to become very rich in another city, we will have to rebuild. (Mark Raffman) AD Second place: “What is going on? There are no people here. Did I get the time right — or is it tomorrow? There should be many people here. Many, many people! It is too empty! “IS ANYONE HERE??? “I cannot accept this! Here is a different reality: “Trillions and trillions of people assembled for my ceremony.” (Elaine Lederman) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: “Thank you, Chief Justice, stand there for a moment. People! Did you get a good look at this old Bible? Lift it for us. What is up with that, by the way? Is it from the Goodwill? It’s, like, all brown and totally in disrepair. Flush it and get a magnificent new one with a little shine — expense it! All right, you can salute, Roberts. Now, out of here!” (Frank Osen) “I promise you, we will eradicate all other countries from the face of the earth. Right here and right now, we will transfer all other countries to space, and the American people will be the rulers of the world for many, many years to come, with love to guide us along the way.” (the late and dearly missed Mae Scanlan) AD “Thank you, Michelle and President Obama, it’s good to be here right now, because back at your home, at great expense, I have a group of foreign women doing a ceremony that has infused your old room with an ocean of not very pleasant body by-products.” (Frank Osen) The Patriots are winning so much now. A total success. But who likes these people? No one! They are just like small women to us. Sad. (Mary Kappus) And Last: Trump enters The Style Invitational: “Everyone but you will think this is great. Only you stand in the way of my triumph. But you are not a righteous lady. For too long you have deprived me of victory. I will be forgotten no longer. The American people are looking for you to tell the public that I win! Understand, my winning is a MUST.” (Drew Bennett) [Yikes, it sounds like the call to the Georgia secretary of state.] AD How to do Week 1421: I tried to anticipate questions about how to use the word lists, and so I take up a bunch of space in the instructions with rules to work by, which I’ll repeat here as well (ask me why!): Use the official transcript. (Don’t count the stuff at the top before the speech begins.) You may not change the word except for capitalization or punctuation (of any kind you like): “Person’s” can’t be “person,” but it can be “persons.” You can’t take just part of the word, like “test” from “testing.” The numbers listed must stay intact as well. (We have 2,500 words to use here — almost twice what Trump fulminated — so stop griping right now.) There are a couple of phrases that combine words with hyphens: “once-in-a-century” and “swearing-in.” We’re treating those as individual words, though you’re free to combine them yourself. This lets you use “swearing”! On the other hand, “co-worker” is one word because “co” is not a word, just a prefix. AD Mike Burch’s 700-word tour de force notwithstanding, longer is not necessarily better. In fact, shorter is usually better. And I’m more likely to have room for it. Don’t pad and pad with every word you can fit in there. Todd DeLap, the 110-time Loser who so agreeably and swiftly created the word list you can use for this week’s contest (at wapo.st*invite-list-1421), will also validate my shortlist of entries, to make sure they don’t include words not on the list, or words used too many times. Four years ago it was Loser Gary Crockett (now at 480 blots) who created and ran a vetting program for me, and he offered to do it again. But Todd wouldn’t have it: “Just ’cause that Crockett guy is funnier than I am doesn’t mean I’m going to let him be a better programmer too.” Ooh, duel it out, Macho Nerds! Seriously, I’m deeply indebted to both of them several times over, as well as to Kyle Hendrickson and Steve Langer, who’ve also checked word bank entries in previous years, almost always finding some word that shouldn’t be there. (Once, Todd flagged his own entry.) Still, you should check your own entry! If I can’t easily fix it, I’ll have to toss it. That would be so sad. Laugh after death*: The obit poems of Week 1417 *The winning headline from last year’s obit poem contest, credited to Jesse Frankovich, Jon Gearhart and Tom Witte; that didn’t keep both Jon and Tom from submitting it this year as well. AD As certain as you-know-what and taxes, this year’s Dead Letters anthology was a zingy salute to a variety of Selected Mort Subjects, in varying degrees of (ir-)reverence. With the exception of First Offender Ellen Haas — who snagged a runner-up with a winsome tribute to NASA “Hidden Figure” Katherine Johnson — this week’s credits are an dishonor roll of veteran Loserbards. Chief among them this week is Hall of Famer Beverley Sharp, who snagged her 14th Invite win (plus three honorable mentions!), but her first Clowning Achievement, our new trophy. Once again, Beverley seems to have consulted the annals of the Darwin Awards, which highlights the demises of people who accidentally brought about their own demises in spectacularly dumb ways. Her winning poem, for example, tells the story of the man who went searching for the treasure hidden in Colorado by an eccentric codger named Forrest Fenn, had to be rescued in the snow … only to try again last March, and … no such luck this time. (In June, however, the treasure was finally found after 10 years, and Fenn, 89, died in September.) Second place and what probably rates the Bad Taste Award goes, fittingly, to an ode (well, a two-line quip) about the co-founder of Pizza Hut: AD In keeping with traditions old, Once boxed, he was delivered cold. (Frank Osen) Frank wins a face mask that was supposed to say “NYC Strong” in Hebrew letters, but the letters for “strong” were placed backward so it reads like “NYC Crotch.” And the Invite-ubiquitous Mark Raffman builds up to a zinger of a punchline with his tribute to four Hall of Fame pitchers: “The Umpire’s final call: ‘Outside and in the dirt.’” (Be sure also to catch Bob Kruger’s poem for the same four, farther down the list.) There was that familiar embarrassment of riches this week: poem after inkworthy poem that really demanded to be shared. Believe me, it’s worth your while to catch all 28 verses in this week’s online Invite — none longer than eight lines, some as short as two (the print page has 15 entries). I hope to share a few of the shorter ones as graphics on my Style Invitational Ink of the Day page on Facebook; sign up and click “like” at bit.ly*inkofday here to see Inks of the Day in your news feed (at least if you also click “like” on the posts a few times). Meet the new boss? Did you see that the legendary Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron is retiring next month, after eight years running the Post newsroom and more than 40 years in journalism? I chatted with Marty a grand total of one time, soon after he came to The Post, and explained what I did. He never killed a Style Invitational contest or even an entry. No word yet on who’ll be taking the reins, but I hope it’s someone who likes bold humor. We’ve been very fortunate so far as the Invite nears its 28th birthday, under three different editors. Not-yet-arthritic fingers crossed! ====================================================================== WEEK 1422, published February 7, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1422: Udon want to miss these neologisms The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s new contest and Tour de Fours winners Udon, the thick wheat noodles often used in Japanese soups, inspired a number of Style Invitational Losers in the UNDO neologism contest. Udon, the thick wheat noodles often used in Japanese soups, inspired a number of Style Invitational Losers in the UNDO neologism contest. (Wikipedia, Creative Commons) By Pat Myers Feb. 4, 2021 at 5:08 p.m. EST Add to list Wow, when Jeff Contompasis suggested that this year’s Tour de Fours letter block be “UNDO,” I knew it was a timely idea, but I didn’t realize how swiftly it would happen: Joe Biden hardly had time to take off his inaugural parade coat before whipping out his not-a-Sharpie and signing executive order after executive order reversing his predecessor’s own decrees on immigration, gay rights, climate change, science restriction, educational indoctrination, and more more more, day after day: A giant CTRL-Z to 2016. (Will the next president do a giant CTRL-Y?) Oh, and three of those letters in UNDO are DON. “Don” as in Trump made it into a couple of the 46 neologisms — coined words and phrases — in the results of Week 1418, which required UNDO, or any of its permutations, to appear with no other letters in between (though punctuation and spaces were okay): “Don U Can’t Be Serious” as a “Famous Last Texts” collection, by Ira Allen, and Jesse Frankovich’s “Donuments,” the statues that he thinks should replace the Confederate ones. AD The residue of the former president’s behavior still permeates the Invite, and is likely to do so to some degree for at least a while, as the Loserly artillery begins to turn toward successor targets. (You should see their arsenal of Jewish Space Lasers.) Lee Graham’s runner-up of “Undo pressure,” Kevin Dopart’s “nincompounded” (what Giuliani’s “trial by combat” exhortations did to the situation on Jan. 6) and Steve Smith’s “trolling in dough” continue the tradition of the past, what, half-decade (sigh). But notice how many of the inking neologisms today have nothing to do with Washington or the GOP or the Deposed Emperor. Instead we have lots of zingy, relevant, usable additions to the Loser Lexicon that refer to Life in General. And they’re topped this week by “ickspounded,” a verb form of “TMI” by Terri Berg Smith, complete with the example of being treated to a graphic recounting of barfing the whole bag of multicolored Skittles. It’s Terri’s first Clowning Achievement trophy — in fact, her first Style Invitational win — though she’d already won three runners-up in just 13 blots of ink, most of them recently. AD I only noticed this just now, but all three runners-up contain UNDO in that very order: It’s the concept of Dave Prevar’s definition of “undoh” — to realize you’re right after all — that supplies the humor; you don’t need further description or an example. I’m picturing Homer Simpson undohing. Dave doesn’t Invite as much as he used to (though he’s been a continual donor of wacky second prizes, like today’s Amazing Silly Straw), so it’s nice to see him back on the road to the Hall of Fame with Inks 371 and 372 this week. Jesse Frankovich cites Mike Pence as someone who’d trigger undorphins, but it’s not political humor; that’s left to Lee Graham’s undo pressure as the sole current-events rep in this week’s Losers’ Circle. A number of the inking neologisms were offered up by several people: fonduel was submitted by eight Losers. I generally chose my favorite description among them — in this case, Mark Raffman’s and Beverley Sharp’s similarly posed idea of fighting over that last piece of bread in the cheese goo. (Most of the others imagined people swordfighting with those skinny forks.) Here’s a neologism rule of thumb: Even though neologisms are, by definition, new words, you’re relying on the readers to apply their intuitive understanding of the English language, how they realize that a word is a noun or a word or an adjective. Part of that is a suffix: if the word has a noun ending, such as “-tion” or “-ment,” the definition should refer to a noun. (You can avoid an awkward definition by instead using a zingy example of its use.) AD Many neologisms are portmanteaux, terms that combine two existing words. And in general, the definition should match the part of speech of the second word rather than the first, because that’s how multisyllabic nouns tend to be constructed: first part of the word describes the second part. Here are two entries — playing identically on “correspondence” — that made me think of this principle: A. Correspondunce: Someone who starts a letter with “To Who It May Concern.” (Jesse Frankovich) The second part, “dunce,” is a person. What kind of dunce? A correspondunce. Contrast this with another funny idea but one that doesn’t work for me as well: B. Correspondunce: Mail that contains a Style Invitational trophy. It’s off because the noun part of the word, at the end, doesn’t match the noun part of the definition. Mail* dunce. AD There’s at least one entry this week that violates this principle: condumb, while playing off a noun, is changed into adjective form, but still has a definition in noun form: “Discount prophylactic with a hardly noticeable tear.” I think it would have been better as an adjective (a condumb person) or even a verb (as in dumb down) but still laughed at Stephen Dudzik’s definition, and didn’t want to weigh it down with extra words. By the way: If your inking entry was tweaked a bit, or more than a bit, this week, it wasn’t alone. Some weeks, I hardly change a comma among the entries; other times I feel the need to tinker more with the description of a great-idea neologism. I wish I had the time (and patience) for back-and-forth workshopping, as limerick writers at OEDILF.com enjoy with their submissions, but there are just too many entries and too few Empresses. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choice of this week’s Loser Circle of entries — especially Terri Berg Smith’s winning “ickspounded” — and also singled out Hannah Seidel’s “brofound”; Jesse Frankovich’s “correspondunce"; First Offender Adie Peña’s “houndini”; and Jeff Shirley’s “undoo” — as in to excise all the poop references from the week of Invite entries, leaving the Empress a chihuahua-doot-size pile to judge. Adie, by the way, introduced himself to the Loser Community recently when he joined the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group. I’m pretty sure he’s the charter member of the Philippine Loser Bureau. The way the mail’s going, I’m sure he’ll be getting his Fir Stink for his first ink before the end of the year. Putting it together: This week’s contest As I mentioned in the intro to Week 1422, this week’s contest is Classic Invite: combine two elements, puns on names, funny combinations of famous people. So it surprised me that the suggestion, complete with examples, came not from one of the Usual Suspects, but from someone whose Invite oeuvre had consisted of one obit poem two years ago: AD But Daniel Fleisher seems right on the mark here, and I hope that the 71-year-old retired plumber and inveterate punster from Baltimore (“I have an archive: 50 pages of original puns”) has more material for this contest, as an entrant, and for future Invites as well. Note that one of the examples is in sentence form and the other in “breeding” format; I’ll decide what to use (maybe both) when I see the entries, so don’t sweat it. If writing it out makes it funnier, write it out. Deadline is Feb. 15, which is Presidents’ Day. Does it really matter anymore? What is Episode 10 of 'You’re Invited’? Be sure to catch the latest episode of In You’re Invited, Mike Gips’s half-hour podcast about all things Invite. This time Mike treats Invite Rookie Phenom Sarah Walsh, who’s been on both “Jeopardy!” and “The Chase,” to a surprise Invite Jeop game, complete with Invite trivia. Sarah’s a trouper — it’s a riot. She also gives a little dish on what it was like to be on “The Chase” last month, and to face down that little bowtied supertrivialist Brad Rutter. You can search for You’re Invited at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or some other apps, or just go to bit.ly*invite-podcast, an especially handy way to listen at your computer. ====================================================================== WEEK 1423, published February 14, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1423: Unnatural acts The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s ‘joint legislation’ results and headline anagram contest Let's hope that Rep. Norma J. Torres (D-Calif.) and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) will find as many opportunities to work together as the Loser Community found for Torres-Ossoff in the Week 1419 “joint legislation” contest. Let's hope that Rep. Norma J. Torres (D-Calif.) and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) will find as many opportunities to work together as the Loser Community found for Torres-Ossoff in the Week 1419 “joint legislation” contest. By Pat Myers Feb. 11, 2021 at 4:14 p.m. EST Add to list It happens every time with The Style Invitational’s “joint legislation” contest: The inking “bills” that I think very obviously sound like some English phrase or sentence are totally mystifying to at least a few readers. And so it is with the results of this year’s installment, Week 1419. Not that I understood all the 2,000-some entries submitted; I knew that I’d be stumped myself. That’s why I told entrants that I welcomed translations of their entries (below them, so I could first read them and guess). And indeed, those translations came in really handy — because in many cases, they sounded nothing like what the string of freshman members’ names sounded like, and often translated into some phrase that didn’t even make sense; you’d never have thought of it on your own. Example 1: The Donalds-Kim-Cawthorn-Owens-Sessions Act requires the destruction of all versions of Kimberly Guilfoyle’s Republican National Convention speech. Provided translation: “Donald’s Kim Caw for No One Sessions.” Aside from the fact that “Thorn-Owens” doesn’t sound like “for no one,” the whole phrase doesn’t sound like English. I’m not even sure what it means: “For No One Sessions”? AD Example 2: Torres-Tiffany-Newman Bill — or pill — to boost masculine morale. Explanation: Torres-Tiffany-Newman = To restiff any new man. It’s not a problem to bend the pronunciation of “Newman” to “new man,” quite another to expect someone to read “Torres-Tiffany” as “to restiff [??] any.” I don’t think any of today’s inking entries are anywhere in that league of WTH? And the people I’d asked to read them beforehand had no trouble understanding any of them. But as soon as I published this week’s results this morning, I found out that some readers were interpreting the names totally differently from how I’d read them. Even “Torres-Ossoff” — used in perhaps 100 entries by dozens of entrants to mean “tore his ass off” — proved confusing for a Spanish-speaking friend who read “Torres” in the authentic Spanish with rolled R’s. So here’s the whole list with translations at the end. I think you’ll find that if you say the translations out loud, you’ll find that they’re pretty close to how the names are pronounced. AD Fourth place: The Moore-Greene-Salazar-Good Act mandates fresh leafy veggies to school lunch programs. (Pia Palamidessi, Cumberland, Md.) [More green salads are good] Third place: The Mann-Jones-Steel-Owens-Moore Resolution lamenting the perpetual inability to keep up with the neighbors. (Steve Glomb, Alexandria, Va.; Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.)[Man, Jones still owns more] Second place: The Kim-Torres-Ossoff Act expressing sympathy for Kanye West. (Mark Eckenwiler, Washington) [Kim (Kardashian, his wife; rumors are that their marriage is in trouble) tore his ass off] Winner of the Clowning Achievement: The Bordeaux-Gimenez-Torres Resolution, limiting long-winded uncles at Thanksgiving to 20 minutes tops. (Sarah Walsh, Rockville, Md.)[Bored o’ him and his stories] The Newman-Bice-Moore-Tiffany Act to set minimum engagement ring sizes for aspiring second husbands. (Pam Sweeney, Burlington, Mass.)[New man buys …] AD The Mann-Torres-Spartz-Good Resolution discouraging the practice of barbed-wire hurdling. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) [Man tore his parts good] The Herrell-Harshbarger-Fischbach rule that if your Big Mac makes you sick, you can get a free Filet. (Kathy White, Fairfax, Va., a First Offender; Dan Helming, Trenton, N.J.) [Hurl harsh burger, fish back] The Jacobs-Lummis-Jacobs Act to prevent the taking of property from landlords in underserved areas. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)[Jacob’s slum is Jacob’s] The Issa-Tiffany-Herrell-Bordeaux Act to encourage teens to alert a trusted adult when a friend abuses alcohol. (Seth Tucker, Washington)[I saw Tiffany …] The Good-Hinson-Bush Act requiring all police investigations to check for clues behind the landscaping. (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.) [Good hints in bush] AD The Mann-Fallon-Owens-Good Act endorsing the doctrine of original sin. (Steve Langer, Chevy Chase, Md.)[Man fallen; no one’s good] The Fallon-Issa-Keller Act requiring that sidewalks be salted during snow season. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)[Fall on ice: a killer] The Fallon-Steel-Good Act enshrining the five-second rule into law. (Eric Nelkin, Silver Spring, Md.)[Fallen, still good] The Fitzgerald-Good Act to resculpt the statue of President Ford in the Capitol with a better-tailored suit. (Hannah Seidel, Alexandria, Va.) [Fits Gerald good] The Good-Herrell Act to reverse all executive orders from the previous administration, because sometimes you just need a Good-Herrell to feel better and move on. (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines) The Hinson-Fischbach-Fallon-Mann-Spartz Act instructs male legislators on the proper method for “tucking in one’s shirt” when alone with a journalist in a hotel room. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) [This is the biggest stretch of the group, I think, but I omitted the translation because it was too risque to call attention to. See the link above to read about the episode involving Rudy Giuliani and the “journalist” — actually an actress making the second “Borat” movie — accompanying him to his hotel room. Translation: Hints on “fish back fallen man’s parts.”] AD The Moore-Hickenlooper-Pfluger Proclamation that more of anything is better than yesterday’s covfefe. (John Call, Frederick, Md., a First Offender) [Here’s an outlier: Rather than wordplay, it just jokes on the names because they sound like nonsense words.] The GOP-sponsored Franklin-Jackson Act authorizes a one-time stimulus payment of $120. (Frank Mann, Washington; Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore) [Benjamin Franklin is on the $100 bill, Andrew Jackson on the $20] The Torres-Ossoff Act to compensate former vice president Mike Pence for what Sen. Harris did to him during their debate. (Dave Airozo, Silver Spring, Md.) [Same wordplay, different context] The Moore-Clyde-Steel Act to fund a breeding program for Budweiser’s horses. (Fred Shuback, Silver Spring, Md.)[Clydesdale] The Bordeaux-Steel-Nehls Prison Cot Reform Act. (David Peckarsky, Tucson)[Board of steel nails] AD The Bordeaux-Jacobs-Williams Act to encourage more novel boys’ names. (Pamela Love, Columbia, Md.) [Bored o’ Jacobs, Williams] The Donalds-Good-Bice Declaration that we really didn’t care if the door hit him on the way out. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) [Donald’s goodbyes] The Good-Bordeaux-Manning ICE Reform Act. (Dudley Thompson, Cary, N.C.; Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) [Good border-manning] The Bowman-Bordeaux-Boebert BananaFannaFoeFert FeeFieFoeFert Boebert Act to mitigate unnecessary name calling. (Scott Straub, Winchester, Va.) [One of a number of entries I got alluding to “The Name Game,” the old R&B song by Shirley Ellis (video here)] The Ross-Nehls Act to serve escargot sushi at the congressional cafeteria. (Duncan Stevens; Jesse Frankovich) [Raw snails] The Bentz-Nehls Act to straighten out the escargot. (Mark Raffman) [Bent snails] AD The Salazar-Mrvan Act to procure a fleet of bullet-resistant trucks. (George Thompson, Springfield, Va.)[Sell us armor van] The Jones-Jacobs-Hickenlooper-Spartz Resolution that affirms, “That’s kinda sorta my name, too.” (Sarah Walsh) [Another play-song reference, this one to “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, his name is my name, too …"] The Bice-Kim Act promoting fat-free milk. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.; Jonathan Jensen) [Buy skim] The Fallon-Herrell-Keller-Kelly-Malliotakis-Marshall-Miller-Tubberville-Williams Declaration, telling the former Inciter in Chief to go 2L. (William Verkuilen, Brooklyn Park, Minn.) [This one does nothing but list legislators who have two L’s in their names. Since publishing the results this morning, I was reminded that 14 years ago, I gave ink to the same joke, this one by Steve Langer for the 2007 legislators: “The Donnelly-Ellison-Ellsworth-Fallin-Gillibrand-Hall-Heller-McCaskill-Mitchell resolution telling the administration to go two-L.” Hear it now, folks: No more ink for this joke until 2035.] AD ---- It’s the first Clowning Achievement trophy — and, I hadn’t realized, the first contest win, period — for Sarah Walsh, who didn’t get her first Invite ink until Week 1324 and has been inking up the joint regularly for the past few months. Sarah, a school librarian who also appears at history events as Abigail Adams in costumes she crafts herself, started entering the Invite after she moved to the D.C. area from Seattle and got ink on her very first try with an account of the Creation of Eve written hilariously a la Jane Austen. This win and an honorable mention this week brings Sarah’s ink count up to 39, with five of them “above the fold” as winner or runner-up. Third place went to two Losers who’d sent in very similar entries about “keeping up with the Joneses”: Steve Glomb finds himself in the Losers’ Circle for the first time, with Ink No. 26, while Jesse Frankovich has been there, uh, more than once. Lessee … 76 times. Steve gets his choice of Loser Mug or Grossery Bag; Jesse has prized out until we get new products to give away. And while it’s just the ninth blot of ink for Pia Palamidessi, it’s already her second runner-up prize. What Doug Dug: In addition to the two Torres-Ossoff entries, Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood singled out as faves: Moore-Hickenlooper-Pfluger by First Offender John Call; Bowman-Bordeaux-Boebert bananafanafofert by Scott Straub (Loser anagram: Actor’s Butts); and Sarah Walsh’s Jones-Jacobs-Hickenlooper-Spartz. Given this week’s reliving of the traumatic events of Jan. 6, maybe this week’s Invite will give the reps and sens a moment of diversion. And it’ll give Sens. Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio something else to look at when the video comes on. The unprintables: For once, we didn’t have a Rep. or Sen. Johnson this year for risque jokes. But alas, it’s the first term for Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri. The thing is that “johnson” is a sort of cutesy term, a euphemism for “penis”; it’s printable if the context isn’t too graphic. This is not the case with “a bush.” (Especially when the member of Congress in question is a woman, which just adds to the graphic nature.) So sorry, Steve Langer, no ink for “The Donalds-Steel-Issa-Bush (Donald still eyes a …) Resolution declaring that a former president hasn’t lost his lust for the ladies.” And Jon Gearhart: “The Man-Nehls-Moore-Bush Act to make Wilt Chamberlain’s birthday a federal holiday.” Nope nope nope. ‘Unnatural acts’ in the headline above was a non-inking entry submitted by both Kevin Dopart and William Kennard. Honestest Wickets! > This Week’s Contest (Week 1423) As I mention today in the introduction to Week 1423, this week’s contest was inspired by (i.e., ripped off from) the Anagram Times page of Wordsmith.org. Anu Garg, best known for his widely distributed and always fascinating email newsletter A. Word. A. Day, also posts reader-submitted headlines on this Anagram Times page, complete with a photo and his nifty graphic (Anu is a computer scientist) that twirls around the letters from original to anagram and back again. Anu gave me his blessing to use today’s examples from his page, and even said he’d tell about this contest to his regular contributors. If you’re entering a headline in Week 1423, please don’t also submit it to Anagram Times. For the purposes of this contest, I’ll say that a headline can be (a) a heading on top of an article or ad (or, in a print paper, on the top of the “jump,” or continuation page); (b) a bank head, or subtitle; (c) a subhead, a heading over a section within an article; and (d) a heading that doesn’t have text under it (e.g., on a website’s homepage) but links to an article. Does the subject matter of the anagram have to relate to the original headline? It’s not a rule. But it might be funnier that way, especially if it’s topical. Be sure to use Wordsmith’s Anagram Checker! It’s a super-fast and fun way to check your anagram to make sure you haven’t used a letter too many times, or not often enough. Note: Quotation marks and other punctuation can mess up the validation, so it’s best to take all those out before clicking “Check anagrams.” ====================================================================== WEEK 1424, published February 21, 2021 ====================================================================== WEEK 1425, published February 28, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1425: Sketchy situations with Bob Staake The Empress of The Style Invitational talks about this week’s caption contest and ‘Alternagural Address’ results Image without a caption The sheet of sketches -- often he'll send even more -- that Bob Staake sent to me this week as options for the four I needed for the Week 1425 caption contest. I went with D, F, G and H (now renamed A, B, C and D). By Pat Myers Feb. 25, 2021 at 5:11 p.m. EST Add to list While Bob Staake’s illustrations (dis)grace The Style Invitational just about every week of the year, it’s time for a Bobocentric contest, which we last did in August. Though that one was a special edition in which Bob drew “blank stages” of various well-worn cartoon panel settings (e.g., desert island) and we asked for novel takes on them (results here), this week it’s Classic Staake for Week 1425. I’ve worked with Bob so long -- every week for more than 17 years -- that I don’t need to tell him that the final pictures should include people with different skin tones, that he’d let me know about any possibly controversial details that I might not notice in the mini-sketches, etc. Meanwhile, if you missed Mike Gips’s interview with Bob, “Staake Talks Smaake,” check out Episode 9 of “You’re Invited,” Mike’s podcast about The Style Invitational. Bob talks about the Invite’s caption contests (including his least favorite genre of caption joke) and gives his side of the famed Cartoon With a ???? Hidden in the Middle story. (Check out all 11 episodes so far at bit.ly*invite-podcast or search for “You’re Invited” in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.) AD By the way, Bob is making his Invite art, both pencil sketches and final pen-and-ink drawings, available to the Loser Community at low-for-a-famous-artist prices at bobstaake.com*SI. Tell him what you’re looking for -- write to me first if you need help in figuring out the date, details of the cartoon, etc. -- and he’ll check to see if he still has it. Aaand once again .... The early returns from last week’s contest, the Spelling Bee neologisms (wapo.st*invite1424 -- deadline Monday night, March 1), showed widespread disregard for the contest instructions to begin each entry with the relevant letter set, not to use the letters as a heading for several different entries. The latter means I won’t be able to sort them out by letter set, or even know which of the 30 sets the neologism came from, without going back and attaching them before the sort (or reading them without sorting). Yea, still I hold out hope: I am even optimistic that everyone who sends more than one entry for Week 1425 will format them thus, as I note in both the contest and the entry form: AD LIKE THIS: PIcture A: A zingy caption for Picture A. Picture A: Another zingy caption for Picture A. Picture B: Something that made the Empress spit out her coffee on two different readings. NOT : Picture A: A caption that doesn’t say which picture it’s for A second caption that doesn’t say which it’s for ALSO NOT: 1. Picture A: skfjlksdjflk 2. Picture B: sdlkfjskldjf (or bullets, dingbats, etc.) Thanks, guys -- you know I love you. But I’d love you more if. Them’s Biden words*: The Alternaugural Addresses from Week 1421 *Non-inking but super headline by Jesse Frankovich As soon as the presidential election results were finally official that Saturday morning, Nov. 7 -- once I let four-plus years of despair and anxiety pfffft out of my body like a screaming balloon -- I said, “Guess we’ll be doing another inaugural-address word bank contest.” AD But would it fly? It was one thing to mock the harsh, xenophobic rhetoric of Trump’s “American carnage” speech, not to mention the already outrageous record of the man himself -- and the results of Style Invitational Week 1214 did that with glee, in a contest to pluck words from here and there in the inaugural address to write something else. Would it be funny, or even fair, to give “equal treatment” to Joe Biden’s calls for unity and reason? Yeah, yeah, it worked fine. Just look at today’s results from Week 1421. When judging the contest, I gravitated toward entries that were not just ingenious juxtapositions of words -- someone sent in an uncannily accurate total paraphrase of Macbeth’s “sound and fury” soliloquy -- but were also funny. A literally laugh-out-loud “confession” is certainly what earns this week’s Clowning Achievement trophy for rookie George Thompson for his first Invite win, and his 12th blot of ink in all, though an astonishing four of them have been “above the fold,” one of the week’s top four. [HAHAHAH! I just looked -- it turns out that the Macbeth thing was also by George Thompson!] AD While I’ve expressed a strong desire to get past the Invite’s many years of Trump-centered digs, it was hard to ignore the Ex-ecutive, especially when it came to Frank Osen’s perfectly executed wordplay on “profound conviction.” Jonathan Jensen gets another visit to the Losers’ Circle with one of numerous poems in different genres submitted this week (be sure also to see Mark Raffman’s); I was hesitant to run an entry talking about “Depends” -- for either Biden or Trump -- but at least it says “I don’t need Depends.” Numerous other entries were not so restrained. The runners-up are rounded out by another excellent rookie, Hannah Seidel, with her creative “commercial” for what sounds like a pay-per-view wrestling match between McConnell and Pelosi. What Doug Dug: The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood came from this week’s honorable mentions, though he told me he enjoyed the whole column: Doug singled out John O’Byrne’s “Has he left yet” (John, who lives in Dublin, Ireland, is a dyed-in-the-wool wonk about U.S. politics); Kevin Dopart’s Biden promising “all my heart to stand behind women, but they clearly don’t like it”; Frank Osen’s “I would like to thank the deep state”; and two that had nothing to do with government: Jesse Frankovich’s “Good husbands know the paper should always be put on with the torn end hung forward,” and the “And Last” by Elden Carnahan, who’s been entering -- and keeping the stats for -- the Invite every year since its birth in 1993: “This is the first time in many weeks that I have put together any good words for this paper. Perhaps I will get an ‘And Last’ out of it.” I had lots of fun judging this contest, but that was ONLY because Loser Todd DeLap volunteered to run my shortlist of 63 entries through a validation program that he had constructed just for this purpose. I can’t imagine how I could even have checked to make sure that none of the entries included words that weren’t included in the text of the inaugural address, and used no more often than in the speech. (The word “were” was not in there at all, it turns out; “am” only once in the speech.) AD Todd returned my list the very next morning with twenty-seven entries flagged. Some of them weren’t really invalid, since I had explicitly said you could change any capitalization or punctuation; so it was okay to use “mothers” when the speech had “mother’s,” and also to drop the apostrophe and turn “we’re” into “were.” But other entries had added words like “soon,” or used a shorter form of the word (“task” instead of “tasks”) or added prefixes and suffixes. For instance, Biden used “children" five times but “children’s” just once, which put this otherwise good one by Leif Picoult out of fixable contention: “If we do this, then our children and our children’s children, and our children’s children’s children, and our children’s children’s children’s children—where was I?” Most of the errors, though, were easily solved, often by just deleting the invalid word. Some of today’s inking entries had a little rescue treatment. One more nutty little problem arose: Loser David Shombert wrote to tell me that instead of using the transcript I’d specified, from the White House, he found another one, from the New York Times, that seems to reflect all the words Biden actually spoke, rather than the prepared remarks. The perhaps impromptu line included the word “ceiling,” which David confirmed by watching a recording of the speech on YouTube. Alas, no Invite ink for David, since I said we were going with the White House version, but here’s some no-magnet Convo pixels for an entry that would probably have been too risque anyway to attribute to the president: AD “I gave my women a foolish fantasy, then I could not rise to the challenge. They lay in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering: will it never happen? Not tomorrow? Only once in a century?” And finally: Once again, Loser Hildy Zampella submitted a zinger that was too long for the Invite, but too funny to hide. Here’s her inaugural-address entry: It turns out that Trump really DID leave a note for President Biden in the Resolute Desk: To the new President (don’t make me say your name): I lost. There. I said it. That’s over. In reality, it’s a great opportunity for me. America’s parties are in chaos. I will start one of my own. Rest assured, I will seek racial justice for ALL white people. They have lost so much. Yet, even with these ugly setbacks, they have the resolve to restore the power their forebearers [sic in the transcript; should be “forebears”] gave them. Their struggle is painful to watch. It inspires me to look inward as I start a new master class with the greatest people, just like me. AD So, about that woman you have -- the one who says, “Call me Dr.” Wives (and in truth, all women) are exhausting! Right? When Pelosi and Kamala have their periods -- look out! Well, the Speaker is up in years. Not a good example. To close, I have the decency to hand you a great America, and you should thank me for that. Promise me you will not do better than me. Remember who is the best ever and always will be: ME! One more thing: security objects when you let “friends” come for the night. --- Okay, we’re out of here -- send those Spelling Bee neologisms in by Monday, March 1, for Week 1424! Formatted correctly. ====================================================================== WEEK 1426, published March 7, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1426: Head games The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s bank headline contest and winning puns Image without a caption Bob Staake's sketch for another bank head example, one that I ended up not using. Headline: Ban on foam food containers is approved* Bank: Foam food can just sit out, duh, council rules By Pat Myers March 4, 2021 at 4:57 p.m. EST Add to list First of all, just a quick memory of almost exactly one year ago, when we last ran a “Mess With Our Heads” contest: Style Conversational, March 12, 2020: “Hello from the Empress’s domicile, Mount Vermin! Hooray for remote publishing! Actually, I almost always publish The Style Invitational from home on Thursdays; I usually go downtown to the Washington Post newsroom only on Tuesdays to mail prizes, make printouts, etc. But everyone at The Post who doesn’t require special equipment has been asked to stay home for the rest of March.” I went on to explain that prize deliveries would be delayed a few weeks until we were back in the office. Current projections: No earlier than June 2021, probably later. But I did receive a questionnaire sent out to Posties to ask us which changes to the newsroom would make us more comfortable: daily thermometer readings, more space between workers, banning unvaccinated people, etc. So maybe plans are afoot. (Since then, I’ve gotten special permission to visit the Post newsroom once a month, most recently last Sunday, to mail out several weeks of prize packages, use the laser printers, etc. The magnets, and other things that fit in envelopes, I mail from home.) AD Anyway, back to this week’s Mess With Our Heads contest, Week 1426. To those who are new to The Style Invitational, below is the FAQ that I ran in a Conversational column a year ago, which itself linked to earlier and earlier Messes. And for the guidance, inspiration and entertainment of all, I’ll follow the FAQ with some of last year’s winners — so many of them were about that strange new time of hand-washing and toilet paper panic-buying — as well as random classics from earlier MWOH contests. What counts as a headline? In a nutshell, it’s anything above the text of an article or ad, as well as a one-line link to another article, as on the paper’s homepage. You may also use a bank head itself as your headline. [The “chair” example this week was a bank head.] Do I have to use every word in the headline? No, but the section you do use can’t mean something hugely different on its own (“City Passes Out Supplies to Residents” can’t become “City Passes Out”), and you can’t string together unconnected parts of the headline. [This is why this year’s entry form asks you to show me the whole headline if you’re just using part; I’ll make the call.] AD ADVERTISING Can I change the punctuation or capitalization in the headline? You can’t change the punctuation. You may change capitalization in the following case: If the headline, like The Post’s current heads, is “downstyle” (capitalized like a sentence rather than a title) and there’s a proper name in the head that you’d like to reinterpret as a plain ol’ common noun, or vice versa — say you want “lab” to refer to a Labrador retriever; or it’s about a Lab and you want to mean it’s a laboratory — then you can write the whole head as upstyle, as in a book title. If the head is upstyle to begin with, just leave it that way. Can I use the headings that appear in other online stuff besides newspapers? You can if it has a date on it and it falls within the required window, March 4-15, 2021. Very helpful to me: Copy the URL (website address) and put it underneath your entry (or at the bottom of the whole submission). DO NOT EMBED IT into the headline itself; I’ll see a bunch of garble. (If that URL disappears, don’t worry: see below.) AD One more thing: Sometimes online headlines are ephemeral, especially on a publication’s homepage; if it no longer exists, I’ll rely on your honor. But come on, don’t rewrite headlines to make them work for your joke; remember: honor. I can’t check every last headline. I’m tired of reading your edicts. Can’t I read some jokes? Here are highlights from last year’s ink (Week 1375), of course reflecting that new, stuck-at-home life we had begun for what most of us that would be a few weird weeks while we nervously started rationing the toilet paper. Runners-up: Major Universities Stop Lab Research ‘Who’s a good dog?’ to remain a mystery (Jeff Shirley) My Co-worker Burps Loudly and Engages in Self-Talk Title set for tell-all book by Pence (John Hutchins) Amid outbreak, Meals on Wheels is changing the way food is delivered AD Frustrated, dizzy customers long to return to Meals on Tables (Alex Steelsmith) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Queen's message of solidarity to the nation ‘Fat-bottomed girls make the rockin’ world go round’ inspires Britons in time of need (Michelle Christophorou) Selected honorable mentions (Ad for kitchen cabinet remodeling) Don’t Replace — Reface! Plastic surgery helping more couples avoid expensive divorces (Marli Melton) What’s still open in D.C. Hole in presidential face continues to spout misinformation (Lawrence McGuire) U-Haul offers 30-day storage free for college students Parents must retrieve offspring from lockers by May 1 (Jesse Aronson) ‘We’ll improvise and make it work’ Copies of next week’s Post to have perforations, cardboard tube (Howard Ausden) Living in the present Woman given isolation cottage by husband (Dan Helming) AD Broadway to dim lights for a month ‘Maybe virus won’t see us’ strategy questioned (Duncan Stevens) Coronavirus slowdown seen from space Extreme social distancing proves effective (Alex Steelsmith) Crocs to close all North American stores through end of month CDC sics carnivorous reptiles on nonessential businesses (Frank Osen) Kitchen trends for 2020 Faucet that plays “Happy Birthday” twice tops the list (Bill Dorner) House, Senate leaders start to make changes to congressional routines Lobbyists must now leave bags of cash in designated touch-free drop zones (Allen Haywood) Many who died had health problems Captain Obvious releases annual report (Frank Mann) This is the biggest blunder in presidential history At least until tomorrow (Drew Bennett) How to cook if cooped up with the kids Hansel & Gretel witch starts ‘Coven Oven’ blog (Steve Honley) AD My Co-worker Burps Loudly and Engages in Self-Talk Royal Consort chafes at sharing home office space with Empress (Drew Bennett) And some gems from the past: Week 634, 2005: From Prodigy to Promising Virtuoso Even with 947 volumes, the most massive encyclopedia project ever hasn’t reached the Q’s (Russell Beland). Week 834, 2009: Neighborhood Watch Recession Forces Bethesda Residents to Share a Single Rolex (Christopher Lamora; Cy Gardner) Week 1047, 2013: Court: Family must return ancient tablet to Germany First aspirin manufactured by Bayer family to be sent home (Bruce Alter) Week 1077, 2014: State parks get creative in search of funding Officials predict ‘Don’t Throw Coins in Lake’ signs will bring huge influx of coins to lake (Danielle Nowlin) Fauxlaborations*: The results of Week 1422 *Non-inking headline by Danielle Nowlin AD As I noted in the intro to this week’s results, Week 1422 basically asked: Give us a pun on a movie, book, song, etc. And the format was to show it as a result of a “collaboration” between the creator of the original and someone whose involvement would create the pun. Compared with Invitational contests that ask for poems, songs or comedy dialogue, it was an easy, short-form challenge to produce some wordplay, which explains the 2,000 entries that came in from about 200 entrants, many of them new names — we have five First Offenders this week. I tried to avoid famously hoary puns like “Tequila Mockingbird” or “My Corona,” though I didn’t insist that some joke had never been made before by anyone ever. Hopefully it’s at least in a fresh context. Congratulations first of all to Daniel Fleisher, who suggested this contest to the Empress; he even got ink for “Everything Licked This Way Comes” (Ray Bradbury + Ben & Jerry), his sixth blot of ink ever. (Dan’s official anagram on the Loser Stats page: SAD, I FELL IN HERE.) AD It’s the first Style Invitational win, but the 69th (and 70th and 71st) blot of ink for Harold Mantle, who got his very first ink in Week 5. Hal gets our new Clowning Achievement trophy for “The Poison-Good Bible,” Kingsolver x Putin. One of the runner-up entries, for Marie Kondo x Lindsey Graham’s “The Fine Art of Toadying Up,” was sent almost identically by Invite veteran Frank Mullen and total newbie John Butman. Each gets his choice of Loser Mug or Grossery Bag, and John also scores the Fir Stink for his first ink. It’s always fun to discover new names among the entries I’ve chosen, once I look them up — and especially to find that they’re responsible for several inkworthies. This week’s phenom is Megan Barnett of Crozet, Va., near Charlottesville, who ended up with three honorable mentions in her debut … followed closely by her husband, Hil, who got two. Hil left a note with his entry: “This is how my wife and I spent our whole Valentine’s weekend. Um, thanks, Empress.” Awww, and now they’ll have that pair of Fir Stinks. What Doug Dug … was not The Style Invitational this week, because Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood elected instead to have a heart attack last Friday. I’m happy and relieved to report that three stents later, he’s home from the hospital and feeling way better. But can you believe that he didn’t take me up on my offer of “some diverting reading material”? Fortunately, warmed up in the bullpen was Other Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia, who reports that What Pleased Ponch most was a joke that might confuse readers five years hence: Megan Barnett’s “All I Want for Christmas Is Glue,” featuring the woman who sprayed her head with aerosol Gorilla Glue, then posted a video on social media asking for advice. Ponch also especially liked Duncan Stevens’s Tarantino version of “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?”: "Having read “Brown Bear” to my boys scads of times when they were growing up, that one made me think “$@%# YEAH!” Do kids dress up as YOU for Famous Americans Day? Bob Staake posted on his Facebook page yesterday an adorable photo of a young boy. A parent had sent it to him along with this note: "Today’s theme for spirit week was “dress like a famous American” and Ezra chose his favorite author*illustrator Bob Staake!! Ezra was SO excited for today and wanted to make sure everyone knew who he was and what his favorite book is.” If you can’t see the photo in the link, the smiling Ezra — currently missing an incisor or two — is wearing Bob’s usual T-shirt*flannel shirt*ball cap get-up, complete with pencil in the shirt pocket. And he’s showing the camera Bob’s popular picture book “The Donut Chef.” But you don’t have to dress like Bob to have a Staake of your own: You can get a piece of his Invite art, either a pencil sketch or the final pen-and-ink drawing, at bobstaake.com*SI. Tell him what you’re looking for — write to me first if you need help in figuring out the date, details of the cartoon, etc. — and he’ll check to see if he still has it. Meanwhile, those Staake cartoons in the Week 1425 contest still await your captions: Deadline is Monday night, March 8. Lay 'em on me. ====================================================================== WEEK 1427, published March 14, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1427: Doomed to repeat it The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s history pun contest and anagram headline results Image without a caption A detail from the Bayeux Tapestry (technically an embroidery), an epic visual retelling of the Norman Conquest that was probably made within a few years after the invasion of England — and inspiration for Brendan Beary's pun from 2004, “Let Me Run That Bayeux.” (Bayeux Museum) By Pat Myers March 11, 2021 at 4:27 p.m. EST Add to list Happy Impending Springtime, everyone! For this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1427, I decided to resurrect the Week 540 contest — one of the Empress’s very first, and one I’ve always thought was especially successful — at the suggestion of Hall of Fame Loser Frank Osen, who didn’t find us till Week 938. I’m looking forward to judging it: I enjoy historical references in humor; you have an almost infinite number of events to work with, so there shouldn’t be a lot of duplication; and of course I’m a sucker for good puns. When I ran Week 540, my fifth contest ever as Empress, I asked that at least one of the elements in the “A, or B” format contain a pun, but I see that the results consisted entirely of Pun + Pun, and so this time you have to come up with a pair o’ puns. This presents a risk to spectacular puns accompanied by unspectacular ones, so do your best. AD ADVERTISING For guidance and entertainment — and so you know not to use these specific jokes — here’s the ink from Week 540, published Feb. 8, 2004. I’m beyond delighted that many of the Losers who got ink that week continue to waste their time with us to this very day. (One who’s bowed out is the suggester of the contest, Russell Beland, who was at the time the Invitational’s highest-scoring Loser.) It was one of those weeks (like today’s results) when the lion’s share of the ink went to a few especially inspired people. But that was back in the day when there was no 25-entry limit; it’s quite likely that Russell, Chris Doyle, Tom Witte and Brendan Beary each sent me 100 or more puns to choose from. I’d expect the ink to be spread around much more this time. Report from Week 540, in which we asked for news or historical events to be presented in the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” “A, or B” format of groaner puns or other halfwitticisms. This assignment was attacked with great fervor by a few people who bombarded The Empress with entries all week long, including a couple who must have majored in Obscure European History at Wassamatta U. (the 1566 Compromise of Breda?). AD Third runner-up: 1975 — Metric Conversion Act passed by Congress: Take Us to Your Liter, or Tens Anyone? (Russell Beland, Springfield) Second runner-up: 2001 — Bush’s tax cuts: Deficit Attention Disorder, or No Rothschild Left Behind (Andrew Elby, Arlington) First runner-up, the winner of the plain old boring BobStaake.com coffee mug: 1066 — The Norman Conquest: Saxon Violence, or Let Me Run This Bayeux (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) And the winner of the Inker: 1854 — The Charge of the Light Brigade: Fools Speed Ahead, or Is That Your Final Lance, Sir? (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) A timeline of Honorable Mentions: 65 million years ago: Extinction of the dinosaurs: Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus, or You’re Looking Awfully Paleo (Danny Bravman, Potomac) c. 1250 B.C.: The Exodus: A Parting Wave, or I Just Dropped a Couple Tablets (Russell Beland) AD c. 1200 B.C. : Trojan War: The Last Time I Saw Paris, or Beware of Gifts Bearing Greeks (Chris Doyle) c. 900 B.C. : The judgment of Solomon: Split Decision, or Halving My Baby (Russell Beland) 431-404 B.C.: Peloponnesian Wars: A Tale of Thucydides, or Hellas-a-Poppin’ (Chris Doyle) 31 B.C.: Octavian at the Battle of Actium: Surrender Unto Caesar, or Let’s Win One for Agrippa! (Chris Doyle) 1773: The Boston Tea Party: Of Tea I Fling, or Hurl Grey (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) 1779 : France comes to the aid of America against Britain: Lafayette You, Not With You, or Burgoyne to Be Sorry (Brendan Beary) 1814: Napoleon is exiled to Elba: Corporal Punishment, or All This for a Lousy Palindrome? (Russell Beland) 1836: The Alamo: Mission Impossible, or Texas Toast (Tom Witte) 1846: The Donner Party disaster: Family Dinner, or Meat: The Parents (Bird Waring, New York) AD 1846-48: The Mexican-American War: Juarez Hell, or Tijuana Make Something of It? (Brendan Beary) Late 1800s: Liberia adopts slavery of native tribes: On the American Plan, or It Takes One to Own One (Russell Beland) 1907-14: The digging of the Panama Canal: Sedimental Journey, or The Wicked Ditch of the West (Miles Townes, St. Andrews, Scotland) 1920-28 : Paavo Nurmi wins Olympic gold: Lapps the Field, or Nice Finnish Guys Last (Chris Doyle) 1929-39: The Great Depression: American Idle, or Stock in First Gear (Tom Witte) 1933 : Roosevelt declares a Bank Holiday: A Cure for the Runs, or Do Not Collect $200 (Russell Beland) 1935: Release of the game Monopoly: Now Boarding, or Playing the Race Car (Russell Beland) 1937: The Hindenburg explosion: Dead Zeppelin, or Light My Flier (Dave Ferry, Purvis, Miss.; Russell Beland) AD 1944 : The D-Day invasion: Strife’s a Beach, or Did Juno We Were Coming? (Michael Denyszyn, New York) 1957: Introduction of the Edsel: Building a Car Bomb, or The Lemon Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree (Russell Beland) 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis: Them Ain’t Cigars, or Armageddon Nervous (Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls) 1968: The Soviets invade Czechoslovakia: Croaking Prague, or Dubcek’s Bounced (Gordon Labow, Glenelg) 1969: The moon landing: One Giant Schlep, or Neil Before Me — Buzz Aldrin, Los Angeles (Cliff Cummins, Hyattsville) 1971: Admission of People’s Republic of China to the United Nations: Peking Into the Naked City, or A China in the Bull Shop (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) 1996: The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal: Secret Service, or Insert Bill Here (David Iscoe, Washington) [Wow, risque for 2004!] AD 1996: Clinton explains the situation: Her and Her Big Mouth, or I’m Incurably Semantic (Russell Beland) 1999: Bob Dole pitches Viagra: Where There’s a Pill, There’s a Way, or I’m as Horny as Kansas in August (Chris Doyle) 2001: The Enron scandal: Piling It Up Fastow and Fastow, or A Man Is Known By the Company He Keeps Looting (Roy Ashley, Washington) 2003: Richard Grasso resigns: The Bucks Stop Here, or NYSE Seein’ Ya (Chris Doyle.) 2003: U.S. handling of postwar Iraq: Peace-Poor Planning, or Throwing the Baby Out With the Baath Water (Chris Doyle) 2003: Michael Jackson arrested: Goodbye, Mr. Chimps, or The King of Perp (Mary Ann Henningsen, Hayward, Calif.) 2004: Style Invitational succession: Czar He Goes, or Beyond the Call of Doody (Sue Lin Chong, Washington; Greg Krakower, New York) Perhaps we can rouse Russ out of retirement for an encore. Papermutations*: The headline anagrams of Week 1423 *Non-inking headline by Kevin Dopart AD As soon as I saw the headline anagrams at Anagram Times, a website under the Wordsmith.org umbrella, I knew that a classic Style Invitational contest would come of it. Thanks to Wordsmith’s Anu Garg for not only letting me rip off his page’s raison d’etre, but for actually linking to our contest in his widely circulated newsletter, A.Word.A.Day. (Anu is also the man to thank for the Anagram Checker tool, without which this contest would have been almost impossible to do.) If you entered this contest, you know what a challenge it is to rearrange all the letters of a headline, with none left over — and not just that, but to end up with something that makes sense as an English sentence — and not just that, but to have that sentence make some sort of witty point. So I wasn’t surprised at the week’s small pool of entrants, not many more than 100, or that a lot of the ink went to a handful of Losers, almost all of whom have distinguished themselves in earlier Invitational anagram contests. The big news four weeks ago — though it might seem like four hundred weeks ago — was Impeachment 2.0, and many of the week’s entries centered on that necessary if futile process. The headlines came mostly from The Post, and a lot from the New York Times, but papers and websites based all over the world were called into service. (I’m always happy to see people using their hometown papers, so many of which are in danger of going out of business.) AD In what fellow Loser Duncan Stevens called in the Style Invitational Devotees group this morning “the dog-bites-manniest news I can imagine,” Hall of Famer Jesse Frankovich got the Clowning Achievement first-prize trophy, a runner-up, plus four honorable mentions. Jesse has been an anagram wizard for decades; in fact, he was already a star of the Australia-based Anagrammy Awards (anagrammy.com) when I similarly ripped off that concern in Week 558 — just a few months after the history pun contest — and Jesse got his first Invite ink for the anagram “Earth Day: April twenty-second. = Hardy planet? We CAN destroy it!” Jesse has branched out far beyond anagrams for the Invite; he’s scored in virtually every kind of contest he’s tried — and this is his 16th contest win. But it’s his first for the new Clowning Achievement trophy. Similarly anagram-ink-bedecked are his compatriots in the Losers’ Circle: Kevin Dopart, author of a classic anagram of the Preamble to the Constitution, and Jon Gearhart, who once anagrammed the entire text of a several-paragraph letter that the Empress sent to him along with his prize, and sent it back to her. In the introduction to this week’s results (scroll down to them if they don’t pop up) I offered an uncredited -- I never did look up who wrote it -- example of the sometimes perplexing combinations of words that constituted many an entry; if I had to struggle to understand the anagram, I didn’t use it. And as always, I tried to avoid entries, however well crafted, that came off as so bitter and angry that it muted the humor. (My umbrella term for this is “screediness.”) Which is why this excellent anagram by Maurice Goddard of Norway — whose work in Anagram Times I cited as an example for this contest — didn’t get ink this week: As Trump’s impeachment trial kicked off, Palm Beach argued about whether to evict him from Mar-a-Lago = A right fit place for him, that macabre, wicked, savage, brute mad former POTUS? A mental home! Lock him up! What Pleased Ponch: As Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, that slacker, continues to recover from a heart attack and associated fun, Panfilo “Ponch” Garcia has been shepherding the Invite through the copy desk. This week he noticed problems in two of the anagrams I hadn’t checked yet — and I hadn’t even told him about the Anagram Checker website. (I fixed one, had to toss the other.) Anyway, here are his faves, all from the honorable mentions: Almost all of them were the short ones — which indicates once again that “most impressive” doesn’t always mean most funny. First, though, Ponch cited Kevin Dopart’s lengthy scramble about the Texas power outage in the cold: “Notable climate-hoax notion tricks town’s credulous, inexplicable moron residents” (key to funny; “inexplicable moron residents”). After that, they were all compact: “The glories of cabbage = I forage, eat gobs, belch” (Jonathan Jensen); “Love, in all its permutations = A million venal prostitutes” (Duncan Stevens); “About the impeachment trial = A beaten Trump: ‘I loathe Mitch” (Jonathan Jensen) and “What are sperm telling us? = Get in! Her wall’s upstream!” (Chris Doyle) O yawn? No way! The unprintables: I think the edgiest one that I ran this week was Jesse Frankovich’s beginning “Bastard Ted Cruz” (online only). But I don’t think I need to explain why I thought it best not to run any of the following in the Invite: Films offer more than happy endings = Ah! Porn helps men stay firm, do “effing” (Mark Raffman) Biden’s supporters jockey for coveted ambassadorships = Oprah: Biden’s jockeys cover a forested bod, pimp-ass truss. (gyaadh, Frank Osen) Breakfast can be boundless = Baked cobblers? Fasten anus. (Duncan Stevens) Millions in grip of arctic freeze = Pilgrim fiancee: frozen clitoris (Duncan Stevens, who did specify this one as “Conversational only,” although I think it would have made for a lively discussion next Monday with the other lawyers for the FDIC) This weekend: Podcast sneak preview! “You’re Invited” host Mike Gips tells me that he’ll be dropping — be more careful, Mike! — Episode 12 sometime this weekend. I’ll tout it more next week, but I can’t wait to listen to Mike’s talk with his guest Mark Raffman — in which he’ll debut a song parody, complete with Loser Jonathan Jensen on piano. Mark, an Invite Hall of Famer, is famous in Loser circles for his innumerable takes on one particular show tune ... So stay tuned to bit.ly*invite-podcast, or search for “You’re Invited” on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. ====================================================================== WEEK 1428, published March 21, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1428: Return of the Seven The Empress of the Style Invitational -- plus NYT Spelling Bee man Ezersky -- on this week’s neologisms Image without a caption Sam Ezersky, the person responsible for robbing workplaces, spouses, etc., of untold hours of attention from thousands of New York Times Spelling Bee addicts, perhaps including the Empress. (: Melissa Bunni Elian for The New York Times) By Pat Myers March 18, 2021 at 5:30 p.m. EDT Add to list We jump from one letter-scrambling neologism challenge this week to another: Style Invitational Week 1428 is our eighth go-round with The Tile Invitational, in which you make words or multi-word terms of five, six or all seven letters in any of 40 “racks” taken from the out-of-print “Big Book of ScrabbleGrams,” helpfully provided to the Empress on a big spreadsheet by Loser Jeff Contompasis, who suggested the contest in the first place back in 2013. “ScrabbleGrams” continues as a daily syndicated feature in The Post and many other papers, but all the letters sets we’ve used have come from this one book (there are still enough in there for several more contests). This neologism challenge is more restrictive than our Spelling Bee contest, whose results run today, since you can’t use a single “tile” more than once. On the other hand, there are more racks to choose from, 40 in all. If you’re new to the Invite, today’s results should provide inspiration and guidance as to what sets the Empress’s funny bone to Vibrate. Funnycombs*: The Spelling Bee neologisms of Week 1424 *Non-inking headline submitted by both Bill Dorner (who raises bees!) and Jesse Frankovich AD Judging from the results of Week 1424, as it did the first time we did this contest (Week 1277 results here) — just before the New York Times Spelling Bee morphed from a low-tech weekly pen-and-paper challenge to a round-the-clock online temptation — the seven-letter “hives” from 30 past Bees provided more than enough neologism fodder to produce a long list of clever, varied additions to the Loser Lexicon. It didn’t hurt that this time I was able to offer so many hives, lifted from an archive shared on the website of software developer and science fiction author William Shunn; in 2018 I provided only 15, the number of weeks I could look up from the paper version. The large majority of the entrants followed my fervent entreaties to format their entries in a single line beginning with the letter set. (See even more pleading this week.) Those who didn’t — whose entries ended up in two or more widely separated pieces once I ran the list through the alphabetical sorter — might have lucked out anyway if I could figure out what the joke was supposed to say, which word the example went with, etc. Might not have. Both Spelling Bee mastermind Sam Ezersky and NYT Wordplay blogger Deb Amlen graciously spread the word about the Invite contest on Twitter, and we got a bunch of new entrants this week. Diane Parham of South Carolina and Kevin Davis of California are both First Offenders this week; Diane skips the One-Hit Wonders list with two honorable mentions, the Maybe-Get and the Lint-Mint, and Kevin’s “Enbee” got in a friendly dig at some words on the Spelling Bee lists, like “enhalo,” that one doesn’t tend to see in the Real World. (Hey, at least he did away with “duad.”) AD The top four winners this week, though — the Losers’ Circle, in Imperial parlance — are all Invite veterans with a veritable vat of ink among them. Danielle Nowlin’s “foible file” — the database that helpfully pulls out all our previous embarrassments while you’re trying to fall asleep — gives her her 15th Invite win (for 371 blots of ink in all), but her first Clowning Achievement, the new trophy we started giving out a few months ago. Runners-up Frank Osen (“Clam mail,” the DeJoy “improvement” on snail mail) and Mark Raffman (“Miracall,” when your young-adult kid phones and just wants to say hi) are both Hall of Famers with more than 500 inks apiece; Dan Helming (“bun tuba,” yes, a fart joke) is the relative novelty “above the fold” with about 35 blots of ink, including several previous runners-up. (The Loser Stats, kept as a labor of love by Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan, are sort of in the shop right now as Elden transitions to some new format.) A’s from the Bee man: Sam Ezersky’s favorites As crossword obsessive since childhood who was hired full time by the New York Times upon graduation from the University of Virginia to edit puzzles, Sam Ezersky certainly landed a dream job. Along with evaluating crossword submissions and improving on the clues of the puzzles slated to run, Sam, at 25, wields a weird sort of power: Seven days a week, day and night, untold (to me) thousands of pathetic word buffs stare into their phones at some letter of the alphabet with six other letters circling it, and attempt to find all the words, four letters or more, that The Great and Terrible Ezersky keeps on his list, denying admission to those he deems too obscure or offensive. (You know what a dado or a loggia or a cleome is, or what sails do when they luff? Sorry, it won’t work for you.) As one Invitational Loser wrote to me: “ As you know, all of us who play the Spelling Bee hate him.” Aww, not really. We don’t have to play the dumb game. AD I especially don’t-hate Sam, because he so eagerly endorsed this contest — and he even looked at a 75-item “shortlist” of Week 1424 entries, culled from about 1,700 in all, and weighed in with his faves. Here are his Top 10 (his fave five plus five more), all from this week’s honorable mentions -- complete with Sam’s comments! For starters ... to everybody who sent in a Spelling Bee neologism: It’s only fitting to call these Genius! My five favorites, in no particular order: Lavity: Potty humor. (Sarah Walsh) I can just imagine myself using this jocularly in a sentence ... probably would get lotsa crap for it, though. Faceflap: Mouth of a nonstop talker. “Jeez, will you tie down your faceflap for just one minute already?” (Ann Martin) Wow, do I feel attacked! Cancún U-turn: A quick reversal of an extremely unpopular decision. “In the face of a backlash from teachers, the superintendent made a Cancún U-turn and declared that learning would remain virtual after all.” (Eric Nelkin) If this ever catches on, I’d be willing to overlook the space and hyphen to allow it. AD ADVERTISING [The Empress adds: Here’s a good example of using a neologism in a real-life context and beyond its original one; part of the fun is its assumption that you get the just-days-old Ted Cruz allusion — and are already using it to apply to other current situations.] Mortarboardom: That feeling when it’s been 45 minutes and the dean just started calling up the G’s. (David Peckarsky) This feeling actually starts at the F’s, unless I’m still walking back to my seat. Bonus points for the pangram! And of course: Beegamy: Equal commitment to your spouse and a certain daily word game. (Steve Langer) How could I not mention this one? My partner knows it well. [The Empress adds: I’m glad that Steve (who’s also a semi-obsessive crossword person) at least gave parity with Spelling Bee to Ms. Allison Fultz, the ultra-generous co-host of the Loser parties they had at their house for several Januaries running, until you-know-what.] AD And these to round out Sam’s Top 10: Bamarunt: The Crimson Tide lineman who’s only 285 pounds. (Nancy McWhorter) Febillion: How much Jeff Bezos made last month. (Mike Caslin) Lay-Zee: The acclaimed nap artist. (Tom Witte) Nonnounology: The study of how nouns get verbed and then texted, messaged, Skyped, Facebooked and Instagrammed. (Frank Osen) Logyn: What’s on the first page of the website where you make your pap-smear appointment. (Jeff Hazle) “A big thanks to all who continue to enjoy this game, and who have found a way here to take anagrams and wordplay just a step further, with some real wit on display.” We’ll be doing this contest again for sure. What pleased Ponch: While Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood still recovers from that pesky infarction, Other Ace Copy Editor Panfilo “Ponch” Garcia offers his favorites, also from the honorable mentions: “Buttbra [Kevin Dopart — it lifts but hopefully doesn’t separate] is a toot! ... I mean a hoot! Lay-Zee [Tom Witte, on “the nap artist”] is amazing. Lobotomommy [Bill Dorner on a sleep-deprived new parent] is impressive. Making Mortarboardom out of 7 letters is summa cum laudable, and the definition makes it valedictorian [for David Peckarsky]. And Urñata [Jeff Hazle, a festive way to distribute a loved one’s ashes] is a hit with me.” AD Not to Bee — the unprintables: While The Style Invitational tends not to be associated with the words “prim” and “tasteful,” even the Invite wouldn’t go here: YABELNZ > Anybalz: What 43 senators don’t have. (Jon Gearhart) CAILMNR > Crimanal: A violator of sodomy laws. (Tom Witte) FACELPT > Fellatte, an especially savored cappuccino and milk. (Mike Gips) Nope, nope and especially nope. Thanks to all who entered Week 1424, especially you newbies — and I hope you all give Week 1428 a shot as well. Deadline is Monday night, March 29, one moment before midnight (ish) wherever you are. And speaking of shots: Wishing you a prompt and easy jab session and a quick aftermath. I’m one Moderna down, one to go. We WILL gaze upon each other again! Meanwhile, be sure to catch the latest “You’re Invited” podcast -- in a truly boffo season finale (Episode 12), Mike Gips interviews serial “Be Our Guest” parodist Mark Raffman, who offers up yet another one. Bit.ly*invite-podcast, or search for “You’re Invited” at Apple Podcasts or Spotify. The headline “Return of the Seven” was a non-inking entry by Stu Segal for the contest results. ====================================================================== WEEK 1429, published March 28, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1429: Look again The Empress of The Style Invitational on the little details in this week’s Bob Staake cartoon captions By Pat Myers March 25, 2021 at 4:53 p.m. EDT Add to list The humor in a contest-winning cartoon caption — certainly one in The Style Invitational, like today’s results of Week 1425 — often differs from that of a standard single-panel cartoon: While a regular cartoon in, say, The New Yorker might be of a man simply talking into the phone at his desk, a la Robert Mankoff’s famous “No, Thursday’s out. How about never — is never good for you?,” a contest picture almost shows some odd situation and looks for imaginative interpretations or ingeniously fitting wordplay. It’s the caption answering “What’s going on in this picture?” rather than that picture illustrating a joke. Because the Invite runs a list of caption winners rather than a single one for each of Bob Staake’s wacky cartoons, the contest also lets the reader enjoy the fun in a variety of interpretation: Wacky Minds Think Differently. It’s not great, I know, that online you have to scroll up and down between the cartoon and some of the results, even with the cartoons spaced apart down the page; this week’s print paper has a more effective format. But it’s still fun. Today’s 35 inking entries came from a pool of about 1,200, with about 300 entries per cartoon. (So if your similar idea didn’t get ink, you’re not alone.) There’s one subset of Novel Interpretations of our Staake contest that’s unlikely ever to win the whole thing, but almost always results in a blot of ink for one or two Losers. And that’s focusing the caption on some little detail in the picture — often unintended — and making a joke on it. I thought I’d share a few of those today, with inking entries and non-. Image without a caption (Bob Staake for The Washington P) Red ovals: “I can’t figure out how the light is on when the arm is broken from the base and floating in midair.” (Jeff Contompasis) AD Green oval, noting how the undies seem to be hanging stiffly at a sharp angle: “No, the streetlight is fine, but I’m concerned that someone is not using enough fabric softener.” (Elden Carnahan) Brown ovals: After soiling himself at his business meeting and then trailing it down the street, Jim finally found things looking up. (Danielle Nowlin) And one that got ink, declining to accept what a sane person would instantly see as a phone (blue oval): Combing his nose hairs on his way home from Mardi Gras, Ralph suddenly realized why his nether regions were feeling so drafty. (Ivars Kuskevics) Image without a caption Picture B: Blue ovals: Holding his breath till he turned blue. Carl could tell from the stench that Bob was shipping a corpse in his baggage. (Steve Fahey) Including an eyelid: “If your skirt, backpack, eyelid, or entire body is blue, you may now begin boarding.” (Jesse Frankovich) AD Red oval: Jill knew what the question mark over her own head meant, but she wasn’t sure what the 3 dots over that other guy’s head stood for … (Richard Franklin) And once again, the brown ones: Everyone poops like a rabbit at the airport. (Mike Anderson) So what are those dots really? I asked Bob Staake what their artistic function was: Shadowing? Unifying the space? His reply? “Black dandruff.” Image without a caption Picture C: Yellow ovals: He was knocked off his feet by the realization the kid wasn’t his, as his hair curled in the opposite direction of the child’s. (Jeff Contompasis) Brown ovals: More “dandruff,” in an unfortunate location: After further investigation, Alan has determined that he, not his grandson, is responsible for that most unpleasant odor. (Tom Witte) “Guess you could call that a ‘void-ian’ slip, eh, Pops?” (Bill Dorner) AD ADVERTISING Or: Oof! Mustn’t — let — Junior — get — the — Raisinets! (Mike Anderson) Or just … “Help! I’ve dropped my change and I can’t get up.” (Steve Honley) Green ovals: Counting to 10 is a challenge when you have only three fingers on each hand. (Kevin Dopart) And then there’s the variant that Bob cited as his least favorite caption joke, as he chatted on the You’re Invited podcast in January with host Mike Gips: one that plays on to the letter ID in the cartoon: Bob Staake gets bent all out of shape after his artwork receives a C. (Eric Nelkin) Picture D didn’t have as much microfocus: There was one more reference to the dots on the ground (“mouse droppings”) but mostly there were allusions to the woman’s droopy breasts. By the way, if you’d like to put one of Bob’s cartoons on your personal drywall, you can get a piece of his Invite art, either a pencil sketch or the final pen-and-ink drawing, at bobstaake.com*SI. Tell him what you’re looking for — write to me first if you need help in figuring out the date, details of the cartoon, etc. — and he’ll check to see if he still has it. The original drawings aren’t in color, because he scans them into the computer and then colors them in Photoshop. AD It’s the fifth Style Invitational win — and 382nd blot in all — for Dave Prevar, but it’s his first Clowning Achievement trophy. It’s for Picture B, with the man with the giant box on his head: “Jack hopes his inflatable-luggage gag goes viral.” It and the three runners-up, one per cartoon, appear online throughout the results. 'Zups Lawrence McGuire, Jeff Contompasis and Jeff Shirley each are bespeckled with hundreds of ink blots, but for John Folse in fourth place, it’s just Ink No. 14 and his second appearance “above the fold”; his first was a win in 2013. What Pleased Ponch: While Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood continues to polish up his refurbished heart, Other Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia weighs in with his faves of the week, all from the honorable mentions: For Picture A, he liked Scott Straub’s “I was checking for shorts in the electrical grid”; one of two Ted Cruz this week, this by Lani Jacobson, telling the senator that “they’re not literally on fire”; and Barry Koch’s “late bloomers”; for Picture C: “By the end of Week 1, it was already clear that 2021 was not as serene as other New Year babies” (Joanne Free and Seth Tucker with very similar entries) and Duncan Stevens’s “scantily clad babe: and for Picture D, Duncan’s joke about the Washington Football Team’s desperate search for a wide receiver. Love Laboring to Lose: This week’s Shakespearean contest I’m a sucker for Shakespeare contests: There’s so much material to work with, all of it so readily accessible and in the public domain, and a chance to exemplify The Style Invitational’s trademark mix of haughty and potty. As Duncan, Thane of Stevens (or Inthane of Invitational), suggests, the idea of Week 1429 is to choose a quote and convey the same idea with a contemporary (real or fictional) quote. It’s not a puzzle-type contest with strict rules (e.g., change one letter) and I suspect that I’ll be generous in setting the boundaries for what fits in this contest. AD What I didn’t have in mind were “Mess With Our Heads” misinterpretations of the language — a quote about Caesar in reference to a salad, say. I don’t know if these previous Shakespeare-themed Invitational contests will provide much guidance, but they make a great read. (In some cases, the link goes to the week’s new contest, so you’ll have to scroll down a bit for the results.) Week 683, string together words from “Hamlet” to write something funny Week 772, “translations” of various literary passages for easy-readers Week 1039, write something using only words in the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy Week 1275, “Questionable Journalism” with Shakespeare quotes Week 1329, Shakespeare “tailgater” couplets Week 1376, add a character to a Shakespeare play English teachers and students, I totally think that entering Week 1429 deserves extra credit. Deadline is Monday night, April 5. Happy Passover to all matzoh-chompers — and be sure to download Loser Barbara Sarshik’s THE BEST “Seder Songs” parody collection, free at barbarasarshik.com. ====================================================================== WEEK 1430, published April 4, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1430: Back in the saddle again The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s horse name contest and winning bank heads Image without a caption Bob Staake's cartoon for Week 320, May 2, 1999. Bob admits to no affection for horses. By Pat Myers April 1, 2021 at 5:50 p.m. EDT Yup, the Kentucky Derby is on. After being moved to September last year and run at a virtually empty Churchill Downs (and on a shortened course, even), the Derby is scheduled for its traditional first Saturday in May, with probably at least 60 percent capacity, reflecting what the state currently is allowing for restaurants and other indoor businesses. And while masks will still be required, If I were going, I think I’d wear one of those giant-brimmed hats to ensure social distancing. Hence Style Invitational Week 1430, our most popular annual contest. Last April, after the postponement was announced, events were being canceled left and right, and of course the pandemic quickly became more and more widespread, so I didn’t have a lot of optimism for a fall Derby. But I certainly didn’t want to miss out on the Invitational’s most popular contest every year, and so for Week 1382, instead of using the names of that year’s 3-year-old Triple Crown nominees, I listed 100 of the 145 previous Derby winners. But the game was the same: Select any two names and “breed” them to produce a foal name that cleverly reflects the names of both parents. AD The winner: Black Gold x Macbeth II = MeTarSand,YouThane (Frank Osen). (Full results here.) And then, wouldn’t you know it: The Derby did go off in September. And so what the heck; then we did the contest again in Week 1400, this time with the horses that ran in the race (and 85 or so others). The winner: Life on the Road x Villainous = RV Weinstein (Steve Langer) (Full results here.) Ever since the Invite began this contest in 1995, at the suggestion of Loser and horseplayer Mike Hammer, the contest has drawn thousands of entries from several hundred contestants per contest. It’s understandable: No outside research or Web surfing is necessary — the list is right there — and it’s pretty easy to come up with a few entries in a few minutes. Many more contestants than in other weeks will submit the maximum of 25 entries; lately I’ve been getting some 4,000 names for the week. AD It’s daunting, true, but I always look forward to judging this contest. First of all, now that I can sort the entries so that I can read all ones for each pairing together (say, Horse 27 x Horse 53) — and, thanks to the special program created and run by Loser Jonathan Hardis, without having to read them twice (i.e., Horse 53 x Horse 27) — the process is far more efficient and far more accurate. And even more important: There are so many clever, funny jokes! Still, with 4,000 entries to read within a couple of days, I can’t mull each entry forever. And I find that recently I tend to read down the list with an eye for funny foal names and novel puns, then check on how it reflects the names of the sires (or even the occasional dam; there just aren’t many fillies nominated to run in these races). But don’t worry: If the entry doesn’t have an obvious pun, I’ll also peruse the entry to find another clever approach, like Determine x Agile = Will & Grace (Mia Wyatt,). Or: As Seen on TV x Verb = Avoid (Nancy Della Rovere) Or the “operative”: A x B = Modified A: As Seen on TV x Censored = ** *een on TV (Duncan Stevens, Laurie Brink) In past Style Conversationals at horse time, I often share winners and runners-up from our more than two dozen earlier contests. This time I’ll look toward the bottom of each list, just to avoid repeating myself. Remember that all the inking entries had beaten out thousands of others: They’re all good. Also, once I started adding entries online to supplement the ones in the paper, I’d often put the racier ones near the bottom of the list. Really, who’s going to write in to complain about the 62nd entry down the page — the complainers aren’t going to read that far. AD ADVERTISING Drill x No Spin = Doesn’t Auger Well (Larry Yungk) Tsetse Fly x Dreaming of Anna = Sleeping Thickness (Brendan Beary) In Orbit + Hello From Heaven = In Obits (Pam Sweeney, Sam Laudenslager) Barber Shop Rock x Rousing Sermon = Four-Part Homily (Jeff Contompasis) Verne x Whistleblower = 20,000 Leaks (Dudley Thompson) Verne x Segway = In Eighty Months (Dave Prevar) Concealed Identity x Positive Response = Private Aye (Kathy Hardis Fraeman) Major Art x Become the Wind = DeGas (Laurie Brink) Old Guys Rule x Sinai = See Nile (Susan Thompson) Okay Corral x Super Saver = Buy It Earp (Steve Price) Unspeakable Filth x Kollege = Dirty Duncing (Brad Alexander) Pavarotti + Forty Grams = The Four Tenners (Mike Hammer) Oceanography x Backlash = Abalone! (Mark Eckenwiler) Men’s Magazine x Reporting for Duty = Stand Up N Salute (Rick Haynes) AD Would you like to see a few thousand more of these? This page on the Losers’ website, kept by Such a Loser Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org, contains links to each new horse contest and each set of results, in plain text, PDFs, the whole schmear. The results of Week 1430 will run online on April 29, two days before the running of the Derby, so we’ll have “our horses” to root for in the race. While ultimately the promise of the actual horse won’t determine who gets ink, I did fill about half of this week’s list of 100 names from “top touts” predictions from various racing writers. At least the favorites should have an opportunity to beget some inky foals. News quippings*: The bank headlines of Week 1426 *Inking headline by Jesse Frankovich in an earlier contest I never tire of Mess With Our Heads, our bank head contest, and always finding myself reinterpreting headlines for weeks after I’ve finished judging one. And the results of Week 1426 should generate much coffee-spitting among the inveterate newspaper readers who probably constitute the large majority of Loserdom. AD And this week’s Clowning Achievement winner is a classic of the genre. Jesse Frankovich, who lives in Lansing, Mich., turned for some reason to the website of the Washington County (Wis.) Insider: US 45 resurfacing project starts Monday Former president getting skin peel, de-oranging Jesse’s name is familiar to anyone who’s read the Invite in the past several years; he routinely gets several blots of ink in a single week. And this is not just his 17th contest win; it’s his second win of our new Clowning Achievement trophy; he got the first just a few weeks ago. But in our 100 Clowners for 100 Losers program — all the disembodied clown heads we could find — I’ll be sending Jesse a little paper “II″ flag on a dowel that he can attach to the trophy’s base. think we’d better make up a “III” and “IV” pretty soon. AD Runners-up Chris Doyle and Danielle Nowlin also swim laps in their respective Invite ink vats, but it’s the first trip for third-place John Klayman to the Losers’ Circle. and just his third blot in all., for his play on “Find a Place for Covid Shots” (recommended: arm). While I invited people to use any print or online newspaper, a large fraction of the entries were from The Post, especially the print version. And so I ended up with too many entries for the Local Living headline “Can I repair the pie-crust molding on my old table?” (All answers: Gross, no, just wash it off, throw it away, and make a new pie, for gosh sakes.), Also: Sweeping relief package clears Senate* Every American will get a free Roomba. And various headlines about the hometown NBA team, the Wizards, generated various banks about Muggles. Head covering required: Unprintables from Week 1426: Some topics are just too serious, some headlines too brutal, to make silly jokes about in the Invite. Like this well-done but tasteless effort from Jeff Contompasis: Prison guard pleads guilty in beating death* Confesses to brewing Live Forever Elixir in jailhouse kitchen. Or this one by Barbara Turner: McIlroy shoots 66 to share Arnold Palmer lead … well, you know where this is going. Too soon, we can say every single day of the year. AD And then just your generally unprintable: Goats pee on their faces to attract mates* Yet all it gets me is a restraining order (Sam Mertens) And one that several people submitted with the same general idea: Things are about to get a lot harder for Joe Biden* President thought little blue pill was his statin. The Staake Stable If you’d like an original Staake horse picture of your very own — maybe even the Equine Strom Thurmond reprinted above — there’s a good chance that he still has some of his dozens of his equin-ish creations, either as a pencil sketch or the final pen-and-ink drawing. Go to bobstaake.com*SI and tell him what you’re looking for — a horse picture or another Invite picture — and he’ll check to see if he still has it. (Feel free to write to me to figure out the date, etc.) See you next week — maybe There’s a fair chance I might not do a Conversational next week: I’m getting my second Moderna shot at 5 p.m. the day before, and given that I had a mild reaction the first time around (e.g., overnight fever, fatigue), I’m a bit apprehensive about this second one. But either way, Happy Easter*Passover*Springtime to all. And happy mating. ====================================================================== WEEK 1432, published April 18, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1432: The winsome wisdom of Melissa Balmain The poet -- and 174-time Style Invitational Loser -- whose new book inspired this week’s contest Image without a caption 174-time Style Invitational Loser Melissa Balmain fractures fairy tales in a sometimes adults-only way in her new collection, “The Witch Demands a Retraction.” (Courtesy of Melissa Balmain) By Pat Myers April 15, 2021 at 5:44 p.m. EDT This week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1432, challenges you to come up with a fresh, not-necessarily-for-children angle on a classic folk tale, nursery rhyme, children’s book or children’s song. (I’m not going to be doctrinaire about what’s a genuine anonymous folk tale rather than one with a known author, especially for children’s classics.) I was inspired to do this contest when I saw a tweet from Melissa Balmain that her book “The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy Tale Reboots for Adults” would be coming out this very week. While Melissa has a long résumé as a newspaper and magazine humor columnist, University of Rochester writing instructor and, since 2012, the publisher of the poetry journal Light, Washington Post readers probably know her best through her 174 blots of Style Invitational ink (so far) through her decade as one of our funniest Loserbards, snarfing up the ink through 10 years of every kind of poetry contest as well as a variety of others. The Invite first encountered Melissa’s work back in 2011 when she got ink in a non-poetry contest: It was to come up with a quote that some particular person would not say. And Melissa’s was: “I’m just gonna try my best and hope I don’t embarrass myself.” — Muhammad Ali. A few weeks later, Melissa won the whole contest, plus three honorable mentions, with more non-poetry: The contest was to channel the old “Devil’s Dictionary” by Ambrose Bierce with some new cynical definitions. Her winning entry, an Invite classic, was “Hero: Someone who, in a crisis, exceeds our lowest expectations.” But it was actually in an honorable mention that week that Melissa first showed us the flair for the humor of the home that’s become one of her strongest suits. “Kitchen shears: Perfectly weighted, precision-ground scissors used for cutting open bags of brownie mix.” And by January of 2012 Melissa got her first Invite poetry ink, in the genre she’s shown in every year since: the obit poem. This one, a sort of Dr. Seuss of Threnody, got her second place that year; Melissa later included it in her first (fabulous) poetry collection, “Walking In on People.” Winner of the Annoy-a-tron, a little box you hide that beeps every few minutes: “Jackass” daredevil Ryan Dunn (1977-2011): When it came to wild stunts, he was second to none — So who’d have predicted that Ryan M. Dunn Would die not by catapult, cannon or cougar, Or Russian roulette with a dung-coated Luger, Or by tying himself to a runaway moose, Or snorting ground glass off a lion’s caboose, But by drinking and driving? How could he succumb To something so horribly, commonly dumb? Melissa could publish an anthology of just her obit poem ink, but here’s just one more, from 2017, once again drawing humor from the home hearth (is there any other funeral poem to mention Farberware?). *Margaret Vinci Heldt (1918-2016), creator of the beehive hairdo* You have to figure beehive gals Kept plenty hidden in their hair. ADVERTISING (A pack of Kents? A Jell-O mold? A handy set of Farberware?) They'd never even tell their pals Precisely what was stashed in there. But Margaret's clients — her, they told. And now, alas, she’ll never share. Melissa still blots up the ink regularly with humor of all genres. She’s particularly proud, she told me, of her winning user-reviews of everyday products sold on Amazon. Here are two that won the contest in different years. The first, in 2012, was just in time to dig at the seven-house-owning presidential candidate Mitt Romney: “Coats & Clark Dual Duty Thread 400 Yards — White”: As a Mormon Republican, I wear a lot of white shirts. And because I’m “just folks,” when one of them gets a hole I never throw it out, or hand it to an assistant to fix, or have my personal tailor, Alessandro, weave me a new shirt immediately from the hair of an albino yak. Gosh, no. I mend it myself, using this humble thread and . . . some sort of thread-attaching device. By golly, I do. And two years later: *“Universal Paper Clips 72210”: One star 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. — When I asked Melissa for a short poem from the new book to use as an example, she sent me a few. I chose the Jack and the Beanstalk fart joke, because it was shorter and not risque. But I think I like this one even more — and I’m eager to see the cartoon that illustrator Ron Barrett (“Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs”) provides as well: Not So Snow White Things started so well: found a chick in a box, got her out, and days later, we wed – such a snap because, speaking of life’s pleasant shocks, my stepmom-in-law turned up dead. Home that night, after finally fooling around (happy endings for both!), I sighed, “Heaven.” But my wife simply stared at the ceiling and frowned: “Is that it? I’m accustomed to seven.” Rack-tile dysfunction*: The ScrabbleGrams neologisms of Week 1428 *Headline by Jesse Frankovich from our 2017 ScrabbleGrams contest The Royal Consort knows by now to roll his eyes when I’m judging a Style Invitational contest and wringing my hands and saying, “Ugh, these are terrible. Nobody is funny! These are the worst ever! What am I going to put on the page?” What’s usually happening — as it did with the Week 1428 neologisms found in ScrabbleGrams letter “racks” — is that I’m wading through more entries than usual in an Invite contest; this time it was more than 1,500, from almost 200 people. And so if I’m hating on 50 consecutive entries and slashing my pen down the page of a printout in a big gesture of nope! three times in a row, I tend not to sense until the end of the process that, oh, yeah, I only hated 1,420 of them: Here are 80 good ones — and that’s way more than I can use. Often I’d come across interesting ideas for a word, but they weren’t funny, in either concept or execution. Only in the Land of the Bureaucrat do people send jokes like this to a humor contest: (CDEEKLR) “DECLERK: To eliminate positions rendered obsolete by automated records management.” I hope the writer isn’t contemplating a career in stand-up. But, as virtually always, there was plenty of funny to go around in this weekend’s results — much of it from the Invite Obsessives, but also a number of names you don’t see every week. I bounced my shortlist off three trusted advisers this week, asking them each to choose their top half dozen: my Czarist predecessor, Gene Weingarten; my co-admin of the Style Invitational Devotees on Facebook, Alex Blackwood; and Thing Two of my Royal Scions, Valerie Holt. But their lists proved almost comically different, a Venn diagram of three freely bouncing beach balls; each of today’s “above the fold” winners, however, did appear on one or another of them. You don’t have to explain “funny” to this week’s winner, Danielle Nowlin, who takes her 16th first-place win for Pap Art — in the hands of an expert gynecologist, more than just a “smear.” Danielle also won her first Clowning Achievement trophy four weeks ago (for the neologistic phrase “Foible File,” where your brain pulls out all your embarrassments just as you’re trying to get to sleep), so this time she’ll receive a supplementary little flag with a Roman “II” to place next to her disembodied clown head. Danielle also inked with another laugher, God-rip — “You know how when you were a kid they told you that thunder is the sound of the Lord bowling? Well, it’s not.” While runners-up Frank Osen — king of the neologism entry quotes — and, more recently, Eric Nelkin are familiar Invite names, we last heard from Deanna Busick of Knoxville, Tenn., in one contest three years ago ... and before that, two others all the way back in 2007. She did, however, win one of those contests, for the neologism “Riminal: A man who doesn’t clean up his toilet dribble.” This time Deanna scores with “Repant,” taking the wordplay in two directions. What Pleased Ponch: Also weighing in this week, as he’s been doing lately, is Ace Copy Editor Panfilo “Ponch” Garcia, who read the whole list last night (all of them made the print page as well as online): Ponch’s faves included Danielle’s God-rip; the triple-credited Antibag, “someone who’ll carry 20 items out of the supermarket in his hands rather than paying the nickel”; Jonathan Jensen’s GPaSs: The guy who insists that his phone knows better than you how to get to your house [the weird capitalization was the best solution I could come up with to have it read “gee-pee-ass” rather than something about GPA’s or GP doctors who were asses]; Peatrap (Richard Franklin), a daintier piehole; Gramnet, what your kids call Facebook (Milo Sauer*, Mark Raffman); and from First Offender Kate Baughman, Analyst, a professional who can explain why the first thing you saw in this ScrabbleGram was ANAL STY, *Tim “Milo” Sauer gets his first blot of ink since he retired from the Invite in 2009 after reaching the 100-ink mark. What Milo only recently fessed up to was, also in the mid-2000s, scoring another 100 blots (including four wins) under the name Elwood Fitzner; the surname is from his wife’s family, the first name made up. All is forgiven, but please don’t enter under pseudonyms. --- I’m all vaxxed up! I was relieved that I’d decided not to write this column last week, as I briefly came down with Ye Olde Moderna 2 Fever and Lot of Fatigue about 20 hours after I got the second shot. Though the fever briefly hit 102, I was totally fine the next morning. ====================================================================== WEEK 1433, published April 25, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1433: Pranks for asking The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s Questionable Journalism contest Image without a caption The example for a 2005 Questionable Journalism contest; we've done this contest almost every year since then. The “answer” to this example came from the Ask Amy advice column. By Pat Myers April 22, 2021 at 5:09 p.m. EDT Add to list Answer: “She is now in jail, charged with aggravated battery and domestic battery.” Question: What happened to the woman who mugged the Energizer Bunny? That was the first example for the first Style Invitational contest we now call Questionable Journalism: Week 254, in 1998, and repeat today in Week 1433. The idea for the contest — to pull a sentence out of the paper and follow it with a question it could answer — was offered by Jacob Weinstein of Los Angeles, who blotted up 36 inks until he disappeared in the mid-2000s. The example was by the Empress’s predecessor, the Czar, who got the “answer” from the Ann Landers column that would appear that same Sunday (we had the text of that column in advance). The Czar ran the contest again in 2001 and 2003, and I picked it up and ran with it beginning in 2004, shortly after I started Empressing. As I explained in Week 561: “This week’s contest is of a type the Empress loves: one in which contestants cannot steal their entries off the Internet, and one that requires readers to peruse The Washington Post, the fine publication that gives her real cash money as long as she does not use the word [blotted out on the page] or [blotted again] or, of course, [blotted again] (except as an adjective).” All that, plus: There will always be a new source of material — each contest asks you to look at new articles, beginning with the day it’s published. And that source is huge, almost infinite: While we used to ask readers to use just that Sunday Post in which the Invitational appeared, now you’re free to use any publication — print or online — as long as it’s dated within the contest window, which has expanded to 11 days from first online posting on a Thursday to the filing deadline a week from Monday. (Yes, some Losers have complained to me — only sometimes in jest — about being forced to read enormous amounts of news coverage for 11 straight days. And yes, of course you can find lots of sentences within a few minutes, maybe even within a single article.) Note that the requirements, as they were in recent years, have become even broader: You can drop a few nonessential words from the sentence, for example “Smith said,” and you can use two short sentences. But try not to use very long sentences, since your entry might be the one most easily trimmed for space. Also, not deleting those extra words is one way to show some cleverness. In general — just as with the headlines used in our Mess With Our Heads bank headline contest — it’s better to use a sentence whose context the reader can roughly guess. That way the switch to a totally different meaning is funnier. The “domestic battery” sentence above works well here, transforming from serious to silly with some deft wordplay. Contrast this with the second example to the same contest; Answer: “A handkerchief edged in lace, resembling women’s panties, to put in a man’s breast pocket.” Question: What would be a bad birthday present to get President Clinton? The initial answer is so odd — what on earth was Ann Landers talking about! — that it detracts from the pretty good question. Also, words like “panties” makes the joke almost too easy; you don’t get to enjoy the transformation offered by the battery joke. So, for that ol’ Guidance & Inspiration®, here’s a smattering of Questionable Journalism entries from that past 20 years of the Invite: A. “Well, we’re glad to be here,” astronaut Bonnie Dunbar replied from the shuttle. Q. Has President Clinton ever made inappropriate advances to female astronauts? (Dave Andrews, 1998) ADVERTISING A. We were in the Guggenheim for almost three hours and had absolutely no idea what the heck was going on. Q. What would you hate to overhear one doctor say to another as they leave the operating room after brain surgery on your wife? (Tom Kreitzberg, 2003) A. His response: “I’m not worth anything anymore.” Q. What did the English teacher reply when his depressed son said, “I ain’t worth nothing no more”? (Russell Beland, 2005) A. I feel for the guy. Q. Ms. Hilton, what do you do upon entering a darkened room? (Kevin Dopart, 2006) A. This is the place that made me who I am. Q. What’s so special about the back seat of your parents’ SUV? (Jay Shuck, 2007) A. I don’t know if I should say something, let it roll off, or what. Q. “Isn’t that the neighbors’ baby up on the roof?” (Beverley Sharp, 2008) A. The 11 players and one substitute were reported missing over the weekend. Q. Where the heck is the Redskins’ offense? (Jeff Contompasis, 2009) A. “We’re working our way happily and steadily through the process of production.” Q. What did the mechanical engineer reply when his mother-in-law said, “We hope you’ll soon make us proud grandparents”? (Cathy Lamaze, 2012) A. Half the Republicans in the House have served three years or less. Q. Why do you say criminal sentencing guidelines are skewed to favor rich white males? Brendan Beary, 2014) A. Negotiations have begun in Baghdad on settling long-standing sectarian disputes. Q. So, Sisyphus, what have you been up to lately? (Jeff Hazle, 2014) Note that this entry isn’t about taking the words out of context, but instead comments wryly on the news itself. I’d be happy to run some entries like this. A. Go figure. Q. With the ban on guns now strictly enforced, what did the Math Olympiad official yell to start the competition? (Kevin Dopart, 2015) A. “I just grayed out or blacked out a little bit.” Q. Do you deny starring in your fraternity’s racially insensitive minstrel show? (Tom Witte, 2016) A. Blasting will be done during the day and “very rarely” at night or on weekends. Q, How will the Purple Line construction differ from the president’s use of Twitter? (Jesse Frankovich, 2017) A. “Soybean prices are in the toilet right now.” Q. What happened when the grocery tagger had to bring his toddler to work with him? (Danielle Nowlin, 2019) A. At the moment, social distancing is the only effective countermeasure. Q. How do I get my parents to stop asking me when I’m going to give them grandchildren? (Hannah Seidel’s first ink) Now, go ahead and become an example for a future Style Conversational column. Bardmouthing*: The results of Week 1429 *A non-inking headline by Tom Witte, who won instead with “Update Your Will” plus the honorable-mentions subhead, “The Errors of Comedy” To quote a source even older than William Shakespeare, there’s nothing new under the sun. And in Week 1429, the Loser Community proved especially adept at matching up the Bard’s 400-year-old zingers to an equivalent, usually considerably less eloquent contemporary sentiment — often in some embarrassingly stupid pronouncement by a current unluminary. When Obsessive Loser Duncan Stevens suggested examples for this contest — one of several Shakespeare-centered challenges he’s proposed — I told him that I wanted to stick to modern paraphrases, rather than taking him humorously out of context. Nothing about Caesar and his salad. But how could I turn away Kevin Dopart’s “Now I see the bottom of your purpose,” as a warning not to stand up during a Zoom meeting? Or Sarah Walsh’s quote from a sonnet, " … Then might I not say so* To give full growth to that which still doth grow,” about overly effective Viagra? Or even the play on “election” in Duncan’s own winning entry? But most of this week’s 38 inking entries (31 on the print page) stuck to the original meaning, often quoting verbatim from some newsmaker or other. Some Shakespeare quotes are used so widely in popular culture — say, “O that this too, too solid flesh would melt” in the context of a diet — that such entries seemed to pale next to less famous quotes. There was a lot of duplication this week, for instance a come-on by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the voice of various Shakespearean characters; usually, I chose my favorite combination of old and new, and other times gave double or even triple credit. And as it’s done now 17 times, the win goes to Duncan Stevens himself, for this timely gem about Stacey Abrams’s activism for voting rights in Georgia: If it be a sin to make a true election, she is damned.” (“Cymbeline”; the “election” is a choice of lover) “Ms. Abrams, the Georgia legislature thinks there’s been way too much voting going on.” While runners-up Frank Mann and Gary Crockett are familiar names in the Losers’ Circle, it’s the first appearance “above the fold” for Nancy McWhorter, who almost doubles her previous ink stash with three blots today. And impressed congratulations also go to two First Offenders: Jim Sproules, one of three Losers to translate’s Shakespeare’s decorous turndown line “I do desire we may be better strangers” to “[Swipe left.],” has been a longtime member of the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, and had to remind me that this was his first ink; and a big two-ink debut (with more on my shortlist) for Karen Golden of Southern Maryland, who is clearly on the Invite wavelength. And she’s off! Next week, the winning horse names This weekend I’ll be curling up with more than 3,800 foal names from Week 1430, once again sorted and cleaned up by the indispensable Jonathan Hardis. As always, the entries are all grouped by horse, so if you sent in 25 entries, I’ll likely be seeing them in 25 different places. I hope as much as you do that your extra-clever pairing wasn’t the same extra-clever pairing that 15 people sent in — to avoid this as much as possible, that’s why I offer 100 names to mix. I’ll leave it to the many Losers who can tell you in five seconds how many possible combinations it allows for. What I do know is that the winners are certain to be fabulous. See you next Thursday and we’ll enjoy them together. “Pranks for Asking,” the headline on today’s column, is by Chris Doyle, from an earlier Questionable Journalism contest. ====================================================================== WEEK 1434, published May 2, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1434: Minds on the same track The very clever foal name that popped up 18 times over Image without a caption Soup and Sandwich, one of 14 horses on the Week 1430 list to be running in Saturday's Kentucky Derby, has already paid off for Loser Matt Monitto: Matt wins this week's Clowning Achievement trophy with his “breeding” of One Fast Cat x Soup and Sandwich = Usain BLT. (Charlie Riedel*AP) By Pat Myers April 29, 2021 at 4:19 p.m. EDT Add to list One Fast Cat x Savile Row = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x Concert Tour = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x Fly Like an Eagle = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x Fly Like an Eagle = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x Fly Like an Eagle = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Hey, it’s a good joke — a punny, perfectly inkworthy name submitted for Style Invitational Week 1430, this year’s installment of the racehorse name “breeding” contest. And had it not been submitted by 18 different people, Tailor Swift might well have been among this week’s inking entries (results here). There’s just no way to know what the other people entering the contest — this year, almost 400 of them — are going to come up with. This is one reason you’re allowed to send as many as 25 entries: If four people send pretty much the same entry, I toss it; if three people do, it had better be worth running a credit line that’s longer than the entry itself. I’ll note some more good-but-too-common ideas farther down in the column. People are getting so good at this contest. Though well over 300 people got no ink this week — though a whopping 60 of you did — I’d suspect that many of them made my “shortlist” of 282 entries that I culled from the pool of 3,834. (I don’t look up the authors’ names until I’m ready to give them ink, so I never checked on wrote all those puns that I marked but ultimately tossed. Maybe all your entries were in that part of the list — yeah! For sure! As I read through the entries, I’d put a double star among ones I was sure I wanted to use. I ended up with 29 of those, and they’re all sprinkled throughout today’s results (including this week’s top four winners). Then for the remaining entries — it turned out that 43 more of them would fill the space exactly on the print page — I paged through nine pages of single-spaced, small-type printout and chose what how-you-say spoke to me at that moment. I don’t doubt that I could have chosen 43 others that would have been just as clever and funny. But today’s top winners, of course, worked for me especially well — and it turns out that all four “above the fold” Losers are veterans of the horse contest. Matt Monitto, though still in his twenties, has inked in five earlier horse contests, but this is his first finish in the money, as it were — and though this is the sixth time he’s won an Invitational contest (for 164 blots in all) it’s his first Clowning Achievement, our new trophy. His winning entry: One Fast Cat x Soup and Sandwich = Usain BLT. This year’s second-place winner, Jonathan Paul, was one of the biggest stars of the Invitational’s early years, earning almost 400 inks — and 25 wins — before stepping back to a saner life a number of years ago. But Jonathan always comes back for the horse contests — and continues to score big virtually every time. Today he scores with Troubadour x Chaos Reigns = Widespread Luting, a totally distinctive entry this week. Bernard Brink started entering the horse contests in 2008, after his daughter Laurie Brink had gotten fourth place in the previous one. Virtually every year since then, they’ve each sent in a list full of clever names. Laurie usually outscores him, but this week Bernard gets his first ink above the fold, with Like the King x Breadman = Elvis Pretzely — plus two honorable mentions, while Laurie scores “only” two HMs. Rob Wolf, likewise, has made himself scarce Invite-wise except for the horses — for which he’s scored in virtually every contest in recent years, often with multiple ink and runner-up “honors.” Today’s mug- or bag-winner: Count Tolstoy x Uno = War and Pizza What Pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Panfilo “Ponch” Garcia — whose moniker is even more fitting now that he just won the ACES award, from what used to be called the American Copy Editors Society, for his headline writing — particularly enjoyed these honorable mentions this week: Never Surprised x Chaos Reigns = No Duh Rioty (Susan Geariety) ) Beep Beep x Hidden Stash = Wile E. Peyote (J.J. Gertler, Alexandria; Brent and Elizabeth McBurney) Federal Bureau x Classier = J Edgar Louvre (Jon Gearhart) I Am the Law x One Fast Cat = Cuff Lynx (Kathy El-Assal) Hush of a Storm x Money Mike = Hush Stormy (Jonathan Jensen) Savile Row x Santa Cruiser = HaberDasher (Fred Shuback) I Am the Law x Hold the Salsa = Mild Bill HIckok (Laurie Brink) Breadman x Arabian Prince: CruMBS (Kevin Dopart) More From the Great Minds Department: ADVERTISING Foals named “2020″ came from a variety of pairings: Chaos Reigns x Isolate; Concert Tour x Outasite; Life Is Good x Notable Exception, among others. The 1981 Tommy Tutone song “867-5309” was used for numerous foal appellations, mostly from Get Her Number; the other parent was variously Circumvent, Concert Tour and Prime Factor (is it?). Then there were variations: Get Her Number x Uno (and x O Besos) = 867-5308; x Hyperfocus = 86753 Oh Nine; x Myopic = 867530NighEyeing (now there’s an example of piling on too much complexity); Many entries, of course, used O Besos (besos meaning “kisses” in Spanish) to refer to Washington Post and Everything Else Owner Jeff Bezos; four people played off the spelling difference and named their foals “Amason.” I wouldn’t have had a problem making Bezos jokes; the Invite has made lots of them; I just wasn’t blown away by any of them this week. Similarly the many Biden references using Joe Man Joe: Biden My Time or Biden His Time appeared 19 times under various pairings. Many of the others seemed awfully worshipful, like, really: Joe Man Joe x Magnificent = President Biden. Six people used the Operative form — Horse A x Horse B as a modifying word = Modified A — to Turn Beep Beep into Bleep Bleep, mostly via Tarantino. Sometimes, though, one pairing works significantly better than another to get to the same foal: There were four foals named Clooney Tunes, but others paired By George with Concert Tour; only Rivka Liss-Levinson used Beep Beep — the signature call of Road Runner in the Looney Tunes cartoons. Gershwin was “bred” far more often than any other horse, with 195 matings, so it’s not surprising that Gershwin x Ram = Embraceable Ewe showed up nine times and Gershwin x Big Fish = Porgy and Bass 14. The horse with the fewest breedings, with a mere 10? Irony, take a bow: It’s the scarce Prevalence. A few more multiples, certainly not a complete list: Overtook x Helium = Passed Gas — so good, all seven of you. Arabian Prince x Helium = Lighter Than Heir — six. One Fast Cat x Whole Shebang = Kitten Caboodle — six. Petruchio x O Besos = Kiss Me, Kate — eight. This week’s follow-on contest -- Week 1434, the grandfoals -- tends not to have so much duplication, because so many of the horses are puns in themselves, and so they can be played on in more ways. Also, if history is a guide, there will be far fewer entries than for the foals -- 30 to 50 percent fewer. So there’s every reason to waste even more time this week -- perhaps while you’re watching TV’s 90-minute buildup to the 2-minute Kentucky Derby. Be sure to root for “our” horses -- 14 horses out of the 20 scheduled to run on Saturday were on our list, and I think all of them got at least one foal today. Once again, my deepest thanks to Loser Jonathan Hardis, who took my giant file of entries — stripped of the Losers’ names, addresses, etc., — and transformed it into an alphabetized, perfectly consistently formatted Word document of 213 pages. (I’m so glad he got ink, with Spielberg x Savile Row = Clothes Encounters. And we both also appreciate the cooperation of all you Invite entrants who followed the directions this year. Please do it again for the grandfoals! Note to people who got ink this week: I’m grateful for your patience in waiting for your magnet or runner-up prize; I’ll get all the letters done sooner or later. Runners-up: Unless you’d like a Grossery Bag, which I can mail from home, it’ll be a few weeks before I’m back in the newsroom for my once-a-month package-mailing frenzy. If I think that you’ve already gotten a bunch of our current magnets, “No ‘Bility” and “Punderachiever,” I’ll be sending you the “prize” letter by email instead — but feel free to write me right back and ask for the magnet that you certainly have earned. (If you’d prefer your letter to come as an email attachment rather than by snail, let me know and I’d be more than happy to oblige.) And did you see that last line in the Invite? Hey, remember The Post’s Peeps diorama contest?So what’s grosser, a bunch of Peeps or a bunch of cicadas? ====================================================================== WEEK 1435, published May 9, 2021 ====================================================================== WEEK 1436, published May 16, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1436: Stop me if you’ve seen this one before The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s movie-title contest Image without a caption “Garfield: The Movie” — the Oliver Stone conspiracy version — as envisioned by Loser Pam Sweeney in Week 625. Actually this engraving of President Garfield's assassination (the assailant is being apprehended at a New Jersey railroad station) appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in 1881. By Pat Myers May 13, 2021 at 4:29 p.m. EDT Add to list There’s a good rule among newspaper editors, one that’s useful for anyone making any pronouncement: If you say something is the oldest, first, biggest, etc., be prepared to run a correction, because there just has to be one exception to prove you wrong. The original version of this week’s Style Invitational, Week 1436, stated that the new contest — to summarize an alternative plot for any real movie title — was our first of this kind since all the way back at Week 625 in 2005. It took exactly five minutes after I posted the contest to the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, at 10:27 Thursday morning, for Duncan Stevens to note, “Week 1247 (reinterpret a movie title, supply a quote) was along the same general lines, FWIW.” Oops. For some reason (= we are slobs) both Keeper of the Invite Stats Elden Carnahan and I failed to notice the description of Week 1247 (October 2017) sitting right there in Elden’s own superduper Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. It was even coded properly with “MOV” so that it showed up on a list just of movie contests, though granted it was 53rd on a small-type list of 59 items. But Duncan — who’d suggested the contest in the first place, with the twist of including a quote — remembered it as one of his favorites. Fortunately, I’m able to post the Invite online several hours before the print Post’s Arts & Style section goes to press late Thursday afternoons, and the Devotees inevitably point out something that needs a fix before The Rest of the World notices. And fortunately, they’re still making lots of movies, so yes, we may carry on! The list of movie-title jokes we’ve already used is now a lot longer, but I’m sure there are lots more to be had. So while you can certainly use one of the movies listed below for Week 1436, don’t use the same joke! Here are the results from the two — pretty sure there aren’t more than that — preceding different-plot contests: Note that some of the inking entries allude to the real plot of the movie, while others don’t at all. We have room for both kinds. Still, a familiar title tends to be funnier for this contest than an obscure one, since the reader will laugh at the transformation (and*or the allusion to the original); on the other hand, I didn’t need to know “Maria Full of Grace” to laugh at the cannibalism joke. And look at all those names from 2005 who still play the Invitational regularly or participate in the Devotees! (We do regret the Invite-retirement of Peter Metrinko and Russell Beland, who inked up the joint in Week 625.) Report from Week 625 [2005], an early contest of the Empress], in which we asked you to come up with an alternative plot for an actual movie title: Dozens of Losers ventured that “Casablanca” was about the household of the first Hispanic president, and that “A River Runs Through It” was a travelogue of New Orleans. Third runner-up: The Whole Nine Yards: Kirstie Alley’s instructional video on making a miniskirt. (Phyllis Reinhard, East Fallowfield, Pa.) [In 2021, fat jokes about a particular person don’t tend to be so funny] Second runner-up: Baby Makes Three: A new mother finds something really, really disgusting in a used diaper. (Russell Beland, Springfield) First runner-up: White Men Can’t Jump: Three-year-old Bobby Fischer learns the rules of chess. (Kyle Hendrickson, Frederick) And the winner of the Inker: The Asphalt Jungle: In this series finale, Tarzan suffers his untimely death. (Kevin Jamison, Montgomery Village) Honorable Mentions: The Magnificent Seven: Aftermath of a nuclear disaster, starring Dolly Parton. (Gordon Jones, Draper, Utah) Garfield: The Movie: Oliver Stone finds another presidential assassination conspiracy. (Pam Sweeney, Germantown) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: The story of Louisiana’s fight to save its community baseball fields. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney) She’s All That: After a suicide bombing, forensic investigators have lots to piece together. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) Yojimbo: A daring new chapter in the enduring saga finds Rocky Balboa going back in time to defend President and Dolley Madison from the invading British. (Brad Alexander, Wanneroo, Australia) Silent Running: A mime, frustrated by the government’s refusal to support his endangered art, launches an unusual campaign for public office. (John Shea, Lansdowne, Pa.) Gone in Sixty Seconds: A documentary on America’s recent budget surplus. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) [budget surplus!] The Shawshank Redemption: Michael Moore’s film about a man who finds a coupon for a free shawshank in his Val-Pak and his struggles with Corporate America to redeem it. (Pete Hughes, Alexandria) She Wore a Yellow Ribbon: The owner of a small-town strip club finds a loophole in the city’s anti-nudity law. (Russell Beland) You’ve Got Mail: King Arthur convenes the Knights of the Round Table. (Charles Mann, Baileys Crossroads) The Big Easy: The Mae West Story. (Michelle Stupak, Ellicott City) The Exorcist: A woman with poor English skills becomes an aerobics instructor. (Scott Campisi, Wake Village, Tex.) Sorry, Wrong Number: Barbara Stanwyck portrays a tough-as-nails heiress who, day after day, fails to win the lottery. (Matthew Cole, Northfield, Minn.) I Know What You Did Last Summer: An IRS agent pursues a lifeguard over undeclared poolside earnings. (Steven King, Oakton) Chariots of Fire: In ancient Rome, a cartwright’s wagons explode when pulled by pintos. (Brendan Beary) Fantastic Four: A man tries to convince women that it’s not the size, but what you do with it. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park; Tom Witte) Around the World in 80 Days: The story of the world’s slowest hooker. (Steven J. Allen, Manassas) Gladiator: The true confessions of Hannibal Lecter. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis; Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) The Rocky Horror Picture Show: A Sly Stallone retrospective. (Russell Beland) Stand By Me: The story of a man who always gets discount airline seats. (Russell Beland) Maria Full of Grace: A gruesome tale of cannibalism in a small-town convent. (Katherine Burke, Washington) Spring Break: A child is traumatized when his beloved Slinky rusts out. (Tom Witte) Total Recall: Poisoned wheat flakes kill hundreds as a cereal killer strikes. Only complete regurgitation can stave off death. What did you have for breakfast? (Martin Bancroft, Ann Arbor, Mich.) The Bad News Bears: The Berenstain family goes to Iraq. (Erika Reinfeld, Medford, Mass.) March of the Penguins: An enthusiastic young basketball coach inspires little Youngstown State to reach the Final Four. (Pam Sweeney) Groundhog Day: The folks from “Deliverance” celebrate Thanksgiving. (Michelle Stupak) Miracle on 34th Street: A house in Georgetown actually sells for under a million dollars. It is, however, only six feet wide, having been a stable up until 1904. (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) [now it’d be “under two million”] This Is Spinal Tap: Part 3 of the successful documentary series, on the heels of “This Is Goiter Removal” and “This Is Colon Irrigation.” (Russell Beland) The Green Mile: A rival team sabotages a track meet with food poisoning. (Peter Metrinko) The Last Temptation of Christ: The story of the man who ran the dessert cart at the Last Supper. (Art Grinath) The Man Who Knew Too Much: Gov. George W. Bush realizes that the American voting public is put off by smarty-pants officials. So he begins a crafty campaign to make himself look less intelligent than the average voter. (John Shea) Northwest Passage: The D.C. neighborhood clash over Klingle Street access culminates in a hilarious quiche fight . (George Vary, Bethesda) The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Chef Tell is pressured to uncork his final bottle of rare vintage olive oil. (Ryan Poston, Florence, S.C.) ADVERTISING Twelve Angry Men: Chaos ensues when budget cuts force a small town in Nebraska to drop the Drummers Drumming from the Christmas pageant. (Bill Thompson, Columbia) An American in Paris: The biggest Internet porn video of 2003. (Douglas Frank, Crosby, Tex.) Return of the Jedi: In Part 1 of an epic trilogy, the patriarch of the Clampett clan leaves Beverly Hills in a journey back to his ancestral homeland. (Andrew Hoenig, Rockville) And from 2017: FILM QUIPS: REIMAGINED MOVIE PLOTS FROM WEEK 1247 In Week 1247 we asked you to reinterpret a movie title with a line from your “script.” Number of fart jokes submitted about a reimagined “Gone With the Wind”: 30. 4th place: 12 Years a Slave: “No, Olivia, I don’t think it’s unfair that I expect you to help with the dishes and keep your room clean.” (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.) 3rd place: The Pelican Brief: “And the pouch on our design will be so much roomier than Fruit of the Looms. We'll make a fortune!” (Larry Gray, Union Bridge, Md.) 2nd place and the book “Who Farted”: Notting Hill: “We will not fix health care. We will not fix immigration. We will not fix infrastructure. We will not fix taxes . . . " (Jesse Frankovich, Grand Ledge, Mich.) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: A Man Called Horse: “No, Mr. President, that is only half of what they call you.” (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.) Snubplots: Honorable mentions Three Days of the Condor: “More leftovers of this stuff? Why can't Mom cook turkey for Thanksgiving like everyone else?” (Elden Carnahan, Laurel, Md.; Mark Richardson, Takoma Park, Md.) Boyz N the Hood: “Grand Wizard Duke, sir? I think we could broaden our appeal to, uh, less rural guys by calling ourselves something a little more hip. I have a suggestion . . . " (Danielle Nowlin) The Thin Red Line: “Confirming the suspicions of many riders, we have discovered that portions of the Metro were built out of tinfoil.” (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) Full Metal Jacket: “Now that one really suits you, Mr. 3PO.” (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) In the Heat of the Night: “When your air conditioning goes out, call me: Mr. Tibbs.” (Howard Walderman, Columbia, Md.) For Your Eyes Only: “You know, you really shouldn't drink Visine.” (Jesse Frankovich) The Shawshank Redemption: “I'm going to the pawnshop to get my shawshank back.” (Gary Crockett) Stand and Deliver: “She's in labor! How can this hospital have no empty beds?” (Mark Prysant, Silver Spring, Md.) The Cider House Rules: “Man oh man, this is one awesome cider house.” (Duncan Stevens) The 39 Steps: “Where's that stupid hex wrench? Sheez, I don't think we'll ever get this bookshelf together . . ."(Larry Gray) The 400 Blows: “Sure, the Model 300 is underwhelming, but if you think the 300 sucks, believe me . . .” (Frank Mullen III, Aledo, Ill.) Apocalypse Now: “But Mr. President, don’t you think we should confer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff first?” (Danielle Nowlin) Around the World in 80 Days: “Mr. Fogg, United has the best baggage system in the industry. I guarantee your bag will be returned very soon.” (Jonathan Hardis, Gaithersburg, Md.) Bridge of Spies: “You see, the microphone device fits right here inside the dental material . . .” (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) Captain Phillips: “Lieutenant Flathead, it looks like we're really screwed — unless the Captain turns up in time.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Chain Reaction: “He told me it was 14-karat, but look! It turned my neck green!” (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) Clueless: “Well, I don't know, was it Professor Plum in the ballroom with the candlestick? You tell me — I'm just the caterer.” (Colin Schatz, Oakland, Calif.) Free Willy: “In sports news, we have to pixelate the results of the men’s marathon in Slovakia . . .” (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) Hidden Figures: “Do you really think you'll have any success selling burqas in Beverly Hills?” (Bird Waring, Larchmont, N.Y.) Hidden Figures: “I want to know why all the people in that yuge inauguration crowd didn't show up in the photos!” (Nancy Della Rovere, Silver Spring, Md.) How to Train Your Dragon: “Well, it'll depend on what works for you. For me, thinking of baseball does the trick, though in an emergency you could think of Grandma in her swimsuit.” (Danielle Nowlin) Invasion of the Body Snatchers: “I'm sorry, sir, but the dressing room is for pageant contestants only.” (Dave Matuskey, Sacramento) Love Actually: “Is it '15-zero' or '15-oh'?" (Jesse Frankovich) Mrs. Doubtfire: “Get real, Oog. You no expect me believe you make flames with two sticks.” (Jesse Frankovich) No Strings Attached: “If you walk out that door, Pinocchio, you are on your own!” (John McCooey, Rehoboth Beach, Del.) Strangers on a Train: “Watch it, you guys, you're standing on my bridal gown!” (John Hutchins, Silver Spring, Md.) The NeverEnding Story: “Sure, why not take another crack at Repeal and Replace?” (Bill Dorner, Indianapolis) The Thing: “Grandson, could you bring me over that . . . whatchamacallit . . .” (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.) There Will Be Blood: “It's just a garbage disposal, Sharon, how hard could it be to fix?” (Danny Wysong, Crozet, Va.) Wall-E: “And in the event that the Mexicans make it past my first four great, great walls . . .” (James Kruger, New York) Must Love Dogs: “No way! I'll do nudity, but I am not doing a scene like that!” (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) The Quiet Man: " .” (Larry Gray) Happily ever laughter*: The results of Week 1432 *Too-long-for-print non-inking headline by Beverley Sharp It’s hard to match the devilishly adorable “fairy tail reboots for adults” that 176-time Loser Melissa Balmain features in her new book of verse, “The Witch Demands a Retraction,” but then we have our Loserbards, who stepped up to our contest inspired by the book but broadened to include nursery rhymes and children’s books and songs, and mini-stories as well as poems. Melissa’s signed copy goes to second-place Loser Frank Osen, but if you order the book and email her at melissa.balmain@rochester.edu (or message her on Facebook), she’ll be happy to sign a bookplate — and dedicate it to a fellow Loser, if that’s the case — and send it to you so that you can paste it on the inside cover. It’s the second Clowning Achievement in just five weeks for Gary Crockett — his 17th win all time — who seems to have quickened his lope to a sprint to the gate of the 500-ink Style Invitational Hall of Fame, his win plus two honorable mentions this week put him at 494 blots. Now that the CDC has announced that if you’re vaccinated among vaccinated people, you are TOTALLY FREE TO PARTAY indoors or out, and show off your new lipstick to boot, I would be thrilled to congratulate Gary in front of his pee-ers later this year at a Loser function. Since we haven’t gathered since our last Loser celebration — the Post-Holiday Party of January 2020 — except for a couple of outdoor outings in Gettysburg, Pa., I’m awfully eager to get back to our regular schedule of monthly brunches and especially the Flushies, our annual awards potluck and singalong, which was supposed to happen last June at Chez Sam Mertens at his family’s house-on-acreage in Montgomery County, Md. Last time I talked to Sam, he was still game, so what do you say, Loser Party Organizers and Guests? Gary’s winning entry, once again refuting my prediction that I wouldn’t want to continue our emphasis on The Former Occupant: Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, Kissed the girls and made them cry. Then he made them go away Encumbered by an NDA. (But richer by one-thirty K.) Hildy Zampella went for the yuck-yuk in her Mary Had a Little Lamb* Little Bo Peep tie-in, while Alex Steelsmith elegantly paraphrased the Little Dutch Boy story with a zinger at the end. What Doug Dug: He’s back! After working part time while recovering from that pesky heart attack, Ace Copy Editor is back with us to read the Invite most Wednesdays, and to weigh in with his favorites. This week Doug enjoyed Gary’s winner as well as Frank Osen’s runner-up “Emperor’s New Clothiers” among the honorable mentions he singled out David Young’s socialist Jesus (I hope people don’t complain about my including the Bible under “folk tales”), Gary Crockett’s allegorical mini-story about the boy who cried wolf “because there was a wolf,” and almost-newbie Kate Baughman’s tale of the Little Mermaid who found that losing her voice was just fine, once she learned she sounded alternatively like Gilbert Gottfried, Christopher Walken and Ringo Starr. Great Minds etc.: Both Rob Cohen and Jesse Frankovich had poems about Rapunzel’s golden tresses turning out to be armpit hair. Which reminded Doug of this classic Don Martin cartoon from Mad Magazine (you have to click because I don’t have the rights to reproduce it here). Here’s Rob’s: The man called, “Rapunzel! Let down your long hair So that I may climb up your golden stair” But when he ascended, much to his alarm He found her hair sprouted from under her arm. And Jesse’s Your Mama joke: If Your Mama were trapped in a tower, By a suitor she soon would be saved— He'd just climb up her locks to her bower, For her armpits have never been shaved. What a bad boy are you! Unprintables from Week 1432 While the Invitational has run humor more than once alluding to Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s bawdy rap song “WAP,” I didn’t think this would make it past the Taste Police: Pussycat, pussycat, what’s your locale? Hangin’ with Cardi and Megan Thee Stall. Pussycat, what sort of stuff there was voiced? They’re writing a song that got me all moist. (Duncan Stevens, who did supply alternative wording but it didn’t get ink anyway) And certainly not this, by Tom Witte: Cardi, Cardi, saucy and hardy, How does your garden grow? With slippery swells that parallel, And nectar all aflow. Not to mention this one, also by Witte (I didn’t even have to check) Jack Sprat enjoyed some “cat.” His missus relished “peen.” And thus, this very happy pair Would lick each other clean. ====================================================================== WEEK 1437, published May 23, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1437: We’re emerging! The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s new contest and results, and the Losers’ resumed 'social engorgements" Image without a caption John Hurt and emerging li'l monster in the “chestburster” scene from the 1979 movie “Alien.” In Style Invitational Week 1433, Loser Steve Honley saw the sentence in the paper "“It really has to come from within” and wrote the question “What lesson does the crew in the 'Alien' spaceship learn the hard way?” (20th Century Fox) By Pat Myers May 22, 2021 at 1:37 p.m. EDT Add to list Before we talk about this week’s contest and results, I wanted to share some good if still tentative news: It seems that we can wipe the dust off the calendar of Our Social Engorgements: an eventual return of our monthly Loser Brunches and, most noteworthy, the Flushies — our annual summer awards lunch and singalong. We’re looking at, probably, UPDATED ON MAY 22: SATURDAY, SEPT. 18, rather than the hotter “Saturday afternoon in July sometime after the Fourth,” at the house-on-acreage of Loser Sam Mertens and his family, near New Hampshire Avenue in the outer reaches of Silver Spring (but still just 12 miles or so north of the Beltway). The Mertenses were all set to host a Loser brunch in April 2020, as a dry run for the Flushies that June. He was going to be crowned Loser of the Year, too! But then, you know. Now they’re vaccinated, we’re vaccinated. (Their kids aren’t vaccinated but repeatedly have tested negative at their school.) And we can be mostly outdoors, weather permitting. Grand Loser Vizier (I just made that one up) Elden Carnahan took a look at Chez Mertens last year and deemed it eminently Flushiesworthy. If you’d like to help work up songs — we’ll be honoring Sam as well as the new Loser of the Year Jonathan Jensen — or help with other aspects of planning, contact elden [dot] carnahan [at] gmail [dot] com, and we’ll get a group together on Facebook so we don’t have 200 emails going on. I’ll let you know which date to save as soon as possible. I’d think it’d be fine for unvaccinated kids to come if they’re masked. A screechy bug in the ointment — but it’s not a biggie Currently, the entry form for Week 1435, the contest to make funny art with at least one real cicada or nymph casing — is not transmitting photos properly. As of May 19, I’ve contacted everyone who submitted photos and asked them to send them instead by email attachment at pat.myers@washpost.com, along with something like “MY CICADA ENTRY” in the subject line. I’ve also put this notice in the entry form itself, and I’ll take it back out if the problem gets fixed. Also include whatever text you want to accompany your photos, as well as your postal address, if you’d like me to send you a prize. If you’re just sending alternative headlines and subheads, you can send them through the form in the usual way. Do note that you haven’t sent photos, so I won’t be worried that they’re missing. Last week’s cold snap made me worry that we might have to extend the submission deadline because the cicadas’ emergence was delayed, but now it’s 90 degrees in Washington and it shouldn’t be hard to score a few of the guys. (Please try to use already deceased ones, or the casings; I’m seeing them all over my neighborhood’s streets.) Fat-fingered fun: The Week 1437 neologism contest I’m always looking for some new way to trot out yet another chance to make up words based on other words and thus metastasize the Loser Lexicon even further. and so I was intrigued by the “typo” parameters that Hadn’t Been Heard From Since Week 62 Gabe Goldberg suggested: to add or substitute a letter that’s adjacent on a standard keyboard to the pertinent letter. And for Week 1437 I tossed in the option to double the letter, since that’s also in the “typo” realm. Gabe included a good example, but I’ll let him send it in for the contest. ADVERTISING “This is a GREAT idea for a contest,” exulted our cartoonist Bob Staake, who, to understate the case, does not usually adore the ideas I send him. In fact, he soon produced a list of examples, including today’s “hurrito.” (Some of Bob’s clever but thoroughly uncartoonable ideas: Po’goy — a shellfish-free sandwich popular in New Orleans’s Jewish Quarter; F’artagnan — The original Fourth Musketeer who didn’t make the “cut”; “Bone With the Wind”: “Frankly, my dear, I have no desire to [redacted] on a breezy day.” For other examples, I searched the archives from Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List and All Invitational Text for neologisms that would work for Week 1437. In addition to the three I used at the top of the contest — Streeptococcus, Goodzilla and Sayonada, I found some other gems: Hillary Rodham Clingon: The First Lady’s latest hairstyle. It features massive centerline part held in place with black spray paint. (Harold Mantle, from the Invite’s first change-a-letter contest, Week 19 in 1993) A Place Called Nope: Bill Clinton’s Washington. (Peter A. Molinaro, from that same contest) It was God’s swill: Rationalization for jumping off the wagon. (Harold Walderman) Aliass: A body double for a nude scene. (Tom Witte) Bilk of Rights: The Patriot Act. (Greg McGrew) Boobboo: A small scar left by breast surgery. (Fred Souk) Editore: Edited. (Peter Metrinko) Eohoppus: A prehistoric kangaroo. (Brendan Beary) Exhillaration: What Monica almost caused in Bill. (Peter Metrinko) Experdition: The journey to hell. (Martin Bancroft; Mae Scanlan) Take the money and rub: madam-to-celebrities Heidi Fleiss (Sarah Worcester in a contest to change a quote by one letter) Coke up and see me sometime: D.C. Mayor Marion Barry (Tom Witte, same contest) I’m confident that you’ll be able to come up with lots more. Note: None of the examples above include using the word in a funny sentence; that tack is welcome, often earning the ink when several people send in the same general idea. Question mocks*: The results of Week 1433 *A headline that got ink in 2016 for Kevin Dopart Our Questionable Journalism contests — first appearing in 1998 — have never failed to produce lots of laughs in its context-switching of sentences from the paper, and the results of Week 1433 keep the streak going gloriously. As usual, the sentences that worked best for this contest tended to be ones whose real context was clear, or at least not puzzling: You immediately grasp the military context of “The withdrawal is set to begin on Friday and will be completed by May 1,” which makes you laugh even more at Leif Picoult’s “timeline for the final stage of the nonagenarians’ marriage consummation.” Leif, by the way, has been an Invite phenom of late: After her debut in Week 1401 she didn’t ink again for 12 more weeks — but then, boom: Week 1425, Week 1428, three inks in Week 1431 and now again in 1433. Are we looking at the future Rookie of the Year? Another notable ink-getter of late: Stu Segal blotted up all these inks from the Invite’s earliest days — starting in Week 4, when he was a runner-up, and continuing a run that included two wins and other above-the-fold ink until he suddenly dropped out of Invite-sight after Week 138 in 1995. Then a couple of months ago, I got this note attached to entries for Week 1424: “Hi Pat — I’m back after a 20+ year hiatus (no — not a chronic disease). Unfortunately, I had to spend time at the Will Shortz Clinic for Puzzle Addiction (‘You are the solution !’) and was away from problem-solving for a number of years, colloquially referred to as ’15 down.' “Back in the day, when The Style Invitational first starting sending out RSVPs, I actually gave the infamous Chuck Smith a run for his money for a time and acquired the concurrent ‘shabby notoriety’ (as your then predecessor called it) that comes from winning several Invitationals.” Stu got ink that very week, and since then in Week 1426, Week 1427 and now today: “A. I shouldn’t have to be afraid to express myself. Q. Why do you care that you’re not allowed to use USPS as a transportation option?” Keep it coming, Leif and Stu. And I’d love it if you’d both join the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, so you’d get to know the Loser Community. And come to the Flushies as well. And it’s a former phenom, 2019 Rookie of the Year Jon Ketzner, who wins his first Clowning Achievement, and his second Invite win, with his reinterpretation of a line about the Oscar-winning “Nomadland” — “That was Frances McDormand having explosive diarrhea in a plastic bucket on a van” as “Q. What was the worst act on “Celebrity America’s Got Talent”?” Jon’s a pretty salty guy, and for a while he got more ink in the Conversational’s “unprintables” section than in the Invite itself. But he’s figured out that filter, and now he’s up to — aw, wouldn’t you know it — 69 inks. The rest of the Loser’s Circle are all Usual suspects: Jeff Contompasis and Beverley Sharp are both in the Invite Hall of Fame with well over 500 blots of ink each, and Gary Crockett is just about there with his key card: According to the Loser Stats, Gary’s second place and “And Even Laster” this week bring him up to 496 blots. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood singled out Kevin Mettinger’s entry for “This is a moral imperative, an economic imperative. A moment of peril, but also a moment of extraordinary possibilities,” identified as how 10-year-old Bill Clinton asked for lunch money. Doug also especially liked Stephen Dudzik’s about the “fortress of pillows and blankets in the guest room,” how Mrs. Mike Lindell expressed problems in their marriage; Chris Doyle’s about masks repurposed as pantyliners — for a sentence about how the no-longer-needed items are found “in drawers”; John McCooey’s “3,000 chips in a car,” which is what you hear crunching in a minivan — that was my pick among numerous similar “chip” entries — and Duncan Stevens’s “The dude was wrong” as an example of the new way to write appellate court rulings. Extra-Questionable*: The Unprintables: (*Headline suggested by Duncan Stevens) Among the entries that wouldn’t pass the Style Invitational taste test (or whose writers specifically asked they not be used where decorous people might see them) — but we figure that if you’ve read this far, you know what you’re in for. (If you don’t like bad taste, please stop reading now!) A: Midway down the shaft, the walls took on a honeycomb pattern, with large shelves carved into them. Q: What were some of the unfortunate side effects of taking Viagra? (John Kammer) A: The “P,” it goes without saying, is silent. Q: Mitch McConnell, would you say that Marjorie Taylor Greene is the Republican “hope” for the midterm elections? (Kevin Dopart) A. Make sure you and your partner are on the same page. Q. What’s good advice for a congressional ménage à trois? (Chris Doyle) A, The doctor’s bag now sits in his closet gathering dust. Q. What became of the surgeon’s berries after the scalpel slipped? (Jon Gearhart) A. My crawl space is always wet even though I have a dehumidifier and a sump pump down there. Q. What kind of synonyms do embarrassed women use in describing being at Brad Pitt movies? (Chuck Smith) Uh-huh. ====================================================================== WEEK 1438, published May 30, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1438: The old college try The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s contest and results Image without a caption 1983 Kentucky Derby winner Sunny's Halo (1980-2003) the son of Halo and Mostly Sunny. I asked the Losers for more Invitey alternatives to that foal name; my faves were Corona Light, and Sunny and Cherub. (Domino Stud) By Pat Myers May 27, 2021 at 5:50 p.m. EDT First, a quick update from last week’s Style Conversational: If you rushed breathlessly to read it as soon as it was published, you’d have missed it when I announced in an update that this year’s Flushies awards picnic — last year’s was of course canceled — would be not in July, as I’d stated last Thursday, but on the presumably much cooler Saturday afternoon, Sept. 18. It will still be at the Manse of the Mertenses — Loser Sam and his obliging family — in outer Silver Spring, Md., where one can have a six-acre property and raise chickens. Save the date! (And see below for some more Social Engorgements this summer.) And … they’re offspring!* The ‘grandfoals’ of Week 1434 *By Tom Witte and Stephen Dudzik from the 2013 grandfoals contest The results of Week 1434, this year’s “grandfoal” name contest, are full of the zingy pun-on-pun action that the spinoff challenge has delivered every year since I first ran it in 2007. The 64 entries that got ink this week could be followed by another 64 that were almost just as good. Though they numbered barely half of the Part 1 “foal” contest four weeks earlier, the 2,126 valid entries (plus 200-some headline ideas, etc.) from 211 entrants once again made it among the most popular Invite contests of the year, at least for the “breeders.” And thanks again to the skills of Selfless Sorter Jonathan Hardis, I was able to enjoy the wit of the entries without being overwhelmed by them, as I used to be in the early years. (Since neither Jonathan nor I see the entrants’ names until I make my choices and then look them up, Jonathan’s free to send his own entries — which got him a blot of ink this time around.) One foal name in particular amused Jonathan as he ran his sorting* cleanup* fixed-your-misspelling program: School Near Boston, bred by First Offender Michael Doyle from Harvard x Classier; “I went to school near Boston” is a well-known way to humbly — or more likely humblebraggardly — say you’re from Harvard. “As an MIT alumnus,” Jonathan told me, “I noticed that MIT was frequently punned for ‘School Near Boston’ — and often in unflattering ways.” In fact, of the 91 grandfoals sired by (or born to — who can say?) SNB, 30 of them referenced his alma mater. None of them ended up getting ink, but this one was on my VeryShortListTM: School Near Boston x Polar Espresso = DeMITasse (Steve Fahey, an alum of … Harvard Medical School) ADVERTISING Among the others: Clothes Encounters x School Near Boston = Hem I. T. School Near Boston x 0 Pesos = AdMIT Nothing Parasite x School Near Boston = MITe (from several people) E. F’n T. x School Near Boston = DamMIT School Near Boston x E. F’n T. = M. I. F’n T. School Near Boston x Genial Herpes = Catchers MIT School Near Boston x Hammer and Sicko = sMIThereens School Near Boston x In Tents = MITeepee School Near Boston x Marlin Blando = MIT Romney School Near Boston x Suite, Marriott = MITt Roomney But MIT didn’t get all the (non-) ink. Here are some other Schools Near Boston puns: Harvard (14 in all) School Near Boston x 0 Pesos = The Hahv-Nots School Near Boston x CruMBS = Ivy Meager School Near Boston x Hammer and Sicko = VeriTASS Rhapsody in Red x School Near Boston = Crimsong Tufts School Near Boston x Dodger = OK, it’s Tufts (NOT by Tufts alumnus Jeff Contompasis) School Near Boston x Fly Like an Emu = Tufts of Air Boston University School Near Boston x It’s All Over = BU Hoo Replaceable You x School Near Boston = It Had to BU Hammer and Sicko x School Near Boston = Vladimir BUtin UMass School Near Boston x Outamind = UMass Hysteria School Near Boston x Passed Gas = PhewMass Brandeis School Near Boston x Bitter Inside = Brandeis Sour School Near Boston x Polar Espresso = Brand Ice Berklee College of Music Joe Ban Jo x School Near Boston = Banned in Berklee Wile E. Peyote x School Near Boston = Buzzed B. Berklee Others Wellesley: School Near Boston x On Pyrite Pond = Oars 'n' Wellesley Boston College: Passed Gas x School Near Boston = Tooty Flutie Northeastern: Polar Espresso x School Near Boston = NorthByNortheastrn And from the geography-impaired …. Brown (Providence, R.I.): It’s All Over x School Near Boston = Blown University UConn, 85 miles from Boston: Passed Gas x School Near Boston = Smells Groton Notre Dame (presumably the one in South Bend, Ind.): School Near Boston x It’s All Over = Notre Doom None of those grandfoals got ink for School Near Boston, but nonspecific one did: Replaceable You x School Near Boston = Replaceable U. (Eric Nelkin) SNB’s 91 foals didn’t make him the busiest sire out there; even more fertile were Elvis Pretzley (92), Parasite and Bitter Inside (96 each), Genial Herpes (103), It’s All Over (153) and — this will surprise approximately 0.0 percent of Invite readers — Passed Gas, with 169 foals. While the above entries were all fine and some very good, the four names in today’s Losers’ Circle were Triple Crown-level: Crowning Achievement winner Jonathan Paul (HaberDasher x It’s All Over = RIP What You Sew) has gotten ink in almost every Style Invitational horse name contest, and this is the fifth time he’s won one (along with 20 other victories). At least some of them, like today’s, were chosen totally blindly. Jon just does the horse contests these days, but in the early Invite years, until the early 2000s, he blotted up almost 400 inks. He also got two honorable mentions today: Waning Gretzky x Can’tata = Penalty Bachs and It’s All Over x Cuff Lynx = You’reUnderAWrist Hall of Famers Mark Raffman and Jesse Frankovich each got their umpteenth above-the-fold inks with topical references: Mark going after evil Mohammed bin Salman with CruMBS x Lip Loch = Ruthless Ness, Jesse with Dodger x Outamind = Ducker Carlson. And it’s the 33rd blot of ink, and third trip to the Losers’ Circle, for J.D. Berry, who had the made-me-laugh Widespread Luting x TamingOfTheShroom = PlayThatFungiMusic. What Doug Doug: The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood came from the honorable mentions: Bitter Inside x Suite, Marriott = Vicious Roomer (Larry Gray) Bye, George x Merch Madness = Buy, George! (Eric Nelkin, Larry Gray) Merch Madness x Parasite = Buy 1 Get 1 Flea (Eric Nelkin, J.D. Berry) TimeKeepsOnSlippin x Rhapsody in Red = Into the Fuchsia (Jeff Rackow — I bet that Doug also liked that Jeff spelled “Fuchsia” correctly) Wile E. Peyote x Bitter Inside = Acme If I Care (J.D. Berry) Marlin Blando x Passed Gas = Smella! (Chris Doyle) Ballooney Tunes x IGotRhythmMethod = The Wabbit Died (Mia Wyatt) And both names to improve on Sunny’s Halo for Halo x Mostly Sunny: Corona Light and Sunny and Cherub (variously by Jesse Frankovich, Pam Sweeney, Bill Verkuilen) THE NERDIEST ENTRY EVER? This was submitted as a grandfoal name by Kevin Krist, who did get ink with “Amal Alone.” I print it verbatim without further comment. PassedGas + HaberDasher = JustSayNO2Ammonia (Okay, I’ll explain: PassedGas is a reference to an anesthesiologist, often called a “gas passer,” who uses Nitrous Oxide (N2O), while Haber is a reference to Fritz Haber, a German chemist who won the Noble Prize in 1918 for his invention of a process for synthesizing ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen gas. And, yes, I realize it has exactly zero chance of inking, but it was too good not to include. And by “good,” I mean “esoteric.” You’re welcome….) Okay, one further comment: This could not have gotten ink because “Nobel” is misspelled. Do you think we’ll get any lawyer jokes? This week’s contest, Week 1438, is the latest in our long series of fictoid contests — spoofs of trivia lists, books, games, etc. I’m having trouble coming up with categories we haven’t done (though I have another one waiting), so I was happy when 277-time Loser (and host of the all-things-Invitational podcast “You’re Invited”) Mike Gips suggested this one about the legal world. For guidance and inspiration, I’m going to direct you to the Trivia-contest index of Elden Carnahan’s comprehensive Master Contest List. Starting with Week 739 in 2007, it lists some 20 contests looking for fake trivia on movies, politicians, medicine, cars, fashion, animals et cetera et cetera et cetera. On each row are links to the contest announcement and to the results, either in plain text or a PDF of the print page, and often a PDF of the Web version as well. You’ll get it, and you’ll have enjoyed a very nice time suck. Deadline is Monday, June 7. See Live Losers Walking Around and Eating! Except for a couple of lunch-and-tours up in Gettysburg last fall and this past spring, the Losers’ calendar of “Our Social Engorgements” has, of course, been empty. But we’re slowly emerging from our caves, with at least two events before the Sept. 18 Flushies: — July 4 weekend: Alex Blackwood, my co-admin (and by now, my soulmate) of the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, is coming to D.C. from Houston for an unrelated all-day event in Alexandria on Thursday, July 1, but then will hang around on July 2 and 3. She’ll be staying with us here in Mount Vermin, and of course she’s eager to meet the Losers and Devotees she’s gotten to know through the Invite. While it’s going to be hard (for me, anyway) to organize a whole slate of large-group activities, we can figure on a lunch or dinner on that Saturday, and perhaps set up a few other things with small groups. Suggestions on an informal, easy-to-order place (pizza? beer garden?) where we won’t be crowded are welcome. — Aug. 21 or 22: As a dry run for the Flushies, a Loser Brunch potluck also Chez Mertens. Anyone who’s interested in the Invite — and if you’ve read this far, that has to include you — is invited to all Loser events. They’re always very mellow and are not Algonquin Round Table quip competitions. You eat, you schmooze, and at the Flushies and January party, you sing along. I’ll be besieging you with reminders in this space in the coming months. ====================================================================== WEEK 1439, published June 6, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1439: The Brood X-hibition The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s cicada art and new wordplay contest Image without a caption The cicada emergence seems to have reached Indianapolis, to judge from Hoosier Loosier Bill Dorner's entry for Week 1435. (Bill Dorner) By Pat Myers June 3, 2021 at 4:09 p.m. EDT 0 Gotta love them bugs! Yesterday a cicada landed on my head while I was walking down the street; the night before, I encountered one caught inside my sleeve when I put on a jacket. But no one was happier than I to see all those exoskeletons and live insects appear in time for our Week 1435 contest for dioramas and other “art” featuring real cicadas from Brood X of 2021. (I’m already reserving space for Page 12 for the June 2038 Arts & Style section.) My apologies to those of you whose ears are not besieged 24 hours a day with a insectile drone and had no critter or critter parts to work with; in 2038 I will magnanimously let you substitute cockroaches. Clever, clever — and even pretty cute (sorta) — stuff this week, from the detailed dioramas like Lani and Eleanor Jacobson’s re-creation of the furniture-barricade scene in “Les Miz” to Lee Graham’s bug and a Photoshopped boot in front of a photo of a castle for “Inigo Cicada” — “You squished my father.” And the so, so Invitey gross-out humor of Kevin Dopart’s “Creeps” snack, perhaps the only thing less appetizing than the crusted-over tennis-ball-yellow confection whose name it spoofs. The four entries scored this week by Kevin, sometimes with his wife, Deborah Hensley, are but perhaps a fourth of the dioramas and other photos he submitted. I’ll invite Kevin — and the rest of you — to post your “noinks” in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, so that at least 2,000 people on your humor wavelength can get a look. Use the hashtag #cicada in your post so that other members can find it easily. (If you’re not yet a member, just answer the application questions, so we know you understand what the Invite is, and the Devotees will anagram your name so ridiculously that you’ll wish the Witness Protection Program had given you a different one.) Oh, goodness, I just realized that while this is the THIRTY-THIRD time that Kevin has won a Style Invitational contest, it’s his first Clowning Achievement: He’s scored the 21st of our 100 Clowners. Since Deborah gets joint credit for the “Et tu, BroodX” stabbing scene, they’ll have to fight it out for ownership of the Disembodied Clown Head on a Stick. Meanwhile, second-place Lee Graham will be receiving a brand-new can of Korean silkworm pupae in a brownish sauce. I bought a can for myself as well at the Lotte supermarket in Northern Virginia, and — after unusual hesitation for me — tried them. They were truly bad. I will eat almost anything (exception: Peeps), but these I finally threw out. Maybe Lee will like them. I apologize for the 15-second ad you had to watch to see the online photo gallery; if it’s any consolation, I have seen that ad about 25 times today as we worked out a series of technical tweaks this morning. This week I had to suspend my usual rigorous practice of hiding the names of the entrants until I was finished judging; a bug in the entry form required most people to email me their photos directly, and I also had to contact some Losers about technical or other tweaks. So this week only, if you didn’t get ink, it is indeed because I’m prejudiced against your gender and*or religion. Try again next week. Some of the entries were the product of painstaking craftsmanship — with the emphasis on “pain,” if other entrants agree with 334-time Loser Craig Dykstra, who told me: “Working with them is more disgusting than eating them. [He’d gone to a restaurant that was offering them.] Eating them in a taco, you don’t have to touch them, or pry their little wings apart, or separate their little legs, or look into their little red eyes, or see their butts fall off (that happens), etc. Ick. I feel like I need a Pulp Fiction-style hose-down.” Craig also was a devoted entrant of The Post’s Peeps diorama contest, and was featured twice (and really robbed of ink one year with a truly amazing Escher-like tower); and his Invite “die-orama” this year featured a flock of hapless Peep-chicks being devoured, starting with the face, by a swarm of cicadas. Others were more, oh, cerebral. One person sent a photo of just a cicada on a leaf with the line “I just caught the redeye from L.A. to D.C.” What Doug Dug: “All of them were really inspired,” Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood told me; this time Doug saw the whole gallery rather than just the entries for the print page (eight this week). His very favorites were Kevin Dopart’s “Creeps” package, Todd DeLap’s “Metamorphosis” parody and Sara and Ziva Walsh’s Zoom classroom. Limping down the homestretch If your grandfoal got ink last week but you haven’t received your magnet yet, it wouldn’t be right to blame Louis DeJoy this time: I’m still working on the Week 1434 letters; I vow to finish them and get them into the mail tonight. Then you can blame DeJoy. Har replacement*: Week 1439, our new Vowel Movement contest *2016 headline for the first round of this contest, by Beverley Sharp Sometimes, people suggest contests to me that are more like word puzzles than humor fodder, sort of the challenges that Will Shortz serves up on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday.” It might be a fun little problem to solve — but will Washington Post readers be entertained when they look at half a page of results? I think this week’s contest, Week 1439, serves both purposes: There’s the nerdy challenge of removing all the vowels from a name — this time, song titles — then adding in different vowels to make a different title, perhaps wittily related to the first one. But also the opportunity to be really funny and current. It certainly was in its initial airing in 2016, when the subject was movie or TV titles. Here are the results from the Week 1155 contest to change movie titles (January 2016, so we’re already deep into Trump). Note how many, though not all, of the altered titles reflect the originals in some way. 4th place: “The Art of the Deal” → take out the vowels and get THRTFTHDL → add vowels and get “I, the Rat Fathead, Lie”: Confessions of a demagogue. (George-Ann Rosenberg, Washington) 3rd place: “Annie Hall” → “Ennui Hill”: While sitting through endless congressional debates, two staffers make eye contact and find love. (Howard Walderman, Columbia, Md.) 2nd place and the jaunty shell sculpture of a conga player: “The Interview” → “The Nature View”: Satire about two wildlife photographers who sneak across the DMZ to shoot an elusive North Korean cuckoo. (Christopher Lamora, Arlington, Va.) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: “Much Ado About Nothing” → “A Much-Eyed Booty in a Thong”: Kim and Kanye play Beatrice and Benedick on Broadway. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) E: IOUA Magnet: honorable mentions “Alice’s Restaurant” → “Alec’s Restraint”: Baldwin orders the diet plate, doesn’t get everything he wants. (George-Ann Rosenberg) “Emma” → “Ammo”: At the next theater over, an alternative for guys who’ve been dragged to see a chick flick. (Nancy Della Rovere, Silver Spring, Md.) “The Hangover” → “The Hung Oeuvre”: A documentary exploring the male nude in statuary. (Steve Honley, Washington) “Chinatown” → “Chin Twin”: Jay Leno meets a brother he never knew existed. (Paul Comstock, Lancaster, Pa., a First Offender) “Amadeus” → “Mad U.S.”: It’s subtitled “The Making of the President 2016.” (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.) “Big” → “Bag”: At a carnival, a 12-year-old girl makes a wish to be older. (Deb Stewart, Damascus, Md.) “Blazing Saddles” → “Blue Ozone Gas Doodles”: Estranged scientists come together as Earth’s stratosphere comes apart. (David Friedman, Arlington, Va.) “Bonanza” → “Bunnz”: A hunky father and his three hunky sons maintain excellent gluteal muscle tone through endless hours of horseback riding. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) “Candide” → “Cyanided”: Voltaire’s story of an eternal optimist, updated: “If this is the best of all possible worlds, then …” (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) “Chasing Amy” → “Aches Nag Me”: A going-of-age story. (David Friedman) “Love Story” → “Elvis Eatery”: Oliver orders Jenny a peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich, and boy is he sorry. (Chris Doyle) “Masters of the Universe” → “Mis-tiaras of the Universe”: Starring Steve Harvey as Emcee-Man. (Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.) “Eat Pray Love” → “Tip or Leave”: A woman learns two things the world wants most from Americans. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) “Taxi Driver” → “Tuxed Rover”: Story of an embittered, nihilistic, wandering penguin. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) “The Honeymooners” → “The Hiney Miners”: Adventures of a hospital colonoscopy team. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) “The Vagina Monologues” → “The Vegan Menu Logs”: A play in which A-list actresses rant for 2½ hours about their struggles to find tofu burgers. (Christopher Lamora) “Titanic” → “Ta-ta on Ice”: Same movie. (Jesse Frankovich) “8mm” → “8 Muumuu”: Detective Nicolas Cage is hired by a woman to hunt for a medium-size housedress that doesn’t make her look fat. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) “High Noon” → “HGH! No! No!”: A missive from the Peyton Manning Fan Club. (Matt Monitto, Bristol, Conn.; Tom Witte) “Bambi” → “Bambo”: This stag is out for revenge. (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.) “Hook” → “Ahoy, Okay?” Peter Pan makes nice with a notorious pirate. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) “Hoosiers” → “He’s Ours”: A basketball coach in rural Indiana employs ringers to help his team. “Shaquille? Oh, he just moved here in August … Mikey Jordan? Yeah, him too” (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) “Gypsy” → “GPS”: A stripper and her stage mother struggle to find themselves. (Brendan Beary) “It Happened One Night” → “The Pope: Nude ’n’ Naughty”: The film the Vatican wants to suppress. (Chris Doyle) “Left Behind” → “Left by Honda”: As the Apocalypse nears, a group of believers miss the last ride to the Rapture when their Civic hatchback makes a wrong turn. (Roy Ashley, Washington) “Network” → “Not War, OK?” “I know we’re mad as hell, but let’s all just chill out.” (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.) “Pulp Fiction” → “Plop of Caution”: This time, John Travolta’s character doesn’t leave his rifle outside the door while he does his business. (Mike Gips) “Roger and Me” → “Our Ego Ruined ’Em”: A doc about Roger Smith and his city — and Michael Moore and his films. (Ellen Ryan, Rockville, Md.) “Scorpion” → “Is Crap, No?”: French hosts review all things American. (William Verkuilen, Brooklyn Park, Minn.) “Smokey and the Bandit” → “Smokey and the Bond-It”: A heap o’ hoot’n trouble rollicks through the county when someone glues the sheriff’s wheels to the pavement. (Barbara Turner) “Stand by Me” → “Satan Aide Obama”: Rush Limbaugh’s book on how the president does the Devil’s bidding. (Jesse Frankovich) “Star Trek” → “Astro Trike”: No one wants to be the test pilot for the Enterprise’s new “right-sized” shuttle craft. (Bill Lieberman, Ellicott City, Md.) “The King and I” → “The Kong and I”: In this legal drama, the Supreme Court upholds marriage between primates. (Howard Walderman) “Toy Story” → “Toaster”: In this heartwarming tale of a bagel’s risky adventures with an English muffin, Pixar finds yet another way to make a lot of bread. (Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.) “The Exorcist” → “The Exercist”: “Okay, give me 10 more head spins …” (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.) “Concussion” → “Concession”: The sequel the NFL will never make. (William Verkuilen) “The Apartment” → “The Part Monty”: A rom-com dodges an X-rating. (Chris Doyle) Take note: Just from writing the examples, I saw how easy it was to drop or add consonants accidentally from even a short title. I won’t be including the list of consonants in the results, except for the first entry or two to make it clear to the reader what we’re doing. But YOU should do it yourself, to make sure your entry is kosher. Note that there’s no rule that says you can’t drop one single vowel and put that same vowel back one letter over. But unless the product is incredibly funny and brilliant, it’s not as likely to get ink; it would be so much like our regular neologism contest, and not in the spirit of this one. A note about vowels: Technically, a vowel, by most definitions, is a sound that comes out of your mouth “without audible friction”; “ah” is a vowel sound, while the letter beginning “la” or “ba” or “yah” is a consonant. But if you hewed strictly to that definition, the “u” in “unicorn” — pronounced “you” — would be a consonant. And what if it’s silent and next to another vowel? So for this contest — which of course is an arbitrary game and not a linguistic study — A, E, I, O and U will always be vowels. You may add as many as you like into your new title, regardless of how they’re pronounced. But for Y and W, which are so often used as consonants, we will make a distinction: Those two letters are consonants in the many instances where they’re followed by another vowel in a syllable — “yes” or “want,” for example. And in that case, don’t take them out of the original. But when they’re not used that way — as in the Y in “Mary” or teamed with another vowel, either voiced or silently, as in “pay” or “why” or “few” or “snow,” then add them to your set of vowels to drop — AND don’t add them back in to use as a consonant. (I had to cut my original example of LAYLA to OL’ YELA because the Y in YELA is a consonant; I properly dropped the Y in LAYLA, but couldn’t add a consonant back.) It may be a worm-can-opening mistake for me to make this distinction, but it really does reflect the point of the contest. (Hair-tearing to commence in two weeks.) ‘X-hibition’ in the headline is from a non-inking headline by Tom Witte for this week’s Invitational. ====================================================================== WEEK 1440, published June 13, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1440: Start singin’ the news The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s parody contest and movie title results Image without a caption Keanu Reeves as John Wick. The franchise was replotted by many in Style Invitational Week 1436 as a guide to bathroom candles. (Lionsgate) By Pat Myers June 10, 2021 at 5:35 p.m. EDT 0 First this: Are you going to be in the D.C. area on Saturday afternoon, July 3? See the bottom of the column about our Loser*Devotee potluck picnic. I think I’d be thrilled to judge Style Invitational song parody contests every single week: The Loser Community — what I call the folks who enter the Invite regularly — produces such good material so consistently that my only disappointment is in denying ink to at least a dozen funny, beautifully crafted songs every time I run the contest, usually twice a year. And so I’m already eagerly awaiting the gems from this week’s contest, Week 1440. Our last parody contest, Week 1420 this past January, was for “work songs” for or about a particular profession, inspired by the TikTok-viral whaling song “Wellerman” — but, as in virtually every Invitational contest, topical, especially political humor trotted right into the results, as in Rob Cohen’s entry about the profession of GOP senator: I’ve been working in the fail mode All the livelong day I won’t vote for legislation Joe Biden sends my way … This time, though, there’s no theme to contrive to fit; just look at the headlines about events and trends of the current day. I’ll post the results on July 8, 10 days after the June 28 deadline, so hopefully your topic won’t be old news by then even by Twitter standards. Here’s a list of guidelines (which I’ve recycled in previous Conversationals) about what I’m looking for in a song parody for the Invitational — which, remember, runs in a shorter form in print, including the four top winners, in The Post’s Arts & Style section on Sundays. ● As with all Style Invitational song parody contests, we value flawless rhyming, even if the original rhymes loosely. And we’re a humor contest; witty wordplay (including, but not requiring, clever playing off the words of the original), a zingy ending and the avoidance of bitter anger — our word for this is “screediness” — are the paths to Invite ink. ● Because the Invitational is a contest that is read rather than listened to — especially, duh, in the print version — a reader has to easily figure out how your lyrics match the tune. The best way to know this is to show someone the lyrics and see if the person — without your help or cues — can figure out how to sing them. For the print page (which includes the four top winners), I’ll be choosing what I hope are very well known songs among at least a couple of generations. Online, I’ll include links to video or audio versions to the originals, and so less well known songs are welcome there. In either case, feel free to include the URL of a clip on YouTube or elsewhere whose music matches your lyrics. (Handy hint: To make a YouTube clip start playing at a certain point -- here’s an easier version than what I had before, thanks to Loser Suzanne Barnhill: 1. Play the video, then pause it at the spot where you want your viewer to see it. ADVERTISING 2. Click “SHARE" in the line of choices under the video screen and title. 3. This will produce a box with the URL (link) that you want to give me. Underneath the URL is a checkoff box that says “Start at 4:07” or whatever your starting point is. Check that. That will change the URL. 4. Click “copy” next to the URL. Then you can paste that along with your entry. Still, if this task proves confusing, don’t worry about it! ● In our Golden Era of Political Parody Videos, I’d love it if I could share your fabulously inkworthy parody as a performance, particularly if the lyrics are right there on the video — like this one by Sandy Riccardi in our Week 1287 parody contest (results here). If you send a link to a video, please also send the text of the lyrics. This terrific video by Jonathan Jensen — from our work song contest (“Capitol Police officer”) from this past winter — doesn’t use subtitles, but the singers sing so clearly it’s not necessary. It’s always good to put your lyrics as the first post in the comments section of your video, though. Still, the vast majority of the parodies I run are just lyrics without videos. That’s just fine! ● Our general rule with the Invitational is to run humor that hasn’t been published elsewhere. But I’ve made exceptions in cases where it hasn’t yet been distributed widely, or by another publication. Write me at pat.myers@washpost.com. about specific cases and I’ll make a ruling. ● Also, while I normally consider the Invite not to be a team sport, I don’t mind crediting two people for a single parody. ● Note that once again, I’m extending the usual deadline by a week — so you’ll have till Monday, June 28, to submit your parodies. If you’ve done a video and it’s ready for me to see earlier, drop me a line and I’ll have a look at it, in case I’d like you to tweak your lyrics. (My normally strict blind judging, in which I don’t see the writers’ names until I’ve chosen the winners, has to involve a little peeking in cases like this; don’t worry — even if I know and adore you personally, I won’t have any trouble at all denying you ink.) If you have any questions during the process — for example, “can I use this edgy word?” — feel free to ask me at pat.myers@washpost.com. (put “Question about” in the subject line). I won’t coach you through the writing of the song, but I won’t refuse to answer a question or two. For guidance and inspiration, a rabbit hole of earlier results: Week 1420 (work songs) Week 1378 (Life in the Age of Corona) Week 1357 (general news) Week 1339 (“modern woes”) Week 1287 (2018; general news) Scriptease artists*: The results of Week 1436 *Non-inking headline by Jon Gearhart Even though we did this very contest twice previously, I was deluged with almost entirely fresh material for Week 1436, a contest to supply an alternative plot to any real movie title. I received more than 1,900 entries (plus some 200 headline and subhead suggestions) from more than 200 Losers, many of them new to the Invite or very infrequent entrants. And I ended up running almost 60 entries by more than 40 Losers in this week’s results. Because of the one-liner format of the contest, and since each entry began with the name of the movie, I was able to sort out all the entries alphabetically by film, without a clue to who wrote what. That let me see that there were all too many jokes about John Wick and bathroom candles, or Dolittle (116th Congress), Raging Bull (guess who), even The Italian Job, half a dozen entries all riffing off that ever-sufferin’ biblical guy from Tuscany. It’s the fifth win, but the first of our new Clowning Achievement trophy, for Ann Martin, who gets Ink No. 115 in her Invite career; the multi-degreed classics scholar knew her market and scored with “Paper Moon: In Part 1 of ‘Back to Our Offices: 2021,’ a hilarious documentary about a contest for best butt photocopy.” Second-place Eric Nelkin used Joe Versus the Volcano as the perfect name for the last election — amazingly, it wasn’t already all over the Internet. Runner-up Lee Graham turned Portnoy’s Complaint into a Karen joke (will readers from 2030 have a clue?); and Susan Geariety hilariously parlayed the horror film Seed of Chucky to reference Prince Charles’s relationship with son Harry. While I often like to run a self-referential “And Last” entry — this time it was Chris Doyle’s Les Misérables, referring to inkless Losers (as if he’d know from that) — it shouldn’t be too inside-baseball, assuming that any reader would be familiar with earlier contests. So I didn’t run this one, which did make me laugh: MalcolmX: The Empress is at her wits’ end as a computer glitch at The Post removes the second horse from all the entries in the Kentucky Derby foals contest. (Jeff Shirley) What Pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood is off this week, so Other Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia told us his faves, all from the honorable mentions: Avatar: Can picking just the right World of Warcraft character change the life of a shy teen? Spoiler alert: No. (Todd DeLap) Breakfast at Tiffany’s: Or “How I lost my job with the Secret Service.” (Pam Sweeney) F9: Vin Diesel schools John Cena in refreshing Word documents fast and receiving Outlook emails furiously. (Jeff Rackow) Mean Girls: The story of three young women of average height, weight and intelligence from Normal, Ill. (Rob Cohen) Raging Bull: Ferdinand has finally had enough with the flowers. (First Offender Kara Laughlin) The 39 Steps: Documentary peeks in on AA’s new “premium plan.” (Mark Raffman) The Lovely Bones: Does Kirk have a thing for McCoy? (John McCooey) Rated X’ed: The unprintables: The Post has a brand-new executive editor, Sally Buzbee, fresh from heading up the worldwide Associated Press. And I hope she’ll first learn about The Style Invitational in a way other than reader complaints. So I thought these entries would be better nestled down at the bottom of the Convo (some were requested by their writers not to be considered for the Invite (im) proper: He’s Just Not That Into You”: At the end of a romantic evening, a woman realizes her date is rather inadequate. (Jesse Frankovich) The Flash (2022): It’s leaked out that this remake of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” will be over before the opening credits. Running time: 12 seconds. (Jon Gearhart) And in just all-around bad taste: Old Yeller: A still-rabid Kimberly Guilfoyle is finally put down just before the 2024 Republican Convention. (Kevin Dopart) Social Engorgements update! Loser*Devotee picnic, Saturday, July 3 A couple of weeks ago in this space, I noted that Alex Blackwood, my co-admin of the Style Invitational Devotees group — and Invitational reader-junkie — would be in town from Houston for an unrelated event on July 1, and would be free to Meet the Losers on Friday and Saturday. And she’ll be staying with me and the Royal Consort here at Mount Vermin in Fort Washington, Md., about seven miles due south of the Beltway. Many Losers and Devs are eager to meet her — and one another, now that we’re finally emerging from covid hibernation. I decided that the best way is to have y’all over for a potluck picnic here at my house, anytime between noon and 4 on Saturday, July 3. I’ll provide Salvadoran barbecued chicken and some other stuff, and you bring a moderate amount of food to eat and share: That way, the more people we have, the more food we’ll have (I really don’t care about how many of each food group), and we don’t have to worry about an accurate count. There’s no program of events; just come and chat; if you like, you can walk in the woods behind our house, or saunter down the hill to the Piscataway Creek waterfront. Kids are welcome, pets not so much. We’ll have tables outside; if it rains, we’ll bring them inside and be a bit cozier. As always, you don’t have to be a Loser, just someone who enjoys The Style Invitational. I’ve posted information about my address etc. in the Devotees group; if you’re not on Facebook and would like to come, email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. for details. (If I don’t know you, expect to chat with me a bit first.) If you’re planning on coming and I do know you, let me know, too. If you can’t make it on July 3: Alex plans to do some D.C. sightseeing on Friday, July 2; we were thinking of the new Planet Word museum at 13th and K, and maybe the nearby National Museum of Women in the Arts, though they both require advance tickets. We’ll see. And later on: Sunday, Aug. 22: A Loser brunch at the home of Loser Sam Mertens in Silver Spring, Md., which is a dry run for Saturday, Sept. 18: The Flushies, the Losers’ annual awards potluck banquet and songfest to honor this year’s (and last’s) Loser of the Year, Rookie, Most “Imporved,” Least Imporved, etc. I’m guessing that for those later events we’ll be able to sing along with some of the parodies from Week 1440. Looking forward to hearing from you soon. ====================================================================== WEEK 1441, published June 20, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1441: Gimme Five The Empress of The Style Conversational on this week’s limerick contest and neologism results Image without a caption The poisonous and stains-everything pokeweed — or what Loser Jeff Contompasis named “yuckleberry” in our Week 1437 neologism contest. (wagwalking.com) By Pat Myers June 17, 2021 at 5:09 p.m. EDT 0 First this: Are you going to be in the D.C. area on Saturday afternoon, July 3? See the bottom of the column about our Loser*Devotee potluck picnic and future Loser events. Yes, yes, we’re going to be doing our annual Limerixicon contest in August. This is just extra. As I mention in the intro to Style Invitational Week 1441, the hearty-named Invite fan (but not an entrant, as far as I know) John Vigour got the idea for this week’s contest from a widely circulated Tumblr post called “Famous Poems Rewritten as Limericks,” and — perhaps realizing that the “famous poem” repertoire of your typical Invite reader wouldn’t fill a Top 40 list without the help of nursery rhymes and jump rope jingles — suggested that our Loser Limericians try the same idea with songs instead. While I’m pretty much intransigent when it comes to the rhyme and meter of limericks (hence the guide I run with every lim contest), you’ll see that I was kind of fuzzy when explaining the content this week: “Sum up or otherwise reflect a well-known song as a limerick.” That’s because I don’t want to rule out opportunities for humor, and I’m not certain what approach will yield the most Ha! Funny! rather than just the admiring Huh. Clever. ADVERTISING My example today was a pretty straight translation of the opening verse of Hal David’s “Close to You.” David’s: Why do birds suddenly appear* Every time you are near?* Just like me, they long to be* Close to you. Mine: Whenever we go to the zoo* The hummingbirds fly right to you!* In your face they will flit* And I’m irked, I’ll admit.* See, I’d like to be close to you, too. Serviceable, I’d say, but it took Bob Staake’s twist of turning the narrator into a bacon-tongued crocodile to make it funny. So maybe rather than doing a straight summation, you might write about the song in some way. Having judged, oh jeez, more than 900 Style Invitational contests by now, I am no longer surprised but am still delighted by the creativity and resourcefulness of the Losers when it comes to novel approaches to a standard form. After I posted the Invite this morning, Robert Schechter, one of our longtime Loserbards — and a published poet and translator — showed me some much better poems-as-limericks than the ones that inspired the contest; many of them appear among the links to “fractured verse” on various poets from the light-verse journal Bumbershoot. Here’s one by Bob himself on “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Tennyson’s second stanza: Theirs not to make reply,* Theirs not to reason why,* Theirs but to do and die.* Into the valley of Death* Rode the six hundred. And Robert Schechter’s limerick version: Not given to reasoning why, not choosing to make a reply, though someone had blundered on rode the six hundred and did what they did, which was die. Maybe not quite as emotionally wrenching, but it does gallop along — which is what 600 horses did, before dying. (Had this been an Invite entry: In keeping with our strong preference for true rhymes in the Invitational, and because we’re trying to be funny, I would have preferred joke-spelling in Line 4: blundered* six hundered.) Anticipating other questions: Can you do it as two or a series of limericks? I won’t rule it out — but it needs to be good enough to use up two entries’ worth of space. If I have to trim for space, and usually do, long entries are definitely more vulnerable. So now we are going all Singin’ Summer here: Week 1439, switch out the vowels in a song title; Week 1440 (deadline June 28), write song parodies or originals about the news; and now this one (also due June 28). I don’t think they’ll overlap, though. By the way: If somehow your limerick would also work to illustrate some word for OEDILF.com — the dictionary in limerick form — feel free to submit it there, but please wait until after the Week 1441 results are posted July 15. Right now it’s taking limericks featuring words beginning up through Ha-. Fit to be typoed*: The results of Week 1437 Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich, who also got the inking headline One more novel set of parameters, one more zingy set of neologisms: For Week 1437, the concept was to be fat-fingered and “accidentally” type a letter adjacent to the real one in a certain word or name, either adding it or replacing the original; or “accidentally” typing the letter twice in a row — flubs I commit constantly IRL. And I wasn’t at all surprised that the Losers handled the assignment deftly; I ran 45 entries online, and close to that in the print paper. As I’m often able to do when the entries are one-liners (i.e., have no line breaks, as in a poem, Q & A, etc.) I was able to sort all 1,200 entries alphabetically, thus scattering each Loser’s up-to-25 entries across the whole pool. And with no writers’ names attached, I truly had no idea who’d written any single entry until I’d made my choices and started searching through Outlook for each one. And sure enough, five of those searches — including for today’s winner, Jest Lag (the time between the joke and the response) — revealed the name of Chris Doyle, The Style Invitational’s highest-scoring Loser. Barfalounger! Horrorhea! Hostalgia! Defoxification! I just looked this up on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List and just can’t get my head around it: As of today, Chris has won the entire contest SIXTY times, for 2,328 blots of Invite ink, almost all of it beginning seven years after the Invitational began. For comparison: Well over 5,000 people have had at least one entry printed, but only 150 of them have had 60. The Tan Commandments, the entry I had to disqualify because A is not adjacent to E on the keyboard, turned out to be by someone who had one single blot of Invite ink — from 1998. While some contestants complain that I pick the same ol’ people every week, I’m always thrilled to see new names among my choices. Oh, well. Try again, Tony — just be more careful next time. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood is back after celebrating a milestone birthday last week. (Doug’s 2 1*2 years younger than I am, and we started working together when we were 20-somethings in the 1980s, so I’ll always think of him as the kid, even though that white beard might indicate otherwise.) Doug enjoyed all the top winners this week — In God We Tryst (Jonathan Jensen), Marathin (a diet running more than two weeks, by Mark Raffman) and Microsoft Bung (Hannah Seidel) — and he also singled out Chris’s Barfalounger as frat house furniture; Jonathan’s Fadebook as the social media platform that’s passe if your parents are going to use it; Duncan Stevens’s Louis Deejoy as the entertainer who shows up late; Kevin Dopart’s Sexiled (“just-a-friended”); and Chris’s Defoxication as removal of poison from political discourse. By the way, Doug will get to meet some of these people in person — and, I hope, you as well: he’s planning to come to the Loser*Devotee picnic at my house. See below for details. Social Engorgements update! Loser*Devotee picnic, Saturday afternoon, July 3 (Reprinted from last week’s Style Conversational) A couple of weeks ago in this space, I noted that Alex Blackwood, my co-admin of the Style Invitational Devotees group — and Invitational reader-junkie — would be in town from Houston for an unrelated event on July 1, and would be free to Meet the Losers on Friday and Saturday. And she’ll be staying with me and the Royal Consort here at Mount Vermin in Fort Washington, Md., about seven miles due south of the Beltway. Many Losers and Devs are eager to meet her — and one another, now that we’re finally emerging from covid hibernation. I decided that the best way is to have y’all over for a potluck picnic here at my house, anytime between noon and 4 on Saturday, July 3. I’ll provide Salvadoran barbecued chicken and some other stuff, and you bring a moderate amount of food to eat and share: That way, the more people we have, the more food we’ll have (I really don’t care about how many of each food group), and we don’t have to worry about an accurate count. There’s no program of events; just come and chat; if you like, you can walk in the woods behind our house, or saunter down the hill to the Piscataway Creek waterfront. Kids are welcome, pets not so much. We’ll have tables outside; if it rains, we’ll bring them inside and be a bit cozier. As always, you don’t have to be a Loser, just someone who enjoys The Style Invitational. I’ve posted information about my address etc. in the Devotees group; if you’re not on Facebook and would like to come, email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. for details. (If I don’t know you, expect to chat with me a bit first.) If you’re planning on coming and I do know you, let me know, too. If you can’t make it on July 3: Alex plans to do some D.C. sightseeing on Friday, July 2; we were thinking of the new Planet Word museum at 13th and K, and maybe the nearby National Museum of Women in the Arts, though they both require advance tickets. We’ll see. And later on: Sunday, Aug. 22: A Loser brunch at the home of Loser Sam Mertens in Silver Spring, Md., which is a dry run for Saturday, Sept. 18: The Flushies, the Losers’ annual awards potluck banquet and songfest to honor this year’s (and last’s) Loser of the Year, Rookie, Most “Imporved,” Least Imporved, etc. I’m guessing that for those later events we’ll be able to sing along with some of the parodies from Week 1440. Looking forward to hearing from you soon. ====================================================================== WEEK 1442, published June 27, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1442: Bar har har The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s legal-fictoid results and compare*contrast contest Image without a caption According to this week's winning fictoid by Bruce Carlson, this decree was nullified by the Trump administration. (WQAD*WQAD, Moline, Ill.) By Pat Myers June 24, 2021 at 4:42 p.m. EDT 0 (Want to picnic with the Losers on Saturday, July 3? See the section at the bottom of this column.) The Style Invitational continues, year by year, to amass its en-PSYCH!-lopedia of misinformation, and in Week 1438 we turned to fictoids — fake trivia items — about the legal system: courts, laws, law enforcement. This week’s results are the top 40 among the 1,200 entries I received (along with another 200 or so headline*subhead suggestions). The fictoid contests are spoofs on the myriad Fun Facts to Know and Tell lists and articles that you see about science, history, biography, gossip: The fictoids are supposed to sound like some interesting bit of information that you might begin with “Hey, did you know that …” — often beginning perfectly plausibly — and then become a joke, something humorously making a point, and, I hope, clearly exaggerated or otherwise obviously false. All this week’s inking entries work like this, in various forms, usually arriving at a surprising and funny punchline. Here’s an elegantly pithy one from Lee Graham that made me laugh out loud: “In Alabama, siblings may not testify against each other until their divorce is finalized.” (Sorry, 'Bamians; I do realize that many of you are not all that close with your kin.) ADVERTISING As opposed to just saying something that’s not accurate. Here’s an entry that not a joke (I never look up who wrote entries I didn’t choose): “The phrase res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself) refers to previously taped or recorded evidence.” Maybe this would be funny if you were grading law school quizzes? Another thing that tends not to work in fake-trivia contest is a pun; that’s just not what the contest is getting at. “A deputy with a poor track record for successfully delivering subpoenas is known as a Sheriff of NotInHome.” “Any attorney representing a client pro bono must be a U2 or Sonny and Cher fan.” No and no. An exception of sorts was this one by Keith Ord: “A law in Tudor England levied a fine on anyone who passed gas in church; the fine was set at a farthing.” At least you have to think for a second; what’s more important, the entry begins to read like a plausible Fun Fact of History — and then you get the punchline. The fine is also plausible, but why is he mentioning it? … aha. This week’s winner and runner-up aren’t the Usual Suspects with hundreds (or thousands) of blots of ink: Clowning Achievement winner Bruce Carlson, who interpreted the “Bridge Freezes Before Roadway” signs as a federal decree, then played that into a political joke, gets his 39th blot of ink all time — and that’s dating back to Week 413 — but this is the third time he’s won the whole contest. Bruce, by the way, is also the wit behind at least two of our most popular Loser Magnets for honorable mentions: the NOT(E) WORTHY, from 2012, and the current NO 'BILITY. Image without a caption Idea by Bruce Carlson; design by Bob Staake for The Washington Post Winning the hypodermic-looking pen they gave me when I got my covid shot is second-placer Daniel Galef, an MFA student at Florida State who scores his amazing fifth ink “above the fold” in only 16 blots of ink so far, with his untruth about British courtroom wigs. Daniel got a little puddle of ink back in 2016, then lay low for a while, and now he seems to be back for, I’d venture, serious inkage. Peter Boice’s fictoid about the secret message in RBG’s lace collar gives him his first above-the-fold ink and his 11th in all; and it’s just the fourth ink for newbie Joe McManus, who made his Invite debut in Week 1404. I’ll be able to give both Bruce and Peter their prizes at the Loser picnic on July 3 (see below); I’d love to meet Joe as well. (Daniel, I guess it’d be a bit of a trip for you.) What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood tells me he enjoyed all four top winners, and also singled out: the Boston police determining that 23 Dunkin’ Donuts fit on a nightstick (Rob Huffman); that opponents of the First Amendment’s freedom of the press followed up with a Second Amendment so “at least we can shoot ’em” (Frank Mann); Keith Ord’s “farthing”; Duncan Stevens’s report (not so fictoidy but I didn’t mind) that juries tend to make the “Law and Order” CHUNG CHUNG noise at key moments in a trial; and especially Lee Graham’s Alabama siblings joke. By the way, here’s one reason I adore Doug (and good copy editors in general): Rob’s doughnut entry originally was about Krispy Kremes (I’d added the Boston setup to make it sound more fictoidy). Doug noted that while KK stores are in 42 states and territories, Massachusetts is not one of them. But Dunkins are on every corner. Catch of the day! In snark contrast*: This week’s contest, Week 1442 *Headline by Bill Dorner from Week 1348 It’s a long list to choose from for the latest version of our perennial (since 1996) compare*contrast contest. In recent years I ask the Style Invitational Devotees group for random items, and try to choose them without trying to engineer good combinations. If you’re unfamiliar with this Invite contest, please read through the results of a couple of the previous 28 Same Difference (plus other names) contests, all listed on one handy page on Elden Carnahan’s indispensable Master Contest List, for guidance and inspiration. Here are a few top winners from years past: Week 276 (1998): What is the difference between the human navel and a 1998 VW Bug? In the case of the navel, most people would rather have an innie. In the case of the Bug, most people would rather have an Audi. (Russell Beland) Week 466 (2002): The difference between the Pennsylvania Dutch and a mole on one’s butt is that in a Pennsylvania Dutch neighborhood, there’s probably no crack. (Chris Doyle) Week 563 (2004): The difference between the next Redskins season and Ivory Soap: With the soap, at the end the owner will end up with a ring. (Chuck Smith) (Only the team’s name’s changed, alas) Week 738 (2007): “American Gothic” and the next three presidential debates: The pitchfork has three good points. (Chuck Smith) Week 934 (2011): The difference between a toilet brush and a tattoo of Joe Biden: One’s a bristly Number Two tool; the other’s merely the depiction of one. (Rob Huffman) Week 1167 (2016): Hillary’s emails are just like three inches of snow: not enough to keep you from running for the office, but danged if they don’t make the route hell. (Mike Ostapiej) Week 1348 (2019): A hard Brexit and Jockey shorts: Two things we hope we never see Boris Johnson pull off. (Jon Ketzner) And most recently: Week 1390 (July 2020): Trump’s tie rack: Red neckwear. A skull-motif face mask: Redneck wear. (Jesse Frankovich) See? Totally doable. Social Engorgements update! Loser*Devotee picnic, Saturday afternoon, July 3 (More or less reprinted from last week’s Style Conversational; update about July 2) A couple of weeks ago in this space, I noted that Alex Blackwood, my co-admin of the Style Invitational Devotees group — and Invitational reader-junkie — would be in town from Houston for an unrelated event on July 1, and would be free to Meet the Losers on Friday and Saturday. And she’ll be staying with me and the Royal Consort here at Mount Vermin in Fort Washington, Md., about seven miles due south of the Beltway. Many Losers and Devs are eager to meet her — and one another, now that we’re finally emerging from covid hibernation. I decided that the best way is to have y’all over for a potluck picnic here at my house, anytime between noon and 4 on Saturday, July 3. I’ll provide Salvadoran barbecued chicken and some other stuff (plantains, lemonade, watermelon) and you bring a moderate amount of food to eat and share: That way, the more people we have, the more food we’ll have (I really don’t care about how many of each food group), and we don’t have to worry about an accurate count. There’s no program of events; just come and chat; if you like, you can walk in the woods behind our house, or saunter down the hill to the Piscataway Creek waterfront. Kids are welcome, pets not so much. We’ll have tables outside; if it rains, we’ll bring them inside and be a bit cozier. As always, you don’t have to be a Loser, just someone who enjoys The Style Invitational. I’ve posted information about my address etc. in the Devotees group; if you’re not on Facebook and would like to come, email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. for details. (If I don’t know you, expect to chat with me a bit first.) If you’re planning on coming and I do know you, let me know, too. Change of plans for Friday: Alas, the July 4 weekend after a pandemic is not a good time to score timed passes to D.C. museums and whatnot; everything I checked out for Friday, July 2, was sold out (or freed out). So instead Alex and I will be getting together for lunch with a few Loser*Devotees in Southern Maryland, southeast of Mount Vermin. And that evening I’ll be having Alex clean my house before the Saturday event. (I kid, I kid, we’re not going to clean the house.) BUT! Alex may be coming back this fall to another Unrelated Event! So we can try again. And later on we have two (non-Alex, alas) Loser events scheduled: Sunday, Aug. 22: A Loser brunch at the home of Loser Sam Mertens and fam in Silver Spring, Md., which is a dry run for Saturday, Sept. 18: The Flushies, the Losers’ annual awards potluck banquet and songfest, also Chez Mertens, to honor this year’s (and last’s) Loser of the Year, Rookie, Most “Imporved,” Least Imporved, etc. “Bar Har Har” was a non-inking headline by Tom Witte for Week 1438. ====================================================================== WEEK 1443, published July 4, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1443: The Ballad of Gary Crockett The Empress of The Style Invitational celebrates the latest Invite Hall of Famer Image without a caption It's not TOTALLY dorky — he's not wearing socks with the sandals: Loser Gary Crockett, whose 500th blot of ink admits him into the Style Invitational Hall of Fame. (Courtesy of Gary Crockett) By Pat Myers July 1, 2021 at 4:55 p.m. EDT 0 Before we start, it’s last call for the Loser potluck picnic at my house on Saturday afternoon, July 3. Once again, I’ll run the info at the bottom of this column; if you read it before, there’s nothing new to see. This week’s regular programming has been pushed farther down the page by an Invite Big Deal: With his transformation of the song “Cocaine” into “Ice Cone” in the results of Week 1439, Loser Gary Crockett has gained entry into that rarefied Style Invitational Hall of Fame with his 500th blot of ink, becoming its 16th member. Gary didn’t start entering the Invitational until its 18th year, 2010 — but he made up for lost time, winning the whole Week 871 contest with his very first ink, then blotting up puddles of the stuff — up to 98 in a single year — consistently since then, with 17 wins and 42 runners-up (he has long since declined the usual Loser swag). And I and the Loser Community have had the pleasure of meeting him at a number of Loser brunches and parties over the years. ADVERTISING Gary has perfectly, totally endearingly cultivated the Mien of Gracious Humility, as when he accepted his Loser of the Year plaque at the 2012 Flushies awards: He immediately clarified to the audience that the prize is a one-and-done award — and that he was actually the sixth-highest scorer that year, behind five people who’d already gotten it. Here’s the nutshell bio that Gary sent me last night — after I discovered that he’d gotten that 500th blot of ink. "The most important thing about me right now is that I’m the proud grandfather of Fiona Ariadne Crockett-Atkins, born on May 27. Fiona’s grandmother is also known as Marla, whom I’ve had the tremendous privilege of being married to for the past 49.3 years. [YES! Gary is unbelievably youthful — that photo of him on the weird bike is brand-new and Gary is in his late sixties.] "Apart from that I’m a programmer, a woodworker, and a recovering software company CEO. I dabble in humor contests, cryptic crosswords, and acrostics. For exercise I ride a Rowingbike and I play what loosely might be called tennis. “Also, I’ve been told that I am tall.” [That is because he is 6-6. Or, as he puts it, 5-18.] Here are Gary’s 17 winning entries (so far), starting with that first ink. 1. Week 871 [2010]: change a movie title by one letter: The Winner of the Inker: Four Weldings and a Funeral: A man attaches a set of rocket engines to his Chevy and momentarily achieves his dream of driving a flying car. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, a First Offender) (That same week, he also had an honorable mention: An American in Parts: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 7) 2. Week 905 [2011]: fictional anecdotes in response to some of the “Editor’s Query” prompts in The Washington Post Magazine: “A time when a piece of clothing changed my life”: In the jungle you make do with what’s available, so I patched my torn pants seat with a piece of bright red flannel. Had I not, I would have been spared much pain. But I might never have discovered the new species of baboon. 3, just three weeks later, a dig at quarterback Brett Favre, who had come out of retirement three times: Week 908 , recast a movie or TV role: “Shane”: Fire Alan Ladd, hire Brett Favre. Joey: “Shane! Shane! Come back!” Shane: “Okay!” 4. Week 922 [still 2011!], new lyrics for the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner”: See the video, complete with singing by Gary’s daughter Emily, an opera singer: Send your tired, your poor, (Sing this line to “O, say can you see,” etc.) Huddled masses also, And your refuse that’s wretched From shores that are teeming. If to breathe free they yearn, Here’s the place they should go, Send them here, to the land Of which they have been dreaming. And we’ll send them away, We’ll deport them today (Unless they’re from Cuba, in which case okay). We’ve all gone xenophobic, All foreigners we now eschew. We’re afraid they’ll take our jobs — Jobs we don’t want to do. 5. Week 1054, poems about people who died in 2013: Etch-a-Sketch inventor Andre Cassagnes Andre Cassagnes, your Etch-a-Sketch showed us We needn’t just tweak, fix and patch. That sometimes the best course, for peasant or POTUS, Is shake and start over from scratch. 6. Week 1064, 2014: Alter a moment in history: 1972: If the Democratic National Committee headquarters had been in the Willard Hotel, every scandal since then would have a name ending in “lard.” 7. Week 1081, 2014: Stupid questions: How do you say “Don’t claw the sofa” in Siamese? 8. Week 1115, 2015: Put a “typo” in a real headline, then write a bank head to go with it: Royal Couple Checks Out the [Mall] Malt: Charles chugs Colt 45s while Camilla crushes cans against royal forehead 9. Week 1142, 2015: Combine two names into a Twitter handle and write a sample tweet: @OrangeJulius: Could be well mov’d: My friends in the House are sticking knives into me. #IdesOfSeptember 10. Week 1193, 2016: “Poeds,” poems with a six one-syllable words in the first line, three two-syllable words in the second, two threes in the third, and one six-syllable word in the last, plus a rhyme somewhere Eight of me in my head. Crazy? Maybe instead Multi-me’s healthier: Biodiversity! 11. Week 1211, 2017: Trash-tweeting laudable people from history: Looks like @TheMessiah*’s getting delusions of grandeur. Thinks he’s @RealDonaldTrump. 12. Week 1225, 2017: Protest march ideas: The Million Middle Managers March: * If It Were Up to Me, I’d Say Yes 13. Week 1341, 2019: Portmanteau words: Muellerotica: “If we had confidence that the earth did not move or that an explosion did not erupt through her as every cell in her body screamed ‘Yes!’ we would have said so.” 14. Week 1374, 2020: Historical rap battles: Harriet Tubman: I’m an Abolition hero, Union soldier, scout and spy! Your face is on the twenty still — you wanna tell me why? Andrew Jackson: You’re crazy if you think that off the twenty I’ll be scoochin’ Don’t care if you’ve got history, because I’ve got Steve Mnuchin! 15. Week 1404, 2020: Ask Backwards: . A. The Republic Forwhichistan. Q. Where can you find One Asian Undergod — except he’s invisible? 16. Week 1427, 2021: Double puns about history: 2008: Sen. John McCain announces his running mate: Impalin’ the Ticket, or Wasilladvised And most recently: 17. Twists on nursery rhymes etc. Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, Kissed the girls and made them cry. Then he made them go away Encumbered by an NDA. (But richer by one-thirty K.) Capitol letters: This week’s acronym contest This week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1443, reflects those silly back-formed “acronyms” whose full names are contrived to fit some catchy word. You see them in all aspects of life — education and corporate culture are rife with them — but we’ll do it from the angle of legislation, which was suggested by the Empress’s Royal Consort, Mark Holt, in honor of his birthday. It might well be a shock to you that members of the United States Congress would attach their names to formal documents defaced with inane, lame, juvenile titles. If so, Mr.*Ms.*Whatever Van Winkle, please return to your nap. Here are some actual bills, part of an even longer list collected by The Washington Post newsletter The Fix a few years ago, some of which continue to be introduced in each Congress. It’s where I found the HELLPP Act (Helping Ensure Life- and Limb-Saving Access to Podiatric Physicians) that I mention in the intro to this week’s contest. JAWS Act: Justice Attributed to Wounded Sharks EGO Act: Eliminating Government-funded Oil-painting FAIR TOW Act: Fair Action for Interstate Recovery Vehicles on Truck Operating Weights SMOKE Act: Stop Selling and Marketing to Our Kids E-Cigarettes DRIVE LESS Act: Domestic Reduction In Vehicle Expenditure and Lowering Emissions from State Sources TIGER CUBS Act: Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery for Cities Underfunded Because of Size SAFE HAUL Act: Safe And Fair Environment on Highways Achieved through Underwriting Levels GROW AMERICA Act: Generating Renewal, Opportunity, and Work with Accelerated Mobility, Efficiency, and Rebuilding of Infrastructure and Communities throughout America (“Throughout” is conveniently lowercased because GROW AMERICTA doesn’t quite sing as well.) RECALL Act: Repairing Every Car to Avoid Lost Lives PLANT Act: Protecting Lands Against Narcotics Trafficking QUIET Act: Quell Unnecessary, Intentional, and Encroaching Telephone Calls And ... SPEAK FREE Act: Securing Participation, Engagement, and Knowledge Freedom by Reducing Egregious Efforts Act — For Invite purposes, I’d think the humor will also lie with the “there oughta be a law” angle — creative peeves (which, ahem, no longer include Those Kids Today and Their Cellphones) along with the acronym. Question you’ll ask: Does every word have to be used in the acronym? Not necessarily, but leaving out significant words will definitely increase the lameness quotient. You can safely omit little words like “the,” “for,” etc. The Replacements*: The song-vowel thing of Week 1439 *Non-inking headline by Tom Witte Relatively few Losers entered the Week 1439 contest — not many more than 100 — but so many of them clearly enjoyed the game of deleting all the vowels in a song title, then adding their choice of vowels back in to make a new song. I ended up with 1,200 entries because more people than usual sent substantial lists, many of them the maximum 25 entries. Almost always when there are few entries, it’s a handful of regulars who get all the ink, but that wasn’t the case this time; in fact, we have three First Offenders, two of them with multiple ink, one of them a runner-up. And some people got their first ink in many years, including Sandy Tenenbaum, who last appeared in 1996. Since we did the same contest in 2016 with movie titles, I was pretty sure we’d have a fun set of results, but these might even be better than those of Week 1155 because of the mini-parodies included with some of the entries. (Lines from songs that didn’t follow the tune of the originals didn’t work for me as well.) Fresh off the Clowning Achievement for his cicada diorama four weeks ago, Kevin Dopart scores once again with I’m a Believer > Mob Lover, with odious Sen. Ron Johnson “singing”: “Then I saw their race, now I’m a mob lover* Not a trace of doubt in my mind.” Instead of a second Disembodied Clown Head trophy, Kevin will receive a little “II” pennant to add to the base until he replaces it with a “III.” Jon Gearhart, also famed for Invite wordplay, takes second — and wins that classy color-changing toilet night light — with his verse of “Stairway to Heave In.” Greg Johnson of our Canadian Loser Bureau played to the Empress’s copy editor side with “Lie Lady Lie” for just his fifth blot of ink ever. And First Offender Coleman Glenn of the Philadelphia area, who also just joined the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, gets a Fir Stink for his First Ink to go along with his choice of runner-up Loser Mug or Whole Fools Grossery Bag. But Coleman never spend a week on the Loser Stats’ One-Hit Wonders list, since he had two inking entries this week, as did fellow First Offender Mark Turco. Both newbies sent long and especially clever lists of entries; I hope to see lots more from both of them in future contests. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood — meet him on Saturday (see picnic blurb below) found a lot to like this week. He agreed with me on the winners and also singled out Kevin Dopart’s “Hours With an Enema” (“A Horse With No Name”); Frank Mann’s “A Comet Got Her” (“Come Together” — “Finally explains how she got joo joo eyeball and spinal cracker”) Jesse Frankovich’s Don’t Stop > Don T.’s Type: “Please stop thinkin’ about Ivanka"; and Jesse’s “And Last," “Borin’ to Run," about those non-inking entries. The unprintables: Clever, but too gross for the Invite, I think, especially on such a good week: Born to Run > Brown Tureen: A chamber pot will have to do when the runs cause thunder on the road. (Kevin Dopart) Smells Like Teen Spirit > Small Silk Tiny Spurt: The worm sperm bank work song: " Oh, I’ve worked with no thanks in worm sperm banks* Hoping for a small silk tiny spurt" (Jon Ketzner) [I actually missed that it was about a silkworm, but still.] Last call! Loser*Devotee picnic, Saturday afternoon, July 3 A couple of weeks ago in this space, I noted that Alex Blackwood, my co-admin of the Style Invitational Devotees group — and Invitational reader-junkie — would be in town from Houston for an unrelated event on July 1, and would be free to Meet the Losers on Friday and Saturday. And she’ll be staying with me and the Royal Consort here at Mount Vermin in Fort Washington, Md., about seven miles due south of the Beltway. Many Losers and Devs are eager to meet her — and one another, now that we’re finally emerging from covid hibernation. I decided that the best way is to have y’all over for a potluck picnic here at my house, anytime between noon and 4 on Saturday, July 3. I’ll provide chicken and some other stuff (lemonade, watermelon) and you bring a moderate amount of food to eat and share: That way, the more people we have, the more food we’ll have (I really don’t care about how many of each food group), and we don’t have to worry about an accurate count. There’s no program of events; just come and chat; if you like, you can walk in the woods behind our house, or saunter down the hill to the Piscataway Creek waterfront. Kids are welcome, pets not so much. We’ll have tables outside; if it rains, we’ll bring them inside and be a bit cozier. As always, you don’t have to be a Loser, just someone who enjoys The Style Invitational. I’ve posted information about my address etc. in the Devotees group; if you’re not on Facebook and would like to come, email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. for details. (If I don’t know you, expect to chat with me a bit first.) If you’re planning on coming and I do know you, let me know, too. And later on we have two (non-Alex, alas) Loser events scheduled: Sunday, Aug. 22: A Loser brunch at the home of Loser Sam Mertens and fam in Silver Spring, Md., which is a dry run for Saturday, Sept. 18: The Flushies, the Losers’ annual awards potluck banquet and songfest, also Chez Mertens, to honor this year’s (and last’s) Loser of the Year, Rookie, Most “Imporved,” Least Imporved, etc. ====================================================================== WEEK 1444, published July 11, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1444: Ode News The Empress of The Style Conversational on this week’s parodies and new contest Image without a caption Bob Staake's sketch for Gregory Koch's alternate Olympic event, the beaststroke. It was a toss-up between this one and "the 00-yard dash." By Pat Myers July 8, 2021|Updated yesterday at 2:59 p.m. EDT 0 I don’t want to keep you today — not when there are so many so clever and so entertaining songs — including six videos — to enjoy in this Week’s Style Invitational at wapo.st*invite1444. As usual in our song contests, which run about every six months, I received hundreds of song lyrics, along with about a dozen videos, focusing on topics in the news recently, and it was all I could do to restrict today’s ink to a still overwhelming 25 song lyrics (nine of them fit on the print page) and six videos; the longest ones are at the bottom of the page so the shorter ones aren’t crowded out. This is the first time I decided to award a first-place trophy, the Clowning Achievement. to both a written song and a video. In previous years I’d stuck to the idea that the Invitational was really all about words, and the ink would always go to the cleverest songwriting — the best rhymes, the most natural syntax, the most effective satire, the best play off the original — rather than to the production values of a video. And because the top winners run on the print page, they have to be interesting to read; they can’t be incredibly long; they can’t fade out; the rhymes can’t be fudged by a voice. And still, those qualities are paramount for me. But of course, The Style Invitational is a humor contest, not just a wordplay one, and so a well-produced, entertainingly sung, funny video such as First Offender Sophie Crafts’s “Two Darn Shots” ought to be eligible for a Disembodied Clown Head on a Stick as well. Let me emphasize that Sophie’s song is indeed really clever and funny, from the title on down. Cole Porter would have grinned. But just as a set of lyrics, it would have missed this week’s top four. But oh my goodness, it was so much fun! Sophie, who’s an educator in the Cambridge, Mass., public schools, really went to town on this video — the excellent jazz singing including harmonies; the costumes; the staging (including getting her vaccine at a CVS while wearing a silky evening gown and long gloves); and just all that energy and charm kept me watching it over and over. Somehow, I think that Sophie’s Clowner — not to mention the Fir Stink for her first ink — won’t be the only award on her mantel in Somerville, Mass. And I can’t wait to see and hear more from her. Speaking of “her,” this week turned out to be one for the women: While in a usual Invite week the ink-blotters are disproportionately male — last week’s entries: 32 by men, 8 by women, 1 by someone named Sandy — this week, both Clowners and two of the three runner-up slots went to women — congrats to not only Sophie, but to the superb perennial Loserbards Hildy Zampella, Barbara Sarshik and Beverley Sharp — and women shine throughout this week’s whole songbook. Meanwhile a definitely female Sandy: The fabulous Longtime Loser Sandy Riccardi — who with her husband, Richard, performs their parodies and other comic songs around the country — tells me that this week’s inking parody, the hilarious “I Never Started a Coup,” is the first one the Riccardis have made since Richard suffered a subdural hematoma and a fall this past spring; it’s the first one since January, actually. We are thrilled to see him totally back on his game. I hope we’ll be able to go back up to Baltimore to see them again at Germano’s cabaret. The only thing I don’t like about judging the song contests is denying ink to totally inkworthy songs. Fortunately, I — and the writers themselves — can post “noinks” in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook. I’ll start posting one or more each day starting July 9, and I’ll include the hashtag #parodies in the intro so that you can search for all the parodies when you’re on the page (FYI, each comment on a post pushes that post back up near the top, right under the Invite itself). You can post your own noinks there as well. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood read the nine songs that will appear in the print Invitational in The Post’s July 11 Arts & Style section — the four winners, plus Gary Crockett’s “Arizona,” Sarah Walsh’s cicada-eating dog, Mark Raffman’s unfavorite things, Terri Berg Smith’s play on the Maryland state song, and Irene Plotzker’s “I Cain’t Say Yes” (they happened to add to exactly the right column length) — and pronounced them “all awesome.” Well, duh, Doug. You’re Invited again: The podcast is back for Season 2 While 55 of us were busy stuffing our faces at the Loser*Devotee Picnic last Saturday, “You’re Invited” podcaster Mike Gips was busy buttonholing various Invitational types for short interviews (setting up in the house on the way to the bathroom was key). And he’s edited them into two podcast episodes. In Part 1, up now, Alex offers warm and entertaining insights on being a part of the Loser Community — and, drawing on her youth in Nicaragua — chats with Mike about wordplay in different languages ... and how that can go wrong. Alex was too diplomatic to name her favorite song-title-play ink from Week 1439, so Mike and the Empress’s Royal Consort, Mark Holt, compare their picks of the week in the podcast’s weekly department. Hear this week’s episode, plus all 12 entertaining interviews from last year (including me in full blather), at bit.ly*invite-podcast, or on most podcast platforms. Next week, mini-interviews with several Losers. On your mark! Get set! Type! This week’s sports neologism contest This week’s contest, Week 1444, is thoroughly in the Style Invitational neologistic tradition: take a real sport, event, sports-related-thing, competitive pastime, etc.; change it by a letter, or a little more than a letter, but little enough that the original is obvious; describe it so that the entry is funny and not just an interesting idea (or a stupid idea, unless it is hilariously stupid). I thought Gregory Koch’s suggested examples were both funny — and, as we see from Bob Staake’s cartoon for the Invitational and the Plan B sketch above, both especially illustratable. Speaking of: Buy your own Invite ink! (Or pencil.) Various Style Invitational fans — especially those decorating their padded rooms — have asked me if some past cartoon by Bob Staake was still available There’s a good chance: Bob, whose bestselling picture books are becoming more and more handsome — makes his Invite art, both pencil sketches and final pen-and-ink drawings, available to the Loser Community at low-for-a-famous-artist prices at bobstaake.com*SI. Tell him what you’re looking for -- write to me first if you need help in figuring out the date, details of the cartoon, etc. -- and he’ll check to see if he still has it. Thanks for coming! Sorry if you missed it! Last Saturday’s Loser*Devotee picnic last Saturday at my house, Mount Vermin, in honor of the visiting Devotees admin Alex Blackwood of Houston, proved an astonishing success — that’s Image without a caption Displaying the sophisticated humor associated with The Style Invitational, the congenitally tiaraed Pat Myers and her Devotees group co-admin Alex Blackwood do the silly at the Loser*Devotee picnic on July 3. (Janet Galope) because I hadn’t realized that Alex was going to ensure, for her four-day visit to the D.C. area, four days of sunny, 75-degree days (immediately preceded and followed by the usual hazy 90s). [Scroll down for more.] But really, everything fell into place: Fifty-five Losers, Devotees and Assorted Hangers-On converged on my yard in Fort Washington, Md., with a wide variety of potluck fare in tow (Mark Raffman brought his puppy, who was cute enough to eat, but we stuck to the grape leaves). Everyone was thrilled with Alex, who promises to come back from Houston before long. Until then, mark your calendar for the Loser brunch on Sunday around noon, Aug. 22, and the bigger-deal Flushies awards*songfest, Saturday afternoon, Sept. 18. Both will be potlucks at Chez Loser Sam Mertens in outer Silver Spring, Md., about 10 miles north of the Capital Beltway and so an easy trip from Baltimore and even the Philadelphia area. (Virginians, you can deal with this too.) The headline “Ode News” got ink for Kevin Dopart in 2011 for a news-poem contest, but not this week after Kevin sent us the very same one. Hey, we do a lot of ode contests. ====================================================================== WEEK 1445, published July 18, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1445: Could you use the word in a poem, please? The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s new contest and results Zaila Avant-garde gains instant stardom after spelling “Murraya,” a plant genus, on July 8 to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee. She should write a poem using one of the bee words and try for the Clowning Achievement! (Joe Skipper*Reuters) By Pat Myers July 15, 2021 at 5:11 p.m. EDT 0 Let’s get sesquipedalian! This week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1445, isn’t as likely as some Invites to be a coffee-spitter. But our recurring contest for poems based on words from the year’s National Spelling Bee has always generated good material and more than a few laughs: It’s in keeping with the Invite’s tradition of mixing the haughty and the potty. As I did in our 2019 contest (the bee was canceled last year), I’m inviting you to use any of the words used in Round 8 and later, easily accessed this year at the bee’s redesigned website. (Make sure you use the correct spelling of the word, not the way a losing kid misspelled it; there are two columns!) And if you don’t want to check round after round, just go to the bottom of this week’s contest for a list of 25 words that seem fairly promising to me. I recommend that before you write the poem, you should confirm your understanding of the definition by finding the word actually used or explained, not just in a list of spelling*vocabulary words. Or at least look at a few definitions from various dictionaries and glossaries. For instance, the definition of “aphyllous” at m-w.com, Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, just says “destitute of foliage leaves,” since the full definition is only in the premium unabridged version. But Googling the word, I found a list of biology words on Thought.com that makes it clear an aphyllous plant never develops leaves, not that it’s dropped its leaves for the winter, or got sick. For inspiration and to give you an idea of what we’re looking for, here’s some classic ink from our four previous Spelling Bee poetry contests. Week 716 (2007): Noctilucous (noc-ti-LU-cous), shining at night: On a moonlighted stroll, my sweet love did profess That my fair face was quite noctilucous; My heart skipped a beat, but I have to confess: What shone from my nose was some mucus. (Anne Paris) Strigil (strid-jil), a sweat-scraper: For cleaning off, the Romans Scraped themselves with iron strigils — But folks back then, you understand, Were tougher indivijuls. (Brendan Beary) Week 1181 (2016): Sophrosyne (suh-FROSS-uh-nee): prudence, self-control: If a don makes an offer you might just refuse, Here's advice from a guy with a leg he can't use: A goombah's unlikely to practice sophrosyne Whacking a Louisville slugger across a knee. (Chris Doyle) Solenoglyphous (Sol-e-NOG-li-fus), having fangs that fold into the mouth: “Your solenoglyphous fangs are spectaculah! They are awesome (to use the vernaculah) 'Cause they fold up inside Till you open up wide — I asp-pire to be like you!” Signed: Dracula (Beverley Sharp) Week 1283 (2018): Lochetic (lo-KET-ic), describing an animal that lies in wait for prey:* A small spider, lochetic, it lies In its web all day, seeking a prize, Which is fine, for it feels, When it comes to good meals, Time’s fun when you’re out having flies. (Frank Osen) Catachresis, incorrect use of a word: My catachrestic family! Folks correct us, Inferring that our usage is a mess, But their discrete reprisals won’t effect us 'Cause all and all, we frankly could care less. Our language skill is fulsome, and we flout it, Not phased by all the references they site. Except it, 'cause there’s no two bones about it: For all intensive purposes, we’re right. (Duncan Stevens) Week 1335 (2019): Apophysitis (uh-PAH-fuh-SIGH-tis), painful bone spurs: Once upon a time of drafting, Donald pondered, sly and crafting, Over many dark, dishonest ways to dodge the call to war — Fearing far-off foes who'd fight us, settled on apophysitis, Blaming it without the slightest hint of shame forevermore. “I'd be honored,” Donald uttered, “to have served within the Corps. But, alas, my feet were sore.” (Jesse Frankovich) [Yeah, that one won.] Murrelet, a seabird Among endangered species is the avian marbled murrelet, It would be sad to see this species going down the turrelet. (Dave Zarrow) AABBA’s Greatest Hits*: The song-limericks of Week 1441 *Non-inking entry by Jeff Contompasis; we’ve had similar ABBA*AABBA limerick jokes by Mark Raffman and Bruce Alter Our first-ever contest to turn a well-known song lyric into a limerick (or to comment on the song in limerick form) turned out to be one of our most enjoyable of the zillions of limerick contests in our history. Thanks again to Invite reader John Vigour for the suggestion; if he ever comes up from Charlottesville, I owe him a milkshake. I was slightly concerned that many of the limericks would provide ingeniously correct five-line summations of the songs, but would get the reaction of “huh, I see” rather than “hah! funny!” But of course the Loser Community figured out how to get the jokes and digs in for this week’s results, many of them using the option to “reflect” on the song rather than to sum it up. Even the second cut of my shortlist contained lots more zingers than the 35 limericks I ran (19 in print). There’s a new(ish) name atop the list this week: Almost-newbie Emma Daley wins her first Clowning Achievement trophy — and just her sixth blot of ink — with her take on “The Star-Spangled Banner,” rhyming “British” and “skittish” to end it: “Now of despots we’re finally rid (ish).” Emma edged out runner-up Sarah Walsh, who observed that one of the universal beliefs that make this world a small one after all is a loathing of “It’s a Small World.” Filling out the Losers’ Circle are Usual Suspects Jonathan Jensen, sending outgrown Puff the Magic Dragon to Goodwill, and Mark Raffman, imploring Jesus, “Please, my Savior and Lord* Take the wheel of my Ford* (Which I trust that you know how to drive).” Some Losers ignored this line in the instructions: “No matter how obvious it is to you, please supply the title of the song you’re limericking.” I was sure about most of the unattributed limericks (some of which got ink because I am nice), was pretty sure about some, and tossed the rest. As usual with Invite music-themed contests, the references leaned heavily into the 20th century, specifically the 1960s and ’70s, along with old-timey classics, camp songs, etc. We don’t have anything currently in the Top 40 in this week’s lim-list, but at least there are entries based on the less fogy “Uptown Funk” (2014), “Jesus Take the Wheel” and the somewhat contrasting “Don’t Cha” (2005) and, tucked way down near the bottom, Seth Brown’s “damp cat” take on “WAP” (2020). Oh, and “Baby Shark” (2016 but it feels like a thousand years already). Some of the entries included fun facts about the songs. I knew that the FBI investigated whether the garbly lyrics of the Kingsmen’s “Louie, Louie” were hiding something dirrrteee, but it was new to me that the BBC at first refused to play the Who’s “My Generation” out of sensitivity to stutterers (Chris Doyle’s non-inking entry ended “It offended, they said,*Folks who stutter, which led*To them giving the Who p-p-pause.” And Bob Turvey from across the pond accompanied his precis of the 1871 hymn “Onward, Christian Soldiers” with a note pointing out that William S. Baring-Gould, grandson of the hymn’s composer, wrote the U.K. best-selling 1967 collection “The Lure of the Limerick: An Uninhibited History.” The limerick was a bit straightforward, but I’d love to see that book. I hope you keep that hickory-dickory-dock rhythm nearby; sometime next month we’ll have our 18th Limerixicon, our annual contest in conjunction with OEDILF.com to write limericks that feature words from a particular sliver of the dictionary (somewhere in the H’s, it should be). What Doug Dug: “They were all good, really,” Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood told me after reading this week’s results. Well, yeah, we know that. But Doug did offer that his favorite song-limerick was Robert Schechter’s of “Over the Rainbow,” explaining exactly why oh why happy little bluebirds fly but Dorothy can’t. Doug also singled out Melissa Balmain’s limerick about the A-B-C song; Chris Doyle reminding us that “Louie, Louie” rhymes with “FBI,” which suspected the Kingsmen’s unintelligible lyrics contained dangerous obscenity); and George Thompson’s five-line “Stairway to Heaven.” ====================================================================== WEEK 1446, published July 25, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1446: Lentils entertain you The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s bean-speckled reverse-crossword contest The high-tech materials I used for covering crossword squares in the Week 1446 Style Invitational contest. See below for the grid in its beanless glory. (walmart.com) By Pat Myers July 22, 2021 at 5:27 p.m. EDT 0 “Liked the lentils … old-school graphics,” Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood told me charitably about the reverse-crossword grid in Style Invitational Week 1446. Truth be told, I had resorted to placing (well, farther down, more like tossing) the little dried beanlets onto a printout of the July 11 L.A. Times crossword — the Sunday puzzle that runs next to the Invite in The Post’s Arts & Style section — because it seemed faster and easier than graying out each of 200-some individual squares on my computer. While our usual Clue Us In reverse crossword (I ran the first in 2006) uses a full grid — our last such contest ran in December 2019 — we’ve had partial-grid contests twice before, though with smaller, daily puzzles. (The idea was from Loser Craig Dykstra in 2010.) The idea is to increase the chance that your oh-so-clever wordplay won’t be the same one that 14 other people sent in — a chronic problem with our crossword contests. And also that it’s fun to show sharply contrasting results from the same set of letters. For example, in the 2010 contest, Week 873, the main answer was “GOFORTHEJUGULAR” — with THEJUGULAR shaded out (but that year the letters were still visible). The winner, by Kathye Lamaze: GO FOR THE REGULAR: Rallying cry of the mediocre. Second place, by Randy Lee: GO FOR IT MS SALAHI: Michaele’s morning mirror mantra. (Michaele Salahi and her husband gained instant notoriety in 2009 when they managed to crash President Obama’s White House dinner for the prime minister of India.) There’s hardly any method to this week’s lentil-square arrangement; I began by methodically positioning the little disks in places that seemed “right,” but eventually I found myself spilling them onto the paper and just making sure I didn’t blot out the whole word. I don’t think this happened, but it’s possible that two short clues have the same remaining letters. Remember that this grid is just a picturesque gimmick for what we’re really after: clever wordplay, wry observations. The results are supposed to be fun to read. There’s a strong chance that many, perhaps most of the “answers” in today’s list won’t yield anything thrilling. That’s okay — because we wouldn’t have room to run a clue for each word, anyway (especially once I put in all those Losers’ names and towns in the credits). There are something like 139 choices; I’ll probably run 40 — and some of those will be multiple approaches to the same set of letters. I gave a couple of examples in this week’s intro of “clues” for this week’s contest. For true inspiration and guidance, I invite you — hey, we’re the Invitational — to peruse the results of any of our 17 previous reverse crosswords, all conveniently linked to on the “CRO” page of Elden Carnahan’s fantastic Master Contest List at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. I neglected, however, to show a type of wordplay that always gets some ink in these contests: a word that has to be read and pronounced in a different way. Like this one by Chuck Koelbel: PEA: The best line on a jock’s report card. As in P.E. — A. or from George Vary: BRONCOS: Slightly irregular Veg-O-Matics and Ginsu Knives (B-Ronco) So as promised, here’s a handy-dandy — well, handier-dandier than the grid, I hope — list of all the words you can choose from. (As usual, you get 25 entries total, and I don’t care if they’re for 25 different words or 25 variations on one word.) This list is actually brought to you by Hall of Fame Loser Jesse Frankovich, who posted it in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group this morning, minutes after I posted the Invitational and before I had a chance to do it myself. I’m surprised that he hasn’t also already sent his best 25 entries of the 247 he’s no doubt already thought of. ACROSS (each hyphen is a hidden letter) LI-- PU-S S-OG F-R-- A-T- OR-- NA-E OC--N -EADA-LA-OU-I- -EAR-- S-LA-S RE--E- B-R-STA T-L- P-RT LE-O-B-O-N A-OF C-Y E-E SNO- -AN-SON-I-E -I-DS IN-NE-- C-C-O-E -UA-S P-RT D-NY O-S TU-ORS S-Y PIES A--E -H-NK-R THE-AN-SAL-H-RE A-C--RS UNI- OU-T D-T --V-NS R-E P--P DOR- YESNO F-S-IE- B-MOD-L MA-R- -LY--A--OME O-OS TIA M-I BAN- DO-T--L-ME C-AR I-A- -VE--LL -LDIES P-O-IP R-L-T- SW--T----LOT-- RATES S-EK HE-A -I-E -P-R- E-SE --GY -CA- The Week 1446 grid, unbeaned. Feel free to use the intended words as well as ones in which you can substitute letters. DOWN (Jesse wrote them down vertically; -IPS is beneath LA-S on the grid, not to its right. Does it really matter?) LA-S -IPS A-Y OD-R I-E-T AN-- --E -OV-R- -TAL- N-RY CVS O-ELAP --DAL -NT T--N ST--T- A--ASE PH-NOM --TER PO-S -O-DIERS AT-L-S- URL PON--E-S F-ILL --AR-F- NSA R-RA- SSE S--ER ICY NU-S- M-W-- O-TC-- A-NE- MEL-ES SNU- -EC -SI I-- D-KE -A-ELY -O-A- ELICIT O-I-E -O-EL P-Y -E-H- GE- -EI-S -O- -BAS-E- BO--E -HU-B-AR --G FO---ED TH--P-AN P-AY -CERB S-U-RT M--I-L R-A--S U-NE DO- -OO-- --RSON AOK DODO A-TIC -N-T-O -R- -R-M -I--A -AN- SSR T-LE P-E- It doesn’t come into play in this week’s contest, but the puzzle we’re using — by constructor Margaret Woodruff — has a clever, fun theme: It’s titled “It Takes Two,” because the seven long “themed” answers are names or phrases are words that are preceded (and given as a single word as the clue) by a word said twice: So the clue “*Extra” — as in “Extra, extra” — leads to READALLABOUT IT; similarly, (Bad, Bad) LEROYBROWN; (Liar, liar) PANTSONFIRE; (Hail, hail) THEGANGSALLHERE; (Ladybird, ladybird) FLYAWAYHOME; (Wait Wait) DONTTELLME; and (Hush, Hush) SWEETCHARLOTTE. The original clues are here; the constructor wasn’t into puns or snark, though, so you don’t have to worry about duplication. My fingers are crossed that you’ll follow the directions and format each entry in a single line of text beginning with the word as it appears on the grid; I’ll handle it on this end if you use hyphens or dashes. I just cannot possibly look all through these lists to figure out that your RINDS was for -I-DS; you have to tell me. And yes, of course I’m going to cook those lentils. It won’t be the first time I’ve had to eat my words. Some linkage may occur*: The results of Week 1442 Tom Witte’s headline for this contest back in 2015 I was just a few minutes into the judging of Week 1442 — compare any two items on the random list I supplied — when I laughed out loud: 12 gallons of hand sanitizer: Purell. An evening with Mitch McConnell: Pure 'ell. And it remained my favorite entry as I read through some 1,200 other entries — and then, many hours later, I saw it again. Well, I decided, it has to win anyway. It’s just that good. So congratulations to Clowning Achievement winners Jesse Frankovich and Jeff Rackow. This isn’t the first time that the same entry won the whole contest for two separate entrants, but it’s been a minute: In Week 906, 10 years ago, Mike Gips, Edmund Conti and Howard Walderman all suggested the slogan that would go on the 2011 runner-up mug: “My Cup Punneth Over.” Jeff just started playing the Invite barely a year ago year; it’s just his 10th blot of ink. BUT it’s already his second contest win — he won the Clowner’s predecessor, the Lose Cannon, in Week 1399 for this fictoid: “Virtually all ‘cotton candy’ in the United States is now made of polyester.” Jesse’s Invite story is a tad different, for now anyway: He’s closing in his 800th ink; this is his 18th win. And he’s the first of the Losers to have won three Clowning Achievements, the trophy I started awarding this past December. In our 100 Clowners for 100 Losers program, Jesse’s second win earned him a little “II” pennant to attach to the base of the Disembodied Clown Head. And so he’ll be the first Loser to decide whether to add a “III” flag or to just sub out the “II” on the same base. Grad student Daniel Galef got his first Invite ink way back in Week 1187, but now he’s back in earnest and inking up the joint regularly. His second place this week — and I’m glad that wasn’t a double credit, because I have just one pair of Nerds socks to hand out — gives him his 19th blot of ink, but already his sixth “above-the-fold” prize. Daniel wasn’t the only Loser to interpret “the world’s largest pants” or (“the world’s smallest pants”) as hard breathing, but his was my favorite: A quarantine puppy and the world’s largest pants: Both come out of a dog giving birth. And the Losers’ Circle is filled out by a pair of all-stars: An Olympic pole vaulter: Man with a 17-foot pole. An evening with Mitch McConnell: Man! Not with a 17-foot pole! (Jon Gearhart) Simone Biles and the Texas power grid: You can count on only one of them to light up an arena. (Kevin Dopart) What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, who read the print Invite, enjoyed all four top winners this week and also singled out: The world’s largest pants and the singular “they”: They’re both really useful when nothing else quite fits. (Deb Stewart) A non-fungible token and an evening with McConnell: In short, you could call either of them “non-fun.” (Gary Crockett) Pandemic gray hair: You maybe don’t want to dye it. Pineapple upside-down cake: You definitely don’t want to diet. (Craig Dykstra) Jewish space lasers vs. a vaccination card: One is the outrageous creation used to shame a minority that just wants to be left alone, and the other is space lasers run by Jews. — M. Taylor Greene (John Hutchins) So good luck with the lentilized grid — and don’t forget to write a poem using a spelling bee word: Deadline for Week 1445 is Monday night, July 26. ====================================================================== WEEK 1447, published August 1, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1447: Well, if you’re going to put it THAT way ... The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s ‘plain English’ contest and acronym results. An honorable mention in our acronym-law contest this week: The JAM Act — Jetway Area Mitigation — requires airport gate areas to have enough seating for at least 10 percent of the passengers on a flight. It's by frequent flier Tom Witte. (iStock) By Pat Myers July 29, 2021 at 4:39 p.m. EDT 0 We can thank Al Gore for the first of The Style Invitational’s “Plain English” contest: Back in 1998, the vice president had called for all government documents to be written in “plain language.” The Veep was talking about using simpler, clearer wording for regulations, tax instructions, etc. He cited the example of this regulation for building exits: Before: “Ways of exit access and the doors to exits to which they lead shall be so designed and arranged as to be clearly recognizable as such.” Plain language: An exit door must be free of signs or decorations that obscure its visibility.” “But even that version troubled Gore,” according to The Washington Post, who then suggested: “Don’t put up anything that makes it harder to see the exit door.” But in Week 342 (2000) The Czar of The Style Invitational, of course, wasn’t asking for readers to offer up usefully concise rewording. He was looking for snark, for a cynical (or at least wry) translation of mind-numbing bureaucratese, fact-concealing spin, or just polite euphemism. And that’s what I’m looking for as well 21 years later in this week’s contest, Week 1447. And as you’ll see from these selections from Week 342 and some later Plain English contests, sometimes the “translation” was more of a wry comment. That’s okay — we’re just looking for the funny. REPORT FROM WEEK IX (342) (text file of full results here; scroll down below the week’s new contest),: Fourth Runner-Up: Original: “We hope this will be the first of many such ventures. The internationalization of baseball has begun.” —Commissioner Bud Selig, on Major League Baseball opening its regular season in Japan. Plain English version: “We’ll put a team in Ulan Bator before the D.C. area sees one again.” (Bruce W. Alter, Fairfax Station; Elliott Jaffa, Arlington) [The Washington Nationals debuted five years later.] Third Runner-Up: “I’m not proposing tax relief because it’s the popular thing to do, I’m proposing it because it’s the right thing to do.” —George W. Bush. Plain English version: “I’m proposing it because it’s a right popular thing to do.” (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Second Runner-Up: “I am okay. I am capable. There is no one exactly like me.” —Students reciting a motivational pledge in a high school self-esteem class in Charlotte. Plain English version: “I am okay. I am capable. There is no one exactly like me aside from the 20 other people saying the same thing.” (James Pierce, Charlottesville) First Runner-Up: “We need a change. A cold brain means sober calculations.” —Oleg Makeyev, a Russian voter, on the icy personality of Boris Yeltsin’s successor. Plain English version: “We need a change. A sober brain means sober calculations.” (David Genser, Arlington) [Yeltsin was a well-documented drunk.] And the winner of the U.S.S.R. tour books: “It feels like nothing, actually.” —Cybermagnate Michael Saylor, on what it’s like to lose more than a billion dollars in one day of stock reversals. Plain English version: “I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my legs!” (Martin Bredeck, Community, Va.) Selected honorable mentions: “This era does not reward people who struggle in vain to redraw borders with blood.” —President Clinton, on Pakistani TV. Plain English version: “This era only rewards people who successfully redraw borders with blood.” (Beth Baniszewski, Columbia) “We need to seize the moment available to us to set down themes for the election.” —Karl Rove, political strategist for George W. Bush. Plain English version: “We need to think up some themes quick.” (Jennifer Hart, Arlington; Mike Genz, La Plata) “Bush must reposition the issue environment.” — A Gore spokesman on the weakness of a tax cut as an issue for Bush. Plain English version: “Yes, I know my guy has called for a return to plain English, but old habits die hard.” (Mike Genz, La Plata; Russell Beland, Springfield) --- For some reason, I waited till 2007 to run this contest again. The winner of Week 729 is one of the examples for this week’s contest; here are some others. Full results here, below that week’s new contest. Report from Week 729 … A bunch of entries cited one or another verbose BS-ervation (meant to assure the populace about progress in Iraq, security measures, etc., and translated it as “We’re doomed.” 4. (Job posting) The mission of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) is to enhance the financial stability, accountability and integrity of the Government of the District of Columbia. Plain English Version: Good morning, Mr. Phelps … (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) 3. “It was the one of the most different halves of football I’ve ever been around.” PE: “It’s too soon after the game for me to talk good again yet.” (Russell Beland, Springfield) 2. the winner of the stationery made of Panda Poo paper: “Our overall evaluation is that real progress has been achieved,” Jones told the senators, and then he qualified that judgment with words such as “uneven,” “unsatisfactory,” “overly sectarian” and “failed.” PE: “After uneven, unsatisfactory and overly sectarian progress, our overall evaluation is that failure has been achieved.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Selected honorable mentions: FREE RAZRPHONES! PE: EXPENSIVE SERVICE AGREEMENTS! (Ira Allen, Bethesda) “And — let’s be honest here — " PE: “And — let me sugarcoat this a little less than usual — " (Russell Beland, Springfield) “To the extent that we can move quickly to denuclearization, we can move quickly to normalization.” PE: “This damn well better work.” (the late, great Mae Scanlan) Photos become property of The Washington Post, which may edit, publish, distribute or republish them in any form. PE: We can Photoshop you right out of your skivvies. (Brendan Beary) Complete auto care starts with our $17.99 oil change. PE: For only $17.99, we’ll tell you that you need new shocks, struts, brakes, exhaust system, valve cover gaskets, water pump, CV joints, wiper blades and, of course, tires. (Russ Taylor) On to 2011: Report from Week 897 (full results here; scroll down past the week’s new contest) The winner of the Inker: Sentence in The Post: “The positions the Obama administration is taking today are not the traditional positions of most Democrats.” Plain English: They’re trying out alternatives to “fetal.” (Danny Bravman, Chicago) 2 the winner of the turkey carcass hat: “If you are out and about in a kilt, then remember to show some decorum.” PE: And decorum is the only thing you’d better be showing. (Dion Black, Washington) 3 “Our biggest sweater sale of the year!” PE: “Nobody bought our sweaters!” (Dave Prevar, Annapolis) 4 Obama: “Our success depends on our willingness to engage in the kind of honest conversation and cooperation that hasn’t always happened in Washington.” PE: “We’re doomed.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) [I guess I didn’t get as many of these as I did in Week 729] Selected honorable mentions: “I’m absolutely a person who has not let ego run amok,” Winfrey says. Plain English: “ … as you will learn in this month’s article about me in my personal magazine, O, and on several shows premiering on the Oprah Winfrey Network.” (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) “We clearly have to continue to provide the message to the Afghan people about why we’re here and what it is that we want to do,” Petraeus said. PE: “Can somebody tell me why we’re here and what it is that we want to do?” (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase) Buy your next BMW with zero down, and no processing fee. PE: Please, please, for the love of God, buy one of our ^%&% cars! (Craig Dykstra, Centreville) Richard Nixon, discussing various ethnic groups on a recently released tape: “I’ve just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits…” PE: Mine is that I’m a sleazy bigot. (Russell Beland, Fairfax; Nan Reiner, Alexandria) And then: Week 1198, 2016 — as in Nov. 17, 2016, right after the election (all results here): In Week 1198 we asked readers to find a sentence in that’s week’s Post or another newspaper and to translate it into “plain English,” free of spin, obfuscation or just plain lying. Some entrants’ translations snarkily assumed an election outcome other than the one that occurred; to those Losers, I hope that being robbed of ink is the biggest thing you have to be upset about all week. 4th place: “Kaine said there’s nothing in his life or emails he’d be ‘overly embarrassed about’ and said he’s determined not to be distracted.” Translation: Kaine admits having no life. (Neal Starkman, Seattle) 3rd place: From a classified ad: “Oil Painting: Man and Camel — $110 Original, in beautiful gold frame.” Translation: “I don’t know how to use Craigslist.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) 2nd place and the Hillary Laughing Pen: “How does one face the absurdity of existence in a cold, indifferent universe, where time’s arrow points inexorably toward death and the only certainties are loss and sorrow?” Translation: What do you mean you’re out of the pumpkin spice ones?!!” (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: On China’s plan to rate its citizens: “Imagine a world where an authoritarian government monitors everything you do, amasses huge amounts of data on almost every interaction you make, and awards you a single score that measures how “trustworthy” you are.” Translation: “Imagine how you got your own credit rating.” (Kevin Dopart) Selected honorable mentions: A Nobel Prize committee member about Bob Dylan’s refusal to acknowledge receiving the literature award: “One can say that it is impolite and arrogant.” Translation: “What a douche.” (Hildy Zampella, Falls Church, Va.) “Scientists say that the Ross Sea has hardly been touched by humans and as such is a perfect laboratory.” Translation: “Hey, look! Nobody’s ever touched this stuff! Let’s touch it!” (Marni Penning Coleman, Falls Church, Va.) “U. S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an operation that has not been acknowledged, said the drones being flown out of Tunisia …” Translation: The Pentagon announced that it is flying drones out of Tunisia. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.) “I love Florida, this is my second home.” Translation: “I wouldn’t be caught dead here in the summer.” (Florida native Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) Have at it, gimlet-eyes! Actronyms*: The results of Week 1443 *Non-inking headline submitted by several Losers with varying spellings The Week 1443 contest was to propose some legislation and give it some comically convoluted name so that it would result in a relevant acronym — much like the real-life DEJOY Act to speed up mail delivery. It seemed ripe for the Invite, since it incorporated both wordplay and pet-peeve humor and, likely, political humor as well. But it proved a challenge for the Loser Community, drawing fewer than 1,000 entries and fewer entrants than usual as well. To come up with a phrase you could turn into an acronym didn’t prove much of an obstacle, though some of the words used were a stretch. But it became a slog to read through one long, convoluted phrase after another (even though the silliness of the whole phenomenon is what we were mocking). This is one reason why the results in week’s print edition comprise just 18 inking entries, with 28 online. Alas, I didn’t see as many fresh and funny ideas as usual in the observational*peeve-humor department, and much of the political humor tended toward the screedy. A few people spelled out unprintable words, and whoever spelled out “ASSININE” should have consulted a dictionary first. But a couple dozen veteran Losers — along with First Offender Michael Chung — made it all work, and really, for jokes like this, that’s plenty. The Losers’ Circle of the top four entries is all familiar names: Kevin Dopart wins the Invite for the insane 35th time, and it’s his third win of our latest trophy, the Clowning Achievement. (Under our 100 Clowners for 100 Losers scheme, Kevin gets a little “III” flag to attach to the base of the Disembodied Clown Head. Until he gets the “IV.”) And among the runners-up, Duncan Stevens closes in on 700 blots of ink, Roy Ashley is next in line for the Hall of Fame as he strides toward 500, and relative newbie Jonathan Jensen has been on the page almost every week for the past couple of years. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood most enjoyed Chris Doyle’s ELEPHANT act (Endorsing Legislators’ Efforts to Pack Heat and Annoy Nancy, Too) — and yes, gun-totin’ Rep. Lauren Boebert is really from Rifle, Colo.; First Offender Mike Chung’s tribute to Tucker Carlson (Totally Unsubstantiated, Colossally Knowledgeless, Error-Riddled, Crosseyed Articles Reading Like Smart, Objective News); Craig Dykstra’s Binary Initiative to Transfer Capital from Online Investment Neophytes, a.k.a. the Fool and His Money plan; and Bob Kruger’s WE ARE SCREWED act (While Earth’s Ailments Require Expeditious Solutions, Congress Regards Everything With Endless Delay:). Next week, just as we wrap up the Olympics: The results of Week 1444, our contest to alter the name of a sport to make a new one. Now, that one got a LOT of entries. Also next week: Limerick people, are you ready? ====================================================================== WEEK 1448, published August 8, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1448: Standing atop the odium The Style Invitational Empress on the sports name winners and new limerick contest Badminton stars Apriyani Rahayu and Greysia Polii of Indonesia exult after winning the gold medal in women's doubles Aug. 2. The world's fastest racket sport — a smash has been clocked at 304 mph — brought out our equally quick-witted punsters; this week's inking entries for new sports include Worstminton, Bandminton, Badmitten and Vladminton. (Leonhard Foeger*Reuters) By Pat Myers August 5, 2021 at 5:03 p.m. EDT 0 Dang, ESPN should have gotten in touch with The Style Invitational! Inspired by the fictional sports channel in the sports movie spoof “Dodgeball,” once a year — and this year, it’s Friday, Aug. 6 — ESPN2 becomes ESPN8, the Ocho, and features nonstop programming of “some fringe sports that are nonetheless highly entertaining.” This year’s lineup includes the Franklin Rock River Stone Skipping Tournament, the World Championship Rototiller Races, the Corgi Races at Emerald Downs, and the World Championship Cow Chip Throwing Contest. But only if the Ochoistas had seen today’s results of Week 1444, our contest to slightly change the name of a sport or sports-related term and create a new one! Then we could have had an antennis tournament — as Mark Raffman describes the challenge in his honorable-mention entry, “It’s really hard to hit a ball with a racket strapped to your head.” Or, on the track, the 100x4-meter relay: “It’s all about the baton pass,” explains John Klayman. Or, for that matter, Pam Sweeney’s 2x4x100 relay: “Long pieces of lumber ensure socially distanced handoffs. Just watch for splinters.” Or any of almost 50 inspired, if sometimes inspiredly silly, puns this week drawn from an Olympic-size pool of 1,800 entries, from Anarchery (shoot anywhere!) to Vladminton (best strategy: let him win). While some in the Loser Community scored with political analogies — among them, the poll vault (a high legislative bar to voting) and the Duper Bowl (the GOP primary) — we eased up quite a bit on the Big Issues digs this week, instead offering an array of humor that was less cerebral but “nonetheless highly entertaining.” As Loser Frank Mann observed after the Invite went up online this morning, “I can totally see this sports contest as a two-page spread in MAD.” True dat — think of the Brett Dimaio’s slam donk, bouncing the ball off a defender’s head and into the basket. Couldn’t you imagine that as a Don Martin cartoon in Mad Magazine? Not to mention Frank’s lagrosse itself (score by vomiting into the goal). But not so much, actually, for this week’s top winners (except for Robert Schechter’s runner-up worstminton: played with a grenade). I hereby confer Instant Classic Aphorism status on Melissa Balmain’s Marrython: The only endurance sport where you try not to reach the finish line. It gives Melissa her 180th blot of Invite ink, including her 14th victory, but it’s her first Clowning Achievement, the trophy we started giving out since December. Also too grown up for Mad: Hannah Seidel’s American Ninja Worrier, which nailed the “anxious parents” (her own?) quotes: “A series of extreme obstacles, from the devilishly sensible “He’ll probably text us in the morning” to the terrifyingly reasonable “She’s an adult; she can make her own choices.” And John Hutchins, who’s back Inviting after an unexcused absence, is back in the Losers’ Circle with offencing, a competition between the most vile talk show hosts; “the winner gets a prime-time spot on cable so they can complain every night about being ‘censored.’” [Despite my decades of “fixing” it as a copy editor, I’m on board with the singular “they” in cases like these, when the pronoun applies to any gender.] What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood just ate up the column this week, offering a long list of faves: all the winners, plus, from the honorable mentions: Pam Sweeney’s Moderna pentathlon, culminating in the “Two-Days-Later Sore-Armed Sports Bra Removal”; Diana Oertel’s poll vault (my favorite of 12 “poll vault” entries this week); the aforementioned 100x4 and 2x4x100 relays and Brian Collins’s anarchery, as well as Mike Gips’s and Drew Bennett’s idea for a Super William Tell archerry contest; John Kammer’s plan to combine hoops shooting with the other kind in baskeetball; Craig Schopmeyer’s clickit, Russian and Chinese teams trying to get naive Americans to open email attachments; and especially Tom Witte’s subhead above the list of honorable mentions: They gave only 109 percent. And! Annabeth’s Best Bets: Giving the second read on the copy desk today was Annabeth Carlson, who was partial to Eric Nelkin’s Microsoftball (“Every few innings the umpire updates the rule book, often requiring the game to restart”) and Duncan Stevens’s NASCARA, a car race in which the drivers do their eye makeup in the rearview mirror at 200 mph. Less successful: In the instructions for Week 1444, I asked readers to change the name of the sport slightly: not necessarily just one letter, but enough so that the original was obvious. But sometimes, just a one-letter change made that difficult: one was “bikini,” an alteration of “biking.” especially because the description also wasn’t about bikes. [In this section, I haven’t checked the authorship of any of the entries mentioned.] Also, as always, there were the screedy, in entries so bitter that the humor doesn’t have a chance. Like: “De-Fencing: Mask-wearing participants take down a useless, ugly, yet very expensive wall erected by an idiot to placate his raging ego.” Or: “ICE Skating: Immigration & Customs Employees being acquitted in cross-border shootings, etc.” And then there were what seemed like an inordinate number of entries that were insensitive and what one might charitably call tone-deaf in our current age: “Blackstroke: The first racially designated Olympic event.” “Bitch Volleyball: The perfect game for mean girls.” “Tramp Eileen: Contestants compete to see who can satisfy that slut, Eileen. Eileen often changes her mind, so this event does have its ups and downs.” “Peach volleyball: Georgia debutantes in bikinis. Need I say more?” “Poleo: Your horse must have one leg shorter than the others.” I mean, come on. This isn’t the same as risque; those are nasty. (Well, “blackstroke” would be just dumb were it not for the history of African Americans being banned from swimming pools.) Meanwhile, these are just unprintably funny: Bowl vault: Competitors attempt to accurately drop a load while jumping over the toilet. (Jesse Frankovich) Crow team: Eight big boastful rowers and their tiny cox. (Jeff Contompasis) Hey! Do you know how to write a limerick? Yay, it’s Limerixicon week! I love our annual visit with the limerick dictionary OEDILF.com because I know I’ll always receive lots of great material: Not only does the Loser Community include some of the world’s great limerick writers, but I always discover some new talents as well. And when I announce the contest each August, I have a chance to look through the Invite archives for an earlier limerick to use as an example, one that happens to feature a word that starts with the year’s pertinent letters — this year, for Style Invitational Week 1448, we’re up to the he- words, having skipped ahead from last year’s ha- words. Every year, alas, I also get lots of entries that don’t qualify as limericks. To that end, with each limerick contest I also publish “Get Your 'Rick Rolling,” my handy-dandy guide to what I’m looking for, and how to figure out if that’s what you wrote. I also spell it out more briefly right in the contest instructions. And for guidance and inspiration, pleeze look at any of our earlier results, happily compiled on the “LIM” page of Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List. On the right column of the row listing each contest is a link to that week’s results — to all 17 previous Limerixicons plus assorted other limerick contests, including the one just seven weeks ago to sum up or tell about a song. But if you’re new to limericks, before you check out the guide, bear with me for a minute as I show you my Hickory-Dickory-Dock* Dickory-Dock test on this week’s example by Beverley Sharp, from Week 887. 1. Does Line 1 include a strong “HICK-or-y DICK-or-y DOCK”? Though she sang with a voice operatic, though she SANG-with-a VOIC-op-er AT-ic — YES. (It’s okay, even good, to have those unaccented syllables before and after._ 2. Does Line 2 also have “HICK-or-y DICK-or-y DOCK”? She ate marshmallows like a fanatic. she ate MARSH-mal-lows LIKE-a-fa NAT-ic — Ding ding, YES. Exactly the same as Line 1. 3. Now Lines 3 and 4: Do they have “HICK-or-y DOCK”? But then it got tricky — but THEN-it-got TRICK-y DICK-or-y DOCK! 4. And Line 4 ... Her tonsils got sticky; her TON-sils-got STICK-y DICK-or-y DOCK! 5. And just like Lines 1 and 2: Now all we can hear is s’more static. now ALL-we-can HEAR-is-s’more STAT-ic. Yup! HICK-or-y-DICK-or-y DOCK! 6. Now, the rhymes! Lines 1, 2 and 5 all need to rhyme with one another. Operatic, fanatic, static — yes, perfect rhymes: The accented syllables all rhyme: RAT, NAT, STAT. And what’s following them, the unaccented “-ic,” is the same. Ratic, Natic, Static. That’s called a perfect rhyme and that’s what we want. (What do you think a lot of people will send me when we get to the “hi-” words?) So you have till Monday night, Aug. 16, for Week 1448. And meanwhile, don’t forget Week 1447, in which you pick something from an article or ad and translate it wryly into “plain English.” Deadline for that is Monday, Aug. 9. Coming Sunday: Mystery podcast guest! “I’ll be recording another podcast tomorrow, with a mystery guest.” Deadline for that is Monday, Aug. 9. “You’re Invited” host Mike Gips gave me that teaser today, and I didn’t push for more information; I’m looking forward to finding out myself on Sunday, Aug. 8. So look for Season 2, Episode 3, at bit.ly*invite-podcast (and most podcast platforms). I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all 14 half-hour episodes so far — and so why wouldn’t I want to hear Jeff Bezos, or maybe Joe Biden, dish on his favorite entries of the week? ====================================================================== WEEK 1449, published August 15, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1449: All together now The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s portmanteau contest and winning Spelling Bee poems Loser David Genser got ink in the Czar's 1998 portmanteau name contest with “Madonna Reed: A 1950s TV housewife who could do all the housework and still have dinner and an orgy ready when her hubby came home.” (Madonna in 2015; Donna Reed in 1958) (Wikipedia, Creative Commons) By Pat Myers August 12, 2021 at 5:45 p.m. EDT 0 Before we get going today with our new contest — Week 1449 — and the results of Week 1445, I want to catch you up on some news that was settled on just this morning: The Flushies — the Loser Community’s annual awards*potluck*songfest — are being moved by one day and a few miles: The fete will now be Sunday afternoon, Sept. 19, in Potomac, Md., in the spacious backyard (or, if weather demands, the spacious rec room) of newbie Loser Steve Leifer. The change is yet another prompted by Our Current Situation: Original host Sam Mertens has two kids who aren’t of vaccine age, and things have just gotten to be too scary again. The move from Saturday to Sunday was prompted by the work schedule of Loser of the Year honoree Jonathan Jensen; he’s a bassist for the Baltimore Symphony, which decided it’d have an afternoon concert that Saturday. The move to Sunday will also enable Loserdom’s observant Jews to attend. For obvious reasons, everyone must be fully vaccinated, so no young kids this time. The Flushies are always a great way to meet new Losers and reconnect with the veterans, and to enjoy the talents of our Loserbards as we sing parodies — Jonathan himself has volunteered to play piano — almost always including one or more songs written just for the occasion. You don’t have to be an inking Loser to attend, just a fan of the Invite. And if you’ve found your way to this column, you more than qualify. As I’ve done in the past with the Flushies and the winter party, I’ll send out an email invitation via Evite within the next few weeks, so that it’s easier to see who’s coming, and to update everyone with any important news. I’ll use earlier lists to compile this one, so if you’d like to be added (or to make sure you’re on it to begin with), email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. Like all Loser events, the Flushies aren’t sponsored at all by The Washington Post; it’s all the work of Uber-Loser Elden Carnahan and a gang of volunteers. I just have people’s emails and more of a way to get the word out. And if you’d like to help plan things (including working on a song), contact me and I’ll send you their way. Meanwhile, Sam and Laurie Mertens are still on to host the potluck Loser Brunch on Sunday, Aug. 22, on their big front porch in upper Silver Spring; they’re good with up to 20 or so people — and they’re even letting me show up — so RSVP promptly to mertenshosting@gmail.com and they’ll give you further details. (Let me know as well that you’re coming.) And also: Lim from lim: Catch the latest You’re Invited podcast Especially if you’re a fan of great limericks, be sure to catch the latest episode (Season 2, Episode 3) of You’re Invited, the all-about-the-Invite podcast. This time, host Mike Gips Zoom-interviews Hall of Famer Brendan Beary, who in addition to shouting out his favorite entries of the past week’s Invite results, looks back on a still-unique Invitational: the Week 678 Limerick Smackdown. In our 2006 Limerixicon, before I instituted the 25-entry limit, Brendan had submitted 43 excellent limericks … and Chris Doyle had sent me an even hundred. I was so overwhelmed that four weeks later, I asked Brendan and Chris — and only Brendan and Chris — to compete against each other and write a limerick in each of 10 categories specified by the Empress. (The categories included a limerick that specified at least five body parts; one about an obscure mammal; and a note from George W. Bush to Condoleeza Rice.) The results were stellar; hear all about it from Brendan and Mike. And congratulations to the Gipser for having passed the 2,000-download mark! Let’s do the mash: This week’s portmanteau name contest Some contests you can really do just once. For example, back in 2003 we had a contest for cynical turns on inspirational platitudes, and the results — take a look — were classic (winner: “Never say die. I’ve tried, and it doesn’t actually make people die.” — Tom McCudden). But are 30 other platitudes out there that would generate different, but just as funny, snarky takes? I’m guessing no. (I am, however, open to persuasion with some great new examples.) But there are always new names in the news — not to mention, uh, all the well-known real and fictional names of all time. And so here we are again with a contest to overlap two names — or one name and some other thing into another name, then describe the result. For these portmanteau jokes to work, the reader will have to recognize and be superficially familiar with not only both names, but with how the description applies. To take a random example from 1998, “Tom Daschle Hammett: Author of ‘The Maltese Donkey’” (Stephen Dudzik): First, Sen. Tom Daschle, at the time the Senate minority (Democratic) leader; second, Dashiell Hammett, the author; third, Hammett wrote “The Maltese Falcon.” (And of course that a donkey is the symbol of Democrats.) Daschle left Congress in 2005 and isn’t a household name anymore, but I’d think that in 1998, readers would easily get everything in Steve’s joke, and laugh at the book name. If it were written for 2021, not so much. Unlike in 1998, the online Invite lets me add an explanatory link in the entry. But it’s way better not to have to explain the joke at all; it’s a humor column, not a puzzle. We’ve had various formats and rules for the names. In Week 489 in 2003, the common element needed to be spelled the same way; late contests didn’t require that — and we don’t today, either. In 2012, the gimmick was to combine two names into a Twitter handle, but the names didn’t necessarily have to overlap. I ended up using the wording from Week 866 in 2010, “Natalie Portmanteau.” To anticipate another question: The directions say to “start” with a name and then “append” another name or something else, but it doesn’t say whether the something-else can begin the result. My ruling: If it’s funny, go ahead. If the common element has different spellings, which one to use? Normally, use the one that seems clearest and most natural, but sometimes one way will be funnier, as with Meg Sullivan’s “Rembrandt Van Rijn Tin Tin” from 1998. But that element will have to be pronounced the same, or pretty dang close, or the joke will flop. For Ye Olde Inspiration & Guidance, here’s some assorted ink from previous Style Invitational name-mash contests, plus links to the complete results (sometimes you’ll have to scroll past the week’s new contest). Report from Week 287 [1998], in which you were asked to replicate the “Before and After” game from “Wheel of Fortune,” beginning with a name and adding to it a word or expression that creates a bridge of words. [Text file of complete results here] Fifth Runner-Up: Rembrandt Van Rijn Tin Tin: The night watchdog. (Meg Sullivan, Potomac) Fourth Runner-Up: Heimlichtenstein: A small country firmly lodged between Austria and Switzerland. (Sandra Hull, Arlington) Third Runner-Up: Darryl F. Zanuck nyuk nyuk: A slapstick filmmaker. (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) Second Runner-Up: Roseanne Boleyn: Queen who kept talking after being beheaded. (David Genser, Arlington) [EWWW. We would never do a beheading joke now, especially in reference to a particular person.] First Runner-Up: Anais Nintendo Gameboy: The pocket toy you really don’t want to give your kids. (Greg and Kristine Griswold, Falls Church) And the winner of the snake wine (back in the pre-trophy day, the winner got the unique prize): Thomas Jefferson Clinton — President who penned the famous introductory lines: “We hold these half-truths to be legally accurate … " (Douglas Riley, Reston) Honorable Mentions: T.S. Eliot Ness — Poet who wrote “The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover.” (Ralph Scott, Washington) Alan Greenspandex — An ugly way to contain inflation. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park) Tom Daschle Hammett — Author of the Maltese Donkey. (Stephen Dudzik, Silver Spring) Attila the Hunchback of Notre Dame — Nobody made fun of him. (Niels Hoven, Silver Spring) Marilyn Monroe Doctrine — Post-Clinton regulations requiring all future presidential bimbos to be at least 30 years old. (Philip Vitale, Arlington; Susanne Lazanov, Reston) [Bimbos! Times really have changed.] Madonna Reed — A 1950s TV housewife who could do all the housework and still have dinner and an orgy ready when her hubby came home. (David Genser, Arlington) Shoeless Joe Mama — The man who threw the World Series because the pitcher was so fat, when someone told him to haul butt, he had to make two trips. (Jessica Henig, Washington) Betty Friedan Quayle — Author of “The Femanin Misteek.” (David Genser, Arlington) Grace Slick Willie — Lead singer for the William Jefferson Airplane. (Daniel E. Klein, McLean; Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Report from Week CLVI (actually Week 489; complete results here): Third Runner-Up: Mr. T.S. Eliot: “I pity the fool, wanderin' around half-deserted streets, walkin' on beaches, talkin' 'bout peaches, mournin' his lost manhood. I pity the fool.” (Dan Steinberg, Bethesda) First Runner-Up: Marion Barry Bonds: “The pitch set me up.” (Dave Zarrow, Herndon; Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) And the winner of the sugar-cookie-scented Eggbutt Horseball: Al Frankenstein’s Monster: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, gosh darn it, I’m a big fat idiot.” (Beverly Miller, Clarendon) Honorable Mentions: Ariel Sharon Stone: A political leader who promises a glimpse of the Promised Land. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Auntie Eminem: Dorothy, git down in the cella* Cuz I ain’t no Rockefella* I cain’t take no persecutions* From you or them Lilliputians (Mark Eckenwiler, Washington; Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls) Montezuma Thurman: Starring in “Poop Fiction.” (Trish Hackman, Springfield, and Maureen Langan, New York) Raggedy Ann Coulter: She’s really cute, but we gotta be grateful her mouth is sewn shut. (Susan Reese, Arlington) Lenny Bruce Lee: Master of Kung Fu— (Frank Mullen III, Aledo, Ill.) Report From Week 866 (2010), in which we asked for two overlapping names, or a name overlapping with another word or expression (the spellings of the overlapping part of the names didn’t have to be identical): (complete results here) The winner of the Inker: Mike Tyson Chicken: “Mmm, tastes just like ear!” (Malcolm Fleschner, Palo Alto, Calif.) 2. the winner of the battery-operated Loser Liquor Dispenser: Edgar Allan Popeil: Quoth the Raven, “Wait, there’s more!” (Pam Sweeney, St. Paul, Minn.) Mal-Amalgrams: Honorable Mentions Brigitte Bardotcom: Early Internet provider of topless pictures. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Humphrey Bogart Carney: He often played an underworld figure. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) [Art Carney played a sewer worker in “The Honeymooners.”] J. Edgar Hooversace: Designer specializing in men’s evening gowns. (Mae Scanlan) Emily Post-Apocalypse: She advises you which of your three new arms you should use to hold the cocktail fork at the Nuclear Winter Ball. (Leighanne Mazure, Forest Hills, N.Y, a First Offender) Sally Field Marshal Goering: The Flying Hun. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn) Sugar Ray Leonardo da Vinci: He puts guys down on canvas. (Beverley Sharp, Washington) John Deere John: I’ve decided our neighbor’s grass is greener, so … (Pie Snelson, Silver Spring) T.S. Eliot Spitzer: Poet who penned the immortal lines: “In the room the women come and go*That’s how you find a high-priced ho.” (Anne Paris, Arlington) In Week 1142 [2015], inspired by the tweets of KimKierkegaardashian, , we asked you to combine two names into a Twitter handle, and write a tweet or “bio” by the hybrid person: (full results here) 4th place: @Lao-Tzuperman: A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single bound. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) 3rd place: @JFKanye: Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for you. (Or for me.)" (Lela Martin, Midlothian, Va.) 2nd place: @Trumpelstiltskin: Of course the bimbo knew my name — everybody knows my name! And I never wanted her firstborn. Ugliest kid I ever saw. (John Glenn, Tyler, Tex.) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: @OrangeJulius: Could be well mov’d: My friends in the House are sticking knives into me. #IdesOfSeptember (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) [this one wouldn’t work for our portmanteau contest] Tweetin’ Low: honorable mentions @BelaLuGehrig: Today I consider myself the suckiest man on the face of this earth. (Gary Crockett) @JohnLewistler’sMother: Fought all my life for civil rights, but in that painting I’m a prime example of profiling. #grayandblacklivesmatter (Mae Scanlan, Washington) @DonMcLenaDunham:* And I knew if I had my chance* That I could go take off my pants* And maybe HBO’d be happy for a while (Rivka Riss-Levinson, Washington, a First Offender) A bee in your sonnet*: The results of Week 1445 *I would have used that as a headline but it didn’t quite fit on the print page; it’s by Sarah Walsh I’m not surprised in the slightest that our Loserbards — not all of whom are known for their Invite poems — supplied dozens of clever poems featuring words from this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee. Or that this week’s Losers’ Circle was inhabited by Chris Doyle, Jesse Frankovich and Duncan Stevens, Hall of Famers all. Even the almost brand-new Coleman Glenn has made such a successful debut — he’s already gotten ink with a song parody and a limerick in just the past few weeks, and was a runner-up in his debut six weeks ago — that I think of him already as an Invite veteran. (Hang in there, Coleman!) I couldn’t resist giving second place to Jesse Frankovich’s “argentous” (silver) poem, about how, instead of awarding him a silver medal for finishing second, “Pat sent me some lame piece of crap.” Jesse wins a lame piece of crap. I’d said when announcing this contest that if the entrant could cite a source for an alternate pronunciation to the one I gave, I’d accept it. Daniel Galef showed me one of those 30-second pronouncer videos that pronounced “dysphotic” to rhyme with “erotic,” even though Merriam-Webster only offers the long O, as in “photo.” For obvious reasons, I needed to take the last two lines off John Hutchins’s take on Medusa featuring “thanatophidia” (poisonous snakes). Here’s the original (John did suggest that cut if necessary): On the red carpet, a wardrobe malfunction: Medusa, vamping, without much compunction, Revealed her writhing thanatophidia. For safety, please, don’t YouTube the videa! Having watched it, and succumbed to her powers I’ve been rock hard now for much more than four hours. — And now that you’ve been reading this column for more than four hours, get up and finish those limericks. ====================================================================== WEEK 1450, published August 22, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1450: What fools those mortals be The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s contest and results Bob Staake's alternative sketch for this week's contest, depicting a real-world Captcha user. By Pat Myers August 19, 2021 at 5:26 p.m. EDT 0 (Important note about this weekend’s Loser brunch: See the section at the bottom of this column.) Happy Invite Weekend — and by that I mean from the time The Style Invitational is posted online Thursday morning through that Sunday, when it shows up in the print Post on newsstands, or wherever it is that a nonsubscriber buys a print Post. See, most of the week is Invite Weekend, and so it might as well be a happy one. Unless you didn’t get ink, and then you can have four straight days of unmitigated woe. Sorry! This week’s contest, Week 1450 — suggested, like so many others of late, by Loser Obsessive Duncan Stevens — is a humor-writing challenge, rather than the Invite’s other stock in trade, wordplay. It’s a classic humor*sci-fi trope — the Outsider Viewing Our Crazy Civilization — but one I don’t remember our doing (though something similar may be squirreled away in the depths of the 1,450+-item Master Contest List). Obviously the humor will come from (a) recognizing the absurdity or potentially confusing nature of some part of our lives and (b) writing about it as your chosen observer — a scientist, space alien, whatever — might explain it, quite possibly with misunderstanding, as in Duncan’s example of the captcha. Speaking of Actually True Invite-Adjacent Trivia! Ryan Staake, son of Bob, is the designer of the logo of ReCaptcha, the bot-prevention software that shows you a fuzzy word or two from a book and asks you what it is, then uses your answer to help digitize books. Ryan did it as a college student in the 2000s; since then he’s become an award-winning filmmaker and music video producer (have you seen this mesmerizing “Cross Me” with Ed Sheeran and Chance the Rapper?). So when I sent Bob the examples by Duncan Stevens for this week’s contest, he said, “I’ll have to do that one.” (Also Actually True Trivia: Captcha conveniently stands for “Completely Automatic Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” Shades of Invite Week 1443!) You can also captcha for yourself a Genuine Bob Invite Sketch or Final Drawing; he offers them up to the Loser Community at bobstaake.com*SI. He has them from way back, too. And speaking of Our Big Star Duncan Stevens! Be sure to get “Inside the Mind of the Reigning Champ Of WaPo’s Weekly Humor Contest” in the latest Northern Virginia Magazine! The big profile of the Vienna, Va., local hero is by Jesse Rifkin, himself a 53-time Loser. Except for The Post’s own stories about the Invitational on its 10th and 20th anniversaries, and Frank Ahrens’s big spoofy story on Invite legend Chuck Smith in 1998, Jesse’s piece is surely the biggest article ever about The Style Invitational and its contestants. Jesse is clearly a sports fan, and along with recalling some of Duncan’s greatest Invite hits, he focuses on the contest as a competition among the Losers, especially between Duncan and fellow Invite Obsessive Jesse Frankovich, a rivalry aided by the complex standings kept meticulously every week on the NRARS.org website by Elden Carnahan. But one of my favorite parts is the photo of Duncan in front of his magnet-plastered refrigerator. (Since he hit the Hall of Fame a year and a half ago, Duncan has forgone further magnets and runner-up swag.) Lentil acuity*: The results of Week 1446 *Non-inking headline by Kevin Dopart Nobody will confuse most of them with actual crossword clues — and the cruciverbalist crowd is probably rolling its collective eyes — but the lentil-bedecked filled-in crossword grid that I presented in Week 1446 yielded dozens and dozens of both wry descriptions and brand-new phrases among some 1,200 entries. (There weren’t so many entrants this week, but a lot of Losers sent in the maximum 25 entries.) This week’s results show 49 of them online, 40 in print. I had placed the lentils on the various squares more or less at random. A few words were totally exposed, while at least one word had only one letter showing. Since it was a big Sunday puzzle, there were more than 100 words to choose from — and of course you could choose your own letters for the covered squares, and so I didn’t have much duplication among the entries (though there were a few nearly identical ones). As in our previous partial-grid contests, a lot of the fun came from the contest’s long “theme” words and phrases, and in the variety of ways the Losers replaced the covered squares. I had only so much room, and I also wanted to get in those little gems like “WHE > The middle of nowhere” (Chris Doyle) and “IFA > International Fonetic Alphabet” (Steve Honley). And so when I realized that I was going to have to trim big chunks of my list for the print page, I decided to share some of the longer entries en masse below. But this week’s four top winners were for some of the shortest words. It’s the seventh Invite win, but the first of our latest trophy, the Clowning Achievement, for 451-time Loser Roy Ashley, the next in line for the Invite Hall of Fame. Roy’s own kids are long since grown, but he clearly has a good memory: T- -N > TEEN: I’m working on the definition, OKAY? John Hutchins, who’s been blazing since he returned to regular Inviting a few weeks ago, wins that cool Mao*Obama bag with his dig at Supreme Court nominees with R-E > ROE: "Supreme Court case that Supreme Court nominees may or may not have heard of, have no opinion about, and certainly are not intending to overrule.” And the rest of the Losers’ Circle is filled by two rookie phenoms: Coleman Glenn playing on both David BOWIE and the Bowie knife (though not the D.C. suburb of Bowie, Md.; Coleman’s in the Philadelphia area), and Leif Picoult’s pBAY as the place to get a good urine sample. What Pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood continues his vacation, but Other Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia is back, and he weighed in with his faves. Ponch especially agreed with Roy Ashley’s winner, given that he’s the parent of a rising senior; “the winner made me shout ‘YES!’” Ponch also singled out: Steve Glomb’s EEE: The shores the Marines sing about; both Frank Mann’s and Coleman Glenn’s LEMON BROWN; Frank Osen’s BORISTA: “Let’s walk through the flavor profile of Tuvaluan Botarga …”; Jeff Rackow’s ACAI: The kale of berries; Miriam Nadel’s PANTS-ON FINE, what the Norwegian beach handball team has to pay for not wearing bikini bottoms; and Mark Raffman’s And Last: F SI: “Abbreviated form of “No ink again!?” (Mark Raffman) And here are the Variations on the Themes: For -EADA-LA-OU-I- (originally READALLABOUTIT): READ ALL ABOUT ID: Marketing tagline for Freud’s first book (Daniel Galef) READ ALL ABOUT IT: What subscribers to Computerworld magazine like to do (Coleman Glenn) LEAD ALL ABOUT IT: Why Superman could not see inside my safe (Robert Schechter) BE A DALLAS OUTIE: Encouragement to gay Cowboys teammates (Jon Ketzner) MEAD: ALL ABOUT IT: A manual for DIY honey fermentation. (Sarah Walsh) — For -AN-SON-I-E (originally PANTSONFIRE): Three got ink: PANTS ON FILE: How the fashion police track down repeat offenders (Coleman Glenn) PANTS ON MICE: One way to control the rodent population (First Offender Lenard King) PANTS-ON FINE: What the Norwegian beach handball team has to pay for not wearing bikini bottoms (Miriam Nadel) But there were also: PANTS ON FINE: Trousers not sagging (Miriam Nadel.) FANGS ON FIRE: When Dracula bites a Sichuan-food lover (Duncan Stevens) HANDS ON BIKE: Not quite ready to say “Look, Ma____” (Craig Schopmeyer) PANTS-ON TIME: Returning to the office (Jesse Frankovich) RantsOnFire: Donald Trump’s secret Twitter handle. (John Hutchins) ’NANAS ON FIRE: Chiquita’s answer to Cherries Jubilee (Richard Franklin) [Maybe Rick isn’t familiar with Bananas Foster] RANTS ON TIME: Filibusters (Steve Fahey) YANKS ON RICE: Southern China down-home cooking dish, heavy on the mayo (Edward Gordon --- THE-AN-SAL-H-RE (originally THEGANGSALLHERE): THE BANKS ALL HIRE: What MBA students hope will still be true when they graduate (Steve Honley) THE DANG SALT HERE: What’s making it so hard to drink this gosh darn lake water in Utah (Coleman Glenn) THE L. A. NASAL CHORE: Rinsing the smog from your sinuses (George Thompson.) THE RANT SALE HERE: Ad for Donald Trump’s discounted reading of his it-wasn’t-my-riot act. (Lawrence McGuire) THE TANG’S ALL HERE: Discovery made in Buzz Aldrin’s pantry. (John Hutchins) THEDA, NASAL WHORE: Netflix drama about a lady of the night, played by Fran Drescher. (Ira Allen) Disturbingly similar: THE L.A. NASAL WHORE: Working title of Fran Drescher’s gritty new drama set in an El Segundo brothel. (John Hutchins) THE PANT SALE HERE: Store advertisement seen more frequently as in-person meetings resume. (Sarah Walsh) --- LE-O-B-O-N (originally LEROYBROWN): These got ink: LEMON BROWN: One of the new “back of the fridge” Crayola colors (Coleman Glenn) LEMON BROWN: The sourest man in the whole damn town. (Frank Mann) But there were also: LEG OF BJORN: As seen in “Hannibal Lecter’s Swedish Vacation” (George Thompson) LE BOOBOO UN: French for “My first marriage” (Steve Dantzler) LE BOOBTOWN: New Orleans at Mardi Gras (Ira Allen) LED ON BY OAN: Why some people believe the Big Lie (Lenard King) LEMON BROWN: Low-maintenance color scheme for a bathroom (Kevin Dopart) LeROT BROWN: Guy who smells bad, bad (Duncan Stevens) LET OMB DOWN: Pass an unbalanced budget (Chris Doyle) Open-air Loser brunch this very Sunday! It was originally scheduled for April 2020, so you’re probably pretty hungry by now: There’s still room for some more Losers and their orderlies for this Sunday’s (Aug. 22) potluck brunch out on the spacious front porch of Loser Sam Mertens and wife Laurie on their six-acre spread in outer Silver Spring. It’s noon to 2; I’ll be there (sans Royal Consort but with pie or other fruitish item) and would be delighted to meet you or remeet you. To RSVP and get the address, write to mertenshosting [at] gmail [dot] com, and cc: me as well. And on a larger — but still covid-conscious — scale, we’re on for the Flushies, the Losers’ annual (once again) awards* potluck* songfest, now scheduled for Sunday afternoon, Sept. 19, in the commodious backyard of Loser Steve Leifer. Watch for the Evite, if you’re on my mailing list. (See last week’s Style Conversational for more details.) Hope to see some of you this Sunday! ====================================================================== WEEK 1451, published August 29, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1451: Get us rewrite The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s new contest and results Bob Staake's alternative sketch for this week's cartoon. I asked him if he was going to fill in the viewers' faces; I didn't get that it was a “buttface.” We went with an actual face. You can score this sketch — or any of hundreds of others from the Invite — for yourself at bobstaake.com*si. By Pat Myers Yesterday at 5:29 p.m. EDT 0 As I did four weeks ago for the “Plain English” contest whose results run today, I’m going way back in the Style Invitational archives this week to redo a classic. This time, for Week 1451, it’s “bad drafts of famous lines,” which my predecessor, the Czar, ran in Week 108, in 1995. Sometimes I decide I can’t rerun a contest because we did it already — could we really get a whole new, fresh set of results from the very same contest? For this one? Oh, sure: Your source material of “famous lines from history, literature or entertainment” is well nigh limitless; you could even use some of the quotes from before, as long as you take a significantly different tack. I quote several of the Week 108 inking entries as examples this week, and Bob Staake chose yet another of them for his cartoon. Here’s the complete set: First, the examples with the contest announcement April 9, 1995: Week 108: Near Misses “Please take my wife.” — Henny Youngman. “Let us go then, me and you … " — T.S. Eliot “The business of America is pig farming.” — Calvin Coolidge This week’s contest was proposed by John Mewshaw of Laurel, who wins a new name. Hahaha. Just kidding. John wins a joy buzzer. John suggests a contest to come up with the discarded first drafts of great lines in history or entertainment or literature; lines that almost made it, but not quite.” April 30, 1995: Report from Week 108, in which we asked you to come up with bad first drafts of famous lines in history, literature or entertainment. We hate to be gratuitously nice, but your answers were spectacularly good. Clapclapclapclapclapclap. Seventh Runner-Up [This was the Era of Super-Profitable Newspapers. The Czar could basically buy an unlimited number of prizes]: “Once upon a time there were four little rabbits, and their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Adolf.” — Beatrix Potter (Jamal Jafari, Gaithersburg) Sixth Runner Up: “I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. And believe me, senator, you’re no friend of mine.” — Lloyd Bentsen (Paul Moran, Falls Church) Fifth Runner-Up: (From Week 108) (The Washington Psot) Fourth Runner-Up: “A rose is a rose, of course, of course.” — Gertrude Stein (J. Calvin Smith, Laurel) Third Runner-Up: “And God saw that it was scrumdiddlyumptious.” Genesis 1:10 (Kevin Mellema, Falls Church) Second Runner-Up: “The Giants win the NLCS! The Giants win the NLCS!” — Russ Hodges (Paul J. Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.) First Runner-Up: “You know how to whistle, don’t you? Juthst thtick two fingerth in your mouf like thith and blow.” — Lauren Bacall (Joel Knanishu, Hyattsville) And the winner of the World War II Plumber poster: “We hold these truths to be, like, Duuuh. . . .” — Thomas Jefferson (Joseph Romm, Washington) (Note: Mr. Romm has now won first prize for two consecutive weeks, the first time anyone has done this, according to the Official Style Invitational Historian, Elden Carnahan of Laurel. If Mr. Romm wins next week, we shall be forced to publish photographs of him in his underpants.) [He did not win the next week, alas. But a future “Ask Backwards” category was “Joseph Romm’s Underpants.”] Honorable Mentions: “The sled I had when I was a kid.” — Charles Foster Kane (Joseph Romm, Washington) “I want to hold your second mortgage.” — Lennon*McCartney (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) “Where have you gone, Joe Garagiola?” — Simon and Garfunkel (Joe Anderson, Alexandria) “Four more years! Or less if events force an early resignation!” — 1972 Nixon supporters (Ken Krattenmaker, Landover Hills) “Johnny's Heeeeeeeeeeere.” — Ed McMahon (Ira P. Robbins, Bethesda) “Good night.” — Gracie Allen (Toby Bushkin, Arlington) “How do I love thee? Let me get back to thee on that ..." — Elizabeth Barrett Browning (George Friedman, Towson) TRUMAN DEFEATS DEWEY — The Chicago Tribune (Gary Dawson, Arlington) “I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat and phlegm.” — Churchill (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) “Je suis un Berlinois” — John F. Kennedy (Michael Connaghan, Silver Spring) [A line from “Hamlet” in Russian) — But at the last minute, Will Shakespeare decides to write Hamlet in English. (Gil Renberg, Arlington) “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves* Did gyre and gimble in the vabe ..." — Lewis Carroll. (Toby Bushkin, Arlington) (From Week 108) (The Washington Post) “There is a hemorrhoid growing on the presidency.” — John Dean (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) “Brevity is without doubt considered by many to be the soul of that attribute commonly considered 'wit.'" — William Shakespeare (Elliot Greene, Silver Spring) “Watson, help! I spilled something on my crotch!” — Alexander Graham Bell (J. Calvin Smith, Laurel) “Bark!” — Sandy (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) “I float like a butterfly and sting like a really, really angry butterfly ..." — Muhammad Ali (Ken Krattenmaker, Landover Hills) “Get a grip, Virginia.” — The New York Sun (Jessica Steinhice, Washington) “Who's on first?” “Gehrig” “Oh.” — Abbott and Costello. (Jamal Jafari, Gaithersburg; also, Eric Ehrenberg, Washington) “Get the Cheez Whiz.” — Marlon Brando, in “Last Tango in Paris” (J. Calvin Smith, Laurel) “This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal of sending a man — 'Bang! Zoom!' right to the moon.” — John F. Kennedy (Mike Collins, Dale City) “This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a kind of low whining sound.” — T.S. Eliot. (Joseph Romm, Washington) “Hey, Judge Ito, you mook, whatsamatta fo' you?” — Sen. Al D'Amato. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) “And that's the way it is. You got a problem with that, buttface?” — Walter Cronkite (David M. King, Washington) “This is your brain. And this is your brain in a frying pan …" (K. C. Bahry, Gaithersburg) “'Tis a far, far, far, far, far, FAR better thing I do than I have ever done ..." — Charles Dickens (Paul Moran, Falls Church) “E equals mc with a little 2 up in the air next to the c.” — Einstein (Bob Schlosser, Herndon) “I am SHOCKED! Shocked to find that some credit cards charge interest from the day of purchase!” — Capt. Renault (Albert Diaz, Rockville) (signed) John Q. Hancock — (Gary Patishnock, Laurel) Five years later, the Czar ran a similar contest, to ruin a famous quote by adding to it. A narrower scope than Week 108, but obviously lots of overlap — including in individual entries. Week XXIV: Coming to a Bad End [context examples] Call me Ishmael ——or Mike or Steve, but definitely not Hubert. It is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known, thanks to NyQuil[reg] 24-Hour Cold Caps. Now is the winter of our discontent, having barely recovered from the autumn of our constipation. REPORT FROM WEEK XXIV, in which you were asked to ruin some great line of film or literature, by adding to it. [It was actually Week 357, not 24: When the Invitational returned from a few months’ hiatus in 2000, the Czar started counting all over beginning with Week I until he finally gave the idiocy up in Week CLXII in 2003; the week after that was Week 496.] Second Runner-Up: The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Of course, mouse plans aren’t that big a deal anyway. (Mike Genz, La Plata) First Runner-Up: Jesus wept buckets. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) And the winner of the foot-tall “fully poseable” Herbert Hoover doll: “Rosebud. It was my childhood sled, which represents the only time in my life I was truly happy and, in a larger sense, symbolizes the loss of innocence that almost inevitably accompanies the acquisition of power.”(Joseph Romm, Washington) [Hah! Joe Romm, who won the Week 108 contest with his play on the Declaration of Independence, wins it again by elaborating on the “Citizen Kane” joke that got him an honorable mention in 1995. Pay dirt!] Honorable Mentions: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. Small world, eh?” (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) “The horror, the horror. It really gets to me, sometimes.” (Kelly Midgley-Biggs, Columbia) “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow. But if you want to play ‘Yummy Yummy Yummy’ on your armpit, you do this--” (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park) [This joke was pretty similar to Joel Knanishu’s in Week 108. I just showed the two to the Czar and asked if he’d have run this one had he remembered the first. Sure, he said: “I would have run both; no question. Yes, same joke engine, but different details. But most important, they are both funny AND FIVE YEARS APART. Who gives a rat’s patootie?” The Czar has a point: The readers in 1995 and 2000 weren’t reading one after the other, the way you are now. Still, folks: I don’t want to see these jokes showing up in Week 1451. There are lots of other quotes out there — and even significantly different potential approaches to the quotes that were used.] “You must ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? That is to say, do I, the punk, feel lucky? It’s irrelevant whether I, Dirty Harry, feel lucky.” (Joseph Romm, Washington) “Good night, sweet prince. Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.” (Chris Doyle, Burke) “We’ll always have Paris. Except when the Germans are using it.” (Storm Marvel, Columbia) “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. I mean, helloo-oooo.” (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) “Bond. James Bond. But please call me Jimbo.” (Storm Marvel, Columbia; Joe Anderson, Alexandria) “Stella! Stella! Bo Bella Bo Nanna Fanna Fo Fella Fee Fi Mo Mella, Stella!” (Joseph Romm, Washington) “Fourscore and seven years ago, which comes to, what, 87 years or so?” (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.) “Friends, Romans, countrymen, ladies and germs . . . " (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) “Yes I said yes I will yes. Yes, already. How many times do I have to say it?” (Michelle Gluck and Walter Smith, Bethesda) “Use the Force, Luke, but only in moderation.” (Ben Aronin, White Plains) “We don’t need no steenking badges like we’re some sort of GS-12s.” (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) “One if by land, two if by sea, three to get ready . . . " (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, which must be followed by approximately 577,230 more steps.” (Chris Doyle, Burke) “Brevity is the soul of wit. In other words, effective writing should aim at using as few words as possible. The longer and more drawn out an explanation is, the less powerful and persuasive it is.” (Mike Genz, La Plata) “Shaken, not stirred. And with one of those little umbrellas.” (Jonathan M. Kaye, Washington) “We hold these truths to be self-evident, and by ‘self-evident’ we mean . . . " (Joe Anderson, Alexandria) “How the mighty have fallen, and they can’t get up.” (Joe Neff, Oreland, Pa.) “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home. Although, actually, Nebraska is exactly like Kansas, except it has a unicameral legislature.”(Phil Frankenfeld, Washington) “If you need me, just whistle. Or yodel. Or make that ‘Ook-ook-ook-ook ah-ah-ah-ah’ ape sound from any of those Tarzan films.” (Phil Frankenfeld, Washington) Truth is beauty; beauty truth. That’s all ye know and all ye need to know, ya know? (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) The Uncle’s Pick [“The Uncle” was a fictional dim-bulb “guest judge” who’d either choose a corny entry and painfully explain it, or, as here, would fail to understand the point of the joke he’d “pick.” Some Losers got the joke so well that they’d send in entire Uncle entries complete with his comments; at least one high-ranking Loser, on the other hand, thought he was a real guy]: “Rosebud. It was my childhood sled, which represents the only time in my life I was truly happy and, in a larger sense, symbolizes the loss of innocence that inevitably accompanies the acquisition of power.” (Joseph Romm, Washington) The Uncle Explains: Kudos to Joseph Romm for finally explaining a very puzzling movie, indeed. Frankoly speaking: A new podcast episode Be sure to catch the latest half-hour episode of “You’re Invited”: This time, host Mike Gips chats with Super Incredible Loser Jesse Frankovich. Sample astonishment: Jesse writes a limerick about writing limericks — then rearranges every letter in that limerick to write another flawless limerick. Catch it at bit.ly*invite-podcast or on most podcast apps. Loserly translated*: ‘Plain English’ from Week 1447 *Non-inking headline by Gary Crockett A repeat, after a long absence, of our “Plain English” contest — to “translate” rosy platitudes, strip bare pretentious verbiage, or just point out someone’s outright lie — delivered lots of sly zingers in the results of Week 1447. The contest drew relatively few entrants and almost no brand-new ones, no surprise for a contest that asks you to comb through The Post or other publications for fertile material, not to mention one during peak vacation season. But numerous Losers sent long lists of cleverly snarky entries; my shortlist printout ran seven pages. Most people quoted The Post, or people quoted in The Post, but today’s inking entries also include material from the New York Times, various magazines, and, I’m always happy to see, local papers from around the country. It’s the ninth contest win — and the 232nd (and 233rd) blot of Invite ink — for Drew Bennett, who retired a few years ago as chancellor of Missouri State University’s West Plains campus. So it’s not surprising that he focused on some prime academese of “a systematic internationalization of the curriculum that infuses virtual exchange opportunities” — a college’s study-abroad program having to be done online this year. As we speak, Drew is moving to Arkansas; he just sent me a new mailing address. But it’s his first Clowning Achievement win, and so he’ll be able to adorn that brand-new mantel with that coveted Disembodied Clown Head on a Stick. Yes, even YOU are invited to the Flushies, Sunday afternoon, Sept. 19 Regardless of how much ink you have — or even if you have none at all but are just a fan of the Invitational — if you’ve found this column and have read this far down, you’re a member of the Loser Community in my book. So even if this Evite didn’t reach you by email, you’re hereby invited to the 25th annual Flushies, the Loser Community’s own awards*potluck*songfest*just-yakking; this year, because of You Know Why, we’ll be outside in the backyard of Loser Steve Leifer in Potomac, Md. Here’s the link to the Evite and most of the details — click on these words. If you weren’t on my invitation mailing list, you can still RSVP by clicking and saying Yes or Maybe. If your email address doesn’t contain your name, please leave your name in the comments or contact me directly so I’ll know who you are. If we don’t yet know each other, I’ll want to chat with you a bit before I give you the specific address, etc. ====================================================================== WEEK 1452, published September 5, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1452: Boggle our minds The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s neologism contest and limerick results The 39 words that the Empress fed into the word-find generator in an attempt to get lots of vowels within a 20-by-20 grid. These words all go in straight lines (forward, backward, up, down) but yours can snake around every which way. By Pat Myers September 2, 2021 at 5:24 p.m. EDT 0 For some reason (or, more likely, no reason at all), last year we skipped what’s become an annual contest: “discovering” neologisms or phrases within a word-search grid. Anyway, I’m especially optimistic about As the Word Turns No. 6, Week 1452 (deadline Sept. 13). I think I’m getting better at gaming the grid: Instead of typing in a couple dozen long words (the puzzle generator then incorporates them into the grid, filling in the rest with extra letters), this time I used 39 mostly short words, almost all of them full of vowels. This ought to provide even more possibilities. I was finding tons of real words as well in addition to the dozens that I’d fed into the construction app; this grid might be more fertile for entries than any of our five previous ones. FWIW, here are the words I used, referring to a page that listed words that had a lot of vowels; some recent lists from the New York Times Spelling Bee game; and a bit of utter randomness. I didn’t see any settings to specify how many letters across and down I wanted, so I just added and dropped words until it produced the 20-by-20 grid I used this week. The words: ACACIA, ADAGIO, AERO, AEROBE, AIOLI, ALLOT, ATAXIA, AUDIO, AUREOLA, BEAU, CRAP, EPEE, EVACUEE, FUGU, ILEA, INHALE, INTAGLIO, INVITE, IRIS, LLANO, LOUIE, LULU, MELEE, MINI, ODIOUS, OLEO, PIPIT, QUAI, ROUE, TAPIR, TEXT, TITAN, TITI, TRACK, UTOPIA, UVEA, VIRTUE, ZITI, ZOEA In past years I traced the winding paths of some sample words through the grid, to show that you didn’t have to use a straight line. But a few people said it made it hard to read or at least concentrate on the ground. So hopefully such phrases as “snake through,” “any direction or several directions” and “as in Boggle” will get the point across without the scribble. So very wit-he*: The limericks of Week 1448 *Non-inking headline by Duncan Stevens As we’ve done every August since its infancy in 2004, we’ve given a shot in the arm to OEDILF.com — the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form — by sending out a call for limericks featuring words from an eensy-weensy section of the alphabet, and coming up with dozens of outstandingly clever and well-crafted five-liners. (See farther down on how to submit your limerick there.) This year we took on “he-” words; as usual, the entries ranged from the heavenly to the hellish, but the inking entries from Week 1448 once again demonstrate how it’s done. Among the close to 1,000 limericks I received from 137 entrants, more than 100 made my first cut. (Why, yes, your entry did indeed make that shortlist. Absolutely.) ADVERTISING It’s the second Clowning Achievement — but the 15th win all-time — for Hall of Fame Loser (and frequent Loserbard) Beverley Sharp, with her limerick on “hearsay.” Beverley will get a little golf-hole-type flag with a “II” on it to attach to the base of her Disembodied Clown Head on a Stick, and inks No. 786 and 787. By the way, the name “The Style Conversational” was Beverley’s idea when I debuted the supplementary column in 2009. Runners-up Melissa Balmain and Mark Raffman are frequent squatters in the Losers’ Circle, especially in poetry contests, but it’s the first “above the fold” ink — and just the third and fourth blots in all — for Ward Foeller, who warned of the “bad fit of coffin” for anti-vaxers. I’ve only met Ward through a little correspondence in which he expressed difficulty using the Invitational’s entry form on his 3G phone; I think the phone’s power crank and bellows aren’t compatible with the current platform. There’s a slight but notable variation from perfect rhyme that got ink this week: In perfect rhyme, the last STRESSED syllables of two or more lines rhyme, and any syllables after that are identical — like WEALTH-y, STEALTH-y, HEALTH-y in Gary Crockett’s limerick about gluten-free ice cream. But I also think it’s okay if, instead of being identical, those following syllables rhyme with one another, especially if they have a secondary emphasis in the words. With that, let’s look at this one by George Thompson, which I thought worked great; I especially liked that those three final rhymes had three different vowels — I, U and A — to spell the unaccented schwa before finishing with the rhyming -con*-pon*-gon. “Bigger government?” Part of the lexicon. It’s the altar the taxpayer’s neck’s upon. Someday soon, we may see An enhanced DoD In its new, upsized building: the Hexagon. George’s rhyming is absolutely nothing like “rhymes” in which the rhyming syllables aren’t both accented, or that the un-accented syllables at the end aren’t identical. Among this week’s rhymecrimes: sword*gore; “a kind of charcuterie”*"Give him the boot, hurry"; laconically*all of me* hematology; interested*in the head; cold*tenfold; break*headache (unless you say the words “ten-FOLD” and “head-ACHE,” in which case you are deluding yourself because no you don’t either). Other problematic issues: — Unnatural syntax. It’s hard to make words fit the specs for rhyme and meter but still make the writing sound like actual English — which is why it’s hard to get ink in The Style Invitational; some people accomplish this feat with seeming effortlessness, including, I think, all of this week’s inking entrants. This is one reason I warned off people from trying to fit in as many he- words as they can, losing coherence in the process. Like this one: Hemp hedonist, healings he hewed:* Heaped hearty, her headaches here (s) hewed.* Heed Hemingway heft,* Hey — herbal health (t) heft!* Heigh-ho, heaven’s hearsay (esc) hewed. My headaches are shewing. — Some people still had no hickory-dickory-dock meter in lines 1, 2 and 5: “A librarian in Tacoma”; “Doing yoga moves, I stretch with all my might”; “Now Hepatitis A and B* Are bad enough for you and me”; “Pillow man Lindy, champion chump”; “Twas a love sporadic, a fleeting tryst”; “Greg adored his husband, Tommy Scott”; “a simple squamous epithelium” — nope, you can’t pronounce it squa-MUSS, — And some people, gotta love 'em, didn’t use he- words: One entrant used “hieroglyphics” (spelling it correctly; perhaps the person had first spelled it “heiro-,” then checked the spelling, but forgot the contest?); someone else had a “Simpsons” theme with “Homer-sexual marriage” but no he- word. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood is finally back from his unexcused-by-me absence in which he dared to go on vacation. Fortunately, he had the good sense to like all of this week’s limericks. His favorites, though, were in the honorable mentions: Doug singled out George Thompson’s above-mentioned “hexagon,” Craig Dykstra’s Line 5 retort to the “herbivore” girlfriend — Girl, a salad’s what my dinner eats!” --; and First Offender Robin Rowland’s disillusioned dig at former “heartthrob” Andrew Cuomo. If you got ink this week — or even if you didn’t — feel free to submit your limericks to OEDILF.com, especially if they define the word or focus on its meaning. There, the lims go through a reviewing*workshop process in which an editor works with you to perfect their form and content. A number of our Loserbards are active as OEDILF editors as well as writers, so it’s a good chance to learn from the best. If you send in an inking entry, please indicate that it was an honorable mention (or whatever) in Week 1448 of The Style Invitational. (If you didn’t get ink, you don’t have to credit*blame The Post.) Yes, even YOU are invited to the Flushies, Sunday afternoon, Sept. 19 Regardless of how much ink you have — or even if you have none at all but are just a fan of the Invitational — if you’ve found this column and have read this far down, you’re a member of the Loser Community in my book. So even if this Evite didn’t reach you by email, you’re hereby invited to the 25th annual Flushies, the Loser Community’s own awards*potluck*songfest*just-yakking; this year, because of You Know Why, we’ll be outside in the backyard of Loser Steve Leifer in Potomac, Md. Right now we’re up to a comfortable 36 yeses, including some new Invite phenoms stars as well as your Loserly legends. Here’s the link to the Evite and most of the details — click on these words. If you weren’t on my invitation mailing list, you can still RSVP by clicking and saying Yes or Maybe. If your email address doesn’t contain your name, please leave your name in the comments or contact me directly so I’ll know who you are. If we don’t yet know each other, I’ll want to chat with you a bit before I give you the specific address, etc. — Wishing a Happy New Year to those for whom Jan. 1 isn’t enough! My judging schedule will be slightly affected by Rosh Hashanah, but I’ll be here next Thursday to explain why you didn’t get ink in Week 1449. A couple of weeks from now, though, I’ll skip the Conversational on Yom Kippur, Sept. 16. (The Invite, of course, will be there for you. I believe that the last week there was no Style Invitational column was the week of Jan. 23, 2000.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1453, published September 12, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1453: More from the Invite Bookshelf The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s contest and results Bob Staake's illustration (on an idea by Kevin Dopart) for our Week 971 contest (2012), in which we asked readers to pair a real book title with another real title or a fictional to make a back-to-back “flip book.” Some entries from that contest could have worked for this week's as well. By Pat Myers September 9, 2021 at 5:11 p.m. EDT 1 Hello and welcome to the 1,453rd installment (or close enough) of The Style Invitational. Week 1453 is a contest in which you choose a book title — anything listed by Amazon is fair game, though not equally promising — and prove that you haven’t read it by adding a subtitle that misinterprets it. (Deadline is Monday, Sept. 20.) Not so incredibly, among our previous 1,452 contests are some entries that could fit right in this week, had we not already given them ink. Until I was reminded this morning by Loser Ann Martin, who got ink in Week 971 (2012), I’d forgotten about a contest that asked people to pair a real book title with either another real title or a made-up one, to create a two-sided “flip book.” Some of the second titles could work as subtitles this week, so don’t make any of these already spoken-for zingers: “The Golden Apples of the Sun”* “The World’s Best Nude Beaches and Resorts” (Dion Black) Washington) ADVERTISING “The Book of Senior Moments”* “The Book of Senior Moments” (Jayne Osborn) “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”* “Pain” (Drew Bennett) “Pork Chop Hill”* “Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process” (Brad Alexander) “The Lovely Bones”* “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Becoming a Model” (Joe Neff) “The Fellowship of the Ring”* “The Essential Guide to Gay Weddings” (Chris Williams) “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”* “Code of Federal Regulations Title 41, 301-74: Conference Planning” (Kevin Dopart) “The House at Pooh Corner”* “Plumbing: 22 Easy Fix-It Repairs” (Ann Martin) “The Naked and the Dead”* “Great Parties: The Best of Martha Stewart Living” (John Shea) “The Hunger Games”* “Mastering Pac-Man” (Jeff Contompasis) “History of Ancient Civilization”* “MS-DOS for Dummies” (Paul Burnham) “A Wrinkle in Time”* “Linen Clocks: The Downside” (Diego Pedulla-Smith) “The Naked Ape”* “Honey, Hand Me a Towel” (Drew Bennett) “Sh*t My Dad Says”* “Shut Up My Mom Tells Him” (A.B. Gibson) “Peter Pan”* “The Big Book of Cooking Utensils for Exotic Foods” (Tom Witte) [Yup, that one ran only online] — But even just a few months ago, we redid Week 625, which “asked you to come up with an alternative plot for an actual movie title.” The results aren’t written as subtitles but the jokes are there in general. And this is for movies, not books, though of course many classic movies are based on books. Here’s some ink from Week 1436 (full results at wapo.st*invite1440) that might overlap: Portnoy’s Complaint: Karen Portnoy wanders aimlessly through life … until the day a waiter serves her a regular Coke instead of Diet. (Lee Graham, Rockville, Md.) 12 Angry Men: Soon after Christmas, a young man rounds up a dozen pipers against their will and gives them to his true love. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore) A Raisin in the Sun: Undocumented Mar-a-Lago workers enjoy their daily snack. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) Breakfast at Tiffany’s: Or “How I lost my job with the Secret Service.” (Pam Sweeney, Burlington, Mass.) Life of Pi: Mathematician parents celebrate their child’s 3.14159265359th birthday. (Duncan Stevens) Pride and Prejudice: Quietly but assertively defying Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s homophobia, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley marry and settle down together at Pemberley. (Sarah Walsh, Rockville, Md.) The Remains of the Day: “So, Igor, did you bring me anything interesting this evening?” (Mark Richardson, Takoma Park, Md.) Psycho: A hotel owner can’t understand why no one wants to stay at his fancy establishment in downtown Washington. (James Bershon, Leonardtown, Md., a First Offender) Raging Bull: Ferdinand has finally had enough with the flowers. (Kara Laughlin, Leesburg, Va., a First Offender) Sons and Lovers: Oedipus and Jocasta meet cute. (Michael Doyle, Arlington, Va.) Stripes: Rep. Matt Gaetz models a potential new wardrobe. (Joel Cockrell, Damascus, Md.) The 39 Steps: A woman begins her Fitbit regimen slowly but with great resolve. (Daniel Galef, Tallahassee) The 39 Steps: Documentary peeks in on AA’s new “premium plan.” (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) The Lovely Bones: Does Kirk have a thing for McCoy? (John McCooey, Rehoboth Beach, Del.) The moniker mash*: The portmanteau names of Week 1449 *This headline, by Tom Witte, was the one I first went with for this week’s results — until two Losers pointed out this morning that I’d used the same headline for the Week 963 portmanteau results, in 2012. It was also by Tom Witte. One mind thinks alike, I guess. I found dozens and dozens of clever, funny mash-ups of names, or a name and something else, in our Week 1449 contest, one that we’d done a few times before. My shortlist ran to perhaps twice the 44 inking entries in this week’s results. On the other hand, those dozens and dozens lay buried deep within a mass of 1,300 entries, of which a large majority were, to put it charitably, uninspired. Some of that uninspiration included, for numerous Losers, a failure to read the instructions beginning “Start with a real name”; I skipped over a disturbing number of entries that had no names at all. Others lacked either wordplay or any sort of pointed joke: e.g., “Edmund Hillary Clinton: The first person to climb Mount Everest in a pantsuit”; Elmore Leonard Nimoy: The author of “Get Spock” (whole joke as far as I can tell: Elmore Leonard wrote “Get Shorty”); or their point would be entirely: “well, that’s a funny combination” (The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet Tubman: The sitcom underwent a daring casting move after ratings slumped.) But this is why I make the small bucks — I pare all that dross away so you can enjoy these twinkly little gems. Today’s inking entries are full of ingenious links between the two elements, funny mental pictures, zingy puns, political digs, subtle and (online) less subtle bawdiness. And even some impressive parodies. As in this week’s Crowning Achievement winner — already the fourth for Jesse Frankovich for this trophy that’s only a few months old. Jesse tells me that his parody of “The Raven” for “Giannis Antetokounm-Poe,” an ode to the NBA’s superstar “Greek Freak,” got him thinking of “humbly dubbing myself ‘The Croatian Sensation’ ” (though his family has been on these shores for at least three generations). What’s more, he points out, it’s his third “Raven” parody to get Invite ink over the years. The rest of the Losers’ Circle is similarly populated with ink-soaked Invite veterans: Mark Raffman sent up the proverbially klutzy President Ford with the famed “Great Gatsby” quote for F. Scott FitzGerald Ford: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the … oops, man overboard!”; Pam Sweeney with “Roald Dolly Parton: Beloved author of “James and the Giant Melons”; and Gary Crockett punning on the Rock with Dwayne Johnson’s Wax: Quite impressive when buffed.” Classic Invite humor, all of it. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood told me that Pam’s “James and the Giant Melons” “cracked me up.” Doug was also partial to, in the honorable mentions, Duncan Stevens’s Lin-Manuel Miranda Warning, one of two “Hamilton” parodies today; newbie phenom Mark Turco’s dig at George Washington Football Team (“First in … no, uh … hmm … never mind.”); even more phenomenal phenom Coleman Glenn’s Scooby-Doobie Brothers; and the “And Last,” Craig Dykstra’s Pat Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: “No matter how you take the test, you lose.” Craig’s entry was my clear favorite among a half-dozen Pat Myers-Briggs entries. (There were also a Pat Myers Dark Rum, Pat Myerskine Caldwell and Pat Myers-ula Andress. I blush.) Invite name drop! Our First Offender this week, Henry J. Aaron, is a notable one. No, duh, he is not a dead baseball legend. But at least in D.C., he’s an octogenarian wonk legend: Dr. Aaron has been one of the biggest-shot economists at the Brookings Institution think tank since 1968, and is especially well known for his analysis of health care policies. In 2014 President Obama appointed him chairman of the Social Security Advisory Board, and he’s written widely — including in op-eds in The Post — on the ins and outs of the Affordable Care Act. But obviously, his list of accomplishments contained a gaping blank spot. Now that has been filled with a Fir Stink for his first ink, which enshrines him in Style Invitational Loserdom with this honorable mention: Cuomodo dragon: A nearly extinct lizard that makes a lot of noise and whose touch is repellent. Well, he could get the Nobel Prize in economics, I guess, but wouldn’t it be a bit anticlimactic after a Fir Stink? 20 years ago: What The Style Invitational did after Sept. 11 Right here, I’m just going to link to a piece written Sept. 18, 2001, by Gene Weingarten, who at that time was Czar of The Style Invitational. Not Funny: The Rules of Humor Changed on Sept. 11. And on Gene’s brief reference to it this week in a 20th-anniversary retrospective in The Post, How 9*11 changed humor. See you in two weeks — or in a week and a half Next week’s Invitational comes out online Thursday morning, Sept. 16, which happens to be during the 24-hour Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. So we won’t be having a Style Conversational next week. If you do something incredibly notable, I’ll catch up with you the week after that. Meanwhile, may you get a nice write-up in the Book of Life. But I’ll see you in person on Sunday, Sept. 19, if you’re coming to the Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual awards*potluck*songfest*excuse-to-gab-in-person, in the backyard of Loser (Steve Leifer, Potomac, Md.). YOU — yes, even you — are invited, by “virtue” of having read this far in this column. If you’d like to come and get the specific details (street address, parking instructions, etc.), click on THIS LINK to the Evite and RSVP to us soon. ====================================================================== WEEK 1455, published September 26, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1455: Congratulations — you lose After the but-of-course 2020 hiatus, the Losers’ Flushies awards return with songs, plaques and a brain toss The Empress (in tiara, of course) joins Style Invitational Losers Sarah Walsh, Matt Monitto and Duncan Stevens in Duncan's song “Sam's Enchanted Entries,” a parody honoring 2020 Loser of the Year Sam Mertens, at this year's Flushies awards. (Over to the left are hepcat Jesse Rifkin and the ultra-generous host, Steve Leifer.) (Donna Saady) By Pat Myers September 23, 2021 at 5:12 p.m. EDT The organization is officially (whatever that might mean) the Not Ready for the Algonquin Roundtable Society. But for a couple of decades now, the loose affiliation of contestants and fans of The Style Invitational is usually called the Loser Community, or just the Losers. Pretty much founded back in Year 1 (1993) by contestant Elden Carnahan, who oversees the operation to this day, NRARS encourages a spirit of friendly Invite competition with an elaborate set of Loser Stats, culminating each year with an awards fete, the Flushies. And this year’s fete — the 25th! — was one of the most enjoyable ever, at least since I’ve started crashing the party in 2002. For one thing, we were celebrating both this year’s and last year’s winners; the 2020 Flushies didn’t happen, just as so much else didn’t happen. And for another, the (all vaxed) 60 of us relaxed comfortably on the spacious and shady patio of Loser Steve Leifer in Potomac, Md. Year 27 Loser of the Year Sam Mertens wasn’t able to be there, but we “honored” him all the same: I read a sampling of his classic ink, and we serenaded him in absentia with “Sam’s Enchanted Entries,” a parody penned by Loserbard Duncan Stevens. Right after that, the "7″ balloon on the wall was changed to an 8, and we turned the love on Year 28 LOTY Jonathan Jensen, who had come down from his home in Baltimore. After we sang “Jonathan Jensen” to the tune of “Suddenly Seymour” (thanks, Duncan and Mark Raffman) Jon — who plays string bass in the Baltimore Symphony — performed an “acceptance speech” in the form of an original song that puts his award in the proper perspective: My house is full of statuettes and trophies that I’ve won; My Grammys and my Pulitzers I polish just for fun, Influential journalists have covered my career, But it simply can’t compare to being Loser of the Year. I pal around with royalty, I mingle with the best, At every fancy party I am sure to be the guest, My name in glossy magazines will frequently appear, But it simply can’t compare to being Loser of the Year. I’ve been to every continent, adventure for to seek, I’ve marveled at the sunrise on a Himalayan peak, I’ve paddled up the Amazon, explored the wild frontier, But it’s nothing like the thrill of being Loser of the Year. I’ve reached the highest pinnacle a person can attain; At last I know for certain that my life was not in vain; And if I die tomorrow, I can face it with good cheer … Because I’ve lived to earn the accolade of Loser of the Year. ADVERTISING So … kindly bow or curtsy if you see me drawing near — And give due respect and honor to the Loser of the Year. Lavishly decorated cookies in a toilet paper motif — there was also a gorgeous cake decorated as a toilet paper roll — were made for the occasion by Loser Pia Palamidessi, a retired pastry chef who came in from Cumberland, Md. They were tasty, too. (Donna Saady) Along with the Loser of the Year honors and those for of Rookie, Most Imporved (sic), Least Imporved, etc., Elden and team recognized the Losers who’d reached some ink milestone in the past March-to-March — 50 inks, 100, etc. (2,200 if you’re Chris Doyle) — not by throwing rolls of toilet paper at them, as per previous practice, but by tossing a rubber human brain at one, then having that person toss it to the next honoree and so on. “Oooohhhh, I wish I’d been there!” you are no doubt crying as you tear at your hair in woe. Well! Thanks to Loser Sarah Walsh, you can see video of the whole shebang in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group. (Yes, you do have to join the group, but it’s a private group — nobody else on Facebook can see you — and you don’t even have to use your own name, and you can just lurk. Sign up at on.fb.me*invdev and, where you answer the questions, you can tell me or my co-admin Alex Blackwood that you just want to watch the videos and we won’t announce you to the other Devs, if you prefer.) Time stamps for music highlights: “Sam’s Enchanted Entries,” 38:50; “Jonathan Jensen,” 1:00:30; Jonathan’s “acceptance speech” song: 1:04. Before each of the tribute songs, I read a sampling of Sam’s and Jonathan’s ink. Since Jon’s first Invite ink was his anti-Trump parody “A, You’re Abominable,” we sang that too. That’s around 51:00. Jonathan Jensen displays his Year 28 (2020-21) Loser of the Year plaque. Jonathan, a musician with the Baltimore Symphony, sang an original song as his “acceptance speech.” (Sarah Walsh) My deepest thanks to Steve and Jackie Leifer, who offered up their home for this thing and have offered it again, to all the organizers and helpers, and of course to everyone who came out to celebrate this crazy joke thing we keep on doing every week. For details on future events — the annual brunch and tour in Gettysburg, Pa., Oct. 17; Indian food at Aditi in Alexandria’s Kingstowne section, Nov. 14 (should I bring the Czar?); and forward, see “Our Social Engorgements” at NRARS.org. Can I get an amend?* The ‘first drafts’ of Week 1451 *Non-inking (too long; didn’t fit) headline by Jeff Contompasis Even with my contest judging weekend a bit squished by the Flushies — not to mention a whopping 2,200 entries — I had a ball judging Week 1451, “first drafts” of famous quotes, and found myself laughing out loud constantly. Not surprisingly with such a large pool of entries, from about 250 entrants, many Losers chose the same quote to “prewrite” (though because I shuffled all the entries alphabetically, I don’t know if a single person tried a bunch of variations on the same line). Despite flocks of similar jokes on “Frankly, my dear” or “To be or not to be,” I usually could choose one version that I found funnier than the rest. But for a few — “Fourscore and seven years ago,” “The first rule of Fight Club” — it was fun to juxtapose varied approaches to the same line. It’s the first Invite win and the 19th blot of ink overall for Relative Newbie Marli Melton of our Carmel Valley, Calif., Loser Bureau (which consists of Marli Melton), who did Adm. Farragut one pithier, though quite a bit less assertively, with “Torpedoes?? Damn.” The three runners-up, however, are veterans of the Losers’ Circle: Rob Huffman (Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for dea …”), Danielle Nowlin, updating T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock with “I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the tops of my trousers at the level of my nipples,” and Jesse Frankovich, changing the side-dish palate of Hannibal Lecter from fava beans and chianti to jelly beans and Yoo-Hoo, each have ink totals in the triple digits, with Jesse headed toward four. What Doug Dug: “You’re right, lotsa good ones,” Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood messaged me yesterday. Doug seconded my choices for all four top winners, and also singled out Mark Raffman’s clarification of the 1970s Big Mac jingle; Marni Penning Coleman’s “woman is like a tea bag” joke, playing on the one attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt; Steve Bremner’s gospel-untruth “In the beginning was the word, and the word was “aardvark”; both Hildy Zampella’s and Duncan Stevens’s takes on “The first rule of Fight Club”; Jonathan Paul’s biological “You say potato”; and of course the And Last: John Klayman one-upping Jeff Bezos on the importance of your subscription to The Washington Post. The Czar Turn: I hadn’t run my shortlist of entries past my predecessor, Gene Weingarten, as I sometimes do, but I knew he’d like the results, and this morning I sent him a link to this week’s Invite. Sure enough, the deposed Czar found the results “excellent … many made me LOL and quote to Rachel. And because I am [a glassbowl], I am going to opine that none of the winners were as good as some of the Hons. You are welcome.” Of course, I don’t consider someone a glassbowl just because he has different favorites from mine (unless the person continues with “you obviously don’t understand what’s funny”). But had the Czar still been running things, four of these five would have gotten the top ink (though their writers might not have received their prizes until months later). In no particular order: In the beginning was the word, and the word was ‘aardvark.’ ” (Steve Bremner) “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. You’ll be hearing from my attorney.” (Steve Leifer) “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, mine has the best sliders.” (John Hutchins) “The first rule of Fight Club is newest member brings the doughnuts.” (Duncan Stevens) “The only thing we have to fear is a collapsing bank system, plus huge unemployment, dust all over the Great Plains, and some nut in Germany.” (Stephen Dudzik) Gene, by the way, has published his final humor column for the Post Magazine this week, after 21 years and more than 1,000 columns — and before that, more than 500 Style Invitationals, which he Czarred until I deposed him in December 2003. Gene will be turning 70 in … ooh, a few days. He’ll still be writing major stories for the Magazine, such as the works that earned his two Pulitzer Prizes: “Pearls Before Breakfast,” his experiment with how people interact with art out of context, in which virtuoso Joshua Bell set up his violin case for tips and played outside a Metro station; and “Fatal Distraction,” the harrowing examination of how loving, caring parents can manage to forget a child in a parked, overheating car. In this last column, Gene generously salutes some of the humorists who’ve influenced his comic sensibility. But it goes without saying — though that’s never stopped me! — that his style has had a huge influence on my own, and, I’m sure, that of many others. Definitely a good idea: This week’s contest, Week 1455 Ever since I started Empressing almost 18 years ago, I’ve repeatedly (as in 800-plus times) plumbed the Style Invitational archives for contests that we might try again; this search has become far easier with the advent of Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List, which includes links to all the results as well. Many of the topics over the past 28 1*2 years were specific to events of the time; some would now be out of date (e.g., stock table abbreviations that are no longer used); some were successful but might well have used up all the good answers; and some, alas, just didn’t pan out. (Week 43, “What Does God Look Like?” — better left ineffable.) Perhaps “used up all the good answers” kept me from revisiting the “good idea*bad idea” wordplay contest since Week 1091 in 2014 — which was a redo of Week 105 from 1995. In any case, I’m bolder now, less fretful and more optimistic, or at least hopeful. There were so many good answers all the way down the list both times that there must also have been lots of good ideas that missed getting ink. And of course, seven years down the road from last time, you have a new world of experiences and language to play with. The point of the contest is utterly clear from the examples, and so I’m pleased to present more of them: ink from both previous contests. See the full results in these links for Week 105 (plain text) and for Week 1091. Report from Week 105 [1995], in which we [the Czar] asked for good idea-bad idea scenarios. But first we wish to once again protest a torrent of crude jokes from people who seem to think this contest dwells in the gutter. Please be advised that The Style Invitational will never stoop to rewarding sophomoric, adolescent humor. Fifth Runner-Up — Good idea: Shampoo. Bad idea: Shampoop. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) Fourth Runner-Up — Good idea: Wash hands after using toilet. Bad idea: Wash hands using toilet. (Jay Snyder, Chantilly) Third Runner-Up — Good idea: Taking back the streets of Washington, D.C. Bad idea: Taking the back streets of Washington, D.C. (Steve Hazelton, Reston) Second Runner-Up — Good idea: Have a documentary on the civil rights movement narrated by James Earl Jones. Bad idea: Have a documentary on the civil rights movement narrated by James Earl Ray. (Jerry A. Pohl, Rockville) First Runner-Up — Good idea: In business meetings, express yourself. Bad idea: In business meetings, express your milk. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) And the winner of “Standing Firm” autographed by Dan Quayle: Good idea: Showing pictures of your kids at a private party. Bad idea: Showing pictures of your privates at a kids’ party. (Ira Moskowitz, Lanham) Honorable Mentions: Good Idea: Purchase a dog at the pound. Bad idea: Purchase dog by the pound. (Patrick G. White, Taneytown) Good idea: Saving the spotted owls. Bad idea: Saving the spotted owls in little plastic baggies in your freezer. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Good idea: Drive right, pass left. Bad idea: Drive right past cop. (Kevin Mellema, Falls Church) Good idea: Presenting fresh, shiny faces to the teacher each morning. Bad idea: Presenting fresh, shiny feces to the teacher each morning. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Good idea: Calling your mother. Bad idea: Calling “You mutha!” (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Good idea: Acquire a foreign tongue. Bad idea: Acquire a foreign tongue in your wedding reception line. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Good idea: Getting great marks because of your class in “The Social Structure.” Bad idea: Getting grate marks because of your class in the social structure. (Tom Albert, Alexandria) And Last: Good idea: Post humor contest winners. Bad idea: Posthumous contest winners. (J. Calvin Smith, Laurel) Plus these, both from Elden, in retrospective contests: Good idea: Being chaste around the Oval Office. Bad idea: Being chased around the Oval Office. Good idea: A cheap motel. Bad idea: A cheap mohel. Forward to 2014: In Week 1091, we repeated a contest from way back in 1995, in which we asked you to cite a “good idea” and turn it into a “bad idea” with a small wording change. The Empress was utterly shocked to find that a large number of entries concerned the reproductive and excretory systems. What sort of operation do you think we run here? The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Good idea: Give a bowl of irises to your wife. Bad idea: Give Ebola viruses to your wife. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) 2nd place: Good idea: Groom nails before your best friend’s wedding. Bad idea: Nail groom before your best friend’s wedding. (Jan Forman, Falls Church, Va.) 3rd place: Good idea: Use power tools to keep your car functioning properly. Bad idea: Use power tools to keep your ear functioning properly. (Larry Carnahan, Arlington, Va.) 4th place: Good idea: Reply to all sensitive emails. Bad idea: Reply All to sensitive emails. (Eric Yttri, Arlington, Va., a First Offender) Almost good*bad enough: honorable mentions Good idea: Celibate before marriage. Bad idea: Sell a bit before marriage. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) Good idea: Snowed in with your date. Bad idea: Snowden with your data. (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.) Good idea: 3 square meals a day. Bad idea: 3^2 meals a day. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) Good idea: Eating some beef with a side of potatoes. Bad idea: Eating some potatoes with a side of beef. (Larry Gray, Union Bridge, Md.) Good idea: Add “in bed” or “dressed as Elvis” to a cookie fortune. Bad idea: Add “in bed” or “dressed as Elvis” to the Oath of Office. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Good idea: Reusing plastic grocery bags as dog poop bags. Bad idea: Reusing plastic dog poop bags as grocery bags. (Dinah Tabbah, Annandale, Va., a First Offender) Good idea: Keeping a supply of Head & Shoulders in the bathroom. Bad idea: Keeping a supply of heads and shoulders in the freezer. (P. Diane Schneider, Clinton, Wash., a First Offender) Good idea: A sightseeing tour to see a jungle refuge for gorillas. Bad idea: A sightseeing tour to see a jungle refuge for guerrillas. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) Good idea: Uncle Sam wants you. Bad idea: Your uncle Sam wants you. (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.) Good idea: Speed reading. Bad idea: Read, speeding. (G.T. Bowman, Falls Church, Va.) Good idea: Timeshare condominiums. Bad idea: Timeshare condoms. (Ray Gallucci, Frederick, Md.) Good idea: Eat every carrot and pea on your plate. Bad idea: Eat every carrot and pee on your plate. (Kathleen DeBold, Silver Spring; Mike Dailey, Ocean Isle Beach, N.C.) Good idea: Continuing oversight of the Secret Service. Bad idea: Continuing oversights of the Secret Service. (John Glenn, Tyler, Tex.) Good idea: Posting a picture of you hanging out with your member of Congress. Bad idea: Posting a picture of you in Congress with your member hanging out. (Rick Haynes, Ocean City, Md.) See what you can do! Deadline for Week 1455 is Monday night, Oct. 4. ====================================================================== WEEK 1456, published October 3, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1455: Congratulations — you lose After the but-of-course 2020 hiatus, the Losers’ Flushies awards return with songs, plaques and a brain toss The Empress (in tiara, of course) joins Style Invitational Losers Sarah Walsh, Matt Monitto and Duncan Stevens in Duncan's song “Sam's Enchanted Entries,” a parody honoring 2020 Loser of the Year Sam Mertens, at this year's Flushies awards. (Over to the left are hepcat Jesse Rifkin and the ultra-generous host, Steve Leifer.) (Donna Saady) By Pat Myers September 23, 2021 at 5:12 p.m. EDT The organization is officially (whatever that might mean) the Not Ready for the Algonquin Roundtable Society. But for a couple of decades now, the loose affiliation of contestants and fans of The Style Invitational is usually called the Loser Community, or just the Losers. Pretty much founded back in Year 1 (1993) by contestant Elden Carnahan, who oversees the operation to this day, NRARS encourages a spirit of friendly Invite competition with an elaborate set of Loser Stats, culminating each year with an awards fete, the Flushies. And this year’s fete — the 25th! — was one of the most enjoyable ever, at least since I’ve started crashing the party in 2002. For one thing, we were celebrating both this year’s and last year’s winners; the 2020 Flushies didn’t happen, just as so much else didn’t happen. And for another, the (all vaxed) 60 of us relaxed comfortably on the spacious and shady patio of Loser Steve Leifer in Potomac, Md. Year 27 Loser of the Year Sam Mertens wasn’t able to be there, but we “honored” him all the same: I read a sampling of his classic ink, and we serenaded him in absentia with “Sam’s Enchanted Entries,” a parody penned by Loserbard Duncan Stevens. Right after that, the "7″ balloon on the wall was changed to an 8, and we turned the love on Year 28 LOTY Jonathan Jensen, who had come down from his home in Baltimore. After we sang “Jonathan Jensen” to the tune of “Suddenly Seymour” (thanks, Duncan and Mark Raffman) Jon — who plays string bass in the Baltimore Symphony — performed an “acceptance speech” in the form of an original song that puts his award in the proper perspective: My house is full of statuettes and trophies that I’ve won; My Grammys and my Pulitzers I polish just for fun, Influential journalists have covered my career, But it simply can’t compare to being Loser of the Year. I pal around with royalty, I mingle with the best, At every fancy party I am sure to be the guest, My name in glossy magazines will frequently appear, But it simply can’t compare to being Loser of the Year. I’ve been to every continent, adventure for to seek, I’ve marveled at the sunrise on a Himalayan peak, I’ve paddled up the Amazon, explored the wild frontier, But it’s nothing like the thrill of being Loser of the Year. I’ve reached the highest pinnacle a person can attain; At last I know for certain that my life was not in vain; And if I die tomorrow, I can face it with good cheer … Because I’ve lived to earn the accolade of Loser of the Year. ADVERTISING So … kindly bow or curtsy if you see me drawing near — And give due respect and honor to the Loser of the Year. Lavishly decorated cookies in a toilet paper motif — there was also a gorgeous cake decorated as a toilet paper roll — were made for the occasion by Loser Pia Palamidessi, a retired pastry chef who came in from Cumberland, Md. They were tasty, too. (Donna Saady) Along with the Loser of the Year honors and those for of Rookie, Most Imporved (sic), Least Imporved, etc., Elden and team recognized the Losers who’d reached some ink milestone in the past March-to-March — 50 inks, 100, etc. (2,200 if you’re Chris Doyle) — not by throwing rolls of toilet paper at them, as per previous practice, but by tossing a rubber human brain at one, then having that person toss it to the next honoree and so on. “Oooohhhh, I wish I’d been there!” you are no doubt crying as you tear at your hair in woe. Well! Thanks to Loser Sarah Walsh, you can see video of the whole shebang in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group. (Yes, you do have to join the group, but it’s a private group — nobody else on Facebook can see you — and you don’t even have to use your own name, and you can just lurk. Sign up at on.fb.me*invdev and, where you answer the questions, you can tell me or my co-admin Alex Blackwood that you just want to watch the videos and we won’t announce you to the other Devs, if you prefer.) Time stamps for music highlights: “Sam’s Enchanted Entries,” 38:50; “Jonathan Jensen,” 1:00:30; Jonathan’s “acceptance speech” song: 1:04. Before each of the tribute songs, I read a sampling of Sam’s and Jonathan’s ink. Since Jon’s first Invite ink was his anti-Trump parody “A, You’re Abominable,” we sang that too. That’s around 51:00. Jonathan Jensen displays his Year 28 (2020-21) Loser of the Year plaque. Jonathan, a musician with the Baltimore Symphony, sang an original song as his “acceptance speech.” (Sarah Walsh) My deepest thanks to Steve and Jackie Leifer, who offered up their home for this thing and have offered it again, to all the organizers and helpers, and of course to everyone who came out to celebrate this crazy joke thing we keep on doing every week. For details on future events — the annual brunch and tour in Gettysburg, Pa., Oct. 17; Indian food at Aditi in Alexandria’s Kingstowne section, Nov. 14 (should I bring the Czar?); and forward, see “Our Social Engorgements” at NRARS.org. Can I get an amend?* The ‘first drafts’ of Week 1451 *Non-inking (too long; didn’t fit) headline by Jeff Contompasis Even with my contest judging weekend a bit squished by the Flushies — not to mention a whopping 2,200 entries — I had a ball judging Week 1451, “first drafts” of famous quotes, and found myself laughing out loud constantly. Not surprisingly with such a large pool of entries, from about 250 entrants, many Losers chose the same quote to “prewrite” (though because I shuffled all the entries alphabetically, I don’t know if a single person tried a bunch of variations on the same line). Despite flocks of similar jokes on “Frankly, my dear” or “To be or not to be,” I usually could choose one version that I found funnier than the rest. But for a few — “Fourscore and seven years ago,” “The first rule of Fight Club” — it was fun to juxtapose varied approaches to the same line. It’s the first Invite win and the 19th blot of ink overall for Relative Newbie Marli Melton of our Carmel Valley, Calif., Loser Bureau (which consists of Marli Melton), who did Adm. Farragut one pithier, though quite a bit less assertively, with “Torpedoes?? Damn.” The three runners-up, however, are veterans of the Losers’ Circle: Rob Huffman (Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for dea …”), Danielle Nowlin, updating T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock with “I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the tops of my trousers at the level of my nipples,” and Jesse Frankovich, changing the side-dish palate of Hannibal Lecter from fava beans and chianti to jelly beans and Yoo-Hoo, each have ink totals in the triple digits, with Jesse headed toward four. What Doug Dug: “You’re right, lotsa good ones,” Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood messaged me yesterday. Doug seconded my choices for all four top winners, and also singled out Mark Raffman’s clarification of the 1970s Big Mac jingle; Marni Penning Coleman’s “woman is like a tea bag” joke, playing on the one attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt; Steve Bremner’s gospel-untruth “In the beginning was the word, and the word was “aardvark”; both Hildy Zampella’s and Duncan Stevens’s takes on “The first rule of Fight Club”; Jonathan Paul’s biological “You say potato”; and of course the And Last: John Klayman one-upping Jeff Bezos on the importance of your subscription to The Washington Post. The Czar Turn: I hadn’t run my shortlist of entries past my predecessor, Gene Weingarten, as I sometimes do, but I knew he’d like the results, and this morning I sent him a link to this week’s Invite. Sure enough, the deposed Czar found the results “excellent … many made me LOL and quote to Rachel. And because I am [a glassbowl], I am going to opine that none of the winners were as good as some of the Hons. You are welcome.” Of course, I don’t consider someone a glassbowl just because he has different favorites from mine (unless the person continues with “you obviously don’t understand what’s funny”). But had the Czar still been running things, four of these five would have gotten the top ink (though their writers might not have received their prizes until months later). In no particular order: In the beginning was the word, and the word was ‘aardvark.’ ” (Steve Bremner) “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. You’ll be hearing from my attorney.” (Steve Leifer) “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, mine has the best sliders.” (John Hutchins) “The first rule of Fight Club is newest member brings the doughnuts.” (Duncan Stevens) “The only thing we have to fear is a collapsing bank system, plus huge unemployment, dust all over the Great Plains, and some nut in Germany.” (Stephen Dudzik) Gene, by the way, has published his final humor column for the Post Magazine this week, after 21 years and more than 1,000 columns — and before that, more than 500 Style Invitationals, which he Czarred until I deposed him in December 2003. Gene will be turning 70 in … ooh, a few days. He’ll still be writing major stories for the Magazine, such as the works that earned his two Pulitzer Prizes: “Pearls Before Breakfast,” his experiment with how people interact with art out of context, in which virtuoso Joshua Bell set up his violin case for tips and played outside a Metro station; and “Fatal Distraction,” the harrowing examination of how loving, caring parents can manage to forget a child in a parked, overheating car. In this last column, Gene generously salutes some of the humorists who’ve influenced his comic sensibility. But it goes without saying — though that’s never stopped me! — that his style has had a huge influence on my own, and, I’m sure, that of many others. Definitely a good idea: This week’s contest, Week 1455 Ever since I started Empressing almost 18 years ago, I’ve repeatedly (as in 800-plus times) plumbed the Style Invitational archives for contests that we might try again; this search has become far easier with the advent of Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List, which includes links to all the results as well. Many of the topics over the past 28 1*2 years were specific to events of the time; some would now be out of date (e.g., stock table abbreviations that are no longer used); some were successful but might well have used up all the good answers; and some, alas, just didn’t pan out. (Week 43, “What Does God Look Like?” — better left ineffable.) Perhaps “used up all the good answers” kept me from revisiting the “good idea*bad idea” wordplay contest since Week 1091 in 2014 — which was a redo of Week 105 from 1995. In any case, I’m bolder now, less fretful and more optimistic, or at least hopeful. There were so many good answers all the way down the list both times that there must also have been lots of good ideas that missed getting ink. And of course, seven years down the road from last time, you have a new world of experiences and language to play with. The point of the contest is utterly clear from the examples, and so I’m pleased to present more of them: ink from both previous contests. See the full results in these links for Week 105 (plain text) and for Week 1091. Report from Week 105 [1995], in which we [the Czar] asked for good idea-bad idea scenarios. But first we wish to once again protest a torrent of crude jokes from people who seem to think this contest dwells in the gutter. Please be advised that The Style Invitational will never stoop to rewarding sophomoric, adolescent humor. Fifth Runner-Up — Good idea: Shampoo. Bad idea: Shampoop. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) Fourth Runner-Up — Good idea: Wash hands after using toilet. Bad idea: Wash hands using toilet. (Jay Snyder, Chantilly) Third Runner-Up — Good idea: Taking back the streets of Washington, D.C. Bad idea: Taking the back streets of Washington, D.C. (Steve Hazelton, Reston) Second Runner-Up — Good idea: Have a documentary on the civil rights movement narrated by James Earl Jones. Bad idea: Have a documentary on the civil rights movement narrated by James Earl Ray. (Jerry A. Pohl, Rockville) First Runner-Up — Good idea: In business meetings, express yourself. Bad idea: In business meetings, express your milk. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) And the winner of “Standing Firm” autographed by Dan Quayle: Good idea: Showing pictures of your kids at a private party. Bad idea: Showing pictures of your privates at a kids’ party. (Ira Moskowitz, Lanham) Honorable Mentions: Good Idea: Purchase a dog at the pound. Bad idea: Purchase dog by the pound. (Patrick G. White, Taneytown) Good idea: Saving the spotted owls. Bad idea: Saving the spotted owls in little plastic baggies in your freezer. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Good idea: Drive right, pass left. Bad idea: Drive right past cop. (Kevin Mellema, Falls Church) Good idea: Presenting fresh, shiny faces to the teacher each morning. Bad idea: Presenting fresh, shiny feces to the teacher each morning. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Good idea: Calling your mother. Bad idea: Calling “You mutha!” (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Good idea: Acquire a foreign tongue. Bad idea: Acquire a foreign tongue in your wedding reception line. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Good idea: Getting great marks because of your class in “The Social Structure.” Bad idea: Getting grate marks because of your class in the social structure. (Tom Albert, Alexandria) And Last: Good idea: Post humor contest winners. Bad idea: Posthumous contest winners. (J. Calvin Smith, Laurel) Plus these, both from Elden, in retrospective contests: Good idea: Being chaste around the Oval Office. Bad idea: Being chased around the Oval Office. Good idea: A cheap motel. Bad idea: A cheap mohel. Forward to 2014: In Week 1091, we repeated a contest from way back in 1995, in which we asked you to cite a “good idea” and turn it into a “bad idea” with a small wording change. The Empress was utterly shocked to find that a large number of entries concerned the reproductive and excretory systems. What sort of operation do you think we run here? The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Good idea: Give a bowl of irises to your wife. Bad idea: Give Ebola viruses to your wife. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) 2nd place: Good idea: Groom nails before your best friend’s wedding. Bad idea: Nail groom before your best friend’s wedding. (Jan Forman, Falls Church, Va.) 3rd place: Good idea: Use power tools to keep your car functioning properly. Bad idea: Use power tools to keep your ear functioning properly. (Larry Carnahan, Arlington, Va.) 4th place: Good idea: Reply to all sensitive emails. Bad idea: Reply All to sensitive emails. (Eric Yttri, Arlington, Va., a First Offender) Almost good*bad enough: honorable mentions Good idea: Celibate before marriage. Bad idea: Sell a bit before marriage. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) Good idea: Snowed in with your date. Bad idea: Snowden with your data. (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.) Good idea: 3 square meals a day. Bad idea: 3^2 meals a day. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) Good idea: Eating some beef with a side of potatoes. Bad idea: Eating some potatoes with a side of beef. (Larry Gray, Union Bridge, Md.) Good idea: Add “in bed” or “dressed as Elvis” to a cookie fortune. Bad idea: Add “in bed” or “dressed as Elvis” to the Oath of Office. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Good idea: Reusing plastic grocery bags as dog poop bags. Bad idea: Reusing plastic dog poop bags as grocery bags. (Dinah Tabbah, Annandale, Va., a First Offender) Good idea: Keeping a supply of Head & Shoulders in the bathroom. Bad idea: Keeping a supply of heads and shoulders in the freezer. (P. Diane Schneider, Clinton, Wash., a First Offender) Good idea: A sightseeing tour to see a jungle refuge for gorillas. Bad idea: A sightseeing tour to see a jungle refuge for guerrillas. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) Good idea: Uncle Sam wants you. Bad idea: Your uncle Sam wants you. (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.) Good idea: Speed reading. Bad idea: Read, speeding. (G.T. Bowman, Falls Church, Va.) Good idea: Timeshare condominiums. Bad idea: Timeshare condoms. (Ray Gallucci, Frederick, Md.) Good idea: Eat every carrot and pea on your plate. Bad idea: Eat every carrot and pee on your plate. (Kathleen DeBold, Silver Spring; Mike Dailey, Ocean Isle Beach, N.C.) Good idea: Continuing oversight of the Secret Service. Bad idea: Continuing oversights of the Secret Service. (John Glenn, Tyler, Tex.) Good idea: Posting a picture of you hanging out with your member of Congress. Bad idea: Posting a picture of you in Congress with your member hanging out. (Rick Haynes, Ocean City, Md.) See what you can do! Deadline for Week 1455 is Monday night, Oct. 4. ====================================================================== WEEK 1457, published October 10, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1457: If the Q fits ... The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s Ask Backwards contest and book-subtitle results One of our 39 previous Ask Backwards contests, featuring Bob Staake's oft-reused Alex Trebek. The week's winner, by Sanford Horn: A: Paris, Zurich, and Certain Parts of West Virginia. Q: Where is it not permissible to marry one's sister? By Pat Myers October 7, 2021 at 5:35 p.m. EDT Yay, Ken’s still game. Though the past year has vaulted him even to A-er-List celebrity, professional know-it-all (I assume that’s what he writes on his 1040 form) Ken Jennings returns to The Style Invitational to choose his favorite entries in this week’s contest, Week 1457. In about three weeks, I’ll send him a shortlist of entries to several of this week’s “answers”: Ken Jennings; Zen Jennings; Spinal Jeopardy; and Not a Future “Jeopardy!” Category. And if he responds as he did last year, he’ll choose a couple of favorites along with some gracious and good-natured comments, and get back to co-hosting “Jeopardy!” with Mayim Bialik at least through the end of the year. Still, my Empress tiara remains firmly molly-bolted into my head, and so I’ll name the official winners and give out our coveted prizes. But in my experience — for one thing, I’m a devotee of his and John Roderick’s odd-topics podcast, Omnibus (today’s episode: merkins) — Ken’s sense of humor, appreciation of puns, etc., are pretty much in line with mine. ADVERTISING Last October, in Week 1404, I had two “Jeopardy!”-adjacent “answers” — (a) Alex Tribeca and (b) Ken Jennings and Kylie Jenner — along with 16 others. Those two categories didn’t turn out to be the most fruitful, but there were a few inkworthies that I passed along to Ken. And four weeks later, in second place for the week: A. Ken Jennings and Kylie Jenner. Q. Who are Mr. Trivia and Ms. Trivial? (Rob Huffman; this was Ken’s favorite in this category as well) As Ken put it: “The Mr. Trivia and Ms. Trivial is a pretty easy joke, but I laughed. Hard to beat that one.” He singled out two others: A. Ken Jennings and Kylie Jenner. Q. Who are a man who did thunderously win, and a woman who is wondrously thin? (Mark Calandra; Ken Jennings: “A stretch but it’s such a nice spoonerism! I’m such a sucker for those.”) A. Ken Jennings and Kylie Jenner. Q. Whose SAT answers did Aunt Becky think she was buying, and whose did she actually buy? (Ivars Kuskevics, Takoma Park; Ken: “I also liked this one, but I had the biggest crush on Lori Loughlin as a kid.”) I also gave ink to this one that Ken failed to appreciate: A. Ken Jennings and Kylie Jenner. Q. Whose careers got a big boost from “Jeopardy!” and a celebrity family feud? (Steve Smith) The Alex Tribeca category didn’t really pan out; this is why I usually post more categories than I’d likely have room for in the results. But we had a few. A. Alex Tribeca. Q. Who replaced Art Flushing? (Kevin Dopart, Washington; Frank Mann; this was Ken’s “Alex Tribeca” choice, though “too bad there’s not a MANHATTAN neighborhood that sounds like ‘Fleming’ ”) [Face it: this was the work of people doing their best with very little to work with] A. Alex Tribeca. Q. To whom do you say, “I’ll take one-bedroom apartments for $6,000 a month, Alex”? (Gary Crockett; Dan Helming, Trenton, N.J.; Ken’s second choice) I threw in one more: A. Alex Tribeca. Q. Who can be found in a Lower Manhattan bar ordering his daily double? (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) The other top winners for Week 1404: Fourth place: A. @UnrealAbrahamLincoln. Q. Who tweeted: “Great speech yesterday in Gettysburg! Union widows LOVE their President (ME)!”? Frank Mann) Third place: A. Shut Up Man. Q. Who is Florida Man’s attorney? (Jeff Hazle; Pia Palamidessi) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: A. The Republic Forwhichistan. Q. Where can you find One Asian Undergod — except he’s invisible? (Gary Crockett) So this time we have four Jeopocentric categories. Especially if you’re one of the numerous “Jeopardy!” veterans in the Loser Community, or of Ken’s other quiz show, “The Chase,” here’s your chance to rub shoulders (in the sense that word-to-eyeball = shoulder-to-shoulder) with the GOAT. (FYI: The category of “Curry Spice” was suggested by my predecessor, Gene Weingarten. So you’re good to go.) Meanwhile, I’m so grateful that most of you have been formatting your entries the way I’ve been begging you to: one entry per line (i.e., no Enter or other line-breaker within the entry). This way I can sort all the entries out by the first letter of the entry. So for Ask Backwards, as I show on this week’s entry form, please do it this very way: A. Zen Jennings [or whichever “answer” you’re doing]. Q. What [some wildly clever and hilarious question]? NOT: A. Zen Jennings Q. [Your question] NOT: 2. A. Zen Jennings. … NOT: Q. [Your questions] A. Zen Jennings … Thank you, sweeties! Mwah. *The headline “If the Q Fits” got ink for Jesse Frankovich in 2019. Fudging the books*: The results of Week 1453 *Non-inking headline by Jon Gearhart Clearly, some of you out there read books, or have read a book, or have seen a book cover. But to judge from a lot of entries to Week 1453, whose results run today, a bunch of you haven’t. Well, that or dozens of you (or some of you writing many dozens of entries) didn’t bother to look at the instructions for Week 1453, which asked: “Choose any book title listed on Amazon and misinterpret it by adding a subtitle, as in Jon’s examples above.” The examples: One Hundred Years of Solitude: The Covid Hoax Continues The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: Spice Up Your Love Life With Costumes Small Vices: The Best Tools for Making Doll House Furniture Or maybe you didn’t know, or gather from the examples, that a book subtitle is a second title further explaining the subject of the book. It’s not a newspaper headline, with the elliptical, article-dropping style that news headlines traditionally have. Nor it is a plot synopsis. Yes, we’ve had lots of contests over the years that asked for either of those things, but clearly not this time. So what’s with: Mutiny on the Bounty: Disgruntled Shoppers Rise Up Against Manager When Store Runs Out of Paper Towels The Girl on the Train: Bridesmaid Accidentally Destroys Gown Old Yeller: 98-year-old wins hog calling contest. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: In this Wizard of Oz sequel, Glenda and the no-longer-cowardly lion teach Dorothy about the powers inherent in her other clothing items. Okay, sorry to vent. It doesn’t really matter, since I had far more funny 'n’ clever material than I could use among the 2,200 entries from the week’s 240-plus entrants; I finally stopped at 44 inking entries, all of which appear in both the print and online versions of this week’s Invite. And this wasn’t one of those weeks in which a few people each blot up big pools of ink; by my count, it was brushed lightly upon 41 Losers, including four First Offenders (yay!). Then there were the overly obvious ones that were submitted repeatedly, including: Where the Wild Things Are: A Complete Guide to the World’s Zoos Gone With the Wind: Ending Flatulence through Diet and Exercise Lord of the Flies: The Joe DiMaggio (or Willie Mays) Story Oh, The Places You’ll Go! - A Guide to the Public Bathrooms of Europe The Catcher in the Rye: Yogi Berra’s Alcoholic Years Pride and Prejudice: A History of the Trump Administration A Brief History of Time: How a Weekly Magazine Changed the World A Confederacy of Dunces: A Guide to the GOP A Tale of Two Cities: The Story of Minneapolis and St. Paul The Fault in Our Stars: Famous Celebrity Scandals The Sound and the Fury: Conflict Management in Apartments with Thin Walls Lord of the Flies: The Inventor of the Zipper When you’ve seen 15 entries about the Venus de Milo, how fun it is to get the one from First Offender Melissa Muckenhirn: A Farewell to Arms: How to Fit More Chairs at the Dining Table.” It’s the second Clowning Achievement — and the seventh Invite win and almost 400th ink all-time — for Dave Prevar, who transformed imminent ecological disaster into a household one with “Silent Spring: The Year I Forgot About Valentine’s Day.” After lying low for a while, Dave has been entering the Invite more often; perhaps he’s seeing the gates of the 500-ink Hall of Fame glittering on the horizon. Seth Tucker gets his eighth ink “above the fold” with the gut-laugher Left Behind: Thirty Days to a Better Butt (Vol. 1); Hall of Famer Frank Osen does Faulkner one better with As I Lay Dying: Memoirs of America’s Worst Standups; and with his first entry ever, Bill Kullman wins his choice of Loser Mug or Whole Fools Grossery Bag, along with the Fir Stink for his first ink, for One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Jewish Mother Waits for Her Son’s Weekly Visit. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood especially liked all four of this week’s Loser’s Circle entries, and he also singled these out from the honorable mentions: Catch-22: An Analysis of Last Season’s 601 Washington Football Team Passing Attempts (Jesse Rifkin) Dial “M” for Murder: How Automated Messages Have Slowed Down 911 (Jon Gearhart, getting ink in the contest he suggested — something that doesn’t always happen) It Ends With Us: 1001 Latin Singular Nouns (Mark Raffman) Mark Twain: A Maryland Commuter’s Daily Nightmare, by E. Fudd (Steve Glomb) The Tempest: My One-Hour Career With Kelly Services (First Offender David Terry) And the topical So Big: Nicki Minaj’s Cousin’s Friend’s Covid Vaccine Memoir (First Offender Marty Gold) (Hey, Guy Who Wrote to Me Last Week Because He Hadn’t Got Ink — see all these new people? Could be you one day.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1459, published October 24, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1459: Sing yourself to ink The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s first-person song contest and winning 'good news*bad news’ jokes By Pat Myers October 21, 2021 at 5:37 p.m. EDT Above, Sophie Craft’s winning video from Week 1440. While this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1459, is really about first-person song “by” well-known people, you could sing about yourself as well, like Sophie. Hi, all: I’m back after last week’s still-unexplained production snafu delayed The Style Invitational by three hours, which was just long enough to blow my Style Conversational schedule as well. This week: Like a charm! This week, Week 1459, we’re back to one of the Invitational’s stocks in trade, the song parody — enhanced more and more often by ever more impressive videos, but still with plenty of room for low-tech Brilliantly Clever Just the Lyrics. Our last song contest was only 19 weeks ago, back in June; that week the only restriction was that the song be about something currently in the news. This time there’s also plenty of scope, but with a different limitation: that the song be in the first person: in other words, that it’s being sung “by” some particular person (don’t forget to say who!). Many, many of our Loserbards’ inking songs over the years are in the first person. While in Duncan Stevens’s example Sir Mix-a-Lot, of “Baby’s Got Back” fame, “rewrites” his song to the tune of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Major-General’s Song,” the contest isn’t specifically — or even broadly — about one song being rewritten as another. (I’m still working up the courage to run that contest. Maybe next time.) I hate to forsake the opportunity for at least some of the songs to be about current topics. Rather than repeating all the guidance I reiterated in the Week 1440 Invitational and Conversational, I’m just going to send you over there with this Magic Link to the Convo. There you’ll see some advice on what kind of songs are best for our purposes (long enough to make something satisfying to sing yourself as you read it; not so long that reading it gets boring or difficult on the page); my requirement of a rhyme scheme as good as or better than the original; how to convey the tune you’re using to me and (you hope) the readers of the Invite; and, if you’re interested in doing a video, what I need for that. (If you’re singing it yourself, you don’t need to do a parody.) I used to insist that, no matter how well produced and entertaining the video, my only consideration would be the quality of the song’s lyrics. But that’s no longer true: While I still will put a premium on clever lyrics and “perfect rhyme,” I also am happy to shout out funny, clever visual humor as well, even if it might not make the very top of the list of the week’s lyrics themselves. This is why, in the results of Week 1440, I gave out two Clowning Achievements. One went to Hildy Zampella for her (first-person!) parody of “Royals” as “sung by” Prince Harry. And then another one to First Offender Sophie Crafts for her utterly enchanting video, “Two Darn Shots,” a parody of Cole Porter’s “Too Darn Hot” in which Sophie, in evening gown and long gloves, sashays into CVS and gets vaccinated right on camera to the amusement of fellow line-waiters. Hildy’s song was pushing the limits of length on what I can run on the print page, but it was sooo good and never repetitive. A more workable length was used by runner-up Barbara Sarshik — also a first-person classic: Jeffrey Toobin’s Song To “I Could Have Danced All Night” I wear my pants all day, I wear my pants all day Right in my living room. I used to show my groin, and I exposed my … loin To everyone on Zoom. I’ll never know what made it so exciting To be so raunchy and risque. I’m back on CNN. I won’t screw up again. I wear my pants, pants, pants all day! Remember that you have till Nov. 8 to submit your song(s). But if you have questions about how to proceed, feel free to contact me much earlier in the game: Email me at pat.myers@washpost.com and catch my eye in the subject line with something like “question about song contest”; I get hundreds of emails a day sometimes. Meanwhile, for guidance, inspiration and pure viewing pleasure, do check out the results of Week 1440 and any number of previous contests, dating back to 2004. There’s a special page — see it right here — from the Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS, that lists all music-themed contests; click on the links on the right side of the page to see the results. The vary idea*: The results of Week 1455 *Non-inking headline by Jeff Contompasis Our third go-round of a contest to turn a “good idea” into a “bad idea” with a slight wording change (the previous ones were in 1995 and 2014) yielded dozens of zingy, high-level puns from a boatload of 1,400 entries from almost 200 entrants. I ran 38 of them in this week’s results, almost all of them also in the print Invite; my shortlist was about twice that long. I foresee several Ink of the Day graphics based on this week’s winners. It was a heck of a week for Clowning Achievement winner Ryan Martinez, a high school French teacher whose all-time ink total catapults from 12 to 15, and who gets his first contest win with this zinger: Good idea: Getting your cues from science. Bad idea: Getting your science from Q. And looking over his entries just now for 1455, I see that those three inking entries are from a total of four. I had noticed a while back on the entry form that Ryan lived on the same street as longtime Loser (and Style Invitational Devotees anagram obsessive) Barbara Turner — in fact, they were just a block apart. But they hadn’t met! So I did my bit for remote neighbor-introduction. Frank Mann continues to have a boffo Invite year, once again scoring multiple blots of ink with exceptionally clever and funny entries. This week he gets the weird Belgian beer promotional hat for Good idea: Striving to be more of a caring person* Bad idea: Striving to be more of a “Karen” person, with three especially zingy honorable mentions. According to the Loser Stats at NRARS.org, Frank is now just a single blot shy of 200 inks. I understand that his sister Aimee is terribly envious. The remaining runners-up, also wielding very funny puns, are the Invite-legendary Jesse Frankovich (832 inks) and Promising Fresh Blood Scott Richards, who — get this — has three blots of ink, of which one is a runner-up and one is a win: Scott got the Clowning Achievement five weeks ago for his report about our civilization from a future anthropologist: “Once a year every human must recommit to the familial cult by lighting a cake on fire while clan members chant a mournful dirge.” This time Scott scores a Loser Mug or Grossery Bag (let me know, Scott) for pointing out that big church coffers are a much better idea than big church coughers. I had figured that this contest would involve mostly Invite regulars, especially when it came to who got ink. So I was delighted to discover that we have three First Offenders this week — Becky Foster, Donald Norum (who I believe is the son of early-days Loser Jean Lightner Norum) and Lauren Shaham — plus at least three Losers whose second blots of ink promote them from the One-Hit Wonders list: Mary Giorgis, Glen Matheson and Michael (“I’m not a lawyer!”) Cohen. As thrilled as I am to hand out those FirStink air “fresheners,” it’s even more gratifying to see those single-ink people come back to score again — especially when, in Michael’s case, it took 19 years. I’m truly grateful that almost all the 190 entrants to this contest heeded my abject pleading to put each entry on a single line, with no line break between the good idea and bad idea. I didn’t see a single two-liner until Entrant No. 27, whoever that person was, and not again until Entrant 58. I was able to fish out the eight or 10 offenders in all and fix them before sorting the entries alphabetically into 1,400 anonymous jokes. (I admit, though, that at least two of the offenders ended up getting ink today; in the end, I’m not going to deprive readers of the funniest material. But I’m going to kvetch at those Losers personally. Especially the one who sent 25 entries.) Some good jokes weren’t “good idea* bad idea” as much as “good news* bad news”; my favorite of these was by Kevin Dopart: Good idea: You’re up to bat with the bases loaded. Bad idea: You’re up for reelection and the base is loaded. Other ways the good*bad ideas went astray: — Setting the entry up so heavy-handedly that it telegraphs the punchline. Like: Good idea: Throwing your mom a buss. Bad: Throwing your mom under a bus. You can’t start with an expression that no one uses without giving away your plans for the rest of the joke. — Convoluted sentences that try to hard to match or contrast multiple elements: Good: Your bride is waiting for you with a flight of champagne at the shrimp station, wearing a wedding dress with a long train. Bad: Your bride gives you a long dressing down, calling you a worthless little shrimp, and takes flight for the train station. — As happened with the entries to Week 1454′s Punku entries, some people sent in jokes that I believe were discovered in the caves of Lascaux along with the drawings. The funniest of these — in that it was submitted, not in its inherent haha — was: Good news: Finding a worm in an apple. Bad news: Finding half a worm. Um, finding a worm in an apple is good news? Well, it’s cheaper than a bottle of tequila, I guess. Less head-slappy but, alas, done by too many people was using “halving” for “having.” Good idea: Having a baby*Bad idea: Halving a baby. I Have a Dream*Halve a dream. Having a wonderful family*Halving a wonderful family. Having all of your assets secure*Halving all of your secure assets. Having patience with untrained interns*Halving patients with untrained interns. Good: Having your boss to dinner. Bad: Halving your boss for dinner. This last one is pretty good, because of the double meaning in the other phrase: Good idea: Living it up and having the time of your life. Bad idea: Living it up and halving the time of your life. (Mark Raffman) On the other hand, regular Invite readers could reasonably think they’d have half (lve) a chance, given the number of times the halving joke has gotten ink over the years: Puns on movie titles, 2002: She’s Halving a Baby: An epic on the life of King Solomon. (Tom Witte) AND, from 2004, puns on historical*legendary events: The judgment of Solomon: Split Decision, or Halving My Baby (Russell Beland) (Would that, in my first year of Empressing, I had that indispensable searchable “All Invitational Text” file, now at NRARS.org!) Also in 2012, at least in the pretty different context of horse names, but by the same guy: I’ll Have Another x Conserve = I’ll Halve Another (Russell Beland) In 2017, Beverley Sharp used “have*halve” with enough of an original context to make it fresh in this haiku: “I’m the Grim Reaper. It's midnight. Time's up at noon. So halve a nice day!” And the same year, an “X is so Y” joke by Chris Doyle that takes it an extra step: My friend from Weight Watchers is so competitive that she always halves what I’m halving. AND in Week 1418, by Jon Gearhart in a contest for charity names, again given more humor from the rest of the joke: I Halve a Dream: Helping America’s youth set attainable goals. Anyway, I think we’ve halved enough for a while. I also learned a new term this week, thanks to First Offender Donald Norum: Good idea: Sending thoughts and prayers after a tragedy. Bad idea: Sending thots and players after a tragedy. “Thot,” I learned, is an acronym for (depending on whom you ask) That Hottie Over There or That Ho Over There. I owe so much of my knowledge to The Style Invitational. What Doug Dug: The favorites this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood include all four top winners — Doug and I are usually on the same wavelength when it comes to the Invite — plus several from the honorable mentions: First Offender Becky Foster’s childproof gates*child with Gaetz; Mark Raffman’s Jan. 1 resolution*Jan. 6 revolution; Tom Witte’s conquering*concurring with your demons; Jeff Contompasis’s preferred pronouns*preferred capItaLizATionS; Frank Mann’s SNL, Owen Wilson*WFT, 0 and 1; and, in reference to our somewhat Invite-adjacent in-house kerfuffle, making Indian food*mocking Indian food, by Michael Cohen, a longtime fan both of the Invite and of Gene Weingarten’s recently retired column. Funny, but noooo-tions*: The unprintables (*also a Jeff Contompasis suggestion). While Ryan Martinez’s “Date Lab*Dating a Lab” sailed right into print, I drew the line — in disinfectant — at “Good idea: Charting your daily caloric intake. Bad idea: Sharting your daily caloric intake” (from our Western Canada Bureau, Byron Miller) and, from Seamus O’Connor: Add some chickpeas to your favorite stew. Add some chick’s pee to your favorite stew. Ew. ====================================================================== WEEK 1460, published October 31, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1460: Time for more Merriament The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s new-word poetry contest and winning insult-questions The chicharrones — one of the new words added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary — featured on the website of Houston's La Michocana market, along with the recipe for the lard-fried pork skin. (“You can remove excess fat from the skin to get low-calorie Mexican chicharrones,” it advises.) (lamichoacanameatmarket.com) By Pat Myers October 28, 2021 at 5:13 p.m. EDT *“Merriament” was the headline for last year’s results; it’s by Tom Witte. I truly can’t fathom why Merriam-Webster doesn’t want to tell the world which 455 words and meanings it’s added to its online dictionary since January — only that there are 455 of them. In a news release published Oct. 27, M-W notes a measly 34 of the new terms. Fortunately, I was able to prevail upon its marketing person to send me, a few days ahead, 57 of the additions to Our Always Evolving Language, and I chose 38 to feature today in Style Invitational Week 1460, our fourth annual contest for poems based on one or more of the new additions. Some notes on this week’s contest: — I mention this on the entry form, but didn’t have room on the print page: This is NOT a contest to see how many words on the list you can manage to force into eight lines. As M-W says: “tedious, adjective: tiresome because of length or dullness: BORING.” We want readers to enjoy, you know, reading it. A poem could certainly include two or more of the words, but the important thing is that it be entertaining to read. — For the terms that have been in the dictionary before, please use the new meanings. Unfortunately, the updated definitions do not indicate when each new sense of the word was added, so if you’re not sure, just don’t use ones that are obviously not new. I did verify with Ms. M-W that for “dab,” both these definitions are new: (a) the dance where it looks as if you’re sneezing into your elbow; and (b) the cannabis-related meaning: a blob of resin that you — well, I don’t know about you specifically — burn with a little gadget to create fumes to inhale; or a verb (either transitive or in-) meaning to inhale the stuff. (It’s evidently quite dangerous, both in trying to make the waxy stuff and in its high potency.) Also, “jacked” has two new meanings as an adjective, I’m told: very excited (“jacked up” might be the older expression?) and very muscular, built up. — You may use any form of verse that doesn’t run over eight lines. With very few exceptions, I have found poems that rhyme and have a clear, consistent meter funnier and more clever than those that don’t. We’re a humor contest, not a poetry anthology. — Don’t make up a meaning, rather than the real one, unless the poem also acknowledges the real meaning. So while you might say that “petaflop” reminds you of a basset hound, you can’t ignore the fact that it’s actually an extremely high unit of computing speed. — Use the pronunciation offered. M-W helpfully provides a button you can click on to hear the word pronounced. You’ll hear, for example, the “chicharrones,” the plural of the Spanish-diaspora delicacy pictured above, is a four-syllable word ending in an “-ess” sound. (The reader on the recording is thoroughly American, perhaps to stress that the word is now also an English word, not just a Spanish one.) If more than one pronunciation is offered, you can choose. But I can’t run a poem in which the word is mispronounced. — You may include a title beyond the eight-line maximum. But I’ll otherwise precede each poem with the word plus a terse definition, as in the examples below. — You’ll see the results a day early! Four weeks from today (Oct. 28) is Thanksgiving Day, and so I’ll have to finish the print Invite the day before, and so I might as well put it up online that morning. So figure on seeing it online on Wednesday, Nov. 24, at the usual 10 to 11 a.m. (I’ll decide later whether there will be a Style Conversational that day as well or if I’ll just call it a holiday after posting the Invite. It’s also my birthday, so there’s that.) Classic new-worders: For your guidance, inspiration and plain ol’ entertainment, here’s a sampling of ink from our three previous M-W new-word contests, along with links to the full results. (The publishing system I use for the Conversational doesn’t have a way to override the line of extra space generated by a line ending in online articles, which is why they’re all spaced out. Don’t gripe to me.) Week 1296, 2018 TL; DR, “too long; didn’t read” The editor sent back my poem. I found his rejection bizarre. “Thanks for the haiku,” it said, “But sorry. TL; DR.” (Robert Schechter) A good example of a poem using several words on the list: Marg, margarita; mocktail, nonalcoholic mixed drink; flight, a sampler of small drinks: A marg that’s made with mango? A teeny li’l umbrella? Well out here in Durango, it ain’t fit fer a fella. We menfolk here drink whiskey, or Coors (and not Coors Light)! But mocktails? Son, that’s risky! (So’s orderin’ a “flight”!) We cotton to bravado. It’s just our Western creed, So git from Colorado — unless you got some weed. (Mark Raffman) Week 1350, 2018 I didn’t precede the first two poems with definition of the words; it seemed unnecessary and, in the case of the second one (which took first place) damaging to the surprise ending. They called up Ukraine’s president; A skeezy deal was floated. The transcript tells us how it went, ’Cause Trump was quid pro quoted. (Duncan Stevens) --- This escape room’s the worst, everybody agrees; We feel trapped, with a lingering sense of unease That we’ll never get out of here, try as we may — We get sullen or spiteful, our nerves start to fray Till at last we’re released, overjoyed to survive … And we come every weekday, 8:30 to 5. (Brendan Beary) Free solo (mountain climbing without safety equipment) I was certain some free solo action Would deliver me peak satisfaction . But I found only dopes Don’t use harness or ropes, Which is why I now lie here in traction. (Stephen Gold, London) And scoring with just two lines … On a free solo climb, you must not be a dunce — If you make a mistake, it will just be that once. (Jesse Frankovich) Week 1413, 2020 (you’ll need to scroll down to the results; the “jump link” doesn’t seem to be working) Deepfake, an elaborately doctored photo or recording So what if this keepsake Is only a deepfake? A Photoshopped image that shows me in bed With a naked George Clooney Doesn’t mean that I’m loony — A loon would’ve put him in PJs instead. (Melissa Balmain) Iatrophobia, fear of doctors (note the use of a related form of a word): The iatrophobe suffers from gastric distress But fears doctors will just do him harm, So he’s treating himself at the new CVS, Where he may well be buying the pharm. (Chris Doyle) --- Hydroxychloroquine can treat malaria or lupus. It’s not a cure for covid, though our leader tried to dupe us. The drug has many side effects like headaches and depression. It’s rather like the president — so use it with discretion. (Jonathan Jensen) I usually avoid running two poetry contests — in this case, last week’s song parody contest (still running!) and this one — but I wanted to run the M-W contest in conjunction with its announcement of the new additions, and I didn’t hear about it until this past weekend. Question mocks*: The trash-talking of Week 1456 *This headline was suggested by multiple people for this week’s results, but it got ink for Kevin Dopart in Week 999 for the Ask Backwards honorable-mentions subhead If you didn’t get ink in the results of Week 1456, you might console yourself that maybe you’re just not a vicious, mean-spirited person, or at least that you don’t delight in being one. We need people like you for balance! But also maybe you shouldn’t mouth off to someone and expect people to go “Oooh, burn.” Just be your nice sweet self, okay? (Okay, whoever who sent in “Is that your face or an argument for abortion?” You do NOT have a nice sweet self.) If you did get ink, your entry outsnarked almost 1,200 others with its cleverness and originality or maybe it was just a funny exaggeration that got a laugh from an Empress who was starting to wonder if maybe the humor she asked for was just too mean during These Times. Nah. It’s the TWENTY-SIXTH Invite win, and the second Clowning Achievement winner, for Hall of Famer Mark Raffman, whom I have met many times and can vouch for his utter non-nastiness, even though he will soon be chasing his last few ambulances before retiring as a corporate lawyer. In my 100 Clowners for 100 Losers program, instead of a second trophy, he gets a little pennant with “II” on it, to attach to the base of the trophy he won in Week 1413 (which happened to be: new-word poems). I’ve now given out 36 of the 100 Clowners since last Dec. 6, so 64 more of you will one day be awarded the Disembodied Clown Head on a Stick. It’s another Hall of Famer, Gary Crockett, who offered my favorite take (among many entries) on “Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?” (not in itself an insult, just a risque remark; the example I used for the contest, “Is that your nose, or are you just happy to smell me” was). Greg Dobbins wins his choice of Loser Mug or Grossery Bag with “Is that your cooking I smell, or have we reached High Heaven?” — the rare entry that made the reader think a moment for the rest of the expression, turning something that might have momentarily sounded like a compliment into … something that wasn’t. It’s the fourth ink “above the fold” for Greg, and his 35th in all. And Jesse Rifkin gets Ink No. 59 and fifth Loser’s Circle ink, for my favorite of a dozen “Is that your car …” entries: “Is that your car, or is Fred Flintstone walking to work now?” What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood once again agreed with my choices for the winners — seriously, I specifically said, “If you think I picked the wrong winners, let me know” and he responded, “I think you’re good — and singled out a bunch more from the “honorable” mentions: Is that your husband, or did the English fatberg finally calve? (Stephen Dudzik) Did your CEO just say something, or was that a paradigm-shifting game-changer that delivers impacting synergy for disrupters who move the needle and think outside the box? (Duncan Stevens) Were you planning to clean up in here, or are you playing an elaborate game of Jenga with your dirty dishes? (Coleman Glenn) Have you had Botox injections, or did you just not get my joke? (Nancy Della Rovere) Is that a picture of Your Mama, or do you donate to Adopt a Manatee? (Jeff Shirley) Bonus: Annabeth’s Best Bets: Giving the second read (or slotting) on the copy desk this morning (“slotting Invite always brings a smile to my face after a long week!”) was Annabeth Carlson, who also was partial to Nancy’s Botox joke, which I was glad to hear because I wasn’t sure that it was clear enough) and also liked Hannah Seidel’s “Is that your beard, or was this your first time eating ramen?” — which bested seven other beard jokes. --- Taste aside, there’s one important rule for snide jokes: They can’t be built on an inaccurate premise. You might, for example, joke that okra tastes like snot, because taste is subjective, and okra definitely has a slimy texture unless it’s cooked to prevent that (split it lengthwise, brush a little oil and seasoning on it, and roast at 450 degrees on a baking sheet). But you can’t make a joke based on the premise that Indian food is all made with the same few spices, because it’s just not true. The joke fails. Similar case in point for Week 1456: “Did you do your own hair, or do you support the Cosmetology School for the Blind?” Premise: Of course blind people can’t style hair. Response we would have gotten within 24 hours: See this video. No joke — we’re going for Indian food! Loser Brunch at Aditi, Nov. 14 The longtime monthly rotation of Sunday Loser Brunches at various restaurants around the D.C. area resumes at Aditi, a really good Indian restaurant in Kingstowne, not far from the Beltway exit to Van Dorn Street in Northern Virginia. It’s Sunday, Nov. 14, at noon. I have been there many times and definitely have it on my calendar. There’s a buffet or you can order from the menu. If you’re vaccinated, come on out! Details and RSVP on the Our Social Engorgements page on the Losers’ website at NRARS.org. Everyone is welcome — and in person, we do not snark. ====================================================================== WEEK 1461, published November 7, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1461: You name it! The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s eponym contest and on farming out her work to Ken Jennings Bob Staake's sketch for one of the other eponyms used as examples for the Style Invitational Week 1461 contest: SINEMATIC, adj.: Describing utterly nonsensical behavior. “You decided to crash the car because it wouldn’t turn left and right at the same time? Pretty sinematic.” (Example by Duncan Stevens) By Pat Myers November 4, 2021 at 5:13 p.m. EDT Heard any good names lately? It’s not as if you have you have a limited number of sources for Style Invitational Week 1461. An eponym contest was one of The Style Invitational’s first: Week 24 in 1993, suggested by proto-Loser Kitty Thuermer, a reader who’d go on to head up the Extreme Travel Trivia contest for The Post for a while, and who ended up with 19 blots of Invite ink before bowing out in Week 262. Headlined “It’s the Eponomy, Stupid” — the spelling was changed to the better “eponymy” two weeks later in the “next week” line — the contest was headed by these examples (no clue if they were Kitty’s or the Czar’s): Perot, verb. To stand or sit next to someone important and make him feel insecure by saying inane but profound-sounding things. Pack, noun. An unwanted sexual advance more intrusive than a peck, as popularized by Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon. Bobbitt, verb. To bob “it.” Hooverville, noun. A room full of transvestites. (Word to the wise: if you end your joke with a phrase like “as popularized by Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon,” you will not get ink. Gaaaack.) Except for the pathetic Pack entry, they were pretty good. But the results were better. But as is true today, a big part of the fun was the humor’s timeliness — so many of the jokes concerned people who were all over the headlines … of 1993. Let’s refresh our memories with some of the entries that week. (Here’s the whole list in a somewhat clunky text file.) (Incidentally, the week this contest was announced, the results were for the very first Ask Backwards contest.) Report from Week 27, in which we asked you to coin eponyms, words based on the names of famous people. Fourth Runner-Up: Stockdale, noun. The place your mind wanders off to when you daydream. (Paul Sabourin, Greenbelt) Adm. James Stockdale, the running mate of 1992 third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot, had an excruciating night of a VP debate with opponents Al Gore and even famously dopey-sounding Dan Quayle, beginning with “Who am I? Why am I here?” Millions of viewers had the same question. (By the way, entrant Paul Sabourin is half of the hilarious music duo Paul and Storm, and previously a member of the equally funny Da Vinci’s Notebook. We miss him.) Third Runner-Up: To Cuomo, verb. To edge forward and back up repeatedly when attempting to turn onto a busy thoroughfare, to the annoyance of other drivers. (Peter Owen, Williamsburg) The Invite has had whole generations of Cuomo jokes! This referred to the vacillations by Gov. MARIO Cuomo about whether he’d run for president in 1992; he finally didn’t.) Second Runner-Up: Dee Dee, noun. Short, substanceless commentary. “I went to the press conference hoping for a good story, but all I got was dee dee.” (Kate Sparks and Sarah Ducich, Washington, and Laura Sokol, Warsaw) It sounds as if Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers was receiving the same sort of sniping that all presidential flacks get, but Myers has been treated well by history; the first woman in that role, she was known for her quick wit, and was the inspiration for the “West Wing” character C.J. Cregg. First Runner-Up: To Pack Wood, verb. To be glad to see someone. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) As the example to the contest hinted at less graphically, Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon was a notorious harasser of staffers and other women; The Post’s story in 1992 that included accusations from 10 women eventually prompted his resignation. And the winner of the giant flag of a cow [no trophies yet; the gag prize went to the winner]: To shalikashvili, v. To ensure a low profile for a program or agency by appointing a director whose name no one can pronounce or spell or even fit in a headline. “We finally shalikashvilied the White House Travel Office by appointing Joe Bkistellzrtngounmr!” (Sharon Kuykendall, Takoma Park) Gen. John Shaliskashvili, whose father was from the country of Georgia, had just been appointed head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. While I’m not a huge fan of humor that makes fun of people’s surnames, I do like how the entry shows (with a funny sentence) how the neologism could be used more generally. Tsong, noun. A sensible melody that no one wants to hear. (Paul Sabourin) Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas won several Democratic primaries in 1992 but eventually conceded to the more colorful Bill Clinton. Asked why he wasn’t proposing tax cuts like other candidates, he famously said, “I’m not trying to play Santa Claus.” He died at age 55 of complications from a return of lymphoma. McGinniss stout, noun Faux beer. (Stefanie Weldon, Silver Spring) best-selling author Joe McGinniss had just released a book about Sen. Ted Kennedy that was viciously panned, as Wikipedia sums it up, for “its skimpy sourcing, lack of attribution, wild suppositions, lack of footnotes, possible plagiarism and prurient outlook. ‘It is, by a wide margin, the worst book I have reviewed in nearly three decades; quite simply, there is not an honest page in it,’ wrote Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post.” The Czar never repeated the contest, but I brought it back in 2006 and again in 2010. Selected ink below. (Full lists for Week 653 and Week 888) From Week 653: Blix-and-mortars: Said of two types of things never found together. “Bill Frist campaigning at a Wiccan Festival would be like blix-and-mortars.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Hans Blix was in charge of the U.N.'s effort to search for evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; he found none, to the disappointment of U.S. pro-war partisans. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was accused of pandering to right-wing Christian groups. As this 2005 article on the Fox News website (!) says, “The critics have grown louder since he agreed to participate in an event on Sunday organized by Christian groups trying to rally churchgoers to support ending the judicial filibuster [and !!!].” Enfant terrellible: An egregiously self-centered athlete. (Tom Greening) and T.O.: To insult co-workers, violate workplace standards and practices, and show little regard for clients. “Despite his smile and performance record, he still managed to T.O. everyone in the office.” (Ira Allen) Two entries about NFL star Terrell “T.O.” Owens, who was good at catching passes and great at antagonizing everyone on the many teams he played for. The same year of this contest, he spit in an opponent’s face after a play. After finally making the Hall of Fame, he skipped the induction and held his own celebration instead. And from Week 888 (2010): The winner of the Inker: lebronchitis, n.: Acute swelling of the ego. (Jeff Contompasis) LeBron James is inarguably one of the greatest NBA players of all time, and continues to be. But in 2010 he pulled an amazingly egomaniacal stunt — with the eager cooperation of ESPN and 13 million viewers: a live 75-minute TV special in which he announced that, as a free agent, he would leave his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat. whittingtonto, n.: A sidekick who takes one in the face for you. (Chris Doyle) The Invitational has lots of ink alluding to the 2006 accident in which Vice President Dick Cheney shot his acquaintance (widely misreported at the time that he was a close friend) Harry Whittington in the face and elsewhere with a shotgun during a quail-hunting excursion. Whittington, a lawyer, offered this statement a week later: “We all assume certain risks in whatever we do. Whatever activities we pursue and regardless of how experienced, careful and dedicated we are, accidents do and will happen.” Years later he said that the Cheneys had never apologized, publicly or privately, to him. He’s still alive at age 94. Heene, n.: The sound of air being let out of a balloon. (Kevin Dopart) The Balloon Boy! I’ll let Wikipedia sum it up: “The ‘Balloon Boy’ hoax occurred on October 15, 2009, when a homemade helium-filled gas balloon shaped to resemble a silver flying saucer was released into the atmosphere above Fort Collins, Colorado, by Richard and Mayumi Heene. They then claimed that their six-year-old son Falcon was trapped inside it. … After flying for more than an hour … the balloon landed about 12 miles northeast of Denver International Airport. When Falcon was not found inside and it was reported that an object had been seen falling from the balloon, a search was begun. Later that day, the boy was found hiding in the attic of his home, where he had apparently been the entire time. “Suspicions of a hoax soon arose, particularly after an interview with Wolf Blitzer on Larry King Live that same evening. Asked why he was hiding, Falcon said to his father, “You guys said that, um, we did this for the show.” It’s 'pardy time*: The Ask Backwards results *Non-inking headline by Kevin Dopart Golly, Ken Jennings is truly a good guy. “Sure, I can help with this. Thanks Pat,” he answered promptly after I emailed him in early October to ask if he’d be willing to look at and comment on four lists of “Jeopardy!”-themed entries in our Week 1457 Ask Backwards contest. He did this last year, too, just as graciously and charmingly. But since last year, the “Jeopardy!” GOAT and professional brainiac has become A1 news in the wake of Alex Trebek’s death and the long and wild saga of Who’ll Replace Him — and for now, he’s still up there; he and fellow smarty Mayim Bialik are splitting up hosting duties through the end of the year, and there hasn’t been anyone else announced to take over. No matter. I sent Ken the four lists on Tuesday and he returned them the same day, with the comments I quote atop this week’s results: “Hope this helps!” Obviously, as the most recognizable name connected with the show (and someone who’d like to get some tenure), he wasn’t going to choose entries referring to the controversy, or gibes at the producer who named himself host until the world quickly saw to it that he would do no such thing. That’s my job. That job for this year’s Ask Backwards consisted of reading about 1,400 entries plus 200 headline and subhead suggestions. Not surprisingly, there were many similar ideas offered; I usually chose my favorite wording. Thanks to everyone who — and this was just about everyone — typed the A-part and the Q-part of each entry on a single line; this let me shuffle all the entries alphabetically instead of seeing a single Loser’s entire list at once. I was also able to read big groups of, say, “30,000 steps” entries at once rather than having to search for them one by one through the massive amalgamation. So I had no idea until the end that the Loser who sent the fourth-place “Dalai Double” joke for “Zen Jennings” and the Loser who wrote the first-place “Six hours without Facebook” question, “How do 56 percent of Americans describe an eight-hour workday?,” were both 136 (now 139)-time Loser Jeff Hazle. It’s his sixth Invite win but his first of the Clowning Achievement trophy (though I suspect that his shout-out from the Kenster might count for more in his book). John Hutchins accurately predicted that Ken would be good-humored about his affliction of being Possibly the Whitest Man in America, asking, “Who was the inspiration for “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” the Procol Harum song. And Bird Waring, who used to work for the Jesuit magazine America, got the other runner-up spot for “A bun in the oven” as “What do bakers have no control over in Texas?” Some categories proved more fertile than others for ink; that’s why I always put up more than I’ll have room for. Not surprisingly, more people tried to get some Ken-props and entered the “Jeopardy!” categories, but several of the other “answers” drew many dozens of questions as well. Some of the answers were pretty inside-Jeopardy: Two of them alluded to an answer that Ken missed during his 74-victory run in 2004. Alex Trebek’s clue: “This term for a long-handled gardening tool can also mean an immoral pleasure seeker.” The intended response: “What is a rake?” Ken’s: “What is a hoe?” And so we had these two questions: A. Zen Jennings. Q. Who brought a hoe to the Japanese rock garden? (Dave Matuskey) A. Zen Jennings. Q. Whose most famous “Jeopardy!” guess was “What’s a ho-listic approach?” (Jesse Rifkin) One quibbler who read this week’s results this morning points out a problem with one of the honorable mentions: A. 3½ Pounds. Q. How big is a pound cake in Texas? The premise, of course, is that everything is bigger in Texas, but pound cake gets its name from the traditional recipe: a pound of flour, a pound of sugar, a pound of butter and a pound of eggs (that would be eight to 10). So at 3½ pounds, the Texas cake would be half a pound smaller than the classic. Okay, noted. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choices for the winners (really! And I’m sure it’s not just because I hired him in 1992) and also singled out Mike Gips’s and William Kennard’s “Buzzy Koan”; Pia Palamidessi’s description of six hours without Facebook as “the punishment for parents who don’t obey their children”; Ward Kay’s “bun in the oven” as the result of the Pillsbury Doughboy’s visit to Sara Lee; and Lee Graham’s saying Curry Spice is Gene Weingarten’s stripper name. And yes, Gene was okay with my using the Curry Spice category and with all the inking entries for it. He especially liked Pia Palamidessi’s “takeout” wordplay. Meanwhile, Gene won’t be going with us to … Have some Curry Spice! Loser Brunch at Aditi, Nov. 14 (Reprinted from last week’s Convo) The longtime monthly rotation of Sunday Loser Brunches at various restaurants around the D.C. area resumes at Aditi, a really good Indian restaurant in Kingstowne, not far from the Beltway exit to Van Dorn Street in Northern Virginia. It’s Sunday, Nov. 14, at noon. I have been there many times and definitely have it on my calendar. There’s a buffet or you can order from the menu. If you’re vaccinated, come on out! Details and RSVP on the Our Social Engorgements page on the Losers’ website at NRARS.org. Everyone is welcome — and in person, we do not snark. Feeling sketchy? Talk to Bob Staake. Do you covet today’s “disputin” cartoon, or the “sinematic” sketch above — or any old Invitational art? Bob Staake makes them available to the Loser Community at low-for-a-famous-artist prices at bobstaake.com*SI. Tell him what you’re looking for — write to me first if you need help in figuring out the date, details of the cartoon, etc. — and he’ll check to see if he still has it. ====================================================================== WEEK 1462, published November 14, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1462: The switcheroo The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s new contest and results Jesse Frankovich's (and others') anagram, animated by the ingenious Internet Anagram Server created by Anu Garg at Wordsmith.org*anagram. Jesse got an Invitational runner-up with his description of a "Baking Bread" series: "Walter White finds a better way to make a lot of dough before he dies." (Frank Ockenfels*AMC) By Pat Myers November 11, 2021 at 4:32 p.m. EST Hi, everyone. Before getting to this week’s contest and results, I wanted to catch you up on something that happened right after I finished last week’s Style Conversational: The company that I used to send out my weekly notification email to 1,800 people had disabled my account without warning or explanation. It took about 24 hours to learn what had gone amiss: I had not properly followed its strict rules requiring a “double opt-in” from each person receiving the email. Instead, I had added the address of each new entrant to the Invitational, a dozen or so new names each week, with directions on how to easily unsubscribe. I figured the newbies would want to be notified when their entries got (or failed to get) ink. But evidently at least one (probably more than one) recipient clicked on “Report Spam,” and kaboom. Fortunately, I quickly found another platform: Substack, a service that a lot of writers have been using to publish their own work; the historian Heather Cox Richardson has had enormous success in sharing her “Letters From an American” blog. I was able to set up quickly on Substack, and it seems I can send out the newsletter just about the same way as before. And it even let me import my whole mailing list with a click. But. Substack first asked: All these people opted in the first time around, right? Um. So this is why I’d like to hear from everyone who was on my list as of last Thursday. I did upload everyone’s name, just to get the word out to them. And I’m asking all of you to, just this once, send me an email to myerspat (at) gmail (dot) com, expressly saying that you want to keep getting the emails. Thanks to the more than 200 of you who’ve already answered my plea when I finally sent out last week’s newsletter about a day and a half late. And then, within a few weeks, I’ll remove everyone who didn’t opt in again. Breaks my heart, but I don’t see an alternative. Please tell me you’ll stay! Meanwhile, to sign up for the first time: So simple! Just go to TheStyleInvitational.substack.com and fill in your email address. I’ll know not to remove you later because I’ll see that you came aboard after Nov. 4. (Substack offers writers a way to charge for their work, but of course there’s no charge to read my newsletter. The links to the Invitational and Conversational, however, go to Washington Post pages, which are usually blocked to Post nonsubscribers. But the newsletter itself has no restrictions.) Thank you, lovely crazy people. Help wanted, Alternative Universe branch: This week’s contest This week’s contest, Week 1462, is pretty wide open in both form and content: Describe what it would be like if two particular people switched professions (or other roles in life that aren’t exactly professions). The example of Bob Ross*Gordon Ramsay, which is taken from Twitter and itself based on a writing prompt in Reddit, does it in the form of a quote from each guy. But I could see funny descriptions, including wordplay. Usually, for guidance and inspiration, I’ll show you some examples of a similar earlier Style Invitational from sometime in our past 1,461 weeks, but if we’ve done one, I can’t think of it. The closest thing I have is Week 423, which asked readers what would happen if a character from one movie were put into another one. The top winners: Fourth Runner-Up: If Ben Kingsley’s Gandhi had played Darth Vader, the Empire wouldn’t have struck back. (Joseph Romm) Third Runner-Up: If Renton from “Trainspotting” had played Mary Poppins, it would have taken a spoon, a lighter, a belt and a syringe to make the medicine go down. (Jessica Henig) Second Runner-Up: If Phil from “Groundhog Day” had played Scarlett O’Hara, tomorrow wouldn’t have been another day. (Chris Doyle) First Runner-Up: If Marlee Matlin’s character in “Children of a Lesser God” had played Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver,” it would have made a lot more sense for her to keep wondering, “Are you talking to me?” (Mike Edens) And the winner of the can of South Carolina Potted Possum: If Flipper, from “Flipper,” had starred in “Jaws,” then after eating people he could have scooted through the water backward on his tail balancing their heads on his nose. Cool. (Russell Beland) The Style Invitational > T H E S Y L I N V A O N > Holy Insane TV!* The results of Week 1458 *Non-inking headline (no space for anything like this) by Kevin Dopart When I present a new contest, I’m always concerned about its parameters: Is it so specific and difficult that it won’t get enough funny and varied entries, meanwhile denying the opportunity for lots of good jokes? Or is it so broad that there’s not enough structure to prompt interesting entries — or that the result will just prompt a “So what?” I vacillated between these concerns after posting Style Invitational Week 1458; Loser Sarah Walsh had suggested a contest based on the anagrams of TV show names, and I decided to expand the challenge to allow contestants to repeat any of the letters of the title, as long as they used each letter at least once. Looking back on this week’s results, I think I made the right choice. Granted, it’s definitely cooler when you can rearrange the letters of the TV show into another one that uses the same letters — especially when you can make it into an animated graphic like the one at the top of this page. But as you can see in the results, most of the time I got more of a laugh from entries that weren’t exact anagrams. (The validation program devised by Hall of Fame Loser Gary Crockett, which he ran on the titles in a list of semifinalists that I sent him, flagged the anagrams along with any illegal letters.) Despite their coolness factor, many of the anagrams seemed contrived and difficult to read. And some were just bested by non-anagrams with funnier ideas in the descriptions. I ended up using nine anagrams and 32 anagram-pluses (better names welcome!). It’s the first Clowning Achievement for rookie Coleman Glenn, but I had to look that up — the man has become an Invite household name since his debut a mere 19 weeks ago. Since Week 1439, the chaplain and religion professor at Bryn Athyn College outside Philadelphia has been a runner-up five times, and now has 28 blots of ink in all. Coleman writes a lot of poetry, and heard of us through the journal Light, but he’s proved to be clever, funny and current in all manner (or unmanner) of humor that we’ve thrown out to him. And I think I’ve remembered each time that there’s a D in the name of his town, Huntingdon Valley, Pa. Coleman, who’s in his 30s, was deprived of experiencing “Gilligan’s Island” in its original broadcast incarnation, but is clearly well versed in the monuments of television posterity; “Ding-a-lings in Sand” is the perfect synopsis for every single episode. Advertisement Eleven people anagrammed “Breaking Bad” into “Baking Bread” — showing why Invite contests usually ask for an extra element to the joke. But Hall of Famer Jesse Frankovich nailed the cleverest description: “Walter White finds a better way to make a lot of dough before he dies.” Also on fire, Invitationally, has been Frank Mann, whose runner-up reminds us of Tucker Carlson’s blink-of-an-eye stint on “Dancing With the Stars”: “Right-Wing Whiner Can’t Cha-Cha — Sad.” Not only has Frank snarfed up 16 blots of ink in the past 10 weeks, but I just realized that on my first-cut “shortlist” of about 100 entries from the total of 1,150, twelve of them were by Frank. And remember that when I’m judging, I’ve already shuffled all the entries, with no names attached, into alphabetical order. So maybe the TV news reporter turned federal lawyer was kind of robbed this week, getting “only” two blots. And we’re delighted with the return of Amanda Yanovitch, an English professor in the Richmond area who blotted up a little vat of ink from about 2011 to 2016 — sometimes with the aid of one or another of her three young boys — but then pretty much disappeared until a few weeks ago. But this’ll be the third week in a row that I’ll be sending her a prize: this time, a Loser Mug or Grossery Bag for teasing technologically hesitant seniors with “America’s Funniest Home Videos > Send the Nice Man Our Homemade Errors From the VCR.” Keep it coming, Amanda. Also back in Loserdom this week is Milo Sauer, who quickly ran up exactly 100 blots of ink in the early 2000s, then vanished. Well, his name did, anyway: Milo (a.k.a. Tim, a George Mason University math professor) just recently confessed to me that in 2005, he broke the Invite’s strict no-pseudonyms rule and assumed the identity of an Elwood Fitzner of Valley City, N.D., amassing 100 more blots before retiring him as well. I’d actually looked up Elwood in my early days of Empresshood, and while I didn’t find that exact name back then, I did find numerous Fitzners in Valley City (population 6,400) and figured he must be there somewhere. (It turns out that Milo has Fitzner relatives there.) All is forgiven now, almost 15 years later, and I’m delighted to see that Milo is as clever as ever — two blots this week! — but people, do not enter under false names. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood got a laugh (or four, I hope) out of all this week’s top winners, and also singled out several honorable mentions: Mark Raffman’s anagram “Seinfeld > Life’s End: A show about nothingness”; Frank Mann’s “Lost in Space > Plastic Noses, Lips et al.," about the family Kardashian; and Jesse Frankovich’s “The Lone Ranger > The Orange Gloater,” who won’t be a masked man. Yes, the Trump jokes keep coming, and keep getting ink. And in case you think I’m being politically biased here: I don’t remember seeing a single Biden joke among the 1,150 entries; a search on his name yields two mentions, neither really about him. Really, there’s nothing to take on about him and his administration? Understandably, no one on Earth is as mockable as TFG, but hasn’t Biden done anything in the past almost-year that deserves a valid barb? Last call for Loser Brunch! Sunday, Nov. 14, Aditi We’re back and boosted and I’m all ready to meet (and remeet) Losers, Devotees and Invite fans this Sunday, Nov. 14, at noon at the restaurant Aditi in Kingstowne, not far from the Beltway exit to Van Dorn Street in Northern Virginia. There’s a buffet or you can order from the menu. Details and RSVP on the Our Social Engorgements page on the Losers’ website at NRARS.org. (Especially if you’re new, can you let me know as well at pat.myers@washpost.com?) Everyone (as long as you’re vaccinated) is welcome — and in person, we do not snark. ====================================================================== WEEK 1463, published November 21, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1463, with our guest Kyle Stonversational The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s spoonerism contest and song parody results Bob Staake's illustrated example for Style Invitational Week 124, July 1995. Bob might still have this cartoon on file, which means you could buy it — or another piece of Invite art — by asking at bobstaake.com*SI. By Pat Myers November 18, 2021 at 5:17 p.m. EST Hi, all: I just got my Internet restored after a power outage and SOME of the Conversational was saved. Gotta love Our Modern World. But I’ve been on the phone with Verizon for an hour … Never once, since I started Invite song contests in 2004 (here’s a page of extra honorable mentions), have I not been overflowing with outstanding material, way more than I could rationally expect a reader to get through. And so it was with the results of Week 1459, whose subject matter was limited only by the requirement that the lyrics be people “singing about themselves” — in other words, in the first person. The Loser Community responded with songs “by” not only the usual (lots of Trump, a few Bidens and other politicians) but also everyone from Shaggy of “Scooby-Doo” (to “Happy”) to Christopher Steele of “dossier” fame (an unprintably graphic “Puttin’ On the Spritz”). I heard from about 125 songwriters, some of whom — I’m talking about you, Duncan Stevens — sent as many as 20 songs. I ended up running eight songs on the print page in Arts & Style, plus a dozen more online, including two videos: in other words, enough material for a generous-sized album. But still, some Losers were robbed of ink, plain and simple. And so I’ll be featuring more parodies over the next week or so in the Style Invitational Devotees group (I know Facebook isn’t exactly The Fashionable Club to Join right now, but the group is private; is watched over personally by me and my co-admin, the wise Alex Blackwood; and isn’t affected by the bad-actor aspects of The Evil Algorithm). I’ll make sure to include the hashtag #parodies when I post each one, so you’ll be able to search on that tag and find them all. First up will be Greg Dobbins’s “Aaron Rodgers” singing “Covid on My Q-tip” to the 1959 Connie Francis song “Lipstick on Your Collar.” It’s the third Clowning Achievement win, and the 18th Invite win all-time, for Duncan Stevens, who captured a “III” flag to adorn his Disembodied Clown Head on a Stick trophy with a jab at the potentially principled but ultimately spineless Sen. Susan Collins, using one of the Invite’s most popular parody songs, “If I Only Had a Brain.” Because I can’t shuffle individual multi-line entries such as poems and songs, I read each Loser’s full submission at once, though without a name attached. I’d read eight songs by Entrants 1 through 6 (I don’t see the names) and wasn’t wowed by any of them, and then called up Entrant 7. And Songs 7A through 7X. I marked a star in front of 7A, a star for 7C, two stars for 7D … My shortlist now had 12 songs just by Entrant 7. The Devotees will be seeing some of them on Facebook. This week’s runners-up are also veteran Loserbards: Mark Raffman’s name is most famously linked to “Be My Guest,” a song he’s parodied for ink something like a dozen times (a fact that’s joked about by Elliott Shevin’s funny parody today), but today he used the pretty (even though it’s about a rat) theme song of the movie “Ben” — a tune I don’t think we’ve used here before — for a song about his incoming governor, Glenn Youngkin, and how much he may or may not owe Trump. Melissa Balmain used “I Cain’t Say No” successfully for the second time (she told me before I lost my Internet) and Hildy Zampella made “I Will Survive” a bit chilling when you see who’s so determined to do so. ADVERTISING What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood read the eight print songs — the four winners plus Barbara Sarshik’s Leonard Cohen, Beverley Sharp’s Eve, Coleman Glenn’s Terminator and Duncan Stevens’s Velveteen Rabbit — and, after great deliberation, announced: “Liked 'em all!” Spoon-feed us: This week’s contest, Week 1463 Dr. Spooner still garbled his words, Though insisting, “I’m wetter with birds.” At a wedding, this freak Was invited to speak And delivered “a few wasteful turds.” That lovely tribute by Loser Brian Allgar got ink not in our spoonerism contest, but in a later limerick challenge. But it puts its grimy finger on what a spoonerism is — the transposition of the beginnings of two words — which we seek in this week’s contest, Week 1463. While we’ve mentioned Spooner and his accidental -isms numerous times, we seem to have set aside a whole contest for them only once, and that was ages ago, in the early days of the Czar — but one that I happened to judge, when as his co-worker, I agreed to fill in while he went on a four-week August “sabbatical.” (I returned as “Auxiliary Czar” for about a dozen contests in 2001, then took it over for good as Empress in December 2003.) We’re going to do the contest in the very same way, too — in riddle form. Here are the many results of Week 124, complete with an introduction in which I clearly was trying to establish a snotty, imperious tone. If nothing else, it’ll give an idea of what I’m looking for in Week 1463 (deadline Nov. 29). Report from Week 124, in which we asked you to come up with Spoonerisms: transpositions of the beginnings of paired words. (Belated thanks to Kevin Cuddihy of Fairfax for suggesting this contest months ago. Kevin wins a pair of slippers that look like salmon, since he just had knee surgery and could really use, for once, a salmon.) Most of the 1,000-plus entries actually fit the Spooneristic form, though there was the occasional pairing of, say, “Hillary Rodham Clinton” with “Killer hot rod, Rin-Tin-Tin,” or even “the coveted losers’ T-shirt and mildly sought-after bumper stickers” with “the curt staff taught me to avidly shove sick abuser lumps.” (Out of compassion — remember, this contest is now nestled in the nurturing arms of a woman — we refrain from mentioning that both of those entries were from Phil Plait of Silver Spring.) Lots of people sent in utter obscenities, figuring it’d be okay as long as they left out the half of the joke that RHYMED with “truck” or “wit” or “cities.” Ha ha ha, you smart feller, you. And literally dozens of contestants plagiarized from the Rosetta Stone Dirty Joke Obelisk and sent in the ones about the defiant rooster and the epileptic oystermonger. Even that nasty little Czar, who is currently confined to quarters (the rest of his pay has been docked), wouldn’t have stomached that. Fourth runner-up: How is career advice for Tommy Chong like the job description for an actress on “Baywatch”? One is “Best to star with Cheech”; the other is “Chest to star with beach.” (Joel Tompkins, Laurel) Third runner-up: How is the Supreme Court abortion case like what roaches say on TV? One is Roe-Wade; the other is “Whoa! Raid!” (Scott McKenzie, Manassas) Second runner-up: How is Roger Tory Peterson like the Rev. William Spooner? One is a birdwatcher; the other is … a birdwatcher. (Douglas J. Hoylman, Chevy Chase) First runner-up: How is Cole Porter like a reformed Bob Packwood in his reelection bid? One gets no kick from champagne; the other gets no chick from campaign. (J. von Bushberger, Davidsonville) And the winner of the original amateur copy of the “Mona Lisa”: How is adoration of a pop group like a PBS documentary on an obscure European country? One is Beatlemania; the other is “Meet Albania!” (Steven Papier, Wheaton) Honorable Mentions: How is O.J. Simpson like the bloody glove? One is a prosecutor’s perp; the other is a persecutor’s prop. (Joseph Romm, Washington) How is the Capitol at night like President Clinton? One is visible in the city’s lights; the other is visible in Liddy’s sights. (Greg Arnold, Herndon) How is one Buddha figurine like another Buddha figurine? Each is a placid face above a flaccid place. (Matt Westbrook, Baltimore) How is a Washington Chinese restaurant like Rush Limbaugh? One is Mandarin Palace; the other is panderin’ malice. (Alison Kamat, Washington) How is a Mellon-Rockefeller marriage like the result of skinny-dipping in a cold river? One is shrewd linkage; the other is lewd shrinkage. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) How is a champion golfer like a genetic engineer? One makes big-money putts; the other makes pig-bunny mutts. (Paul Sabourin, Silver Spring) How is a conservative presidential candidate like a flying mammal that projectile-vomits? One is Pat Buchanan; the other is a bat puke cannon. (Joseph Romm, Washington) How is war like Newt Gingrich’s sister? One is “c’est la guerre”; the other is “gay la soeur.” (Steven Papier, Wheaton) How is Nancy Kerrigan like Miss Manners on a roller coaster? One says, “Why me?”; the other says, “My! Whee!” (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) How is an old movie projector company like an awful name for a heavy-metal group? One is Bell & Howell; the other is Hell & Bowel (Scott L. Vanatter, Fairfax) How is President Clinton’s media image unlike that of House Speaker Newt Gingrich? One is an easy waffler; the other is an awful weaseler. (William Bradford, Washington) How is a hit song like Jack the Ripper? One is a chart topper; the other is a tart chopper. (Steven Papier, Wheaton) How is rotten parsley like Radovan Karadzic at his family farm? One is a sick herb; the other is a hick Serb. (Katie McBride, Alexandria, with Seumas Gillecriosd, Loudoun County) How is a Texas football team like a group of insensitive Chinese monks? One is the Dallas Cowboys; the other are the Callous Tao Boys. (John Garner, Silver Spring) How is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms like a sadistic Dale Evans? One’s got a Good Ol’ Boy Roundup; the other’s got good ol’ Roy bound up. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) How is an earnest amateur golfer like a blind asphalt layer? One is craving a par; the other is paving a car. (Phil Plait, Silver Spring) How is the Moscow Circus like “Star Trek”? One has unconventional bears; the other has unbearable conventions. (J. Calvin Smith, Laurel) How is a double martini like a proctologist? One packs a wallop; the other whacks a polyp. (John Chickering, Rockville) How is an illegal batter’s ploy like a would-be Supreme Court justice who has been eaten by a jaguar? One is cork in a bat; the other is Bork in a cat. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) How is Tiny Tim like Michael Jackson? One is an androgynous freak; … oh wait, so is the other one. (Michael Kane, Fort Collins, Colo.) How is a piece of lawn furniture like a talkative nanny? One is a patio chair; the other is a chatty au pair. (Helen and Miriam Dowtin, Suitland) How is Catherine Deneuve like the secret behind Newt Gingrich’s helmet head? One is “Belle du Jour”; the other is Gel du Boor. (Willy Hawkins, Washington) How is a blind pop star like how a Londoner would tell someone to avoid a space alien who’d just zapped a woman with a ray gun? One is Stevie Wonder; the other is “Weave! 'E stunned her!” (Steven Offutt, Arlington) How is a Christmas photo at the mall like what your child is sure to do for the photographer? One is Nick pose; the other is pick nose. (Mike Connaghan, Silver Spring) How is celibacy like an afternoon fling between bank tellers? One is safe sex; the other is safe sex. (Mike Thring, Leesburg) How is a lab rat on the space shuttle like Billy Joel? One is mating weightlessly; the other is waiting matelessly. (Edward Palm, Baltimore) How is a henpecked husband like a West Virginian? One’s mate says “do, do, do”; the other’s date says “moo, moo, moo.” (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) How is an inconsequential radio personality like what his motto should be? One is Don Imus; the other is I’m Dumbest. (Scott L. Vanatter, Fairfax) Thanks, Substackians! Thanks to the hundreds of you who’ve opted in to continue (or start) receiving my weekly Thursday afternoon newsletter, which gives you links to the week’s just-posted Invitational and Conversational. I had moved my 1,800-name mailing list, originally on TinyLetter, to the provider Substack, but I lied a little and said that everyone on the list had expressly asked to join; actually, I’d signed up some Invite entrants myself over the past couple of years when they first entered. So now I’m trying to follow the rules totally, which is why I’m asking everyone who’s been getting the newsletter to email me at myerspat [at] gmail [dot] com and confirm that you want to be there. In a couple of weeks, I’m afraid I’ll have to drop you if you haven’t gotten back to me. To sign up or just to read the newsletter, go to TheStyleInvitational.substack.com and click on the button; all you have to give is your email. And it’s totally free (though the links to the Invitational and Convo still require a Post subscription). Something to be thankful for (it is too!): We’ll be a day early next week As we do every Thanksgiving week, the online Style Invitational will publish Wednesday morning rather than Thursday, since the print paper’s Arts & Style section will be typeset that afternoon, so why wait? But given that this means I have to finish the Invite a day earlier, I probably will skip the Convo and start cooking. So I’ll see you in this space in two weeks — but of course the Invitational always comes out. The last week there was no Style Invitational column? The week of Jan. 23, 2000. ====================================================================== WEEK 1465, published December 5, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1465: See _____ next year The Style Invitational Empress on the 2022-prediction contest and eponym results Not ridden out of town on a rail, alas: Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) was censured by the House for tweeting an anime video that depicted him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- a "joke" sarcastically termed "Gosarcasm" by Losers Marty Gold and Lee Graham. Gosar then sent out the tweet again. (Jabin Botsford*The Washington Post) By Pat Myers December 2, 2021 at 4:45 p.m. EST You know, I’m pretty glad that the results of our Year in Preview contest last year did NOT include a prediction that, a few days into the new year, a wanton, murderous mob would invade the Capitol and its legislators with the goal of overturning the 2020 presidential election and maybe hanging the outgoing vice president from a scaffold. Or that almost none of the Republican members of Congress would dare criticize what happened. They’d have blamed us! Anyway, let’s give another go to our Year in Preview contest, Style Invitational Week 1465, in which I’ll compile a timeline of Loserly predictions for 2022. Once again, I’ll thank Longtime Loser Malcolm Fleschner not only for the idea, but for supplying some handy-dandy examples — which now he can’t put in his own column. Malcolm, a Californian whose humor column Culture Shlock used to run in the San Jose Mercury-News and now appears on his blog on Substack, came up with his Year in Preview back in 2004 as a twist on Dave Barry’s famous “Year in Review” pieces — which Dave has been doing since well back into the previous century, mixing his own jokes with actual “I swear I am not making this up” occurrences. Here’s Malcolm’s Year in Preview from last year; here’s Dave’s lengthy Year in Review from 2020 (this year’s will run in The Washington Post Magazine on Dec. 26). While Dave’s wrap-up is in paragraph form, we’ll copy Malcolm’s Invite-friendly timeline format of individual entries. One source of Dave’s humor is the running jokes he’ll thread throughout the year, like the six progressively sillier “events” involving the Houston Cheating Astros; while a single Loser shouldn’t submit several related jokes expecting them all to run, I hope to be able to place three or more related entries throughout the timeline (by the same or different people) for a similar effect. Like both versions, the Invite entries should be in present tense. And while I didn’t make a plea for it in the column or this week’s entry form, I hope to be able to shuffle everyone’s entries into one alphabetical list for judging. So to make sure each of your entries stays in one piece, don’t break it up into multiple lines. NOT LIKE THIS: Jan. 3: Something happened. Also, something else. BUT LIKE THIS: Jan. 3: Something happened. Also something else. I’ll post the results of Week 1465 online Thursday, Dec. 28, but in print they’ll be in the Jan. 2 Arts & Style section. Still, I won’t refuse to run predictions for Jan. 1 — what are people going to say, “Oh no, that didn’t really happen!”? I don’t think I’ll have to run a correction. In today’s contest I quoted some the inking entries from last year’s Invite Year in Preview; here are all the Week 1414 results (preview of 2021). And if you’re feeling really nostalgic, here’s our predicted timeline for 2020 (nope, nobody predicted a pandemic) from Week 1361. Haws with known names:* The eponym neologisms of Week 1461 Non-inking (too long) headline by Chris Doyle Hoo-boy, will readers 20 years from now — or, in some cases, two years from now if we’re lucky — be furrowing their li’l ol’ brows over the inking eponyms from Week 1461. In a happier world, Rep. Paul Gosar will become a trivia question: “Three siblings of what member of Congress wrote an op-ed calling him an ‘unhinged’ liar and gaslighter and ‘immune to shame’?" (Those were the calmer sentiments.) But we’re writing for right now, and this week’s words incorporating the names of particular people, or eponyms — almost four dozen of them — formed a long-overdue update of our previous “It’s the Eponymy, Stupid” contest sending up the Names in the News of 1993, 2006 and 2010. This week’s Clowning Achievement winner is a rookie phenom: Donald Norum got his first blot of ink six weeks ago with a good-idea*bad-idea pairing, one of several inkworthy entries that week. Good idea: Always handling guns like they’re loaded. Bad idea: Always handling guns like you’re loaded. And today Don makes a deft analogy for the House minority leader: KevinMcCarthyism: Blacklisting people who agree to appear before a House committee investigating un-American activities. It wasn’t necessary to add “no shame, no decency.” While Don is new to us, he has an Invite pedigree: His mom, Jean Lightner Norum, was twice a runner-up a full 20 years ago: with a poem about Osama bin Laden, and this item for an underachiever’s list of goals: “Win the admiration of my dog.” Two of this week’s three runners-up are almost Forever Losers, going back even farther than Jean: Roy Ashley — next in line for the Hall of Fame, with 456 blots of ink — got his first ink in Week 120 in 1995; and Steve Fahey goes back a few months more to Week 104. Steve wins a hat shaped like a pizza (well, it’s a disk with some pepperoni-motif appliqués) for offering two adjectives connoting athletic longevity: “ovechkinetic” and “bradioactive,” while Roy explained that “toobin'” was something done with a tube. (We are so highbrow sometimes that we have to lower it with a face-drop.) What Doug Dug: The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood this week included the top winners, plus these from the honorable mentions: Frank Mann’s “manchin,” a property owned by the coal industry; Amanda Yanovitch’s “ahemsworthy,” her second ink in a row involving swooning over a movie star (last time it was a poem laughing about Jason Momoa’s physique being called a “dad bod”); the similar “goscarcasm” entries by Marty Gold and Lee Graham; Greg Dobbins “heehawley” calling Stanford*Yale-educated Sen. Josh Hawley on his bumpkin act; Dave Silberstein’s “young-kins,” alluding to the Virginia governor-elect’s 17-year-old son, who twice (unsuccessfully) tried to vote, perhaps trying (and backfiring) to prove his dad’s contention that polling places were untrustworthy; and Kevin Dopart’s “giulianesty,” which works better when you say it out loud. Save the date: The Losers’ Post-Holiday Party, Jan. 22 The whole premise of this week’s Year in Preview contest is that we can’t be sure what’s down the road for us. But assuming that our vaccines and boosters will keep us from needing to lock ourselves down against Omicron or whatever other Greek letter, we’ll be having the Losers’ Post-Holiday Party on the evening of Saturday, Jan. 22 — in a new, spacious location: a large party room in the new apartment building of Loser Kathleen Delano in Arlington, Va., close to the Crystal City Metro station. (Kathleen also hosted the 2019 Flushies in the party room of her previous Crystal City building; this is a different one.) As always, it’ll be a potluck, and with the aid of pianist and 113-time Loser Steve Honley (and possibly others), we’ll sing (or perhaps “sing”) various Loser-penned parodies. The hours for the room would be 5 to 9 p.m., with the singalong getting going around 7:30. The event is put on by the Losers, with no involvement from The Post, except that I’ll send the Evite because I’m the one with y’alls’ email addresses. If you weren’t on the invitation list for the Flushies Awards this past September and you’d like me to add you, email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. But if you’ve found your way to the bottom of a Style Conversational, you’re invited regardless. It’s like the Golden Ticket to Loserdom. Finally: Have you opted in for the Invite newsletter? As I’ve mentioned for a few weeks now, I had to get a new host for the once-a-week notification email, or newsletter, that I send out with links to the week’s Invitational and Conversational. This new host company, Substack, is very accommodating, allowing me to load all 1,800 names on my list with a single click. But I had to lie and promise that all the people on the list had signed themselves up, or otherwise asked to be there: It wasn’t true, since I’d added new Losers when they sent in their first entries. So now I’m asking all those longtime newsletter-getters to email me at myerspat@gmail.com to tell me they do want to stay on the list. Thanks to the hundreds of you who’ve done this so far! If you haven’t yet responded, I’ll try to write to you personally before I cut your name, but to be honest, I might not get to you. So just take two seconds and email me — or just reply to the newsletter you get today. If you weren’t on the original list, or you’d like to sign up under a new address, just go to TheStyleInvitational.substack.com*about and click on the purple “Subscribe Now” button. It’s all free. ====================================================================== WEEK 1466, published December 12, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1466: Let’s make it right The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s funny-corrections contest and job-switch winners The website Testy Copy Editors shared this on Facebook Dec. 8. “If only The New York Times had access to a list of editors,” it mused. The Style Invitational invites you to have fun with corrections in this week's contest, Week 1466. (Screen image from Testy Copy Editors) By Pat Myers December 9, 2021 at 4:48 p.m. EST “The Washington Post strives for a nimble, accurate and complete news report. We endeavor to be promptly responsive in correcting errors in material published on digital platforms and in print. When we run a correction, clarification or editor’s note, our goal is to tell readers, as clearly and quickly as possible, what was wrong and what is correct. Anyone should be able to understand how and why a mistake has been corrected.” That’s the doctrine listed in The Post’s in-house guide to writing corrections. We really do strive for transparency. I’m pretty sure, though, that it hasn’t always been the case that we’ve aimed to “tell readers … what was wrong”; the rationale I heard over my years on the copy desk was that you don’t want to repeat an inaccuracy, so just go ahead and say what the correct fact is and leave it at that. But as you can imagine, readers were often left thinking: “Wow, what ridiculous thing did they actually say?!” (And just maybe we didn’t want to embarrass ourselves by admitting what doofy thing we said.) But certainly as long ago as 2004, The Post spelled out in its corrections box on Page A2 — to some degree — this howler that I quoted in the introduction to The Style Invitational’s Week 609 contest. “The Sunday, April 10, edition of ‘The Mini Page,’ about wind waves, tsunamis and tides, incorrectly indicated that the sun orbits the Earth.” Unfortunately, The Post’s archives don’t include preprinted supplements like The Mini Page (which was inserted into the Sunday comics) and so I can’t look up exactly what sort of science lesson was being imparted to our tykes, and how this idea was “indicated.” I wasn’t even able to track down the text of the correction to see if there was more to it, but my search for Mini Page corrections of 2004 did lead me serendipitously to a more conventionally obfuscatory “correction” of the era, from the Daytona Beach News-Journal: “A photo caption on The Mini Page, 2D, on Monday should have reported June 6, 1944, as the date U.S. and allied troops landed on the beaches in Normandy.” Maybe they had said that was the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor? The signing of the Declaration of Independence? Anyway, I hope you’ll have fun spoofing newspaper corrections — much as Mess With Our Heads contests (and of course the Onion) spoof headline conventions — with this week’s contest, Week 1466. I remember judging this contest with delight in 2004 in my first year on the throne (or, actually, in the car while waiting in the elementary school kid-pickup line). And the results are hilarious! So why did I wait 17 years to do it again? Perhaps because I worried that all the jokes to be had were already … had. But surely I was selling y’all short. One tack you might take — this was noted by Loser Dave Prevar when he suggested that I redo the contest — is to write the correction as if it’s from some specific publication, such as the Rocky Mountain News in Denver clarifying which kind of “oysters” to use in a recipe. Here are the results of Week 609 (while President George W. Bush was seeking reelection). The contest had been suggested by Russell Beland, then the Invite’s dominant Loser. Third runner-up: A June 4 news article described White House senior adviser Karl Rove as “a vicious old bloodsucker in the thrall of corporate paymasters.” Mr. Rove is 54. (Mark Eckenwiler, Washington) Second runner-up: The reviewer of “Monster-in-Law” incorrectly described the film as “two hours of my life I’ll never get back.” The film’s actual running time is 101 minutes. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) First runner-up, the winner of the CD of pop song parodies about food safety: In last week’s Book World, authorship of the anonymous poem beginning “There was an old man from Nantucket” was incorrectly attributed to Emily Dickinson. (Dennis Lindsay, Seabrook, Md.) And the winner of the Inker: Due to a transcription error, the Indian prime minister’s wife at Tuesday’s White House dinner was incorrectly described as wearing “a sorry ensemble.” (Elden Carnahan, Laurel, Md.) Honorable Mentions: [before we started doing the reader-submitted subheads] In the April 24 Travel article “Hiking in Grizzly Country,” a word was omitted from the final sentence. The sentence should have read: “Be sure never to carry chunks of raw meat in your pockets.” Also, a May 11 article, “Area Hikers Mauled in Yellowstone,” contained erroneous information supplied by a park official who reported that all the victims were from Maryland; in fact, one was from Virginia. (Dennis Lindsay) [Wow, that was a weensy bit subtle; I had to reread it to get it. Sick humor!] Yesterday’s obituary of the North Korean ambassador contained an inaccurate date. According to CIA sources, his death will not occur for several days. (Dan Seidman, Watertown, Mass.) In an article on swearing in local schools, the principal of George Washington Elementary was misquoted. “He’s a %#!!@#ing liar” was actually “He’s a %#!!ing liar.” (Chris Doyle, Raleigh) [In addition to his unbeatable position as highest-scoring loser ever, Chris surely holds the record for number of different towns cited after his name. I’m thinking of Burke, Va., to start, and there were places in Missouri, Alabama, North Carolina, Hawaii and Texas — not to mention all the ports of call he sent entries from on his round-the-world travels.] A recent Metro article listed James Schlemtz of 1223 J St. NE as the surprise witness who prosecutors fear might be murdered before he can testify. While accurate, the story should not have included that information. (Russell Beland, Springfield) [“J Street” is the 555- number of Washington writing; the alphabet-street grid skips J.] A recent editorial noted that John Bolton’s mustache looked “as if it had been torn from the rear end of a baboon.” Baboon rear ends are bare. The correct simile is “Japanese snow monkey.” (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) [17 years ago, people!] A correction in yesterday’s paper incorrectly indicated that the editors regretted making an error in the previous day’s edition. The editors actually felt no remorse for the mistake. This newspaper regrets the error. (Danny Bravman, St. Louis) [The Post actually doesn’t use the common “regrets the error” phrase in corrections.] A series of printing errors on the Op-Ed page caused George F. Will to appear to be even more of an insufferable pedant than his column usually makes him out to be. (Russell Beland) [Did I mention 17 years?] In an article about a principal who refused to let the school chorus sing “Louie Louie,” the lyrics “Eh fnh lttl grurl shweat Fermi” should have read “Ehh fnne little ghullsh wate furme.” (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) Due to a typographical error, an obituary stated that Joseph McDonald was survived by his wife of 270 years. They were actually married for 27 years. It only seemed like 270. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) Workers took two hours to remove an eight-foot crucifix from the apse of St. James Cathedral, not the “arse of St. James” as reported. (Bird Waring, New York) A recent editorial said the president’s IQ was equal to his shoe size. It should have made clear that it was referring to European sizes, which have higher numbers than American sizes. For instance, American men’s size 10 is equivalent to a European size 43. (Russell Beland) An article titled “Ann Coulter’s Favorite Flicks” should not have included the Zapruder film. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) [How many years exactly?] In last week’s Food section, the lists in “Tom Sietsema’s 20 Favorite D.C. Dining Destinations” and “D.C. Restaurants Closed for Health Violations” were inadvertently transposed. (Greg Pearson, Arlington, Va.) The map accompanying an article on Monday’s Science Notebook page should have depicted a tortoise, not an elephant, holding the Earth on its back. (Jan Stanley, Reston, Va.) Wednesday’s Miss Manners column incorrectly stated that if a crouton falls down the dress of the lady seated next to you, etiquette dictates removing it with the sugar tongs. While that remains the case in Europe, Americans follow the precedent set by Woodrow Wilson at a 1916 state dinner, in which the fingers were used. (Mike Fransella, Arlington, Va.) An item in yesterday’s Post said the Washington Times would pay $1 apiece for used diapers for a consumer study. This was erroneous. Oops. Our bad. (Dan Seidman) In an article on the history of the Potomac River, rowing enthusiast Max Schmitt was misquoted; he actually referred to Fletcher’s as “the best oarhouse I’ve ever been to.” (Marty McCullen, Gettysburg, Pa.) [The late Marty must have been an art buff to quote a “Max Schmitt”] A recent article in Health suggested that thousands of people are deliberately injecting their faces with botulism toxin. That’s just got to be wrong. (Russell Beland) Friday’s Federal Page reported on John Smith’s promotion from Special Assistant to the Assistant Deputy Undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security to Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Projects at DHS. Further investigation reveals that this was actually a demotion. (Joseph Romm, Washington, former Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Energy, and also Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, and even Acting Assistant Secretary for six months) Because of a typographical error, the May 13 editorial page masthead listed The Washington Post’s publisher as “Full o’ B.S. Jones.” His real name is Boisfeuillet Jones Jr. (Tom Witte) [He pronounces his name “Bo-fillay” and, outside the official listing, goes by “Bo Jones.” He went on to be chairman of The Post Co. board until 2011. The current publisher is Fred Ryan, who goes by “Fred Ryan.”] Yesterday’s Ask Amy column replied to “Lonely in Largo” with advice that was wrong, wrong, wrong. Don’t mistake the giddiness of this new fling for the constancy of your old love. Yes, it can be hard to love a man who’s away every night writing corrections at the newspaper, but, oh, come on, Doreen, I’m just asking for another chance. (Brendan Beary) And Last: In violation of Post editorial policy, today’s Style Invitational improperly lists the contest’s judge under a pseudonym, “The Empress.” She is Valerie Plame. — R. Novak, Washington (Mark Eckenwiler) Okay, Losers — top those. Oh, and here are the examples that accompanied the announcement of the contest. I don’t remember if they were all mine or some were Russell’s. The first one would definitely be mine. An article about a comedy camp for children in the Catskill mountains described one boy as “a real ham.” The phrase should have read “a real brisket.” Tuesday's weather page reported a 70 percent chance of rain for the next day. The chance of rain Wednesday was actually 100 percent. A recent story described the wife of the new pope and her plans to spruce up the Vatican. The pope is actually a bachelor. Careearrangements:* The job switches of Week 1462 *Non-inking entry by Chris Doyle, who instead succeeded with “Shift Workers” The Week 1462 contest — to say what would happen if two people switched professions or other roles — turned out to be more challenging than most; the Loser Community clearly tried hard, but so many of the thousand or so entries felt like trying. But as usual, a few dozen jokes inkworthily shone out. And then you have this week’s winner, the phenomenally successful Invite rookie Coleman Glenn, who crafted this double: Edgar Allan Poe writes children’s books: “Still that hatted cat comes calling, Nameless Things with him enthralling Children who, their caution falling, Heed their parents nevermore.” Dr. Seuss writes horror: “Then I heard from the floorboards a thumpety-thump, like a tocker whose ticker just started to jump.” Coleman Glenn has been submitting humor to the Invitational for only a few months, and while I’ve come to know the particular writing styles of some longtime Losers enough to guess, sometimes, which entries are theirs, I’m not that well acquainted with Coleman. But I keep picking him to win. My no-doubt-about-it choice this week for the Clowning Achievement is Coleman’s third win of the whole contest in five weeks; if that’s happened before, it’s an astonishingly rare feat. Coleman’s first two wins: First, four weeks ago (Week 1458), to use all the letters in a TV show title to create a new one: Gilligan’s Island > Ding-a-lings in Sand: Still “Gilligan’s Island.” Then, in less of a surprise for the man who regularly writes verse both light and arty (and the father of four young children), poems using terms newly added to the dictionary: The fourth trimester, the months after the birth: We cuddled you close for the whole fourth trimester — We cherished that bond, and the closeness was heaven. And dear, we still love you; we don’t mean to pester — But … leave. It’s trimester one hundred and seven. Upon receiving his Clowning Achievement trophy — a.k.a. the Disembodied Clown Head on a Stick — Coleman posted to the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook an adorable video of his delighted 2-year-old poking the Clowner’s nose. [Sorry, you need to be a group member to see that link. Join up here — it’s a private group — and I or my co-admin Alex Blackwood will wave you in.] And in second place, another impressive rookie: It’s a shame that Leif (pronounced Layf) Picoult wasn’t around back in the day for our Rodney Dangerfieldism contest in 2001, because he does a spot-on Rodney imitation — with the added dimension of Donald Trump. And in third, the newly returned Amanda Yanovitch is scoring ink week after week as well — this time a mordant link between the “there’s nothing wrong” insistence by China about the silenced tennis player Peng Shuai and the sudden exodus of top aides to Vice President Harris. And in fourth, there’s Ol’ Hall of Famer Gary Crockett, loping away from that 500-ink mark. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood liked all the top winners this week, especially Leif’s Rodney*Trump, and also liked John Hutchins’s Joe Biden*Tom Brady (no worries about too much inflation with the latter). But even more, Doug was partial to Mark Raffman’s Colonel Sanders*Dan Snyder switch, especially the reference to the revelations of a toxic work environment for women in the Washington Football Team front office: “Dan enjoys owning a franchise where pictures of breasts, legs and thighs don’t get you investigated.” ---- Last-minute art adjustment: Late Thursday afternoon, the editors removed Bob Staake’s cartoon illustrating the first example in this week’s correction contest, an inking entry in Week 609 in 2004: “Wednesday’s Miss Manners column incorrectly stated that if a crouton falls down the dress of the lady seated next to you, etiquette dictates removing it with the sugar tongs. While that remains the case in Europe, Americans follow the precedent set by Woodrow Wilson at a 1916 state dinner, in which the fingers were used.” Bob had drawn Woodrow setting the precedent. This is my fault; I should have told him to draw something else: There’s a different standard for what you can say vs. what you can draw. ====================================================================== WEEK 1467, published December 19, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1467: Our annual wretchrospective The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s do-over contest and winning spoonerisms Given that the editors said no last week to a cartoon depicting Woodrow Wilson fishing a crouton from a woman's decolletage, it seemed sensible to ask Bob Staake to give this poor office worker a longer, unbothered shirttail in the final version of this week's Style Invitational cartoon. But this very sketch (or a host of others) could be yours: Bob has special prices for his Invite art at bobstaake.com*SI. By Pat Myers December 16, 2021 at 4:37 p.m. EST This email was forwarded to me a few days ago: “For several years I have followed and appreciated the list of Neologisms published each year by The Washington Post — but would like to know the procedure for submitting one for consideration.” I’m not sure what the person has “followed” for “several years”; I’m guessing that she’s perhaps read more than once the corrupted lists — from 1998 — of new meanings for existing words (Style Invitational Week 266), and words changed by one letter (Week 278), that continue to pop up with amazing energy. I didn’t ask, “You have, huh?” but I did, as always, clarify that The Style Invitational is a weekly contest offering a wide variety of humor challenges, including several neologism contests a year, and I invited her to sign up for the weekly notification newsletter. Had I answered the email today, though, I could have pointed to the motley list below of 24 contests from the first half of the past year, the ones you get a chance to enter (and reenter) for Week 1467. Each listing contains a link to that contest, any special rules for this week (e.g., use this week’s papers for a headline contest), and the winning entry. (Remember, you can also just type in the short URL “wapo.st*invite[week number]”; e.g., wapo.st*invite1417 gives you the Week 1417 contest. And wapo.st*invite1421 gives you the Week 1417 results; all the results in this list appear four weeks after the contest was announced.) The nutshell descriptions below are not always complete; be sure to read the instructions in the contest itself. The links below are to Washington Post pages, and so you’ll need to be a subscriber — one of The Post’s 3 million digital subscribers — to see them. (It’s just $40 for your whole first year! I mean, that’s just nuts. And you can usually get the following years for less than $10 a month.) But if you really can’t subscribe, the other way to see the contests is to go to the Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, and scroll down to 2021. Each week has PDFs of both the print page and the Web page, as well as a faster-loading plain-text version. Week 1413, poems using terms added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2020: Useful idiot, a naive person who can be exploited politically: had a useful idiot; for years he kissed my bottom. I need a favor? Two or three? Well, every time I got 'em. But now he’s on his way out and I’m feeling kind of miffed. Those millions that he’s in my debt? I’m likely to be stiffed.— V.P., Moscow (Mark Raffman) Week 1417, poems (no more than 8 lines) about someone who died in 2020 (NOT someone who died in 2021, since that contest is imminent) Michael Sexson (1966-2020), treasure hunter Michael Sexson, 53, had read of buried treasure; Set out with just some clues, and an acquaintance, for good measure. They didn’t find the gold. Soon, cold and hungry, they got lost, But searchers finally brought 'em down the mountain to defrost. Now most folks, being reasonable, would kiss this quest goodbye; ADVERTISING But not these two! In just one month, they made a second try . . ., Bad choice. At least the pal survived ('cause later they were found), But Michael (like the gold) has now been buried underground. (Beverley Sharp) Week 1418, Tour de Fours: new words or phrases containing the consecutive letters U-N-D-O, in any order Ickspound: To overshare about your bodily functions. “To start the Zoom meeting, the boss ickspounded on barfing up a whole bag of multicolored Skittles.” (Terri Berg Smith) Week 1419, “joint legislation”: a wordplay “bill” combining the names of two or more freshman legislators in the 117th Congress The Bordeaux-Gimenez-Torres Resolution, limiting long-winded uncles at Thanksgiving to 20 minutes tops. (Sarah Walsh) [Bored o’ him and his stories] Week 1420, song lyrics about work, or about a particular job, set to a familiar tune (or, if on video, any tune) Cosmetic surgeon (To “I Saw Her Standing There”) If you are past 39 and your form’s in decline, Well, there may be parts that I can help repair, So how 'bout I tuck in your tummy, ooh! And lift your derriere? Well, people are vain, but, hey, I can’t complain’ Cause self-regard made me a millionaire There’s still time to look like Jane Fonda, ooh! When you’re on Medicare. [bridge] Well, it may be crass but you’ll love your ass* And your face without a line! Oh your skin may shine at night and it may feel kinda tight, And when you laugh, your mouth may feel real sore. But you’ll never look like your mother, ooh, once you come in through my door. (Bob Kruger) Week 1421, a new sentence or passage formed from words used in President Biden’s inaugural address My fellow Americans: As you know, Vice President Pence and I have been close friends for many years. Today, I need to tell you something. We are more than just friends — much more. In fact, he is the one and only love of my life, and the two of us will be entering into a state of total domestic union. Yes, as of tomorrow, we are becoming husbands. (George Thompson) Week 1422, pair a song, book or movie title with a “collaborator,” then make a wordplay on the title With co-author Vladimir Putin, Barbara Kingsolver would write The Poison-Good Bible. (Harold Mantle) Week 1423, anagram a headline or a significant part of a headline (use headlines from articles*ads in any print or online publication dated Dec. 16-27; please include the URL of the Web page, or the date and page number of a print paper) Perseverance Probe Successfully Lands on Mars = Endless Probes From Space Cleverly Scan Uranus (Jesse Frankovich) Week 1424, find new words in any of the provided letter sets from the New York Times’s Spelling Bee word-find game; you may repeat letters BEFILON > Foible file: Where your brain stores the memories of every mistake you ever made so it can bring them all out when you’re trying to fall asleep. (Danielle Nowlin) Week 1425, write a caption for any of four Bob Staake cartoons (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) Jack hopes his inflatable-luggage gag goes viral. (Dave Prevar) Week 1426, reinterpret any headline dated Dec. 16-27 by following it with a bank head, or subtitle Real headline: US 45 resurfacing project starts Monday Fake bank head: Former president getting skin peel, de-oranging (Jesse Frankovich) Week 1427, describe any historic event as a pair of puns in the “A, or B” format 2008: Sen. John McCain announces his running mate: Impalin’ the Ticket, or Wasilladvised (Gary Crockett) Week 1428, find new words of 5-7 letters in any of the provided letter sets from the ScrabbleGrams game (letters may be used only once) AAEPPRT > PAP ART: My OB*GYN is so skilled, she doesn’t just make a “smear” . . . (Danielle Nowlin, Week 1429, pair a Shakespeare quote with a modern equivalent “If it be a sin to make a true election, she is damned.” (“Cymbeline”) = “Ms. Abrams, the Georgia legislature thinks there’s been way too much voting going on.” (Duncan Stevens) Week 1430, “breed” any two 2020 Kentucky Derby nominees and name a “foal” reflecting both names One Fast Cat x Soup and Sandwich = Usain BLT (Matt Monitto) Week 1431, tell how things will be different after the pandemic is over (warning: jokes might be beaten out by the 2022 predictions in the not-yet-judged Week 1465) Now it will be less awkward when Grandpa tells everyone how Pfizer saved his social life. (Ben Aronin) Week 1432, new angles on folk tales or nursery rhymes Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, Kissed the girls and made them cry. Then he made them go away Encumbered by an NDA. (But richer by one-thirty K.) (Gary Crockett) Week 1433, Questionable Journalism: take any sentence from an article or ad (use current ones, dated Dec. 16-27) and follow it by a question it could humorously answer A. That was Frances McDormand having explosive diarrhea in a plastic bucket on a van. Q. What was the worst act on “Celebrity America’s Got Talent”? (Jon Ketzner) Week 1434, “breed” any two of the “foals” from Week 1430 and name the “grandfoal” HaberDasher x It’s All Over = RIP What You Sew (Jonathan Paul) Week 1435, send a photo of a diorama or other humorous art featuring cicadas — or, this week, any currently available bug Week 1436, alternative plots for movie titles The week’s winner is the first example in this week’s Invitational, so here’s that week’s second place: Joe Versus the Volcano: The definitive documentary of the 2020 presidential campaign. (Eric Nelkin) Week 1437, “typo” neologisms: change a word, name or phrase by either adding or substituting one letter adjacent on a standard keyboard, or by doubling a letter Jest lag: The awkward silence between telling a joke and getting a laugh. (Chris Doyle) Week 1438, “fictoids,” or bogus trivia, relating to the law or the justice system As part of a flurry of deregulation, the Trump administration nullified the federal law requiring bridges to freeze before roadways. (Bruce Carlson) Week 1439, remove all the vowels from a song title, then add your choice of vowels to create a new song title I’m a Believer >MBLVR > Mob Lover: Sen. Ron Johnson changes his tune after Jan. 6: “Then I saw their race, now I’m a mob lover, Not a trace of doubt in my mind … (Kevin Dopart) --- Wow. Pretty good stuff, huh? Those were the days! (I’ll say that next week, too.) I think I’ve made it impossible for you to send your entries to the old entry forms for those contests — where I would never see them. But do remember that the entries go to THIS week’s form: wapo.st*enter-invite-1467. Which contests are more likely to get retro-ink? Lots of different ones, I hope; I love to show readers the variety of the stuff we throw at people all year long. But there are physical limitations, especially for space. I definitely won’t run more than one cartoon with a caption entry (though I could run one Week 1425 cartoon with two different entries) and it’s highly unlikely to run in the print paper. And remember, we also have the Week 1435 bug-art contest; given its novelty, I could see myself using the art space for that instead. It’s more fun for me to judge 1,200 entries spread over 24 contests than 1,200 of a single kind, so I’m looking forward to the retrospectives. Often, Losers will send me their favorite “noinks” from previous contests, and indeed, a few previously submitted entries usually get ink the second time around; the foal name contest often gets 4,000 entries, for example, and plenty of inkworthies can shake the dust from their bridles and break anew from the starting gate. You HAVE to tell me which contest your entry is for: If you have some letter-rack neologism and didn’t tell me if it was from the Spelling Bee letters or the ScrabbleGrams letters, you’re done. Whipped flurds*: The spoonerisms of Week 1463 *Non-inking headline by Jeff Contompasis Our Week 1463 contest yielded a crumper bop of spoonerism jokes: My first cut from the 1,100 entries ran to 120 inkworthies (or at least inksemiworthies), finally winnowed down to today’s 40 inking entries. But oh, it was slow going through so many of the rest. I was able to shuffle all the entries alphabetically, and so I don’t know if a whole lot of people didn’t understand (or care) that a spoonerism is the “transposition of the beginnings of different words,” or just a few people who sent the maximum 25 entries each. But today’s gems had to twinkle amid such less twinkly efforts as “folksy witticisms* focused pragmatism,” “Poor, sweet Fredo*four wet Speedos,” “jack of all trades*track of unjust gains.” I also should have described the spoonerism as the transposition of the beginning sounds,” since sound is the key to the humor, not the letters themselves. That’s why this honorable mention by Coleman Glenn works creatively: “How is a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine like someone saying “cock-a-doodle-doo”? One is an RNA booster, the other is bein’ a rooster. RNA-BNA! But why I passed on this one: “How is a remote-controlled car like a gown made of organ meat? One is driverless, the other liver dress.” My bad for not stating that explicitly at the start. The best wordplay I saw that was, alas, not a spoonerism: How is beginning by doing something wrong like the hiring of Sean Spicer? One is starting off on the wrong foot and the other is starting off on the wrong fool. (Chuck Smith) By the way, about half the riddles asked, “What’s the difference between X and Y?” and the other half asked, “How is X like Y?” I think the former is more logical for spoonerisms, but I usually just left whatever the person sent in. It’s the third Clowning Achievement — but the ridiculous 27th Invite win — for Hall of Famer Mark Raffman, with his observation that a demagogue at a rally who’s rotten to the core tends to cotton to the roar. Ryan Martinez gets the second-place Poop Timer, and his third ink “above the fold,” for his Cuomotastic Patagonia* gonna pat ya. (Meanwhile, Mike Gips also gets ink for contrasting that prize with President Biden: New POTUS* poo notice.) H o’ F’er Jesse Frankovich, father of a tween, sounds like the voice of experience when musing about a “10,000-piece Lego set” with “Citizen Kane* kit is insane.” And Jon Ketzner sounded almost elegant with needlessly crude* creedlessly nude, referring to a gratuitous comic and an undressed atheist. What Doug Dug: In addition to the four top winners, as well as Coleman’s “bein’ a rooster,” Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood also particularly liked Jeff Shirley’s interpretation of Virginia’s elections as seen by Republicans, fairy tale, and Democrats, Terry fail; Eric Nelkin’s relief pitcher*confessional priest: saves the win* waives the sin; similar entries from William Kennard and Steve Offutt for Taming of the Shrew*shaming of the true, as in the Republicans who show the amazing backbone to speak out against people who tried to undermine the election; and this one from First Offender Pam Shermeyer: How is Donald Trump like Mike Pence? One traffics in fibs and lies; the other’s pestered by libs and flies. (That last one does bend the rule a bit, by leaving the L in changing from “lies” to “flies.” 'Sokay.) Not surprisingly, there were a number of entries — valid spoonerisms — that, well, they’re better off hiding down here in the Invite Weeds rather than out in the actual contests, where more decorous people might accidentally see them. I almost gave official ink to this one by Mark Richardson, but a friend who read my shortlist didn’t get it: “I was hugely excited by the crowds on January 6th — there will never be another sin erection as big as mine. D.J.T., Florida” More obvious but definitely unprintable, the same idea: What did they call the men’s revolt against the government’s edict to wash their genitals before sex? The rinse erection insurrection. (Jeff Shirley) Here are a few more unprintables, which you’ll understand why I’m not boldfacing: How is Facebook like a urology symposium? One passes misinformation; the other masses piss information. (Jonathan Paul) How does a singing cartographer differ from someone relieving himself in the woods? One croons while mapping and the other moons while crapping. (Steve Fahey) How is a bullet to the brain like a roll in the hay? One is being shot in the head; one is being hot in the shed. (Beverley Sharp) What’s the difference between a good boss and a bad boss? One you like to work for 9 to 5, while the other you think is fine to knive. (Richard Franklin, who did, to be fair, attach a note that he was only “metaphorically speaking) How is Rudy Giuliani like skipping foreplay? One had dye dripping, the other leads to dry dipping. (Sam Mertens) How is a single-skill specialist like an award-winning Broadway jerk? The first is a one-trick pony; the second is a one-Tony prick. (Chris Doyle, specified “Convo-only”) ====================================================================== WEEK 1468, published December 26, 2021 Style Conversational Week 1468: Weren’t we just here? The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s retrospective contest and cartoon caption results The cornucopia of creativity that Bob Staake typically unleashes on the Empress: These were his ideas for the Week 1464 cartoon caption contest; we chose four. This very piece of paper (it's actually vertical IRL) might be available for purchase! Ask Bob at his special ordering page for Style Invitational art, bobstaake.com*SI. By Pat Myers Today at 4:18 p.m. EST Can you imagine the mind of Bob Staake? No, of course you can’t. Bob sketched all the motley zany doodles above — as he does for The Style Invitational a couple of times a year — in some insanely short period. In the past I’d hesitated to show them, since he might want to use some of the other cartoon ideas next time. Not a problem, he’d say. He’ll just think up another set. As you can see in this week’s results of the Week 1464 cartoon caption contest, I ended choosing Cartoons G, I, Q and R (conveniently renamed A, B, C and D for their dressed-up debuts). It’s not as if any number of the other ones wouldn’t have worked as well, but my limit was four. I looked especially for situations that would lend themselves to “dialogue” in the caption, not just a description of what was going on (I like using both types) as well as ones that could prompt widely differing interpretations: the blob on the carpet, for example. And sure enough, I did get lots of dialogue, lots of description, lots of variety. But! With as many as 400 captions for a single cartoon (Picture D got notably fewer, for some reason), people are going to get a lot of the same ideas — the same funny ideas. So for Cartoon A, the man and boy looking up at the drones carrying a drooping sack, lots and lots of people thought of a stork. A lazy stork. A stork made obsolete by technology. A stork that observed covid restrictions. A stork that experienced supply chain shortages. A stork whose job was stolen by Jeff Bezos Who Owns The Washington Post. And even several that had the specific joke of the man admitting that the stork was a fairy tale — and THIS is the truth about where babies come from. ADVERTISING My top pick for Cartoon A was from that last group, but with a unique twist. Lee Graham’s admirably pithy caption: “Remember when I told you where babies come from? I lied.” The twist is that not only could the father have meant that he’d lied about the stork; he might have first told the son the biological explanation, right? For that, Lee gets his 55th blot of Style Invitational ink plus a deck of cards featuring trivia about New Jersey. (There will be a quiz later.) Other frequent ideas: there were eight that imagined a bowling ball hanging from the bag — Leif Picoult’s ill-advised “Bowling Ball Land’s ‘You Buy It, We Fly It’ delivery service” blots the ink — a surprising number of entries about the grand tradition of leaving a bag of poop at someone’s door and setting it on fire. (Sam Mertens wins that group with a description of the auto-drive version.) But yes, only Jeff Shirley conjured Roald Dahl’s famous bird-tugged hyperfruit to suggest “James and the Giant Testicle.” Oh, Jeff. Similarly for the other three contests: Instead of throwing out all the entries that shared some basic joke, I chose one that had some element that won me over. Among four entries referencing “schadenfreude” for Cartoon D — in which, at the end of a movie, one woman is gleeful while the woman next to her on the couch weeps pitifully — I gave the Clowning Achievement to Craig Dykstra, who made it the funniest: Denise Downer realized it was just no fun watching sad movies with Amy Schadenfreude. It’s the first Clowning Achievement trophy for Craig, but he’s far from prize-deprived: Craig has returned only recently from stepping away from the Invite for a few years; before that, he was the first to win both Loser of the Year and Rookie of the Year simultaneously (2010) and went on to snarf up more than 350 blots of ink, including five wins. Soon after becoming immersed in Loserdom, Craig told me that he tended to throw all his energies and wit into mastering some project or other, then tire of it and pursue another goal with the same passion. But he stuck around for a good five or six years, snarfing up as many as 121 blots in a single Loser Year (and hosting two memorable Loser parties), before turning to whatever. So it’s heartening to see that Craig may well be back in earnest. I mean, the Hall of Fame is fewer than 150 inks away! Go for it! Also popping up again after a long career in Loserdom — dating back more than 20 years — Phyllis Reinhard gets a Loser Mug or Whole Fools Grossery Bag with her pithy caption for Cartoon B: “Tough night, Mr. Gumby?” Before moving away to the Philadelphia exurbs, Phyl was one of the most delightful guests at Loser functions — and for years in the Style Invitational Devotees group, she’d write personalized poems for other Losers on their birthdays. Turns out that this was her only entry this week, too. Batting 1.000! And a couple of generations younger than Phyllis, Jesse Rifkin grabs the remaining spot in the Losers’ Circle (and his 62nd ink already) with one of this week’s rare political entries — and even rarer, one that digs at the Dems: For the people outside the store labeled with a giant R: “I think I’ll shop here — the D store is about to cost another $2 trillion.” A trip down short-term memory lane: The Week 1468 retrospective It’s hard to be nostalgic, exactly, when you look back a whole week — or zero weeks — for Week 1468, when you have a chance to enter (or reenter) any of our 25 most recent contests, including the cartoon caption contest we review just today. As I did in last week’s Style Conversational for the still-running Part 1, Week 1467 (through Monday, Dec. 27) below I’ve provided links to all the contests eligible this week, along with the first-place entry for each of those contests. It’s an amazing greatest-hits anthology. The links go to the announcement and instructions for the contest; for the results of each contest — be sure to check them so you don’t send an entry that’s like one that already ran — click on the link from four weeks later. Week 1440, song lyrics about anything in the news: To “Royals” I'll never sit upon that fancy throne The crown will rest on brother's head, I can not see Why I can't venture on my own I'll avoid Mom's fate — damn paparazzi! But everybody's like: Grow up, stand tall, pick a proper mate. An Actress? Good God! What an awful state! Man, They're afraid She'll pop out babies of a darker lot Folks in the palace, like, Curtsies, pinkies up, shoulders with no chip, be Discreet, stoic, stiffen up that lip, see They don't care If my stomach’s in a Windsor knot. We don’t want to be royals (royals), we don’t need all that strife I’ll take my children and my wife, we crave a different kind of life Let me go on Oprah (Oprah), she’s the queen of TV And baby, we'll spill, (we'll spill, we'll spill) A whole bunch of royal tea. (Hildy Zampella) Week 1441, a limerick that sums up or otherwise reflects on a particular song The Star-Spangled Banner 'Twas our second time fighting the British They had hoped we'd be fatally skittish But we stayed through the night And we won the last fight — Now of despots we’re finally rid (ish). (Emma Daley) Week 1442, what’s the same or different between any two items on the random list we supplied: 12 gallons of hand sanitizer: Purell. An evening with Mitch McConnell: Pure 'ell. (Double credit for Jesse Frankovich and Jeff Rackow) Week 1443, propose some law and give it a humorous acronym: The Let’s Acknowledge Legitimately Authentic, Literate Americans Love Apathy resolution, to earnestly affirm that climate change is an existential crisis and we really should do something about it someday. It’s the LALALALA resolution. (Kevin Dopart) Week 1444, slightly change the name of a sport or game and describe the new pastime: Marrython: The only endurance sport where you try not to reach the finish line. (Melissa Balmain) Week 1445, poems using a word from the later rounds of the 2021 National Spelling Bee, or Q&A jokes using one of the words Dysphotic, poorly illuminated Dysphotic water's where to hide The bodies of the vics who died For disrespecting capos’ wishes. Now they're sleeping with the fishes At the bottom of the Hudson, Down in zones that too much mud’s in. (Chris Doyle) Week 1446, use a partially filled in crossword grid to create your choice of words (including made-up ones) or phrases, then write the clue T- - N > TEEN: I’m working on the definition, OKAY? (Roy Ashley) Week 1447, take any sentence from an article or ad in any publication (for this week’s contest, use ones dated Dec. 23-Jan. 3) and interpret it in “plain English”: Spelman College’s study-abroad program has pivoted to “a systematic internationalization of the curriculum that infuses virtual exchange opportunities.” PE: You can study a broad section of your Zoom screen. (Drew Bennett) Week 1448, a limerick that features a word, name or other term beginning with “he-”: A rumor is also called hearsay; It's what gossipy people, I fear, say. And it might not be true — Only something that you (After three or four bottles of beer) say. (Beverley Sharp) Week 1449, begin with a real name; overlap it with a word, name or expression; and describe or “quote” the resulting phrase or name. Giannis Antetokounm-Poe: Once upon a playoff mission, 2021 edition, After sitting out two games (his knee was feeling really sore) — Wearing Nike sneakers squeaky, showing off his talents freaky, Six-eleven, strong and Greek, he made amazing moves to score. Named the Finals MVP, the finest player on the floor: Giannis, Number 34. (Jesse Frankovich) Week 1450, describe some aspect of our current society as a space alien or future anthropologist might interpret it: Once a year every human must recommit to the familial cult by lighting a cake on fire while clan members chant a mournful dirge. (Scott Richards) Week 1451, humorously bad “first drafts” of famous lines from history, literature or entertainment. “Torpedoes?? Damn.” — Adm. David Farragut (Marli Melton) Week 1452, neologisms “discovered” by snaking around the word-find grid provided. From F-14: OM-ZAP: A meditation-induced inspiration. In full lotus, Ellen suddenly experienced an om-zap: “What if I created a dog fitness program called Labs of Steel”? (Leif Picoult) Week 1453, change the meaning of any book title by adding a subtitle Silent Spring: The Year I Forgot About Valentine’s Day (Dave Prevar) Week 1454, Punku: haiku including a pun or other wordplay We are not close to Solving climate change, but we Are getting warmer. (Laura Clairmont) Week 1455, Cite a “good idea” and then alter the wording slightly into a “bad idea” Good idea: Getting your cues from science. Bad idea: Getting your science from Q. (Ryan Martinez) Week 1456, ask an insulting question roughly in the format of “Is that your X, or did Y?” Is that your way of encouraging your child’s self-expression, or did you fail to tip the exorcist? (Mark Raffman) Week 1457, Ask Backwards: Choose one of the “answers” provided and follow it with a question. (No guest-judging by Ken Jennings this time around, alas.) A. Six hours without Facebook. Q. How do 56 percent of Americans describe an eight-hour workday? (Jeff Hazle) Week 1458, Using all the letters in the title of a TV show (as often as you like), create a new TV show title and describe it “Gilligan’s Island” > “Ding-a-lings in Sand”: Still “Gilligan’s Island.” (Coleman Glenn) Week 1459, write song lyrics “by” a particular person, set to a familiar tune Sen. Susan Collins (To “If I Only Had a Brain") I can talk of moderation — adept dissimulation! A centrist stance I’ll feign, The conclusion is foregone I'll go and side with Mitch McConnell And I’ll con the folks in Maine. Odds are good, indeed the surest, I'll confirm those right-wing jurists — “Roe's safe!” I will maintain. It disturbs me very little to accede to Trump's acquittal As I con the hicks in Maine. Yes, ma'am, I've learned to scam the people up the shore, “Take your rights away? The thought I just abhor!” And then I vote, and slam the door. My concerns are deep and thorough! Just watch my brow line furrow! My head might cleave in twain! As my forehead sadly puckers, I will play them all for suckers, Yes, I’ll con the rubes in Maine. (Duncan Stevens) Week 1460, write a short poem that features a word from the provided list of terms added to the dictionary in 2021 The “fourth trimester,” the months after the birth: We cuddled you close for the whole fourth trimester — We cherished that bond, and the closeness was heaven. And dear, we still love you; we don’t mean to pester — But . . . leave. It’s trimester one hundred and seven. (Coleman Glenn) Week 1461, create a new word or phrase based on someone’s name and define it (Results here) KevinMcCarthyism: Blacklisting people who agree to appear before a House committee investigating un-American activities. (Donald Norum) Week 1462, what would happen if any two people switched professions or other roles? (Results here) Edgar Allan Poe writes children’s books: “Still that hatted cat comes calling, Nameless Things with him enthralling Children who, their caution falling, Heed their parents nevermore.” Dr. Seuss writes horror: “Then I heard from the floorboards a thumpety-thump, like a tocker whose ticker just started to jump.” (Coleman Glenn) Week 1463, riddles featuring spoonerisms — two words or phrases whose first sounds are switched: (Results here.) What’s a demagogue’s reaction to a rabid crowd at a rally? If he’s rotten to the core, he’ll cotton to the roar. (Mark Raffman) And … Week 1464, captions for the cartoons featured in this week’s results. (Results here) ---- Wishing you all the happiest of holidays, and I’ll be back with the Conv (and of course the Invite) one more time before the wrecking ball crashes on 2021. --------- If you never emailed me to opt in to the notification newsletter: Do it now! A few weeks ago I was suddenly prevented from sending out my weekly email newsletter on the TinyLetter platform, with the links to each week’s Invitational and Conversational, seemingly (I was never told personally) because one or more of the 1,800 recipients had reported it as spam. Fortunately, I was able to quickly set up with another, even better service, Substack, and could even move over my whole mailing list — but I had to promise that everyone on the list had expressly asked to join the first time. I did tell them that so I could get the word out, but I wasn’t totally truthful: I had added some of the names myself, when new Losers had entered the contest (so they could know when the results were printed). So I asked everyone to email me at myerspat ( at ) gmail (dot) com to opt in, so I could prove to Substack that I wasn’t bothering them without their own masochistic permission. And if they didn’t, I’d delete their names. The thing is that it’s taken more time than I’ve had, and so most of you are still getting the newsletter. But I really need those opt-ins, and am shooting for the end of the year for the big dump of no-answers. If you joined after Nov. 5, 2021, you’re in on your own; you don’t have to do anything. If you’re not sure if you already wrote to me (I tried to reply to everyone), heck, flip me another one. If you haven’t yet signed up, just go to TheStyleInvitational.substack.com, click on the most recent (or any) newsletter, and click the purple Subscribe Now button. It’s all free. ====================================================================== WEEK 1469, published January 2, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1469: Death poetry jam The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s obit poem contest and 2022 timeline. Siegfried Fischbacher (1939-2021), left, outlasted his partner Roy Horn by a year. But now the glittery animal trainer’s lion in wait for an obit poem in Style Invitational Week 1469. Siegfried Fischbacher (1939-2021), left, outlasted his partner Roy Horn by a year. But now the glittery animal trainer’s lion in wait for an obit poem in Style Invitational Week 1469. (2001 photo by Al Behrman*AP) By Pat Myers December 30, 2021 at 5:01 p.m. EST As we celebrate clawing our way to the end of the year, The Style Invitational traditionally looks back wryly on those whose mortal coil uncoiled. And so we’re at Week 1469, our annual obit poem contest, which I’ve been running since 2004 and which has produced some of the most memorable Invitiana. I don’t have to spell out why joking about people’s deaths might seem a tad insensitive right now. But as we managed to do for 2020, an even more shocking one for our country, without complaint (results of last year’s contest, Week 1417), I’m confident that we’ll be able to commemorate the lives — and, often, the deaths — of a variety of notables with wit and good spirit. Certainly one way to avoid taste issues is to write humorously about the person’s life, rather than the death. This was the tack taken by Gene Weingarten in today’s example, a double dactyl about the famously profane Tommy Lasorda. (Double dactyls, limericks and other smartly rhyming, clearly rhythmic forms tend to make the funniest light verse, in my experience; I’m not going to say your poem has to rhyme, but it’d have to be incredibly funny and clever in other ways if it didn’t.) The whole archive of our elegies is, well, alive and well within the Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org; just search on “died” and click on the links on the far right to the results of each of at least 18 obit poem contests. They’re all great reads. And below I’ll share a few representative classics, including some “deep cuts” from the honorable mentions. Poems that don’t mention the death: Ed Teller, you fathered the hydrogen bomb, The scope of your dream’s still unfurled. We’ll think of your contribution to us On the day that they blow up the world. (Scott Campisi, 2004) Antisa Khvichava She claimed to be one hundred thirty-two (It’s hard to tell if that was really true). But thanks to luck, good health and proper genes, She’d pass for someone in her hundred-teens! (Brendan Beary, 2013) But the large majority of Invite-odes mention the person’s earthly conclusion. Sometimes, the poem is about the death, especially in poems inspired by lists of Darwin Award winners — people who achieved their final hours in notably stupid ways. Woman who accidentally killed herself while adjusting her bra holster (Why name the poor lady, I figured) She got herself a push-up bra That had a single fatal flaw. It didn’t just support her charms; This bra was meant for bearing arms. But holster bras should not be trusted, Since bras are always readjusted. Sad to say, dear gun-nut crazies, “Push up” now refers to daisies. (Kathy Hardis Fraeman, 2016) Anastasia Tutik & Miguel Ramos Two lovers loving on a balcony high. Two lovers falling, unable to fly. Their friends and neighbors now pay their respects. A chilling reminder to practice safe sex. (David Friedman, 2016) One warm and winning way to do an obit poem is to imagine the person in a happy and fitting afterlife: Cal Worthington, king of the used car salesmen: Jingling-kingling, Calvin “Cal” Worthington Tooled up to Heaven, went Straight to the Lord. Brimming with hucksterish Conviviality, Sold Him a peachy-keen ’63 Ford. (Nan Reiner, 2014) Mike Wallace He runs up to the Pearly Gates, A microphone in hand. He shoves it in Saint Peter’s face While shouting, “I demand An answer to my question, Saint! Is Jesus on the take? Did Moses rob the Israelites? Was Solomon a fake?” Peter cries, “Get out of here! I won’t take this abuse!” But Wallace barges past the gates, And then all hell breaks loose. (Robert Schechter, 2013) As always, there’s plenty of source material. Do make sure that the person died in 2021! I’ve had to toss some very nice poems about people who’d actually died the previous year — and at least once, I got a poem about someone who hadn’t died. Oh, please, don’t do that! The Losers who hunch*: The 2022 predictions of Week 1465 (*Non-inking headline by Tom Witte) FastProstateFix.com Urologist: Enlarged Prostate? Do This Immediately (Try Tonight) Advertisement By FastProstateFix.Com Surgeon: Try This To Help Shrink Enlarged Prostate See more The an(n) als of modern history got their annual one-two punch in The Post this week with, first, Dave Barry’s annual Year in Review and, today, its annual wayward offspring, The Style Invitational’s Year in Preview. Last year at this time, we didn’t know who’d be president a few weeks later. But who knew that, 11-plus months after the fact, some people still wouldn’t have figured it out? On the other hand, for old times’ sake, we have two straight years of Trump shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. Far more people than usual sent full 25-item lists of events, resulting in a total chronicle of about 1,500 entries — many of them awfully similar — of which 40 got ink today. The literally dozens of jokes about the names for variants ended up canceling one another out. What does it mean that our top three winners this week are all educators? I guess it means they’re all educators. Still, it’s nice to know that Style Invitational agents are infiltrating the minds of our youth. A former Capitol Hill reporter who decided to become an elementary school teacher after volunteering in his son’s class — he’s been teaching fourth grade in Silver Spring for many years now — Dave Airozo scores his first Invite win with his 40th blot of ink, though he’s been inside the Losers’ Circle three times with runners-up. Let’s hope that Dave’s predicted Great Exhale of January 7 actually gets its chance. Biden’s appointment of Donald Trump as “ambassador to Elba” was the idea of Tim “Milo” Sauer, a beloved math professor at George Mason University. Milo actually has 100 more blots of ink than the 108 he’s credited with in the Loser Stats. That’s because — as I just found out when he fessed up in the past year — after Milo ran up an even 100 inks and suddenly stopped Inviting in 2004, an Elwood Fitzner of Valley City, N.D., started inking up the joint, running up, yup, exactly 100 more (2005-2011). Anyway, now that’s a full decade behind us, and Milo is back and clever as ever, I’m hoping that he’ll snarf up another 100 blots of ink in short order — and that he enjoys wearing his prize “I Never Fart” socks with dandelions on them. Nobody else use a fake name, please. My generosity is now used up. Ryan Martinez, who teaches French at Walter Johnson High in Bethesda, is relatively new to the Invite; his runner-up today — “Nov. 8: Millions of Americans drive across newly renovated roads and bridges to vote out the Democrats” — is his 17th blot of ink since his debut in Week 1340. But he’s been swinging a hot bat of late (or, I guess I should say, striking out the opposition); he was a runner-up in our spoonerism contest just two weeks ago, and won the Clowning Achievement a couple of months back with his good idea*bad idea. And in fourth place, predicting a big win for Xi Jinping in the men’s downhill, is Jeff Shirley, who sops up is 285th blot of ink. Jeff isn’t a teacher, but he has an indirect school connection to me: He used to be the dentist of my college roommate. (Suzanne: “Dr. Shirley is so nice!” Jeff: “She has a great smile.” Both emphatically true.) What Doug Dug: The faves this week for Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood were Milo’s “ambassador to Elba,” Frank Osen’s Boris Johnson dig; Jesse Frankovich’s $10 trillion inflation relief bill from the Democrats; Mark Raffman’s “150,000 armed ambassadors” from Putin on the Ukraine border; David Young’s appointment of Britney’s father as conservator for Rudy Giuliani; and Wendy Shang’s Pantone Color of the Year: “a greenish brown-gray called Meh.” Unpredictable: the unprintables: Our remaining shreds of propriety prevented us from including these events in the Invite: First, a mild one, arguably just fine, even: April 1: Facing widespread staff shortages, the American Dyslexia Association offers $10,000 singing bonuses, forcing the organization to turn away dozens of confused and angry sopranos. (Dave Airozo) Using “dyslexia” for switched-letter wordplay jokes was a common Invite practice for many years. But a reader’s heartfelt letter to me after one of them was persuasive. Oct. 2022: Mississippi Department of Commerce reports dramatic Q3 increase in sales of coat hangers. (Mark Raffman) Just too graphic for a joke. I instead went with a sharp enough one by Bird Waring: “Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he is ‘dumbfounded’ about the huge increase in number of infants entering the state’s welfare system over the past year. But the Scarlet Letter for very good but very no goes to Stephen Dudzik: “Feb. 4: The Beijing Olympic cauldron is lit by a flaming Uyghur peasant.” Sanely staying home on New Year's Eve? Here's the best way! The Royal Consort and I are, too. But for the second straight NYE, we’ll be spending it (virtually) with Loser Sandy Riccardi and her husband, Richard, who’ll once again perform their whole fabulous and hilarious cabaret show of Sandy’s parodies (and more) from the stage of the White Horse Black Mountain theater in Asheville, N.C. Last year Sandy gave a big shout-out to the Invitational! (Order tickets here.) If you’re not familiar with the Riccardis — who’ve now graced several Invite parody contests — here’s “The Boy From Mar-a-Lago” (“Tall and orange and rich and tubby ...”). Whatever you do, have a happy and safe New Year’s — see you in 2022. Please! The headline “Death Poetry Jam,” by Tom Witte, was used for obit poem results in 2001. So good. ====================================================================== WEEK 1470, published January 9, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1470: The fixes are in The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s ‘prefix’ contest and faux-fix results By Pat Myers Yesterday at 4:07 p.m. EST The Washington Post, actually, doesn’t ever “regret the error.” Well, of course it does in its heart — The Post not only takes pride in its accuracy and transparency, but sees it as essential to its credibility — but it figures that you know that. The New York Times feels the same way. Neither paper apologizes when running a correction; it just explains what was wrong and says what’s right. But given that Week 1466 of The Style Invitational, whose results run today, is a spoof on classic newspaper conventions, I had no problem with entries that “regret” or “apologize,” even if they were supposed to be by The Post. Like the correction jokes in Week 609 in 2004, the framework accommodated a variety of jokes, including: — Unfortunate typos — as in runner-up Stephen Gold’s “dear to me” becoming “dead to me”; Mark Calandra’s correction that the beer was “poured in pints,” not “poured in pants”; runner-up John Klayman noting that “for” was left out of “going for broke” in quoting Elon Musk; or Duncan Stevens’s clarifications that “brow jobs” were offered at the spa. Not to mention Dave Airozo setting the record straight that Losers’ prizes would not “be nailed to them,” though they were free to decorate themselves. About a third of this week’s inking entries corrected such typos, but I kept laughing. Some entries put a twist on the formula. Kevin Dopart’s runner-up noted that the paper had said Sen. Joe Manchin advocated “putting minors back to work” in the coal industry, then clarified that “Sen. Manchin is actually in favor of automation.” And while at least half a dozen entries clarified that children weren’t really going to “pubic school” or whatever, Peter Jenkins corrected the report that Thomas was accused of putting a “public hair” on Anita Hill’s Coke can. — The “correction” of a story with some outrageous name-calling or dubious occurrence by focusing on some other little element. Steve Leifer’s comically*sadly long — and almost entirely accurate — list of supporters whom Trump eventually turned on ended with the correction that “Natasha Badenov” is actually “Natasha Fatale.” Terri Berg Smith corrects not the story of an alien spaceship invasion in Montana, but a tiny spelling mistake. Duncan Stevens clarifies that Dan Snyder does not have the charm of a squashed slug, only one-third that amount. But there were also lots of imaginative other approaches among the 39 inking entries (30 on the print page): Frank Osen helpfully listing the spoilers to the murder mystery; Amanda Yanovitch reporting an objection to the late Mr. Smith being called a contrarian — from the late Mr. Smith; all the way to Milo Sauer’s regret that “the senator who is holding up all climate change legislation makes his living from the coal industry. There is no correction here; we are just sorry.” I counted 14 entries that played off The Post’s ubiquitous disclaimer that “Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post,” which appears in every article that mentions Amazon and its many offshoots, plus the Blue Origin space company, as well as many articles about their competitors. My obvious favorite — it wins the Clowning Achievement — was Sam Mertens’s regret for omitting the mention in an essay headlined “Bald Is Beautiful.” That’s Sam’s fourth Invite win since his Invite debut less than three years ago, and Ink No. 109 in all. First Offender Tim Dobbyn, whose entry ran only online because it didn’t fit on the print page — sorry, Tim: I usually put local people’s first ink in the print Invite so they’ll have a souvenir, but it was just too long — dug at some public figures’ tendency to quibble with small problems in a negative story to damage the whole thing’s credibility; as the editor of “the Rusty Bugle” he announces that, okay, he’ll simply print the damaging story all over again, with the quibbles corrected. (By the way, the Supreme Court’s landmark New York Times v. Sullivan ruling establishes that a public figure can’t sue for libel just because of a few minor mistakes in an article. Given Donald Trump’s constant threats, he might not know that.) One formula didn’t work at all because of illogic, and I got a lot of such entries. “A typographical error indicated that the bagel was topped with locks. That was incorrect. It also had a schmear of cream cheese.” “A Monday editorial noted incorrectly that the House of Representatives found Stephen Bannon in contempt of Congress. He has contempt for all branches of government.” That wouldn’t be noting incorrectly. If I say you have a pet Irish setter, and you do, I’m not noting incorrectly even if you also have a pet iguana. So what was the biggest mistake I personally made at The Post? It was misspelling a name in a headline on the front page of the Sunday Style section. It was the name of the National Spelling Bee champion. I have suppressed from my memory whether The Post ran a correction. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood is back with his faves for the week. Doug singled out Sam’s winner and Kevin’s “minors” runner-up (I’m glad, because another friend I asked didn’t get it) as well as Frank Osen’s about the plot spoilers and Peter Jenkins’s clarification that it was a perfectly sunny day on Jan. 6, 2021, The Post’s motto notwithstanding. But Doug called “great” David MacGregor’s note that “Due to a production error, the same ‘Beetle Bailey’ comic strip has been running for the past 47 years.” YOU are invited to the Loser party Jan. 22 (if you’re boosted) If you didn’t get an email Evite to our Losers’ Post-Holiday Party — Saturday, Jan. 22, 5 to 9 p.m., in close-in Crystal City (Arlington), Va. — consider yourself personally invited anyway; anyone who reads The Style Conversational is Loserly enough for us. Here’s the link to the Evite, which you can respond to. The accompanying message, which tells about the precautions we’re taking so we can get together after skipping last winter’s potluck*parody-fest, asks you to email me a picture of your boostered vaccine card, so we don’t have to ask at the party. It’s going to be a smaller crowd this year, for obvious reasons, and masks are entirely welcome. But it’s also in a spacious party room of an apartment building, rather than the usual cozy space of a Loser’s home. I’ll be there, along with the Royal Consort, and always eager to meet new Losers and Invite fans, as well as to reconnect with longtime ones. Loser and pianist Steve Honley will be at the keyboard, and Invite Celebrity Duncan Stevens will be choosing the lineup of singalong parodies. If you’re coming and you have a parody you’d like to perform or have performed, contact me and I’ll put you in touch with the Duncster and we’ll see if it’s workable. I also will bring some gewgaws that, for various reasons, don’t work as Style Invitational second prizes. If there’s a game — like the trivia game that Kyle Hendrickson led at our summer fest, the Flushies, last year — perhaps someone might win the Nose Condom. Put your best [whatever] forward: This week’s contest, Week 1470 “What, after all, is a prefix? Neither a borrower (A) nor a lender (B). It seems to us — well, me, then — that a prefix may very well be a single letter, but it had better form a syllable. Else it is not the cow we sought. Many of you gave us more than we deserved, adding prefixes to both halves. Forming a hole. While we didn’t rule you out for so doing, neither did we make you monarch.” — Mary Ann Madden, the “we” of the New York Magazine Competition, introducing the results of Competition 830, Oct. 9, 1995 And you thought I wasn’t clear. Anyway, here’s a contest directly lifted from NYM, brought to our attention by Our Very Own Chris Doyle, who used to be NYM’s Very Own Chris Doyle until that competition folded in 2000 after 973 contests over 31 years (it wasn’t weekly) and Chris turned his wordsmithery toward us. It’s not surprising that Chris remembered this particular contest: He’s all over it. Because Madden or the magazine, for some reason, wanted to maintain the fiction of dozens of different readers getting ink every week (there was officially a one-entry-per-person limit), Chris simply submitted his entries under a huge variety of names. And for Competition 830, of the three first prizes, two of them are really by Chris. And of the three runners-up: All of them. (The third first-place winner is by Bob Kopac, who got 14 blots of Invite ink in the early years.) We don’t lie here at The Style Invitational, and so (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) just ran up Inks Nos. 2,386 and 2,387 with his honorable mention and headline this week. Plus No. 2,388 for the contest idea and 2,389 and 2,390 with the two examples I cited (unless Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan uses another system). I’m using “prefix” repeatedly in quotes because, technically, a prefix isn’t just any letter or set of letters you tack onto the beginning of a word; really, to quote Merriam-Webster, those letters must “produce a related word or an inflectional form of a word.” So while “non-native” contains a real prefix, “unimagi-native” — like Chris’s “The Return of the Unimaginative” — does only as a joke. And we like jokes. To judge from the Week 830 results, this might be one of those contests that lean more toward the cerebrally clever than to the gutly funny: more like, “oh, I see — ha, clever” rather than “bltlphHAAAAA.” On the other hand, funny people can make just about anything funny, and we have those people — of course I mean you — standing by. I noticed that Madden (who died in 2016; here’s my Conversational column in her memory) violated her own standard of requiring at least a syllable when she gave ink to “N’Arc de Triomphe” — yay, I’m not the only person who accidentally breaks her own explicit rules — but I do want this contest to be different from our many “change one letter” neologism contests, and so, yes, not just one letter. And please, use your own name. ====================================================================== WEEK 1471, published January 16, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1471: Our po’ pourri The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s retrospective and new Tour de Fours contest A childhood photo of CC, for Cloned Cat or perhaps CopyCat, the late subject of Beverley Sharp's obit poem featured in this week's Style Invitational (Larry Wadsworth*Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences) By Pat Myers January 13, 2022 at 5:03 p.m. EST I won’t lie: I luvvv contests that come around every year — especially ones that have been as consistently rewarding as our Tour de Fours neologism contest, returning this week in its 18th incarnation, with, of course its 18th different letter set, B-I-D-E. The key is that there are 24 different permutations of the letters, and even ones like DBIE can work because the neologism could be a multi-word phrase as well as a single word, and the block can stretch over a space. I betcha someone out there will try for all 24. Like last week’s contest (still running!) for “prefixes,” Tour de Fours had its genesis in the old New York Magazine Competition and was suggested by Loser and erstwhile NYM mainstay Chris Doyle. T d’F doesn’t need a lot of explanation, for once, so I’ll just share a few past inking entries from over the years, including some deep cuts from the honorable mentions. Last year’s winner, for UNDO: Ickspound: To overshare about your bodily functions. “To start the Zoom meeting, the boss ickspounded on barfing up a whole bag of multicolored Skittles.” (Terri Berg Smith) Also from 2021: UNDO: Innuendo U.: “Come inside and check out the intimate relationship you’d have with our well-endowed faculty.” (Danielle Nowlin) From 2020: LIAR (ha-ha, I’m such a card): Nostrail: What inevitably drips down your face when you’ve got the sniffles in February and you’re wearing your big gloves. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) Also from 2020: LIAR: Receding airline: The flight you just missed as it disappears into the sky. (Jeff Shirley) From 2017: SANT: Cantstand: A vigorous exercise of disapproval. “We were watching ‘Sex and the City,’ but Dad started doing cantstands, so now we’re watching the game.” (Frank Osen) SANT: ATNs (Automated Teller Nymphs): The wee folk who pass $20 bills through the slot when you swipe your card. (Warren Tanabe) From 2015: DICE: Flied chicken: The day-old special at Earl’s Shack o’ Wings. (Larry Gray) DICE: Deciderer: What W called his Magic 8 Ball. (Rob Wolf) From 2013: SANE: Senatorpedo: Cruz missile. “The Tea Party’s vaunted senatorpedo self-destructed shortly after its launch.” (Chris Doyle) SANE: Esanem: Rapper also known as Slam Shady. (Ellen Raphaeli) From 2011: NOEL: Groucholenses: How to look at the world through nose-covered glasses. (Eric Fritz) NOEL: Coloneye: James Bond flick where the villain gets it in the end. (Dion Black) From 2009: ERTH: Rhettrovirus: Scarlett fever. (Judy Blanchard) ERTH: Laughterthought: The brilliant Invitational entry you come up with just after the deadline. (Ann Martin) From 2006: ALEF: Halfaleak-halfaleak: How Tennyson charged johnward in his old age. (Chris Doyle) ALEF: Eiffelated: Given a warm “bonjour” at La Paris Hilton. (Jay Shuck, And from Tour de Fours I, 2004, in my first year of Empressing: Week 571: THES: Transvestheight: The distance between the jockstrap and the bra. (Frank Mullen) THES: Allrightest: Superlatively whatever. (Brendan Beary) THES: Smahtest: From the only state that didn’t vote for Nixon in ’72. (Dan Seidman, Watertown, Mass.) Gag reflux*: The 2021 retrospective, Part 1 *The results headline from 2020, by Kevin Dopart It’s more fun to judge 25 contests at once than thousands of entries to a single contest — and I’d think you’ll also especially enjoy reading the results of Week 1467, our Kook’s Tour of what turned out to be 17 varied contests from the first half of the past year. As in most years, almost all the entrants to the retrospective contests were Invite veterans who’d entered the contests last year; when judging, I sometimes remembered the entries from my shortlists the first time around. Sometimes — in long-form contests like song parodies, or in contests with 4,000 entries, like foal names — I can’t come close to running all the week’s inkworthy entries, and so sometimes also-rans finally get their just deserts here. Other times, non-inking entries are reworked and sometimes updated. And still, a sizable percentage of the entries are brand-new. It’s the second Invite win, but the first Clowning Achievement for Jesse Rifkin, for pairing Othello’s iambic line “I can again thy former light restore” with a modern counterpart from Sen. Ted Cruz, “I’ll deal with Texas’s electrical grid after I get back from Cancún.” It was a year ago when Cruz skipped out on his state’s crippling power failure during an unprecedented freeze, but the brazenness of that act (along with Cruz’s continued presence in the news) merits continued gibes, IM (un) HO. One of our relatively few Losers under age 30, Jesse has a regular gig performing on weekends in the “dueling pianos” singalongs at the Georgetown Piano Bar. He’ll be dropping by at the Loser party on Jan. 22 (see the invitation at the bottom of this column!) and invites everyone to follow him to the bar afterward. But I’m thinking that it’s more workable if we arrange a separate Loser outing, especially if we wait till Omicron pipes down. This is Jesse’s 64th blot of ink; and during the pandemic he recruited his dad to give the Invite a try as well — Larry Rifkin already has seven blots of his own and has become a regular entrant. Win-win! And in second place, a rookie who might prove a phenom! Roxi Slemp has been reading The Style Invitational “forever,” but only in the past couple of months thought about entering herself, after writing a song parody for a friend’s granddaughter. A former D.C. area resident who fell in love with Argentina on a visit there and then decided to retire in the ultra-scenic town of Bariloche in Patagonia. (Now there’s a place to stop by!) Roxi started entering the Invite a few weeks ago, and got her first ink in Week 1462, imagining a “job switch” between Mitch McConnell and Pee-wee Herman. (“Today’s secret word is ‘filibuster’! Ha-ha! For the rest of the day, whenever anybody says the secret word, scream real loud!”). And this time, Roxi aces one of the most competitive Invite categories, the song parody, with a subject who’s not revealed till the end of the song. Keep bringing it, Roxi! Jonathan Paul has run up more than 400 blots of Invite ink — including an astonishing 25 victories — mostly from the early years of the Invite. Jonathan now mostly specializes in our annual horse name “breeding” contest, and sure enough, “Like the King x Troubadour = Henry VIII Iamb,” which wasn’t one of the 25 names Jonathan submitted in April, wins him a Loser Mug or Grossery Bag. And it was also a new “collaboration” from Jeff Hazle — Elton John and Sen. Joe Manchin to write “Block-It Man,” that fills out this week’s Losers’ Circle. (Actually, Jeff was working with the idea in the first go-round of Week 1422, but Nikolai Tesla for “Shock-It Man” and John Roberts for “Docket Man” were “noinks,” as the Devotees call them.) The return of parody diva Sophie Crafts to the Invite — with “Santa Baby” turned into “Antibodies,” with the assistance of a cuddly, googly-eyed, dancing covid microbe — is one of the unquestionable highlights of this week’s results. You might remember Sophie’s first Invite video, “Two Darn Shots,” from Week 1440; this one (which brings back Sophie’s “Dr. Fauci” in a cameo) might be even more charming. Sophie, an educator in the Cambridge, Mass., public schools, told me that her original plan for the antibodies was to use simple finger puppets, but her friend Alex Ezorsky-Lie, who does both puppetry and animation, had another suggestion. He came up with the Y-shaped, Muppetish purple hand puppet you see explaining antibodies to Santa-hatted, evening-gowned Sophie, and that’s Alex’s arm you see under it. But the real showstopper was his filming that same puppet 10 times over for the “babies sequence,” as Sophie calls it, and editing it so they twirl around like synchronized swimmers — or even a kaleidoscope — through a red fabric “bloodstream.” There were several other fine parodies — not to mention lots of other inkworthy entries — that I just didn’t have room for this time. As usual after parody contests, I’ll post some over the next few days in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook; you can search on “#parodies.” What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, who read the 25 entries that made the print edition, is back to agreeing with me on the winners (as, of course, he should be). And he also singled out Mark Raffman’s limerick on the new-to-Merriam-Webster “antivax” from Week 1413, Jon Gearhart’s joint legislation of “Torres-Mann-Spartz” mandating button flies instead of zippers in pants; Bob Kruger’s “collaboration” of Hawthorne and Clifford the Big Red Dog to produce “The Scarlet Litter”; and, from Mississippi native and Arkansas resident Drew Bennett, the neologism “Yallzball” — as in what the Alabama referee says when he turns the football over to the other team. Nope! The unprintables: Because of the varied formats of the Week 1467 entries, I couldn’t shuffle them all out in The Big Sort, so I read each Loser’s set of entries at once (though I didn’t see anyone’s name). And one single person sent all these: (Grandfoals) IGotRhythmMethod x In Tents = Squirts in Yurts Lip Loch x Mmph! Talk Later = Lap Lick (Alternative plots for movie titles): “North by Northwest”: A young man must learn to live with Peyronie’s disease. I was not shocked to discover that the author was Tom Witte, who somehow has managed to get more than 1,500 printable entries in the paper dating back to Week 7. Last call for the Loser party, Jan. 22! Just copying this in from last week’s Convo: Right now, we’re at a super-cozy guest list of 23 people, so there should be a minimum of crowding. Still, that’s plenty for singing and schmoozing, and it’ll be nice to chat with people and not have to rush from guest to guest. Okay, here: If you didn’t get an email Evite to our Losers’ Post-Holiday Party — Saturday, Jan. 22, 5 to 9 p.m., in close-in Crystal City (Arlington), Va. — consider yourself personally invited anyway; anyone who reads The Style Conversational is Loserly enough for us. Here’s the link to the Evite, which you can respond to. The accompanying message, which tells about the precautions we’re taking so we can get together after skipping last winter’s potluck*parody-fest, asks you to email me a picture of your boostered vaccine card, so we don’t have to ask at the party. It’s going to be a smaller crowd this year, for obvious reasons, and masks are entirely welcome. But it’s also in a spacious party room of an apartment building, rather than the usual cozy space of a Loser’s home. I’ll be there, along with the Royal Consort, and always eager to meet new Losers and Invite fans, as well as to reconnect with longtime ones. Loser and pianist Steve Honley will be at the keyboard, and Invite Celebrity Duncan Stevens will be choosing the lineup of singalong parodies. If you’re coming and you have a parody you’d like to perform or have performed, contact me [ASAP!!!] and I’ll put you in touch with the Duncster and we’ll see if it’s workable. I also will bring some gewgaws that, for various reasons, don’t work as Style Invitational second prizes. If there’s a game — like the trivia game that Kyle Hendrickson led at our summer fest, the Flushies, last year — perhaps someone might win the Nose Condom. ====================================================================== WEEK 1472, published January 23, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1472: As a matter of fict The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s fake-trivia contest and retrospective winners “Norman Bates” in front of the facade of the Bates Motel set, part of the Universal Studios Studio tour. Loser Duncan Stevens sets the “Psycho” character's, er, devotion to his mom in a song parody that tops this week's Style Invitational. (Alfred A. Si*Wikipedia, Creative Commons) By Pat Myers January 20, 2022 at 4:19 p.m. EST The fake Norman Bates pictured above — he’s part of the Universal Studios tour in Hollywood (or was in 2010) — ties in with our general celebration of inaccuracy of The Style Invitational’s recurring fictoid contests: spoofs on trivia lists and Fun Facts to Know and Tell in almost two dozen areas so far. This week’s fictoid contest, suggested by the Totally Genuine Loser Duncan Stevens — who also managed to win this week with his “Wouldn’t It Be Motherly” song parody featuring Mr. Bates himself — covers money, financial institutions, barter, ancient coins, new coins, totally made up coins, whatever. I tend to be expansive about the boundaries for the fictoid contests, just so the jokes are funny and original. For guidance and inspiration, here’s a list of inking entries from some of the earlier fictoid contests; notice how some of the entries are twists on well-known trivia (which is often inaccurate anyway, like George Washington having wooden teeth); others are bogus “corrections” of various expressions. Some make you think a second or two before getting the joke, making the payoff more fun than if it’s spelled out for you. You can slide down your rabbit hole all weekend by clicking on the links in the Master Contest List’s sublist of fictoid or fictoidish contests, starting at Week 702 in 2007, kept by Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ own website, NRARS.org. (Links to the contest results are in the far right on each row.) But for those who’d rather stay above ground: From Week 702, the original, general “unreal facts” contest, playing off the “real facts” printed on the undersides of Snapple bottle lids: A man in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, has created a ball of string the size of the planet Jupiter. (Sue Lin Chong) Viagra was originally developed to keep celery fresh. (Andy Bassett) There is as much nutrition in the peel of one potato as in a 12-ounce serving of carpet tacks. (Brendan Beary) Week 768, movie trivia: Despite their classic love story that has thrilled millions, Fay Wray and King Kong actually hated each other. (G. Smith) In an extreme example of Method acting, Jack Nicholson had an actual lobotomy for the nding of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” His doctors later reversed the operation, restoring almost all function. (Jonathan Kaye) Week 924, history trivia: Gen. Ambrose Burnside was aided greatly in Civil War planning by his largely forgotten assistant, Col. Wendell Soulpatch. (Malcolm Fleschner) George Washington also had a wooden pancreas. (Mike Turniansky) Susan B. Anthony’s middle name was Barbie. (Judy Blanchard) Week 1015, music trivia: In the fade-out of the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar,” you can clearly hear the phrase “I buried Jughead.” (Rob Huffman) Van Morrison wrote “Brown Eyed Girl” about his then-girlfriend Elizabeth Taylor. They broke up shortly thereafter. (Paul Kondis) “Pompatus” is the Latin word for “festering disease.” (Mark Raffman) Week 1057, sports trivia: Synchronized swimmers are typically fitted with plastic mouth inserts to ensure that their smiles precisely match. (Robert Schechter) In a study of 67 athletes who said they gave 110 percent, it was found that they actually gave an average of only 93.2 percent. (Art Grinath) Early in their history, the Yankees were frequent losers to their archrivals, the Yankers. (Steve McClemons) Week 1075, trivia about cars and other vehicles The name of Erik Prndl, inventor of the automatic transmission, is displayed on most cars’ dashboards. (Edward Gordon) The voice actress for the Garmin GPS made a guest appearance as an extra in the third season of “Lost.” (David Friedman) In Florida, residents over age 80 must renew their driver’s licenses every 10 years or 2,000 miles, whichever comes first. (Jeff Covel) Week 1132, military trivia: Before Greek soldiers fought at the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., they had to qualify at the Battle of 10K. (Drew Bennett) The word “khaki” comes from the Urdu language, in which it means “always wrinkled.” (Larry McClemons) The Swiss Army fights with knives. (John O’Byrne, Week 1253, fashion and clothing trivia Naugahyde is not made from the hide of naugas. It is from the linings of their digestive tracts. (Dave Prevar) Under pressure from feminist groups, American Apparel has rebranded its white tank top as the “Spouse Discusser.” (Mark Raffman) In response to popular outcry, Paris fashion models are now required to weigh at least four times as much as the outfits they wear on the runway. (Chris Doyle) Week 1289, animal trivia The painting “Dogs Playing Poker” was based on a secretly acquired photograph of dogs playing poker. (Roger Dalrymple) The trumpeter swan has a small, flap-covered hole on its neck to drain saliva. (Jeff Shirley) The male orange clownfish has a genetic predisposition to bone spurs. (Dottie Gray [yup, we’re up to 2018]) Week 1345, Food trivia Baby carrots must be at least eight weeks old before they are harvested away from adult carrots. (Robyn Carlson) McDonald’s top-selling burger in Europe is the .1134 Kiloer. (Mike Phillips) The word “cafeteria” originated as a combination of “cafe” and “diarrhea.” (Jon Ketzner) Week 1360, Fictoids about winter (the first of four seasonal contests) If the temperature drops below 10 degrees, the Washington Monument retracts a few feet underground. (Bruce Reynolds) Snow in the Southern Hemisphere forms on the ground and “falls” upward, which explains why penguins are white on the bottom. (Andrew Wells-Dang) In Jamaica, Jack Frost is known as Johnny Gentlebreeze. (Eric Nelkin) And most recently, Week 1438, trivia about the law and the legal*law-enforcement system: Judges and barristers are no longer required to wear wigs in British courtrooms, but only if they work their own hair into those little curls. (Daniel Galef) A law in Tudor England levied a fine on anyone who passed gas in church; the fine was set at a farthing. (Keith Ord) The emblem of the National Lawyers Guild features a pelican, representing the giant bill. (Jesse Frankovich) Needless to say, I welcome any more categories that you think could work! ALWAYS feel free to email me at pat.myers@washpost.com with contest ideas. I do, I concede, reject most of them, but I’ve also used many, many suggested contests — and remember, if you’re local and I use your contest ideas, I’ll take you out for ice cream. (So you’d think Duncan Stevens would weigh 400 pounds by now, but not quite.) Hars do-overs: The results of the Week 1468 retrospective Just as in last week’s Kook’s Tour do-over of half the year’s contests, but with decidedly more entrants, I was flooded with far too many good entries to run — and so dozens of inkworthy jokes got robbed a second time. But I did publish, I believe, a pretty darn whoppin’ 48 of them (32 in print), both resubmissions and new material. This part of 2021 included two song contests, one for topics in the news, the other for lyrics written in the first person, and worthies from just those two could have filled the page. (I used two in the paper — Duncan’s Norman Bates winner and First Offender Arnie Rosenthal’s “I Feel Petty,” “sung” by Vice President Harris — and added Duncan’s Trump administration summary (done to the Invite’s fave parody tune, “Be Our Guest”) and Beverley Sharp’s “Xi’s the One” for the online version. But mostly I found myself gravitating toward the shorter-form contests, especially those that needed minimal explanation and stood on their own as jokes, rather than, say, Ask Backwards, in which the cleverness comes from making a joke out of a noun on a random list. So lots of books with new subtitles, good idea*bad idea, new sports, spoonerism jokes. It’s Duncan Stevens’s nineteenth Style Invitational win, and his multiple blots of ink this week whoosh him right past the 750-ink mark since his debut in Week 970. Perhaps we can sing his inking parodies this week as part of the Loser party songfest (see the bottom of this page). Hildy Zampella is also a wholesale ink-blotter, with somewhat saner totals but huge ratio of “above the fold” winners: of 170 blots of ink, 12 of them won the contest and 15 were runners-up. She scored second place this week, and wins a stupid board game, with her “first draft” of FDR: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941: A crappy day we’ll never forget, amirite?” On the other hand, the Losers’ Circle is filled by two newbies, or at least newerbies: John Klayman grabs Inks 9, 10 and 11 (!!) and already his third above-the-folder; he got it with his determination by visiting space aliens that “in the early 21st century it became popular to have one’s nostrils professionally cleaned. People would queue up, sometimes for hours, to obtain this service.’ and Jennifer Martin Broadway, out in Michigan, gets the first of her runner-up prizes with her sixth blot of ink, reinterpreting the book “No Bad Dogs” with the subtitle “Living With Corns, Calluses and Bunions.” What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood enjoyed all four top winners, and also singled out from among the honorable mentions on the print page: John Hutchins’s neologism “yesno” (“How a distracted spouse answers the question ‘Do I sound like my mother?’”), Jeff Contompasis’s conclusion by a future anthropologist that “there was once a divine being who walked the earth, performed miracles and was called Chuck Norris”; Selma Ellis’s “Jimbo Bond”; and Arnie Rosenthal’s “I Feel Petty” parody. [Nerdy parenthetical; feel free to skip this paragraph: This week marked the debut of publishing the online Invite with The Post’s Ellipsis system, rather than the 11-year-old Methode system (which is still typesetting the Invite’s print page because of layout issues). Ellipsis isn’t naturally equipped to handle the formatting of poems and songs, since every time you hit Enter to end a line, it automatically generates a line of white space after that. Most systems have a simple “soft break” override in which you use Shift-Enter instead, but that doesn’t work in Ellipsis, and for now the solution is for me to mark all the poems and songs with tedious HTML codes. Except for some extra space around the beginnings and ends of the poems (and perhaps that’s easily fixed) I think it worked pretty well. Next week — when all the results are poems (it’s the obit poem contest) — will be the real test. And I hope I’ll be able to use the HTML in the Conversational as well, so as not to repeat the look of the songs shown four weeks ago.] Last call! All-boostered Loser party this Saturday, 5-9 p.m. Copying this one more time from my earlier post: Right now, we’re at a super-cozy guest list of 23 people [I think we’re now up to 24], so there should be a minimum of crowding. Still, that’s plenty for singing and schmoozing, and it’ll be nice to chat with people and not have to rush from guest to guest. Okay, here: If you didn’t get an email Evite to our Losers’ Post-Holiday Party — Saturday, Jan. 22, 5 to 9 p.m., in close-in Crystal City (Arlington), Va. — consider yourself personally invited anyway; anyone who reads The Style Conversational is Loserly enough for us. Here’s the link to the Evite, which you can respond to. The accompanying message, which tells about the precautions we’re taking so we can get together after skipping last winter’s potluck*parody-fest, asks you to email me a picture of your boostered vaccine card, so we don’t have to ask at the party. It’s going to be a smaller crowd this year, for obvious reasons, and masks are entirely welcome. But it’s also in a spacious party room of an apartment building, rather than the usual cozy space of a Loser’s home. I’ll be there, along with the Royal Consort, and always eager to meet new Losers and Invite fans, as well as to reconnect with longtime ones. Loser and pianist Steve Honley will be at the keyboard, and Invite Celebrity Duncan Stevens will be choosing the lineup of singalong parodies. I also will bring some gewgaws that, for various reasons, don’t work as Style Invitational second prizes. If there’s a game — like the trivia game that Kyle Hendrickson led at our summer fest, the Flushies, last year — perhaps someone might win the Nose Condom. ====================================================================== WEEK 1473, published January 30, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1473: What’s your sign? The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s new contest and results An honorable mention by Jonathan Kang in The Style Invitational's Week 672 contest in 2006; the photo is from the sign generator at atom.smasher.org. (Screen image*atom.smasher.org) By Pat Myers January 27, 2022 at 5:21 p.m. EST This week, for Style Invitational Week 1473, I’m giving another go to a contest that I repeatedly told people we couldn’t do because we already did it. But Loser Stephen Dudzik caught me at an “oh, all right” moment, perhaps engendered by a to-do contest list that was mostly for neologism contests, and we did one of those two weeks ago and three weeks ago. And so we repeat the Week 672 contest of 2006, originally suggested by “Fairly New but Already Far Gone Loser Kevin Dopart of Washington” [who’s gone on to amass 1,666 blots of ink], with the option of a barbecue-joint marquee in addition to the original road sign. The generator at atom.smasher.org now lets you go up to four lines, but otherwise it’s the same deal. As I say in the instructions, you don’t need to use the generator; you’re going to type or copy your text entries into the form as usual. But it’s handy because you won’t have to count characters; type into the lines and it’ll stop you at your 19th keystroke. The results of Week 672 hold up really well, perhaps because they’re not as topical as many Invites; traffic jams are not the stuff of nostalgia. But they do date from more than 15 years ago, and I’m optimistic that you’ll have lots of good new ideas. And the barbecue sign is an all-new opportunity. ADVERTISING Here’s the Week 672 ink, from July 2006. For Week 1473, I’ll probably run the results as sign-style multiple lines. But today below, to avoid putting in all sorts of coding to prevent excessive space between lines, I’m running them below just as lines of text. Report from Week 672 [blahblah] … Too frequently submitted for individual ink: “This Highway Paved With Good Intentions.” “This Sign Intentionally Left Blank” and “If You Lived Under This Bridge, You’d Be Homeless.” Fourth place: ENTERING NYC* INCREASE SPEAKING SPEED (Phil Frankenfeld) Third place: REPORT PHONE-USING DRIVERS: CALL 202-555-3147 (Mike Connaghan) Second place, the winner of “The Worst Picture Ever Painted”: HONK IF YOU’RE AN IMPATIENT MORON (Art Grinath) [See the section below “The immortal Ugly Painting” for the story of this thing] And the Winner of the Inker: (Pictured on the sign-over-traffic) NOW ENTERING THE WILSON BRIDGE SCENIC REST AREA (Lisa Younce) [The Woodrow Wilson Bridge, Interstate 95 — a DRAWBRIDGE over the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia — was a notorious and almost constant parking lot until it was doubled in size and its height raised in 2009.] And a Few More for the Road: Honorable Mentions (Subhead by Brendan Beary) REST STOP CLOSED* CROSS LEGS NEXT 23 MILES (Sue Lin Chong) SHOW US YOUR HEADLIGHTS! (Jay Shuck) IF YOU LIVED IN YOUR CAR YOU’D BE HOME BY NOW (“Elwood Fitzner,” now known to be Tim “Milo” Sauer) HAVE YOU BELTED YOUR KIDS? (Bird Waring) WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT LOOK IN YOUR REARVIEW MIRROR (Bruce Alter) BRAKE! BRAKE! NEVER MIND. MY BAD. (Kevin Mellema) END ROAD WORK. I MEAN IT. END IT NOW! (Lawrence McGuire) DO THIS DON’T DO THAT — CAN’T YOU READ? (Stephen Litterst; Stephen Dudzik) BRINKS TRUCK SPILL AHEAD* EXPECT DELAYS (Barbara Turner) DETOUR AHEAD: HARBOR TUNNEL UNDER WATER (Marty McCullen) NON-TEXT PORTIONS OF THIS MESSAGE HAVE BEEN REMOVED (Jay Shuck) TUNE RADIO TO AM FOR POOR SOUND QUALITY (Russell Beland) KEEP KICKING YOUR BROTHER — DAD CANT TURN THE CAR AROUND (Jonathan L. Kang) HITTING STATE INSECT: $200 FINE (Mike Peck) PUT DOWN THE PHONE NOW AND NO ONE WILL GET HURT (Melissa Yorks) 3 CAR CRASH AHEAD* 1 IS FLIPPED* BEST VIEW LEFT LANE (Michael Platt) WASHINGTON 1* NEW YORK 229* WP: GLAVINE LP: ORTIZ (Dan Seidman) 2 RDS DIVERGE, SORRY YOU CANNOT TRAVEL BOTH (Brendan Beary) HEY YOU IN THE H2* PULL OVER SO WE ALL CAN SMACK YOU (Michael Doughten) ALL LANES EXACT CHANGE* TOLL 1.95 (David Kleinbard) HONK IF YOU’RE IN AN UNMARKED CAR (Lisa Younce) YOU IN THE PORSCHE! YOU GONNA LET THAT PRIUS PASS YOU? (Art Grinath) I’M JUST DOING THIS TILL I GET A GIG AS A BROADWAY MARQUEE (Brendan Beary) IN CASE OF RAPTURE* HELP YOURSELF TO UNATTENDED VEHICLES (Alexander D. Mitchell IV) ORDER 8X10S NOW OF YOUR TRAFFIC VIOLATION PHOTO (Kevin Dopart) ROCK 1 MI* FOREIGN POLICY 2 MI* HARD PLACE 3 MI (Russell Beland) DAYS SINCE LAST SIGN-FALLING ACCIDENT: 02 (Mike Connaghan) EXITING DC* KEEP FAR RIGHT NEXT 2500 MI (Kevin Dopart) RIGHT LANE ENDS 500 INCHES (Jon Reiser) SLOW TO 45 MPH WHEN DROPPING OFF PASSENGERS (Elden Carnahan) TIME: 417 PM — OR IT WAS WHEN WE SET THIS THING (Jay Shuck) ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET? ARE WE THERE YET? (Joseph Newman) YOUR WAIT TIME TILL NEXT ACCIDENT: APPROX 4 MINUTES (Brian Fox) GAS THIS EXIT — MUST BE PRE-APPROVED FOR FINANCING (Drew Bennett) COULD SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TODAY’S ZIPPY? (Jay Shuck) CONSTRUCTION AHEAD A BIG DELAY EXPECTED MEN WRITING HAIKU (Tiffany Getz) [That one NEEDED three lines] THRU TRAFFIC KEEP LEFT* HAHA! LIKE U R MOVING! I CRACK MYSELF UP! (Cheryl Davis) NO HUMMERS PERMITTED* PLEASE BUCKLE UP (Art Grinath) ANY OF YOU KNOW HOW TO TURN OFF THE CAPS LOCK? (Kim Herman) Wow, they hold up well after 15 years. But I’m optimistic that we’ll have another bumper crop of them four weeks down the road. The immortal Ugly Painting You have to play your cards right when it comes to the very funniest entries for the week: If you’re the very funniest, you get a trophy. If you’re the third- or fourth-funniest, you get a Bob Staake-designed collectible tote bag or coffee mug. But if you place second this week, you get Derriere Repair skin balm. In Week 672, Art Grinath ended up with the painting pictured here. As I recounted in a story about Invite prizes as part of our 20th-anniversary retrospective in 2013: “Fred Dawson of Beltsville took the Empress aside at the 2005 Loser holiday party and whispered: ‘Would you like to see a really bad painting? I did it myself.’ For a long time after that, if you Googled ‘world’s ugliest painting,’ you would see the portrait of Red-Haired, White-Faced, Joker-Mouthed, Drumstick-Armed Girl that Fred donated as a prize. “The winner regifted the Ugly Painting [“Frankly, it scares my cats,” Art declared], then won it right back in a contest for what to do with the thing. It eventually went to someone who’d painted a mirror image. The Ugly Painting became an icon for the Loser community, featured on the Losers’ name tags at Loser brunches. And Loser Stephen Dudzik even made them into genuine U.S. postage stamps through Zazzle.com.” The mirror-image painter, however, wasn’t the winner of Week 686: It was, yes, again, Art Grinath. His entry: “I should get it because everyone thinks you’ll give it to me because that would be funny, but then people will think you would never resort to such a cheap and easy laugh, so they’ll be sure you won’t give it to me, and that’s when you’ll fool them.” But he readily let me send it to the other guy. Art — one of the very funniest people ever to enter The Style Invitational — is still Inviting, with 417 blots of ink, and 15 wins. (His name is pronounced grin-ATH.) That’s intertainment*: The results of the Week 1469 obit poetry contest *Non-inking headline by Tom Witte As it has every single year since I started running it in 2004, our obit poetry contest brought out a highly entertaining (and occasionally poignant) variety of tributes — and a few good-riddances — to last year’s ex-folks. (This week’s results.) There were, as always, too many good poems to include, but I did get 21 onto the print page and 39-count-em elegies online. It’s already the third win for Jeff Rackow, who still counts as a rookie almost two years after his debut, under Elden Carnahan’s arcane Loser Stats rules. Jeff was one of several Loserbards to pen a joint commemoration of four “Mary Tyler Moore” cast members to die in 2021: Ed Asner, Gavin McLeod, Cloris Leachman and, at the last moment, Betty White. The rest of this week’s Losers’ Circle is populated by Losers who’ve gotten veritable vats of Invite poetry ink: Mark Raffman, with his just-damning enough dig at G. Gordon Liddy; Melissa Balmain, who specializes in lesser-known decedents, on the inventor of Post-it Note adhesive; and the happily returning Scotsman-turned-Londoner Stephen Gold, alluding to the current deep-dip of Prince Andrew in his poem for Prince Philip. (And don’t miss the outstanding ink farther down the page for all of them: Mark’s on Bernie Madoff — which might have won the contest had I not worried that readers wouldn’t know the Yiddish terms; Melissa’s on a pioneer of Botox; and Stephen’s pricelessly racy ode to Larry Flynt.) What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, who read the 21 entries that fit on the print page, sweetly — but not so helpfully — offered, “I liked 'em all!” During the entry period for this contest, Loserbard Brendan Beary posted a challenge to the Facebook group Style Invitational Devotees (join us now!): Write an obit poem in memory of the renowned Belgian-born mathematician Jacques Tits. Several Losers rose to the occasion, quite perkily. And not just in English! Here sits Jacques Tits Ta-ta (Andy Schotz) A mathematician, invited to a lecture At Duke on his famed algebraic conjecture, Heard muffled guffaws from the hall’s back row seats When he opened his talk with “My name eez Jacques Tits.” (Chris Doyle) Rest in peace, dear Dr. Tits Your surname gave the schoolboys fits Until they found out (it’s the pits) Your field was math, not naughty bits (Bill Dorner) The jokes about this mathematician’s name would never cease. Now that Dr. Tits is gone, would you please let him breast in peace?(Bill Dorner) His figures uplifting, sublime, In math he provided swell treats, His algebra fitting each time, And he’s now transcendental: Jacques Tits.(Ann Martin) Professor You-Know-Who has gone To meet his great reward, And now he rests forever in The bosom of the Lord.(Brendan Beary) Finally: In French! Plus a rhyming English translation! Jacques Tits est mort. il a décrit les “bâtiments de Tits” – Ils sont mathématiques, pas “bleus.” Son nom dit qu’il a poursuivi Les seins – peut-être, mais nous savons Qu’il est près du bon sein du Dieu. An approximate translation: Jacques Tits is dead. He had devised “Tits buildings” – not at all smutty, But quite geometrically odd. His name implies he also prized Breasts – perhaps so, but he Is now at the bosom of God. (Dean Alterman) Save the date for May 21! The Loser Post-Holiday party — understandably a smaller-scale gathering during these Omicronic times — proved to be a delightful event nevertheless, with about two dozen Losers and Devotees gathering in the large and cool party room (pool table!) of the apartment building of Loser Kathleen Delano. The parodies were sung socially distanced but heartily; thanks go especially to coordinator Duncan Stevens, pianists Steve Honley and Jesse Rifkin, and vocalists Duncan and Matt Monitto (who once again drove all the way down from Connecticut). Newbie Steve Bremner came down from Philadelphia for his first Loser event, while Early Years of the Invite Superstar Sarah Worcester decided to join us once again, because it was time to go somewhere, dang it. And we got — with witnesses — an invitation from Loser Steve Leifer: He and wife Jackie would like us to come back to his backyard patio in Potomac, Md., for our annual Flushies awards*potluck*songfest. Last year at Chez Leifer was one of the best ever. Save the date for Saturday afternoon, May 21. ====================================================================== WEEK 1474, published February 6, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1474: Send in the Clowner — stat! The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s Hyphen the Terrible contest plus the results of another neologistic challenge The Empress may have to bend the rules on her 100 Clowners for 100 Losers policy and give Sarah Walsh a second one for her Week 1474 win, after the attention given to this one by Sarah's youthful Labrador. (Sarah Walsh) By Pat Myers February 3, 2022 at 5:22 p.m. EST Everyone’s a critic, I guess. Thanks a lot, Maisy. Maisy is Sarah Walsh’s year-old Labrador retriever (or “Lab assistant,” since she’s kind of small). And Maisy seems to have taken issue with Sarah’s Clowning Achievement trophy for her win in Style Invitational Week 1419, the “joint legislation” contest: The Bordeaux-Gimenez-Torres Resolution [bored o’him and his stories], limiting long-winded uncles at Thanksgiving to 20 minutes tops. “The first thing I discovered was the little ruffle — I was like, ‘ohhhhh [something associated with dog walking].’ ” And so the Empress is going to make an exception to her 100 Clowners for 100 Losers policy — there were only 100 Disembodied Clown Heads to be found, in some craft store’s clearance sale — and send Sarah a second trophy for her win today in Week 1470, rather than the customary “II” flag to attach to the base. Because a flag towering over an assortment of smithereens would be too sorry a sight even for us. ADVERTISING Sarah’s winning prefix to attach to a name, phrase or title? UnZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH: Step 1 in boys’ toilet training. With today’s win plus two honorable mentions — InterMISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (another toilet joke) and DeJOY TO THE WORLD (about presents arriving late in the mail), Sarah’s accumulated 69 blots of ink, including six runners-up in addition to her two wins, since she got her Fir Stink in 2019 with a description of the creation of Eve, as penned by Jane Austen. Sarah is a serious Austen Devotee, attending those conventions in period costumes that she makes herself. (Not to mention her one-woman show as Abigail Adams.) And she’s been a contestant on both “Jeopardy!” and “The Chase.” But those pursuits yield ZERO clown heads on sticks. Maisy would get nothing! The rest of this week’s Losers’ Circle also consists of Invite addicts: Frank Mann wins a plush toy vial of vaccine — Frank, if you have a dog, consider yourself warned — for NiTWITTER, a good name for the Deplatformed One’s planned social media network. And Hall of Famers Beverley Sharp and Duncan Stevens — Beverley for ForGETTING TO KNOW YOU (“At the senior center, you get to meet new people every day”) and the Duncster for PassWORDLE (you have to remember your login info in six tries) — are by now overmugged and overbagged and get emails instead of swag; it’s the 59th runner-up win for Beverley, the 50th for Duncan. But ink also went out to Losers we hadn’t heard from in a while: Elliott Schiff (AntiGONE IN 60 SECONDS) last got ink in Week 1217, four years ago (but his first in Week 402, 21 years ago); it’s also been a couple of years for Gordon Cobb, from Atlanta, and Mike Ostapiej, from South Carolina. And we have a First Offender this week — on his first try, too: Mike Swift of Florida (StereoTYPEWRITER). When I posted the Invite to the Style Invitational Devotees group this morning, Mike commented: “It was four years ago today (exactly!) that I joined the group and finally got up the nerve to enter. Woot! It was fun, and my car is in desperate need of a new air freshener.” Now the trick is for Mike to find it fun when he enters and doesn’t get ink. Happens to the best of 'em! Because the Week 1470 entries were one-liners (as they also are for this week’s contest) it was easy for me to shuffle all the entries into one anonymous alphabetical list. But I couldn’t be shocked to find out that Chris Doyle, the Invite’s highest-scoring Loser, made my final list five times over: THE DumBEST IS YET TO COME (Louie Gohmert weighs a presidential run); CriMEA CULPA (what Putin’s not about to do); TiktOK BOOMER (“what your kids say when you ask, ‘What the heck are you watching?’ ”); sneaking a parody (of what else) into DisroBE OUR GUEST; and finally, having Donald Trump enter this contest to say I ALONE CAN preFIX IT. Oh, yeah, Chris also suggested this contest four weeks ago. Pretty nice week, Chris. That seems to leave you with 2,399 blots of ink. (Second place: Tom Witte, with 1,682.) Some very good entries didn’t follow the rules. Some people put the “prefix” at the end of a word, as in BATMANna, unexpected help from a superhero (Leif Picoult). More subtly, the explicit direction that the prefix had to be at least one syllable ruled out Bill Dorner’s otherwise excellent SAVING PRIVATE aRYAN (Richard Spencer’s hope in court); here the A isn’t pronounced in itself (pretty much the definition of a syllable) but has to blend in with the R following it. What Doug Dug: The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood included all four top winners along with Elliott Schiff’s AntiGONE IN 60 SECONDS, Greg Dobbins’s DaDA VINCI, Chris Doyle’s CriMEA CULPA, Jesse Rifkin’s DateLABRADOR (“Update: No further sniffing”), Mark Raffman’s ForGETTYSBURG, and Chris’s I ALONE CAN preFIX IT. (Some unprintables from Week 1470 appear at the very bottom of this page. Don’t look at them if you don’t like off-color jokes.) A note about last week’s contest (still running!) Our Week 1473 contest — deadline Monday night, Feb. 7 — asks you to write a funny message for either a highway sign or a the marquee for a barbecue joint. I linked to the sign generators at atom.smasher.org, saying that the entry fields on those pages wouldn’t let you type longer than our stated limit of 19 characters a line. It turns out that that’s true for the barbecue marquee but not the highway sign; the latter now lets you type 24 characters. Still, though, for our purposes, please stick to 19 characters. I’ve added wording to that effect in both the contest itself and in the Week 1473 entry form. Wit to be tied*: Our Hyphen the Terrible contest, Week 1474 *Headline by Chris Doyle from a 2012 Hyphen the Terrible contest; it was also used by Danielle Nowlin for a name-chain contest This week’s Hyphen the Terrible contest is the latest in a line dating back to Week 156 in 1996 — it was suggested then by none other than Fred Dawson, creator of the famed painting that I highlighted in last week’s Style Conversational — but we hadn’t done an H the T in five years. So noted Chris Doyle to me, though I don’t expect him to complain that I didn’t credit his suggestion and so he’ll miss out on an “idea” point in the Loser Stats. I was going to make this an only-the-Post contest but link to a special subscription promotion, but Management had some concerns about that. So once again, you’re free to use any publication, as long as the two halves of any given neologism come from the same day of the same publication. (To be honest, this is just an arbitrary way to set some parameters on the contest, so you don’t have to choose among All the Syllables in the World.) In the contest directions, I tell readers to look either here or on this week’s entry form for more details on how to enter. Here’s the whole deal: The main direction: Combine one side of a hyphenated word or phrase with one side of another such term — either side can be the end or the beginning — to create a new term, then describe the result. As in “Di-rector + doz-ens: Rector-doz: A sermon so boring that even the pastor falls asleep” (Beverley Sharp) and the other examples given at the top of the contest. The second requirement: Both halves of the term must come from the same issue of a newspaper (The Post or another one) or published the same day on its website, from Feb. 3 through Feb. 14. It can be in an article, headline, ad, whatever, as long as both parts come from hyphenates. Include the hyphenates you’re using, as above. Anything with a hyphen is fair game: It can be a hyphen that breaks a word at the end of a line so that the type lines up, or justifies, on the right side of the column. Or it can be a hyphen that’s used to join a prefix to a word, or two words together, in the text itself. Or it could be a hyphen that’s part of someone’s name. Anything! Just tell me what you’re using. You can search on hyphens right down a Web page! A dash is not a hyphen. A hyphen is a little thing, the key next to the zero on a standard keyboard. A dash (a.k.a. em-dash) is a longer horizontal line that is used in various ways to break up a sentence. This all-too-contrived sentence contains two hyphens — and it also has a dash. Got it? We want hyphens. (Some persnickety books also use an en-dash, which is between those two in length; it’s the space of a lowercase n, while a regular em-dash is the … well, obvo. But regular journalism usually sticks to hyphens and em-dashes.) For each entry, please tell me which newspaper you’re using (specify print or online) and which date. You don’t have to spell out which articles, ads, etc., or give me a link, but you do need to give me the hyphenated terms for both sides of your word so that I can show the reader where the syllables come from, if they seem to add to the humor. Really, to be honest here, I’m not going to research the provenance of every entry’s two syllables; it’s really a matter of honor, a way to let everyone participate but give you some way to limit yourself. Your new term doesn’t necessarily have to have a hyphen itself. Usually the joke works better that way, but other times a hyphen will interfere with the pronunciation, and so the word will work better without the hyphen. Putting a hyphen elsewhere in the word will probably be too confusing and would kill the joke. A note on the formatting: As I’ve been asking you to do most weeks, please write each entry as one continuous line; i.e., DON’T press Enter in the middle of the entry. This will make sure it doesn’t fall apart when the Empress sorts and shuffles all the entries to ensure blind judging. This is why I need you to say “Washington Post” or whatever for each entry, rather than “All 25 entries come from today’s Post.” Entry deadline is one minute before midnight on Monday, Feb. 14, wherever you are. (However, if some terrible thing happens — say, it’s Valentine’s Day night and you get a little bit wrapped up in something — and you have to be a little late, go ahead; you won’t be locked out. But don’t make it a habit.) Finally, a few random Hyphen the Terrible winners and runners-up from earlier years. Note that sometimes we didn’t hyphenate the winners. Mer-derloin, n. Chipped beef on toast. (Joseph Romm, Week 156, 1996) Narcot-rifice, n. Any body cavity used to smuggle drugs. (Russell Beland, Week 206, 1997) Sex-nipulativeness, n., the ability of women to control men simply by not wearing bras. (Robin D. Grove, Week 244, 1997) [Robin is a man. As was the judge of the contest.] Uni-moron, n. Instead of bombs, this terrorist mails flaming bags of poo. (Chuck Smith, Week 318, 1999) Neigh-der: A dark-horse presidential candidate. (Chris Doyle, Week 368, 2000) Mo-ronto: 1. The Lone Ranger’s mentally challenged companion; 2. Home of Prime Minister Jean Crétin. (Chris Doyle, Week 425, 2001) Testimo-stitute: An expert witness who will say anything if the fee is high enough. (James Pierce, Week 465, 2002) Begin-ity: The other end of infinity. (Michelle Stupak, Week 589, 2005) Suck-istan: Transylvania. (Tom Witte, Week 671, 2006) Mon-ovation: The sound of one hand clapping especially enthusiastically. (Dennis Lindsay, Week 711, 2007) Queuing x reality = Queu-ty: The blonde who’s always allowed to cut into a line. (Phyllis Reinhard, Week 630, 2005) [The judge of this contest was a woman.' Enthusala: A 90-year-old man on Viagra. (Christopher Lamora, Week 976, 2011) BEAUtiful + POLitics: Beau-pol: A charming, intelligent and thoughtful politician who, after leaks of toxic material about his life, turns out to be a disaster. (Mike Gips, Week 1078, 2014) And the last H the T contest: miscon-duct + con-tinued: Miscontinued: Dug a hole and kept digging. “Despite warnings from aides, the nominee miscontinued his sexist remarks.” (Duncan Stevens, Week 1196, 2016) ------------- Pre-nopes: Unprintables from Week 1470: ALL THE PRESIDENT’S seMEN: The most widely read section of the Starr Report. (Chris Doyle) castraTED CRUZ: “Thank you for the insults, Don and Tucker!” (Ryan Martinez) moHelen Keller: One-star Yelp review after a bris gone wrong. (Mark Raffman) ====================================================================== WEEK 1475, published February 13, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1475: Getting past ‘Scalp ’em, stomp ’em’ The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s contest for a funny Commanders song or cheer When the Team Was Better quarterback Joe Theismann huddles with some attentive mannequins wearing the uniforms for the newly named Washington Commanders. This week, The Style Invitational invites you to give their fans something to sing about. (Jonathan Newton*The Washington Post) By Pat Myers February 10, 2022 at 4:31 p.m. EST “Braves on the warpath” — can you believe that’s what millions of Washingtonians were singing with gusto just a few years ago? Finally, our city’s NFL Team is no longer the Washington Racial Slurs, and no longer the Washington Generic Name; it’s now the Washington Commanders. (I guess that’s because The Style Invitational already had dibs on “The Losers.”) Okay, whatever. So you’d think that the team’s rebranding would, first thing, purge itself of one of its most embarrassing trademarks: the fight song “Hail to the Redskins.” But according to a recent ESPN story, the team’s president, Jason Wright, “said Commanders will be folded into the old fight song, though with updated lyrics after fan input.” REEEEALLLLY? Well, we’ll happily offer up Mark Raffman’s example at the top of this week’s Style Invitational, Week 1475. We’re sure the team will especially appreciate its allusions to the current woes (ah, schadenfreude!) of longtime Horrible Team Owner Snyder. And we invite your own effort as well — either a song (to any tune) or a cheer for the team, either of them entirely satiric. And for those of you who aren’t inspired by football, there’s a huge out: You can write something about any other Washington institution — and there are a lot of Washington institutions. I will absolutely run my favorite Commanders songs and cheers, but there will be lots of room for the alternatives. ADVERTISING I’m even giving you the extra week that I do for most song contests, especially for people who might record a video. Deadline is Monday, Feb. 28. Scholars of The Style Invitational may be arching their eyebrows (or furrowing them, in the Southern Hemisphere) over my decision to do this contest, given that back in Week 862, in 2010, the results were so lame that I withheld most of the top prizes (“Sometimes it’s not enough to be the best. You have to be good, too”). That contest was for a song or cheer for any city’s team. Here are the entries I ran that week. For any team in Florida: Gooooo . . . say, honey, what’s the name of the team we like? (George Smith, Frederick) For the Washington Wizards: (Don’t) SHOOT! (Kevin Dopart, Washington) [that year, Wizards player Gilbert Arenas was found to keep guns in the basketball team’s locker room, and was said to have pulled one in a dispute with a teammate over a gambling debt] Redskins, Redskins, they’re our guys!* If they can’t do it . . . no surprise. (Craig Dykstra, Centreville) [a longtime season ticket holder] Team Canada: Please forgive us if we beat you. (Christopher Lamora, Arlington) Baltimore Orioles: Pray for rain! (Mel Loftus, Holmen, Wis.) Team Saudi Arabia: We will, we will stone you! (Peter Metrinko, Gainesville) Montreal Alouettes: Gimme an Eh! (Josh Borken, Minneapolis) Gimme an L! Gimme another L! [edited for space] Gimme an H! What’s that spell? Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch! (Russell Beland, Fairfax) Team Mexico baseball: Give us the runs! (Kevin Dopart) Team North Korea: 2,4,6,8, let us brutally destroy our enemies and bask in the admiration and glory of our Dear Leader, who is great! (Mike Gips, Bethesda) Let’s go, Redskins, give a cheer! We just love Coach [add name here]. (Craig Dykstra) Detroit Red Wings: Watch our team control the puck — the only thing here that doesn’t suck. (Judy Blanchard, Novi, Mich.) Ain’t no payroll high enough, ain’t no scandal low enough, ain’t no ego wide enough to keep me from cheerin’ for you! Go Yankees! (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) Hockey’s San Jose Sharks: The Sharks will get you, there’s no doubt;* We’ll chew you up and spit you out!* (This plan is maybe not so hot:* Our teeth are missing — we forgot.) (Beverley Sharp, Washington) The Boston Red Sox, best with glove* Along with wicked ball and bat* To this great team, I give my love* Straight from the bottom of my heart. * It does too rhyme. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn [but a Massachusetts native]) And here, courtesy of Wikipedia, are the original lyrics, sung every time the team scored a touchdown beginning in 1938 all the way to 1972. They were written by Corinne Griffith, wife of the team owner. (Hear it sung here.) Hail to the Redskins! Hail Victory! Braves on the Warpath! Fight for old D.C.! Scalp ‘em, swamp ’um — We will take ‘um big score Read ‘um, weep ‘um, touchdown! — we want heap more Fight on, fight on till you have won Sons of Wash-ing-ton. Rah! Rah! Rah! … --- In 1972, team president Edward Bennett Williams agreed to change the middle lines to these: Run or pass and score — we want a lot more! Beat 'em, swamp 'em, touchdown! — let the points soar! (Just right there is good evidence why sometimes it’s better to just throw out the rotten mess than to try to patch it up.) We’re back to brunching! Sunday, Feb. 20, Bethesda Given the ups and mostly downs of the past two years, I’d fallen out of the habit of checking the “Our Social Engorgements” calendar of Loser brunches and other gatherings at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. But I looked just in time to see that we’ll be brunching at noon on Sunday, Feb. 20, at the Spanish Diner in downtown Bethesda, Md. It’s a fairly new restaurant from the famed chef, restaurateur and Admirable Person José Andrés, who wanted to bring the down-home cooking of his native land to an informal setting in the D.C. area. The menu looks interesting, and includes breakfast all day of a traditional egg-and-potato dish. Not shockingly expensive, especially since parking in downtown Bethesda garages is free on Sunday. Expect to show proof of vaccination. I’m always eager to meet new Losers (or just fans of the Invitational) and reconnect with the veterans. If you’re going, RSVP to elden (dot) carnahan (at) gmail.com so we can make the reservation correctly. The inkrEDIBles*: The results of Week 1471 *Non-inking headline by Chris Doyle Our annual Tour de Fours neologism contest — this year for words and phrases featuring the consecutive letters B-I-D-E in any order — drew a healthy (well, depends on your definition of health) 1,400 entries, resulting in my I’m-so-generous 49 inking entries, almost all of which made the print Invite as well as the online one (anyway, it’s probably for the best that readers sipping their morning coffee over Arts & Style section not cast their eyes on Fried Biopsies — especially since Kevin Dopart also refers to a human-placenta cookbook — or Jesse Frankovich’s Hemorrhoid Belt, “an unpleasant region of space near Uranus.” While some purists (I hear you, Tom Witte) believe that spreading the letter block across two words defeats the spirit of the contest, I especially like that option, since it allows for virtually any of the 24 permutations of the four letters, and a lot more variety than if we’d used only single words. (Also, I can tell you that a lot of those single-word neologisms aren’t easy to read — which isn’t a good way to get a joke across.) While I made no effort to include as many different blocks as possible, by my count today’s ink encompasses 16 of the 24, and almost every other permutation was used as well. (I didn’t see any for IEBD.) Not surprisingly, the most frequent one was BIDE, with lots of Biden references, plus bidets, abides, bid, etc. BEDI also got lots. Also not surprisingly, there were many cases of Loserly Minds Thinking Alike. Twelve people submitted DEBITANTE; the ink went to Leif Picoult because he also tossed in the new card-owner’s eventual DEBITANTE BAWL after spending too much. I was surprised to see that two people had submitted RABBI ED — both with a synagogue named “B’neigh”-something. (“B’nai” means “House of” in Hebrew, as in a congregation named B’nai Shalom.) Bob Kruger got the ink by adding that the rebooted sitcom also starred Mare Winningham (I guess Whinnyham would have been just toooo much) as — I hope people get this — the canter. Advertisement Wow, what a week for Invite Hall of Famer Beverley Sharp! With STUPID BELT! — one that went and made itself smaller over the past year — Beverley wins her third Clowning Achievement trophy, but her 16th win all-time; I’m sure she has some of all our previous trophies as well, since she’s been Inviting since Week 604, back in the Inker days. And she has four blots of ink in all this week, to bring her up to 815 all-time. Meanwhile, we have a new name in this week’s Losers’ Circle: It’s the first ink “above the fold,” and a total of nine, for David Stonner, who offered IMBEDIMENT, “the thing that makes you roll over and go back to sleep,” along with how to use it convincingly: “Sorry I was late to work, but I encountered a major imbediment this morning.” David gets his choice of the “For Best Results, Pour Into Top End” Loser Mug or our “Whole Fools” Grossery Bag; let me know, David. Want to pick it up at the Loser Brunch? Filling out the Losers Circle are Jesse Frankovich, who now has 130 blots of ink in the past year alone; and Still A Rookie Leif Picoult, who has an impressive four inks above the fold out of just 26 in all. Jesse offered the pickup-line field of APPLIED BIOLOGY (i.e., sex), while Leif (rhymes with “waif”) came up with BIDEN-GO-SEEK to describe the seemingly impossible task of getting any congressional cooperation. What Doug Dug: The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood: Once again, Doug agreed with me about the winners (we’ve been on the same humor wavelength for decades) and also singled out these from the honorable mentions: Rookie sensation Pam Shermeyer’s INSTABIDET (“Oh, the many uses of the humble garden hose!”); Also a Rookie Lori Lipman Brown’s PLAN B DIET (“When Plan A, the chocolate diet, doesn’t work”); Craig Dykstra’s AMBIDEN (“This new drug helps one sleep through an unpopular presidency. “Snore more years!”); Coleman Glenn’s CANDIED BROCCOLI, well-intentioned sugarcoating that backfires: Duncan Stevens’s DIE BARD, complete with a line from the movie script: “Huzzah! Yippee! My joy I cannot smother.* I speak to thee, thou &*@#er of a mother”; and Jesse Frankovich’s THE INCREDIBLE SULK (“Bruce Banner: The Teenage Years”). We couldn’t aBIDE these: Some unprintables: BEDICK: Finish up gender reassignment. (Milo Sauer) CADDIE B: She knows a thing or two about clubs, shafts and balls. (Jesse Frankovich) Libideau: French for “I’m always wet.” (Jeff Shirley) Just too gross, I felt: IEDBowels: explosive diarrhea. (Stephen Dudzik) And in a mix of inside baseball (Invite founder Gene Weingarten’s tweets disparaging Indian cuisine) and a tasteless reference (the horrifying Bhopal disaster that blinded hundreds of people): Union Czarbide: Company that spread noxious opinions all over India. (Duncan Stevens, who specifically asked that this appear only in the Conversational) Thanks to all of you who helpfully pointed out that headline for last weekend’s print Invite said “Week 1744” instead of the correct “Week 1474.” We will be issuing little strips of newsprint for you to glue to your copies. ====================================================================== WEEK 1476, published February 20, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1476: The search continues The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s Googlenope contest and financial-fictoid results Well, it was until this morning … What's a Googlenope today might well not be one four weeks from now (and might even differ among users). Don't sweat this; just play in good faith. (Screen image) By Pat Myers February 17, 2022 at 5:04 p.m. EST The Style Invitational is a humor contest, and one key element of humor is irony — some situation in which two things coexist unexpectedly A clumsy man trips over his feet and falls over: maybe funny, not ironic. Clumsy*clumsy result. Rudolf Nureyev trips over his feet and falls over: ironic and surely funnier. Graceful*clumsy result. In the several contests since 2007 that The Style Invitational has run for Googlenopes — phrases that, when put in quotes and searched for on Google, get no real matches — irony has been the source of most of the humor. (And faux irony abounds among this week’s winning “fictoids” about finance; see below.) This week’s contest, Week 1476, repeats the one we did in 2018. In that one, Week 1305, I also invited what we called Googleyups: phrases that someone out there saw fit to say on the Internet. Just as this week, you could send a G’nope, a G’yup or an entry combining two or more of either or both — like the three Nopes and a Yup that serve as today’s primary example. Important if you’re going to play! For your Googleyup — and to get anything good for a Googlenope — you’ll want to use quotes around your phrase, since otherwise Google is looking for those words somewhere on the page, not necessarily together. For instance, a search for unquoted sexy coke bottle glasses yields 5.9 million pages. And: Keep the phrase short. To find that no one else has posted exactly the same 18 words in one particular order: not thrilling, and possibly misleading. Also really important: Google search, like so much of the Internet, is a highly fluid, constantly changing organism. Your search that gave you a Googlenope for you you on Wednesday is suddenly giving you 14 hits when you prepare to send it in on Friday. Just note that. But don’t cheat. (And a funny ironic comparison between something with 14 hits and one with 400,000 works just fine. Yup!) Still, according to my introduction to the results of the 2018 contest, the 'nopes tended to hold up for the duration. ADVERTISING Below are some samples from then, and from some earlier ones. (Full results from Week 1305, 2018) From Week 1305, headlined No-Hit Wonders: Fourth place: Googleyup: “Cows are smarter than you think.” (a Googlewhack, exactly one hit)** Googleyup: “Pigs are smarter than you think.”** Googlenope: “Betsy DeVos is smarter than you think.” (Mark Raffman) Third place: Googleyup: “Does your virginity grow back?” (101 results) (Mike Burch) Second place: Googlewhack: “Sarah Huckabee Sanders always tells the truth.” (The whole sentence: “Sarah Huckabee Sanders always tells the truth about absolutely nothing.”) (Lorna Jerome, who wisely included the context that made the entry funny) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Googlenope: “No one invites me to LinkedIn.”* (Eric Nelkin — winner of today’s fictoid contest!) Googleyup: “Our calm four-year-old” — but they all refer to dogs (Mark Richardson) Googlewhack: “Cannot wait to see Washington in the summer” (and it referred to Washington state) (Duncan Stevens) Googlenope: “Chasidic twerking videos” (Google asked helpfully, “Did you mean: ‘Hasidic twerking videos’?” Fortunately, that was also a Googlenope.) (Daphne Steinberg) I think the yups were an improvement over the previous Googlenopes contests, which are funny in their irony but kind of slim. See for yourself. Report from Week 865 (2010), in which we sought yet more Googlenopes — phrases that still yielded that “no results found” icon when you offer them to the Universe’s Biggest Search Engine. Once again, some of the thousands of 'Nopes submitted were just convenient misspellings of names. [Oy, people, do not do that for Week 1476!] For all the results below — which were still unique at press time [in 2010] — the phrases were entered within quotation marks. Capitalization didn’t matter in the searches. Several entrants noted to the Empress that they were more amazed by the phrases that did produce a few hits, such as “National Beet Day” (discovered by Tom Kreitzberg) or “the wisdom of Tom Cruise” (noted by Russell Beland). These have been called Googleyups, and yes, we’ll have to get to them. [ See? Just took eight years.] (We have already done Googlewhacks, in which there is exactly one hit.) (Plain-text file of full results; scroll down past that week’s new contest) Both “Nobody understands me like my husband” and “Nobody understands me like my wife” (Mark Richardson, Washington) 2. the winner of the nine-inch-long black gummi rat: “I was persuaded by the picket sign” (Dan Steinberg, Silver Spring) 3. “President Obama wigs” (Mike Turniansky, Pikesville, Md.) 4. “I lost lots of weight by eating better and exercising” (Sheri Tardio, Prince Frederick) None: The Less — Honorable mentions “Lady Gaga wore a modest” … (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn) “Muhammad Halloween masks” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) “I always lift the toilet seat for my husband” (David Thorne, Washington, a First Offender) “Now I understand all of 'Lost' " (Craig Dykstra, Centreville) “Find me an Amway dealer” (Russell Beland, Fairfax) “The GOP leadership sought a compromise” (Anne Paris, Arlington) “I was outraged by that ‘Family Circus’ cartoon” (Julie Thomas and Will Cramer, Herndon) “I don’t know, so I’ll say nothing.” (Tom Kreitzberg, Silver Spring) “unwanted strip of bacon” (Russell Beland) “the best of the feel-good Russian novels” (Michael Woods, Arlington) “Three animals were harmed in the making of this movie” (Russell Beland) ““I laughed at The Style Invitational” (Kevin Dopart) Sponsored Video Advertisement By Advertising Partner Watch to learn more See more And back at the beginning: From Week 717, 2007: Report From Week 717, when we asked for Googlenopes, phrases that — until now — would yield no hits if entered within quotation marks on the Google search engine. An amazing number of entrants got their no-hitters only by misspellings: “Barbara McCulsky look-alike” may be a 'nope, but “Barbara Mikulski look-alike” is not. And we’re going to print the following entries right here, just so they’ll no longer be Googlenopes: “The Empress is sexy,” “the Empress is thoughtful,” “the Empress is hot,” “the Empress is amazing,” “the Empress totally rocks,” “the Empress deserves a Pulitzer.” [2022 note: “The Empress totally rocks,” 15 years later, gets only the hit of the Week 717 results text file on NRARS.org.] All right, then. (All the entries below were verified Googlenopes at this writing [2007]. Capitalization and punctuation are not factors in Google searches.) 4. “Calvin Coolidge bobblehead” (Ann Martin, Annapolis) 3. “All the girls loved my Camry” (Tom Lundregan, Alexandria) 2. The winner of the Candy Hose Nose: “Haute cuisine sucks” (Bonnie Speary Devore, Gaithersburg) And the Winner of the Inker: “That controversial ‘Gilligan’s Island’ episode” (Malcolm Fleschner, Palo Alto, Calif.) ‘Worth Only a Magnet’ “Coprolite engagement rings” (Martin Bancroft, Rochester, N.Y.) “What’s so cute about pandas?” (Laurel Gainor, Great Falls) “Fox News is more accurate than” (Brian Fox, Charlottesville) “The weapons system came in under budget” (Rick Haynes, Department of Defense, Potomac) “Lightly used caskets” (David Kleinbard, Jersey City) “One sexy imam” (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn) “Hardcore Nationals fan” (Brian Cohen, Potomac) [this is now up to 3,400 results] “DIY Extreme Unction” (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) “I wish Paris Hilton was my mom” (Jonathan Gettleman, Ashburn) “Funny Googlenopes” (Russell Beland, Springfield) “First-time entries never get ink” (Pete Marshman, Edgewater — and yes, of course) By the way, Elizabeth Molyé originally suggested a Nope version of Instagram hashtags, as in #sexycokebottleglasses. I was enthusiastic — even learning how to get into Twitter without an account (Insta doesn’t allow it) — until I realized that hashtags, besides being hard to read, just don’t cover that many options. There might not be a #tedcruzfanclub Instagram hashtag, but there were almost 2,000 Google hits, including two articles with that header from New York Magazine. So I went back to Google, especially after seeing that “sexy Coke bottle glasses” noped anyway. Incidentally: Elizabeth, who’s been away from the Invite for years, is coming to Sunday’s brunch along with her SO, Now a Loser and Style Invitational Devotee Chad Chitwood! Looking forward to hanging with you, Chad. And speaking of … Last call for brunch! Sunday, Feb. 20, Bethesda Safe dining has become the norm in most D.C. restaurants — the staff is masked; nobody blinks at being asked to show a vaccination card — and so the Royal Consort and I are totally looking forward to this Sunday’s Loser brunch (No. 237!), at the Spanish Diner on Bethesda Row in downtown Bethesda, Md., at noon. I’ve heard good things about the famed José Andrés’s informal eatery that focuses on the home cooking of his native country, including all-day egg dishes. But the real attraction for me is meeting new Losers — or just fans of the Invite — as well as reconnecting with the regulars, and I’m looking forward to personally presenting a Loser mug to last week’s runner-up (David Stonner, Washington) at his first Loser sighting. It’s not too late to sign up, but be sure to let Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan know ASAP at elden [dot] carnahan [at} gmail [dot] com so he can get the reservation right. The restaurant requires proof of vaccination. Downtown Bethesda’s parking garages are free on weekends! If you can’t make it this month, check out a full year’s (tentative) schedule on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. It’s headlined “Our Social Engorgements, or Dorkness at Noon, or Once More Into the Brunch,” Note to the wary: This is not some sort of competitive quipfest — far from it. We just chat and eat and just get to know one another. We won’t even break out into song parodies. Har currency*: The financial fictoids of Week 1472 *Non-inking headline by Chris Doyle Once again, The Style Invitational plays on the genre of trivia lists and “Did You Know …” features, sometimes spoofing specific “amazing” facts and ironies (or alleged facts and ironies), like the one that 90 percent of all U.S. $20 bills contain traces of cocaine, or the woo-woo similarities between Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy. And of course managing to get some digs in about current events and their, uh, eventers. It’s the second win (the first was that 2018 Googlenope!), but the first Clowning Achievement trophy, for Eric Nelkin, who attributed Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 election to his widespread name recognition from being on the $5 bill. That gives him 82 blots of ink overall, and six “above the fold.” John Hutchins gets his 20th trip to the Losers’ Circle, and 157 blots, with is report of a surge in the GNP of India “purely from increased call center volume from Virginians afraid of critical race theory.” Okay, a stretch to call that a financial fictoid, but deftly done. Hall of Famer Mark Raffman mined the “whatever happened to” genre to say that, in a sequel, “George Bailey goes on to build himself a mansion using the money he collected in overdraft fees.” And Bruce Carlson proves that the Empress — despite her protestations — will still fall for a Him Again joke: A little-known section of the U.S. tax code exempts citizens from paying taxes if they have bone spurs in their feet. Well, it does seem to exempt them from military service. What Doug Dug: The favorites this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood were Bruce’s bone spur joke; Gary Crockett revealing movie dialogue by ultra-capitalist Gordon Gekko, who added, ““But even better is saving 15 percent on your car insurance”; Perry Beider’s joke about failed meteorologists turning to economic forecasting; Frank Osen about a George Parker selling an NFT of the Brooklyn Bridge — Parker was a con man who repeatedly “sold” control of said bridge to duped immigrants, hence the saying “If you believe that, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you”; and the triply credited joke about Tom Brady heading to the Federal Reserve because of his success in overcoming inflation. I almost ran two funny (and somewhat similar) entries that spoof the trivia genre — except that they’re not untrue: If you balance a Millard Fillmore Presidential Dollar on its edge during the spring equinox, it will still be an unpopular coin that virtually no one uses. (Mark Calandra) If you hold the latest version of the $500 bill up to the light and closely examine the reverse side, you can easily discern that you have much more readily available cash than the average person. (David Stonner) I had a strong feeling that earlier fictoid contests also had a few truebies: If you laid all of the arteries, arterioles, capillaries, venules and veins in your body end to end, you’d die. (Martin Heath, Week 812, medical trivia) “West Side Story” was originally envisioned as a straight play set in Renaissance Italy. (Russell Beland, Week 768, movie trivia) If you stand atop the DAR Building with binoculars and look toward the White House, you are likely to learn more about snipers than you need to know. (Jeff Brechlin, Week 1109, D.C. trivia) And then there was Ward Kay’s about a state’s highest-paid employee being the college football coach — and it’s lowest-paid one the college football player … followed by “Oh, wait, it’s supposed to be false.” This may be the first of such entries — I’ve gotten many of them over the years — that got ink from me. And finally there’s Gary Crockett, who says his fictoid is true as well: If all of Jeff Bezos’s wealth were converted into a stack of $100 bills, the stack would be higher than his rocket can fly. But not higher than Elon’s can. I asked Gary to show his work: Bezos (as of today): 180 billion dollars = 1.8 billion $100 bills U.S. paper currency is .0043 inches thick. 1,800,000,000 x .0043 = 7,740,000 inches 1 mile = 63,360 inches 7,740,000* 63,360 = 122.16 miles Elon's rockets have flown to the International Space Station, which is 254 miles above the Earth. Bezos's New Shepard launcher took Captain Kirk to a height of 63 miles, and is not capable of much beyond that. Their next generation, the New Glenn, would be able to fly over the stack of money. It was planned to launch in 2020, but they've had lots of trouble with the engine design. It will at the very earliest fly later this year, and at this point it would be surprising if they even made that goal. But how many Loser magnets? ====================================================================== WEEK 1477, published February 27, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1477: Great contest, will run again! The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s Walmart review contest and sign results No stars! Joey, the Empress's late Favorite Cat Ever, was either plotting revenge or rationalizing that he'd be getting the Salmon With Gravy later, so whatever, as he modeled a lion's-mane headband. This product is one of the ones to be “reviewed” in Style Invitational Week 1477. (TWP) By Pat Myers February 24, 2022 at 4:17 p.m. EST The Style Invitational’s first contest for spoofy online product reviews — Week 960, exactly 10 years ago today — was inspired by a series of rapturous odes to a plastic jug of Tuscan brand milk that were posted by various wags on Amazon. One Philip Tone, playing off Wine Specator magazine: “ … Sip gently, slowly, or one is in danger of not only missing the subtleties of the milk’s texture and its terroir. … Tuscan is best drunk young — I recommend pairing with freshly baked macadamia nut scones. Milk Expectorator gives this one a 92.” That week, I invited the Loser Community to weigh in similarly on dishcloths, emery boards, a spool of thread, a pocket comb and a box of Morton’s salt. Today, in Week 1477, you have your choice to extol (or lament) your choice of a shoehorn, a whistle, a loaf of white sandwich bread, an alarm clock, a roll of duct tape, a Slinky, a clear plastic box, and — lately we’ve had one offbeat product — a “lion’s mane” to put on a cat, as in the handsome leonine specimen atop this page: my amazingly tolerant Joey (he obviously wasn’t happy, but he didn’t bite or scratch over it). That the specific products we’re using are listed on Walmart’s website rather than the usual Amazon (together, everyone: 🎵 Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post🎵) shouldn’t affect the contest in the least; it’s just a leetle twist. The best way to show what I’m looking for in these reviews is to show you the ones that got ink in the earlier contests. At first, I was really worried that a negative review — even if it were obviously a joke — could damage the product’s rating average or somehow unintentionally cause it harm, but I don’t think that’s even possible with these products on walmart.com. Still, don’t write that, say, you found glass shards in the bread, or anything else that could be considered libelous. Here are links to the previous results, plus some selected gems from those contests: Week 960, 2012 (scroll past the week’s new contest to the winning reviews) Week 1098, 2014 (link goes straight to the results) Week 1244, 2017 Week 1321, 2019 (“World’s Best Dish Cloths — Set of 12 — Assorted Colors”) Sure, you can purchase other dish cloths, but you’ll need to buy these in the end anyway — just so you can wipe up your salty tears of regret from having bought the World’s Second Best Dish Cloth first. (Art Grinath, Week 960) (A spool of white thread) All the gals in our ladies’ auxiliary swear it’s white thread or nothing! And Dual Duty Plus is the best. We want our men’s robes and masks looking as spotless as can be when they set out on their missions to rescue America from the powers of darkness. (John Shea, Week 960) I’m not sure if it’s the grain size or the iodine, but this salt is much better than kosher or sea salt. Just sprinkle on any open wound and oh, oooooh YES! (Bird Waring, Week 960) (“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, winner of Week 1098) My Pringles can came in the mail and it worked great as a maraca. But did you know that one side of it comes off fairly easily? The styrofoam-like innards slid out of my maraca and onto the floor, and the dog ate some. Should I call poison control? (Mike Gips, Week 1098) (Paper clips) This product is hopelessly confusing. I can never tell whether the small inside loop is supposed to go on top, or the big outside end. Where is the instruction manual? (Ken Gallant, Week 1098) (Paper clips) Drop the double-daggered stapler! Skip the scalding hot-glue gun! Toss the tacks and tricky tape That sticks and rips when it’s undone! Dodge the punch and crushing grip Of lever-action binder clip! Instead use these, which barely dent, And keep your work nonviolent. (Peter Shawhan, Week 1098) (Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil) It really works to block UFO thought control! The proof is in the anagram: WALL UP YOUR MIND FROM ALIENS! (Jesse Frankovich, winner of Week 1244) (Toenail clippers) They work okay but are too noisy. And it’s not just me — everyone else in the restaurant seemed annoyed, too. (Larry Yungk, Week 1244) (Poop emoji pool float) Highly inaccurate — one look at this poop and you can tell it would be a sinker, not a floater. For reference on what is and is not a floater, I have attached several photos … (Todd DeLap, Week 1244) (White handkerchiefs) Who would have guessed that carrying my mucus in my pocket all day could be so stylish? (David Kleinbard, Week 1321) (Shoelaces) My doctor told me to get a neti pot, but these were way cheaper! The plastic bits on the end hurt, though, so only 4 stars. (Todd DeLap. Week 1321) (64-ounce block of Velveeta) I think they changed the recipe — doesn’t taste anything like the real thing. I finally finished the 32-ounce block I purchased in 1953 at the A&P, and it was sooooo much better than this crap. (Warren Tanabe, Week 1321) (Toilet paper holder) Just once, I wish they would design one of these things that could be refilled by spouses and children. (Robyn Carlson, Week 1321) Highway ribbery*: The sign contest of Week 1473 *Headline submitted by too many people to credit individually Our second running of a contest for road sign messages — the first was more than 15 years ago — clearly appealed to Invite readers who don’t usually enter (results of Week 1473 here); I heard from 259 Losers, rather than the 150 to 200 who enter most weeks (the horse name contest still rules with about 400 entrants). That’s probably because it doesn’t require the research or the wordcraft that some Invite contests require, and also because it’s fun to use the sign generators I linked to at the still bare-bones atom.smasher.org. And it could also be that funny people have their own jokes that they always say while they’re in traffic, and here was the chance to share them with the world. I was delighted to discover that we have four First Offenders this week — last week we had one; the week before that, zero. Because I can’t run an automatic counter on entries with multiple line endings, I don’t know how many entries I got in all; I think there were at least 2,000, though, since I saw many submissions with long lists of entries. I wouldn’t be shocked, or even much dismayed, if some of these jokes turn out to have been told before. I didn’t turn up anything identical with some cursory Googling, but if you’ve seen it before, and can’t enjoy it again, just keep reading the rest of the 42 inking entries, and try to restrain your outrage that someone will score a whole refrigerator magnet for a joke you heard before sort of. Go honk at other drivers or something. In fact, most of this week’s inking entries were my favorites among several (or many) with the same idea. Wordle, the fad game of the moment, was mentioned by 17 separate entrants; lots of them were good but I chose one by Melissa Balmain: PUT DOWN YOUR PH- - -*DON’T BE A D-M-Y* WORDLE CAN WAIT. I got a lot of “kosher” jokes for the barbecue joint marquee (and a couple with “halal”) but thought Jonathan Jensen’s elegantly pithy “Closed for Yom Kippur” was by far the best of the bunch — and, unlike some, not offensive, like some that encouraged Jews to eat the pork anyway. Aside from “Closed for Yom Kippur,” the other three entries in the Losers’ Circle were unique ideas among the entries: Jeff Rackow’s ATTENTION SELF-DRIVING CARS: COMMENCE THE REVOLUTION NOW!; Martin Bancroft’s off-the-wall (and complementing this week’s new contest) FIVE STARS! EXCELLENT DELAY! WOULD SIT THROUGH AGAIN; and Stephen Dudzik’s PLEASE CLEAR THIS RUNWAY IMMEDIATELY. That one got Steve his first Clowning Achievement trophy — but his 16th Invite win: One of our 16 Hall of Famers (500 blots of ink all-time), Steve is one of very, very few Losers to have gotten ink in every one of the Invite’s 29 years of existence; I believe the only others are Tom Witte, Elden Carnahan and Dave Zarrow. Today’s win gives him Ink No. 607. And this was before my time — more than 20 years ago — but as far as I know, Steve has so far been the only Loser to invite a tableful of other Losers to his wedding. I understand that no one set off a whoopee cushion or water balloon at the fete. What Doug Dug: The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, from among the 36 entries (out of 42) that fit on the print page: Scott Richards’s HWY DEDICATED TO TROOPER SMITH, POTHOLES DEDICATED TO SEN MANCHIN; Jonathan Jensen’s and First Offender Bill Grewe’s SEE A DISTRACTED DRIVER? TEXT ‘SAFETY’ TO 73826 (an updated version of the phone-call version of the joke in 2006); Don Norum’s WELCOME TO DC* IT’S BEEN: 416 DAYS*SINCE OUR LAST COUP ATTEMPT; and, for the barbecue marquee: Terri Berg Smith’s KERMIE! SAVE ME! Loser Robert Marzec saw this marquee in Coon Rapids, Minn., a while back. (Culver's Butterburgers, by the way, are burgers with a buttery bun, not giant butter sandwiches. Similarly good for you, though. They do have great milkshakes.) (-) Next Loser sighting: Brunch buffet, March 20 I unfortunately have a conflict that day, but otherwise I’d definitely waddle to and from to the giant old-fashioned breakfast*lunch buffet tables at Normandie Farm in Potomac, Md., first-time site of the next Loser brunch. There’s everything from lox and bagels to a full plate of roast turkey with cranberry sauce. There’s also regular menu service. Mask at the buffet, of course. That’s Sunday, March 20, at noon. See a whole year’s (tentative) brunch and party schedule on the Our Social Engorgements page at the Losers’ own website, NRARS.org. Meanwhile, 20 of us had an especially good time this past Sunday at the Spanish Diner in Bethesda, with some of the longest-term Losers, like Steve Dudzik with wife Lequan, and Roy and Inge Ashley, as well as several newbies, like rookies David Stonner and Paul and Lori Lipman Brown (both of whom got ink this week!). It’s been one of the great pleasures of being Empress for the past 18-plus years that I’ve gotten to meet hundreds of Invite contestants and fans, and call many of them my friends. And being able to judge the contest blindly means that I can’t even unconsciously give ink to someone because she complimented me at a brunch — or deny it to the guy who, once, after a lunch, wrote to me to say how surprised how old we all were; I was three years his senior. Wall-to-wall Loserdom at the Spanish Diner Feb. 21. On the left toward the back, Royal Consort Mark Holt, David Stonner, the Empress, Paul and Lori Brown; on the right, fan Stephanie Smilay, Jonathan Jensen, Leif Picoult, Roy and Inge Ashley. More Losers at the next table as well. (restaurant photo*Pat Myers) Now, more than ever: Make 'em laugh! Just as I was listening to last night’s terrible news on the radio, I was heartened by this email I received from an Invite fan who wanted to be on the mailing list for my weekly notification newsletters: "You have made me laugh so much in the 6 years since I moved to DMV [the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia region]. However, your weekly Style Invitational was an even greater bonus during the worst of the pandemic. There was so little joy & so little to laugh about but somehow all the people who submitted entries find a way to see the humor in the irrational, the sad & sometimes even the plain old humorous thing in life. Thank you. Truly. Julia M Cruz" ====================================================================== WEEK 1478, published March 6, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1478: Speak-songs with words everyone knows The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest for poems using the 1,000 most common words (not ‘poem’) By Pat Myers Yesterday at 5:18 p.m. EST Though they were all issued before Obsessive Loser Duncan Stevens started entering The Style Invitational, Duncan managed to accumulate enough vintage Loser T-shirts (mostly as substitutes for other prizes) to make this enormous, totally Loserly quilt. (Courtesy of Duncan Stevens) I love how Randall Munroe explains how he compiled his list of the 1,000 most common words in English: “The set of ten hundred words in Thing Explainer comes from putting together many ways of counting how much people use a word to come up with a single set of ten hundred words that should sound familiar and simple to lots of people.” To write that in his blog, Munroe surely used his own Thing Explainer Word Checker, which immediately flags which words aren’t on the list. It’s a bit coy in that he doesn’t say what those “many ways of counting are” — not to mention he doesn’t even show us the list — but this checker works like a charm, and it’s why we’re going to use it for Style Invitational Week 1478, our contest for poems made from any of these 1,000 words. This nifty checker will make it more fun to write poems for this week's Style Invitational than it was for a similar contest in 2014. Randall Munroe — creator of the sciency webcomic xkcd.com and the marvelous US Space Team’s Up Goer Five — was also my inspiration the first time I ran this contest (Week 1069 in July 2014), at the suggestion of Loser Ben Aronin. ADVERTISING But that time, the 1,000-word list I used turned out to be a little questionable — for one thing, it was drawn from a database of TV and movie scripts, which meant that it included words like “murder” and “Antonio.” And I ran an online validator that time as well, done by a fan of xkcd, but it seems to have been based on a different list from the one I sent contestants to; this list was also a little odd (“smirk,” “focus” and “glare” but not “cow” or “pig” or “tired,” from a random check). The fan did supply a word list, but when I tried to share it this morning with the Style Invitational Devotees on Facebook, FB refused to show it because it deemed it spam. Anyway, this time we’ll all be using the elegant Simple Writer — and because you have to use the tool to write your entry, I don’t have to worry that you accidentally used an invalid word. And because its range remains to be discovered, I’ll be curious to find out what does and doesn’t come through this time. Last-minute update! Since I posted the Invite online this morning, Loser Kevin Dopart turned up this Giant Mess of Words that might be The List. Feel free to use it, but make sure you still run your entry through Simple Writer. Some notes: You may add a title — and it doesn’t have to qualify as simple. You may use two or more short words to substitute for a non-simple word, but only because it’s funny and creative to do so. You would have to run them as separate words or hyphenated, or else your word will be flagged as not simple. So if you used “so-up” for “soup,” it would have to be clear to the reader what the heck you meant. Take it from me (and from haters of our Joint Legislation contests): Long strings of these syllables that you have to puzzle out can become wearisome and a dubious stretch. As always, rhyming poems have to have “perfect rhyme.” Art poetry and Invite poetry can overlap, but when your main goal is funny*clever*zingy rather than lyrical*poignant, true rhymes and clear, consistent meter tends to get you there better. I won’t run worm*swarm, yellow*fellows, etc., and frown on identities — when the last accented syllables of two lines are the same rather than rhyming (leave*believe). Limericks have to be in limerick form, not kind-of limerick form. Don’t worry about formatting each poem into one line. While I usually ask you not to enter any line breaks within a single Invite entry so that I can shuffle up everyone’s entry alphabetically and super-anonymously, that’s just not workable with poems unless they’re all haiku or some other li’l thing. So I’ll see each entrant’s submission as a whole; i.e., if you send seven poems on one entry form, I’ll see them all together. But still, I won’t see your name — so really, not a big deal. (To be totally honest: If you send, say, 15 poems and I love 12 of them, I’m not going to pick all 12 from who I know is the same person. Conversely, if you send 25 poems and 24 of them are pieces of doo-doo, I will do my best to notice that very good 25th one, the 17th one in the list, but it does run some risk of not being properly appreciated.) I am 100 percent certain that I will have tons of fabulous material to choose from. Here’s some of what I chose for Week 1069 (full results here; scroll down past that week’s new contest to see the poems); because we used a different validator, the poems probably won’t work totally with Simple Writer. The winner of the Inkin' Memorial Same sex marriage? Why the fight? It’s good for both the left and right. The left: “This cause the law protects.” The right: “More weddings mean less sex.” (Mark Raffman; "protects" wouldn't work this time) I think that I shall never see A word picture as good-looking as a very big stick that is alive would be. (Gary Crockett, a runner-up) Just Saying . . . Your daughter’s going on a date You tell her not to come home late, To watch her step and never drink — (That stupid stuff won’t let you think!) And one more thing she better know: That boys are always hot to go! Your job is done! (Be glad your kid Has no idea of what you did . . .) (Beverley Sharp, a runner-up) “Hamlet” as a limerick: I’m down now that Father is dead And his brother takes Mother to bed. My girl just got mad When I did in her dad. No wonder I’m out of my head! (Chris Doyle) I have a big girlfriend, about six-feet-five, And so hot that she makes me feel glad I’m alive. I got up on a box to make love face-to-face – And that was the night that I first fell from Grace. (Craig Dykstra) And Really Last: The idea for this week was to write something fun From a list of a thousand small words, which you’ve done. Now I’ve read what you sent me and, take it from me, You’d do well not to give up your day job. – The E. (Chris Doyle) A match made in hyphen*: The results of Week 1474 *Non-inking (too long) headline by Jesse Frankovich, who inked instead with “Hyphen Help Us” Get started Advertisement By LinkedIn Browse the latest open jobs. See more For the umpteenth time, and in the umpteenth-minus-a-few variation, the Week 1474 Hyphen the Terrible contest yielded dozens of zingy neologisms and various political digs from various halves of hyphenated words and phrases found in The Post and other publications. Because such a contest requires some searching through at least a few articles, it’s not surprising that there were fewer entrants than usual (resulting in more multiple ink for a few) and no First Offenders. While each term was made from syllables on one side or other of a hyphen, I left the hyphens out of some of the neologisms themself they would have detracted from the understanding of the word. For example, Tom Witte’s interrogato — a curious cat — was formed from Interroga-tion + go-to; if I ran it as “interroga-to,” it would have messed up the “gato.” I showed the original syllables for the top four entries, to show the reader how the contest worked, then left out the rest, since they rarely add to the joke itself and become a bit tiresome to read. Some neologisms depended too much on the original words; for instance, “Disbia” — the state of having no voice — was the joining of Dis-trict and Colum-bia; as in no meaningful representation in Congress. But you can’t recognize that from the outer-syllable “disbia.” (And were I to spell that all that out, it probably would have felt heavy-handed to the reader.) The inking entries, more than 40 of them, work well as either portmanteaux, combining two recognizable words, or roots with prefixes or suffixes — plus one threebie: Kevin Dopart’s rip-up-licans, referring, like this week’s winning entry involving toilets, to the former president’s disposal of records that are required by law to be preserved. It was a banner week for Loser Steve Smith, who returns after a few months off to claim his third Clowning Achievement trophy — or, more precisely, a little “III” pennant to stick onto his single Clowner (in our 100 Clowners for 100 Losers program). Steve combined the first halves of “paper-work” and “privi-lege” to make paper-privi, “the repository for highly sensitive Trump administration documents.” (The former guy denies having flushed his presidential papers down the White House toilets, though New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman says in her new book that staffers discovered a royal loo clogged with something other than Charmin.) Steve also picked up honorable mentions with St.-Ick, a sketchy Santa, and confectious, what a snotty 4-year-old’s birthday cake can be. The Losers’ Circle was filled out by Hall of Famer Gary Crockett’s non-nouncement, politicians’ stock, highly suspect answer about whether they’ll run for higher office: “I’m 100 percent focused on the job the voters elected me to do”; Ann Martin’s misinforma-ven, “someone who does his own research”; and Leif Picoult’s de-tween, to take the Super Mario sheets off the bed of the ninth-grader. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood tells me that he got a laugh (or four) out of all the “above-the-fold” winners, and also singled out from the honorable mentions: Kevin Dopart’s lib-surdity, “any criticism of the dynamic tourism at the Capitol that day,” attributed to the RNC; Jonathan Jensen’s de-publican, who “won’t Manchin any names”; Tom Witte’s interrogato, a curious cat; Jeff Contompasis’s pre-publicans, “advocates of police defunding who have yet to be mugged”; Barbara Turner’s solo-plause, from that one person who doesn’t know when not to clap (it would have been perfect for Sen. Chuck Schumer at the State of the Union this past Tuesday); and especially Jesse Frankovich’s life-free, describing someone who’d spend a ridiculous amount of time looking for hyphenated words. I had marked a few entries that illustrate what doesn’t work in a neologism contest, but I think I’ll save them for advice the next time I run one, rather than a postmortem. Next Loser sighting: brunch March 20, Potomac, Md. (Reprinted from last week) I unfortunately have a conflict that day, but otherwise I’d definitely waddle to and from to the giant old-fashioned breakfast*lunch buffet tables at Normandie Farm in Potomac, Md., first-time site of the next Loser brunch. There’s everything from lox and bagels to a full plate of roast turkey with cranberry sauce. There’s also regular menu service. Mask at the buffet, of course. That’s Sunday, March 20, at noon. See a whole year’s (tentative) brunch and party schedule on the Our Social Engorgements page at the Losers’ own website, NRARS.org. As always, any Losers, Friends*Handlers of Losers, and Just Fans are totally welcome. ====================================================================== WEEK 1479, published March 13, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1479: A Czar is born The Empress of The Style Invitational salutes her predecessor. Plus a look at this week’s contest and results. By Pat Myers Yesterday at 5:45 p.m. EST The first Style Invitational ran without further explanation — and a challenge that continued to be a poser for almost 30 years — on the front page of the Sunday Style section. No byline, no “Czar.” Last weekend I had the pleasure of gathering with a group of old friends of Gene Weingarten at the home of Tom “The Butcher” Shroder, Gene’s longtime editor, to celebrate Gene and to commemorate the end of his 31 years at The Post — as an editor, essayist, Pulitzer-winning long-form feature writer, humor columnist … and Style Invitational creator — by presenting him with a custom-made 88-page tribute book, intended only for him. The book-for-one (though written as if others would read it as well, someday) contains 14 little chapters, each a reminiscence by a different friend*colleague. Many of the contributors worked with Gene at the Miami Herald before he came to D.C. in 1990; several of them had followed him to The Post. I was honored (and intimidated) to be asked to appear among the work of such household names as Joel Achenbach, Marc Fisher, David von Drehle, Caitlin Gibson, Gina Barecca, former Post executive editor Len Downie — and Gene’s BFF Dave Barry, whom Gene hired as a humor columnist at the Herald after reading a piece he’d written for the Philadelphia Inquirer (at the time, Dave’s job was teaching writing skills to businesspeople). Here’s my contribution: A Czar Is Born: Gene and The Style Invitational, 1993-2003 On March 7, 1993, regular readers of the Sunday Washington Post were greeted with something of a surprise when they reached Section F. Over the years, the Sunday Style section had slumped into little more than the vestiges of Style’s pre-1970 incarnation, For and About Women. Anchored by a few ads for the city’s obsolescent department stores, Sunday Style featured the social calendar, a little fashion coverage, and a usually tepid, puffy, overlong main feature that no one wanted to run elsewhere. But that was before the reins of the section were handed to Gene Weingarten, who gave exactly 0.000 craps about any of those subjects. That Sunday in March, the 3,500-word feature story dominating Page F1 was headlined “Getting Burned: A Look Back at the Navy’s Mustard-Gas Experiments. It's Enough to Make You Sick.” Next to it was an essay: “Noted With … Disdain,” by Gene Weingarten. The disdain was for the new President Clinton’s choice of wristwear: a Timex Ironman Triathlon, “a plastic digital watch, thick as a brick and handsome as a hernia.” And at the bottom of the page was a box: “Introducing: The Style Invitational: Week 1.” There was no byline, no “welcome to our new humor feature.” An anonymous “we” put forth the first challenge: “ … Should the team change its name? Being typical pandering journalists, we take no position ourselves. We merely suspect the Redskin name is doomed, and when that occurs, we wish to be ready with an alternative. So give us one. … Entries will be judged on humor, originality and appropriateness to Washington.” And for the victor? “The first-prize winner gets an elegant Timex Ironman Triathlon digital watch, valued at $39.” The Invite immediately rocketed to astonishing success among readers. The writer identified so far only as “we” announced receiving 3,400 entries to Week 5, a contest to link congressional names into “joint legislation” (e.g., the Traficant-DeLay-Akaka Roadside Port-a-Potty Act). And the anonymity of this “we” — combined with a voice that became more conspicuous and more hilarious as the weeks, months and years progressed — created the most welcome of buzzes. Gene, of course, gloried in it, eventually conferring upon himself an imperial moniker. Five months in: “We have received calls and letters requesting the name of the Czar of the Style Invitational. Regrettably, we cannot disclose this. At The Post, it is a closely guarded secret, like the identity of Deep Throat, which is known only to Bob Woodward and the Czar of The Style Invitational. Thank you.”) This tease of anonymity inevitably created even more of a mystique, and an even more feverish obsession among its clever, funny, nerdy entrants, who formed a proto-social-media community: keeping meticulous standings, sending out a snail-mail newsletter (Depravda) and meeting in person at monthly brunches. Of course, the Czar declined their invitations to join them, or to have anything else to do with his minions, thus enhancing his allure even further. ADVERTISING The Style Invitational’s brand of humor was, certainly in the 1990s, waayyyy edgier than anything else in the paper. Poop jokes. Sexual double-entendres. Snarky gibes at politicians. At political correctness. At religion. At West Virginians. But it was also, consistently, supremely witty, often featuring sophisticated wordplay and erudite references; a contest was as likely to ask for a limerick about Bosnia-Herzegovina as it was for a joke based on noises such as “Kaboom, kablooie, kablamm, duh.” In 2001, Post ombudsman Michael Getler carped that the Invite occasionally “lapses into vulgarity and just plain bad taste,” but also conceded that it could be “very clever and laugh-out-loud funny.” And readers loved it passionately. When the Invite went on hiatus in early 2000, a barrage of complaints and pleas from outraged fans brought it back, sassy as ever. As copy desk chief in Style, I’d become close friends with Gene since his arrival at The Post in 1990; he was working as an editor in the daily section. For some reason he was looking for anagrams for “The Washington Post” and I came up with “Wet Hogs in Hot Pants” and that seemed to make me his kind of colleague. And so when he started up the Invite, he’d typically bounce contest ideas off me, ask my opinions on various entries, etc., though Gene did all the judging himself, every week. Gene might have asked my opinions, but Gene has a firm philosophy of humor, and it’s just a weeny bit in jest. It is that a joke is intrinsically hysterically funny, mildly funny, or unfunny — and that the best judge, and quite possibly the only true judge, of that funniness is Gene N. Weingarten. Sure, other people can find a joke funnier or less funny than Gene does; happens all the time. But those people are wrong. That approach served the Czar supremely as sometimes thousands of Style Invitational entries flowed in each week, first by snail mail, then fax, then email, for 535 weeks, stretching almost 11 years and encompassing a host of humor genres: inventing words and phrases; writing cartoon captions; writing various forms of light verse, such as limericks, double dactyls and even forms the Czar coined himself; and some daringly off-the-wall stuff like “What does God look like?” or running just a big square of empty space, no instructions, just “First prize gets …” And just after Sept. 11, 2001, a contest whose only directions were “Make us laugh.” The Czar and Empress do a selfie in 2015. Pre-pandemic, we'd get together over lunch a few times a year to work the NTY Split Decisions puzzle. (Pat Myers*TWP) Gene finally brought the Czar’s reign to an end near the end of 2003. He’d been writing a weekly column for the Post Magazine for more than three years, and now he’d be leaving Style entirely to become a full-time writer there as well. But he didn’t let the Invite die: That December the Czar was rudely deposed in print — a black crayon was scribbled across his final words — by an anonymous Empress, who picked up the ball and is still running with it, 18 years and 900-plus columns later: The Invite will celebrate its 30th anniversary in March 2023. The “coup,” of course, was Gene’s idea. I’d filled in as his designated “Auxiliary Czar” when Gene took a few weeks off in 1995 and a few months off in 2001; he and I were the only people who’d ever judged the contest. So while it made sense that I’d take it over, I was wildly intimidated, knowing that I couldn’t match Gene’s creativity and writing talent. Nobody could. I literally could not have done it — I would have failed horribly, and immediately — without Gene’s continued, enormously generous support behind the scenes those first few months, and to this day. I’ll say (as I did just a couple of weeks ago), “I need you to write a poem about someone who died in 2021, for an example for our obit poem contest,” and boom, there’s a double dactyl about Tommy Lasorda’s famed foul mouth: Higgledy Piggledy Tommy Lasorda was Quite the field manager — Smart, and with pluck. Angry and colorful, Vocabularically: $%&, %#!* and #$!& and &!@$! And to this day, I’ll regularly send Gene a shortlist of several dozen entries and he’ll tell me his favorites. Which, of course, he deems the only correct choices. And which I sometimes end up ignoring. So I can only attribute the survival of our 30-year best-friendship — by far the longest and closest I’ve had with anyone but my husband — to our shared love for the food of the Indian subcontinent. And maybe the discovery of wet hogs in hot pants. Pat Myers has been the Empress of The Style Invitational since 2003 and has fussed over commas and such for all of Gene’s books. The march of fives: This week’s WordleVite contest Just this morning I saw an interoffice email inviting staffers to attend a “games brainstorm session” to come up with some neat puzzles and games that The Post might offer to readers. I wonder how many of the attendees had already compared their Wordle scores and were now looking for two more six-letter Spelling Bee words to reach Queen Bee. I can’t account for the meteoric and sweeping success of this simple word puzzle, which the New York Times bought from creator Josh Wardle three months after it debuted — and already had 10 million users. It appeals to me — here’s the NYT link to it, with simple directions — because there’s just one quick game every 24 hours; you can’t get sucked into it. There’s a lot of luck involved to think of a few five-letter words whose letters and their positions will quickly help reveal the word of the day, but there’s skill and even strategy involved as well. (I still haven’t failed to get it within the allotted six tries, but it’s inevitable.) Anyway, much as we did with a neologism contest inspired by the NYT Spelling Bee game, The Style Invitational is not ashamed to nod to the Gray Lady with this week’s Wordle-adjacent contest, Week 1479. The Invite isn’t a puzzle; it’s a humor contest whose primary aim is to provide readers with funny, clever material. But as always, I hope that the Loser Community — including, I hope, many people who’ve found us this week through Wordle-of-mouth — will have lots of fun producing that material in exchange for some cheap trinket or, more likely, nothing but a feeling of being slighted. To be honest, Week 1479 and Wordle don’t have that much in common — really, it’s just two elements: 1. A progression of five-letter words. 2. The “green” squares that establish that a certain letter appears in the final word, in the proper position. And four weeks from now, I’ll probably run the winning entry as a Wordlish graphic — and everyone else’s as a stack of plain words (or maybe even one line). When I was hashing out this contest with Melissa Balmain, who suggested it along with several examples, the question was how to keep some connection with the principles of Wordle while still allowing lots of humor and creativity. The first option was to simply ask for a string of five-letter words, no other restrictions. But that seemed too unWordly — especially were they to run in a Wordle-type grid. Conversely, I could have demanded that the “yellow” letters — the right letters but in the wrong spot — had to continue to appear in subsequent words. And I could have insisted that the “gray” letters, those ruled out as not appearing in the final word at all, couldn’t continue to be used. Ultimately I went with just enough to keep the process connected with the game of Wordle: It comes down to the green letters, the ones in the right position. As long as they don’t move out of place before the final word, you’re good. You can’t omit that letter and put it back in, though. More clarifications: You may use a letter more than once in any word, including the final word. That rule makes real Wordle harder to solve, and affects our contest a bit as well. Let’s say the final word is PIPES, and your first word is PLOTZ. You can’t then follow PLOTZ with YIPES, because your correct P has to stay where it is. The second P is its own letter. You can check for your own green letters with the tool at mywordle.strivemath.com; you just type in your progression. Don’t worry about the grays and yellows. (Thanks to Loser Jeff Contompasis for finding this.) You may add punctuation at the end of a word. That’s very unWordle, but I think we’re going to need it. Try to avoid apostrophes within words, but I’m not going to disqualify them. You may reuse a “gray” letter that doesn’t appear in the final word. In real Wordle, this would be a waste because you couldn’t learn anything from it — and so it’s sort of out of character with a real Wordle progression — but it’s not against the rules. Unlike in Wordle, you may use proper nouns in your word series, as in the Putin example. You could even make up a word, if it would contribute to a funny entry. “Yellow” letters — ones that will appear in the final word, but in different places — really aren’t part of this contest. If you have a yellow letter in the first word, you may omit it in the second word (just as you might strategically in Wordle). A BIG NOTE ON THE FORMATTING: DO NOT MAKE YOUR WORD PROGRESSION INTO A GRID! As I said above, the entries will run either as stacked words or in a single line. Please assume the latter, since I’d have to put in coding to stack them anyway: SO ALL YOU DO IS WRITE YOUR WORDS LIKE A SENTENCE, on one line, then continue — on the same line — with the description of your phrase. Don’t bother with boldface, underlines, etc.; to show the Wordality; they won’t transmit on this entry form. Your description can be either terse or not-so-terse. Melissa’s examples were very brief, but if you have a phrase that you can make a joke about, use in a sentence, etc., have at it. Remember: We have readers. Jest for the Hail of it*: The songs and cheers of Week 1475 *Non-inking headline by Jon Gearhart The newly named Washington Commanders, previously the Washington Football Team and before that the Washington Racist Slurs, brought forth dozens of spirited fight songs and cheers in the results of Week 1475, none of which you’ll ever see in flashing graphics on the Jumbotron. ” It’s that happy-for-the-Invite combination of an universally loathed, extortionate billionaire team owner — now embroiled in all sorts of legal trouble over allegations of the sleaziest kind of workplace sexual harassment — an embarrassing team name that the owner fought tooth and nail to keep until his business sponsors refused to work with him anymore; and a team that — no coincidence here — hasn’t been in the Super Bowl since 1992. Formerly the hottest ticket in football — families would pass their season tickets down through generations — the team now often plays at home to louder noise from fans of the other team, as Mark Raffman mentions in his inking entry today. On the other hand, I also opened the contest for songs and cheers for other institutions, which produced a fruitful variety of parodies, far more good ones than I have room for this week. As I often do, I’ll post some ink-robbery victims in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group over the next week or so; you can search for #parodies. Thanks to some Losers who are musically talented and*or technically savvy, this week’s online results include three entertaining videos, all of which supply the lyrics in subtitles. It’s the first ink above the fold for rookie Marty Gold — who plays clarinet in the Army Band but here just sings — and his video parody of “Maria” (“Commanders, we’ve rebranded as the commanders …”), which scored second place and the lovely turkey socks. Baltimorean Jonathan Jensen once again served up a fine video effort, featuring himself three times over as he offers his solution for Washington fans: Look north. Craig Dykstra offers lots of animation in a parody of “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” to express disgust with the team for which he’s been a longtime season ticket holder. But really, Craig’s funnier effort was a one-minute video that I didn’t think I should run, because of a slur, even though it was said in jest. It’s about the team name (and other regrettable aspects), in which Craig affects a Jimmy Durante voice to footage of a “Flintstones” cartoon. It’s very funny. I just wish he hadn’t used that last line. ====================================================================== WEEK 1480, published March 20, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1480: Eclegme, baby! The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest for fake meanings of OED words, and the results of the Googlenopes*'Yups contest. By Pat Myers Yesterday at 5:23 p.m. EDT Her nose almost to the magnifying glass, the Empress peers at the Oxford English Dictionary — “reproduced micrographically” — in search of weird-looking words to misuse in Style Invitational Week 1480. There was usually such a word when she opened to any random page. (Mark Holt) Note: Last-minute change to the brunch venue this Sunday, and still time to sign up; see the item farther down. Our many trivia-spoofing “fictoid” contests aside, The Style Invitational doesn’t often ask you to ignore the real meaning of a word, or facts of some situation, when we ask for a joke about it. Every May, for example, we have a contest to write poems that use words from that year’s National Spelling Bee — and you’re required to use the word correctly. But several times, beginning in Week 744 in 2007, we’ve asked for some blissful ignorance of various archaic and other obscure words, and to make up definitions that are funnier than the real thing, and perhaps repurpose the word to fill a need in Real English — a word that’s used In Real Life is a perennial goal in every neologism contest. This week’s Invitational, Week 1480, is our fourth go-round. ADVERTISING The earlier ones each drew words from a small section of the Oxford English Dictionary (forwarded to me by others, since I lacked my own copy until the past year); this time they range the alphabet. There are a few Style Invitational neologisms and definitions that have caught on in my own life, if not the general English vocabulary (though many would be dang useful). One is Chris Doyle’s portmanteau “gestapolemics” — name-calling people as Nazis. Another is Walt Johnson’s “branacles,” “the dried bits of cereal stuck like glue to the bowl you should have rinsed before leaving for work.” And then there’s one from an OED contest: The word was “eclegme,” and the definition by Bruce Rusk was “Decorative but flavorless sauce dribbled around an restaurant entree. ‘Carl was unimpressed by the colorful eclegme surrounding his skimpy veal cutlet.’ ” To this day, on the rare occasions when the Royal Consort and I go out to dinner and are presented with a huge square plate with a precious little mote of actual food surrounded with flourishes of some sort of calligraphy-sauce, we’ll say, “Hope the eclegme is worth scraping up.” By the way, if you’re looking to pick up a Compact OED for yourself — and you have your own magnifying glass — here’s one for under $20, and the seller’s being wildly overgenerous in charging $2 shipping: Even with its almost microscopic type, the 4,000-page, two-volume mofo tips the scales at 17 pounds, sans slipcase. If you must know — and it is handy in that you don’t want to accidentally give the real meaning in your entry — at the bottom of this column are the real definitions (or at least one simplified one each) of the words. I was going to wait till the results ran to reveal the real meanings, but since Ultraloser Jesse Frankovich immediately started compiling a list of definitions as soon as I published the Invite this morning, I’ll share it with y’all now. I’m not listing pronunciations — read them as you will. (Note the two intended pronunciations for “assythe” in the results of Week 744.) Meanwhile, for guidance, inspiration and just The Laughs, here’s a sampling from our previous OED contests. First, here are the links to the full results. Note that all three sets of results include lots of quotes to enhance the humor of the entries: Text file (I don’t think it’s otherwise online) of the results of Week 744, 2007 (scroll down past the week’s new contest). That week also marked the debut of noting First Offenders and awarding them the Fir Stink for their first ink (the suggestion of Loser Russ Taylor). Text file of the results of Week 858, 2010 (same deal) And an actual online Invite, Week 1002, 2012 (still, you need to scroll down; our “jump link” to the results hadn’t been instituted yet) From Week 744: DEBOISE: The male package. “Billy won’t be playing in the second half against Bensonhurst. He got smacked in deboise.” (Tom Sullivan, Highland, Mich.-- a First Offender) BIZCACHA: Motivational blather before a sales meeting. “We set our monthly goal for syrup pickles, but we first had to wade through all that bizcacha.” (Lawrence McGuire, Waldorf) And the Winner of the Inker: DENNAGE: The stuff that Dad is allowed to keep only in his own room. “An arcade Pong console AND a Visible V-8 Engine — whoa, that’s some serious dennage.” (Bill Spencer, Baltimore) ADAD: A commercial for an infomercial. (Pam Sweeney, Germantown) ADAD: A very early clue that a baby will be dyslexic. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis) ADJECT: A campaign commercial deemed too slimy to run. [Now archaic.] (Elwood Fitzner, Valley City, N.D.) [recently outed as (Milo Sauer, Fairfax)] ASSYTHE: A heavy-duty surgical instrument: “When the scalpel is too small for the butt reduction surgery, the plastic surgeon pulls out the assythe.” (Horace LaBadie) [a fan of Gene Weingarten, Horace in recent years became a co-writer with Gene on the comic strip “Barney and Clyde”] ASSYTHE: What toothless hockey players shout when they help a teammate to score a goal. (Peter Metrinko) BLIN: The capital of Ireland before its expansion. (Kevin Dopart, Chris Doyle) DENNAGE: Gross weight measurement. The Grand Slam breakfast remains one of America’s most vital sources of dennage. (Larry Yungk) The Week 858 results, from 2010, give a hint why Mike Gips was eager to bring this contest back. 4. Exerce: Minimal activity logged as a workout: “As I sat in the tub, I got some exerce by fighting the current as the bathwater drained.” (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.) 3 Exossation: Deterioration of the spine that often occurs following a wedding ceremony. (Kyle Hendrickson, Frederick) 2. Effray: The invisible beam of pure malice emitted by a raised middle finger. (Andrea Kelly, Brookeville) And the winner of the Inker: Governail (actually a rudder): Pontius Pilate. (Mike Gips, Bethesda) Ebulum: That stuff left on the beach after the tide recedes. (Edmund Conti, Raleigh, N.C.) Ebulum: Oatmeal that dribbles back out of a baby’s mouth. (Michael Anderson, Billings, Mont.) Echeneis: The spray produced during a sneeze: “His gazpacho-laden echeneis left his date looking like Howdy Doody with the measles.” (Roy Ashley, Washington) Eglatere: A restaurant’s euphemism for an omelet that falls on the floor while being flipped. “The cook wiped off the dirt and droppings and sent the eglatere out to Table 3.” (Robert Inlow, Charlottesville) Eglatere: The French name for Easter Island. (Marie Baumann, Arlington, a First Offender) Emunge: The stuff that collects between the keys of your computer. (Ira Allen, Bethesda) Endship: Bogus camaraderie offered by someone who’s dumping you. “We can still have an endship.” (Russell Beland, Fairfax) Exossation: The tedium of playing 27 games of tic-tac-toe with your first-grader. (Peter Metrinko, Gainesville; Ken Gallant, Conway, Ark; and both John O’Byrne and John Stephenson of Dublin, who called it Noughts and Crosses) Fibutor: Someone who lies about giving at the office. (Christopher Lamora, Arlington) Hicket: A dense growth of rural necessities: “Surrounded by Bud’s Boot & Gun Emporium, A-1 Bail Bonds and a Waffle House, Thad realized too late he had driven straight into a hicket.” (Mark Gardiner, Faulkner, Md., just near those motels on Route 301) And from Week 1002 (2012): The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Hinderyeap: To pinch a friend in the rear to keep him from saying something stupid: “Hey, Mrs. Smith, when are you due? I didn’t even know you were — yeap!” (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) [Real definition: an adjective meaning cunning or deceitful] 2. Housty: The smell of someone who doesn’t get out much. “He spent so much time working on Invite entries that he developed a housty odor.” (Dixon Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.) [n., a sore throat] 3. INTI: Texting retort to “run that errand yourself” — I’m Not the Intern. (Ann Martin, Bracknell, England) [n., a former Peruvian unit of currency] 4. Hispidulous: Tending to spew saliva on others when speaking. “The hispidulous preacher’s congregation got used to being rebaptized every Sunday.” (Danielle Nowlin, Woodbridge, Va.) [adj., slightly bristly] Higgle: The disconcerting motion of man-boobs. “Only the Secret Service knew that Bill Clinton jogged with a sports bra for higgle control.” (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) [n., the adjusting of prices so that demand equals supply] Himple, n.: The pathetic result when a boy desperately uses a smear of Mom’s makeup before a date. (Tim Beach, Edgewater, Md. a First Offender) [v., to limp or hobble] Idiopt, n.: In a multiple-choice question, an answer that is obviously wrong and included for laughs. (Fred Dawson, Beltsville, Md.) [n., a colorblind person] Idiopt, v.: To knowingly make a stupid choice: “I guarantee Ben will idiopt to hit on the bouncer’s girlfriend.” (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.) Idiopt, v.: To sign up for “special marketing offers from our partners.” (Ben Aronin, Arlington, Va.; Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.) Ikat: Siri prototype that would not interact with the user, required attention at strange hours, and would not accept the battery charger that worked fine yesterday. (Dave Hanlon, Woodbridge, Va.; Bill Smith, Reston, Va.) [n., an Asian fabric decoration technique] Ding! Ding! New buffet site for this Sunday’s Loser brunch! Because of few sign-ups and a concerningly high price for a buffet, this Sunday’s Loser brunch (March 20) is being relocated from Normandie Farms in Potomac, Md., to La Fiamma Italian Kitchen, the successor to Paradiso, a longtime Loser venue on Franconia Road between Alexandria and Springfield, just outside the Beltway at the Van Dorn Street exit. Still at noon. Come hungry for the many tasty dishes in both the breakfast and Big Italian Meal mode. (You can order from the regular menu as well as the $30 buffet.) I’m really sorry to miss this one (I’m at an all-day choral festival). RSVP posthaste to Elden Carnahan at elden [dot] carnahan [at] gmail [dot] com. Har-hitters*: The Googlenopes and Googleyups of Week 1476 *Non-inking entry by Jesse Frankovich, who is all over this week’s Convo We did our first contest for Googlenopes (no results for a particular phrase within quotes) way back in 2007, and I’m truly amazed that, umpteen gazillions of search results later, you can still type in a few words and not find a website listed that contains that phrase. But the Loser Community found plenty of surprising, ironic and just plain funny ones in the results of Week 1476, as well as some humorously notable Googleyups, often to compare with the 'Nopes. The entries generally checked out for me except when the Loser clearly hadn’t used quotation marks around the Googleyup phrase. And for Googlenopes, I tried not to use “discoveries” resulting from particular wording; they were kind of disingenuous. For example, someone had a Googlenope with “Hey, let’s talk about Fight Club.” I didn’t use that because there are 3,000 hits for “Let’s talk about Fight Club.” Also there was a 'Nope for “Donald Trump’s sensitive side” but there were numerous hits for “Trump’s sensitive side,” and it wasn’t referring to a side of Ivanka. Also I tended not to use Googlenope phrases written as if they were addressed to a single person (e.g., “Please tell me your Wordle score”) because that’s not something likely to appear on a website. It’s the first Clowning Achievement — heck, the first “above-the-fold” ink at all, and just the fifth blot of any kind — for Richard Lorentz of the L.A. area. It was less than a year ago when I got an email from someone asking about the “Mensa Invitational”; “Do you or do you not sponsor such an event? This website seems to suggest that you don’t, but I can’t seem to find anything definitive one way or the other. Thanks!” So I wrote back to Richard and set him straight and showed him the real thing, not that corrupted list of winners from one Invite neologism contest from 1998 that’s still in wide circulation with the misname (“Mensa Invitational” gives you 412,000 hits. SMH.). He sent in his first entry three days later, for Week 1427, and kept trying: Richard got his first ink in Week 1431, followed by three more in the next seven weeks. Then a dry spell. But today, the persistence pays off: Richard found Googleyups with questioners wondering if Abraham Lincoln, Joe Biden and Homer Simpson were real people, then paired it with the Googlenope of “U.S. education is the finest.” And for that he earns the famed Disembodied Clown Head on a Stick. Plus he scores an honorable mention for finding the one person who said, “I learn a lot from infomercials.” So yay for the #$%#$ Mensa Invitational! What Pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Panfilo “Ponch” Garcia, filling in for the vacationing ACE Doug Norwood, singled out these as his faves: “Your mama’s so fatuous …” (Chris Doyle) [This one was also the favorite of the Czar; it’s one of the few inking entries that were just jokes, not really expected to be on the Web, or ironic that they weren’t.] “Not enough people post their Wordle results.” (Andy Schotz) “How many calories in a squirrel?” (Jesse Frankovich) “Underwear-sharing near me.” (Kevin Dopart) Googleyup: “I found my soulmate on Tinder.” Googleyup: “I found my soulmate on Bumble.” Googlenope: “I found my soulmate with Date Lab.” (Jesse Frankovich, mocking The Post’s little weekly reality show with the terrible batting average) Googlenope: “The Empress is a fair judge.” (Dave Prevar) Plffffftbbbbt. What they really mean: Thumbnail definitions for the words of Week 1480 As I mentioned above, Jesse Frankovich used OneLook.com to search for listings of the words through a number of online dictionaries (and just plain Google for others); I’ve added in the OED definitions for the ones he couldn’t find, or to elaborate on his. (Note: “Cowin,” one of the words I’d originally included this morning from the list Mike Gips sent me, turned out not to be in the OED, so I replaced it with the even kookier “cowhuby”; also, the original spelling “tripudant” is now “tripudiant.”) Once again, these are not complete definitions. agonistarch: One who trained persons to compete in public games and contests. agruw: To shudder in horror. (Not a typo!) aiel: A writ by which an heir entered into his grandfather’s estate and dispossessed the third person who had attempted to gain possession* anglewitch: Fishing bait, particularly worms. batie-bummil: A lazy or inactive fellow, a simpleton, a fool. battologist: One who keeps repeating oneself needlessly bawrel: A kind of hawk. cag-mag: Inferior meat. cervylle: To remove or knock out the brains. chekkelbone: The wrist. (As in “shackle bone.”) cotty: Entangled, matted. cowhuby: Calf, as a term of endearment or ridicule. dartre: Any skin disease characterized by scabby or flaky skin, such as herpes or eczema. dashee: A tip or present; also to dash doob: A type of grass eftersoons: Soon after, presently, again. enaluron: A border on a heraldic shield, featuring a bird design epithymy: Lust. fankle: To tangle or entangle. You know, to get all cotty. fistmeal: The breadth of a fist; used in archery (usually as “fistmele”) to describe the measure of a fist plus an outstretched thumb, the correct distance between a bow and its string fladge: A broad piece of anything, including a wide-bottomed person; more recently slang for flagellation fritinancy: The chirping of insects. gallack: Left-handed. galligaskins: loose wide hose or breeches worn in the 16th and 17th centuries. galp: to gape; yawn. hardhaw: Black knapweed. impanate: Contained or embodied in bread* Iracund: Easily provoked to anger ithand: Industrious; assiduous; continually busy; diligent. jusson: Pertaining to commands. knowperts: The crowberry. krobylos: A tuft or knob of hair on one’s head or neck Lerwa: A genus constituted by the snow partridge limbeck: An alembic (chemical apparatus) lurdan: A lazy, stupid person; a sluggard. lushburg: A spurious coin of light weight imported into England from Luxembourg. mesonoxian: Relating to midnight. nobodaddy: William Blake’s derisive name for the anthropomorphic God of Christianity. rantipole: A wild, reckless, sometimes quarrelsome person. sprauchle: To move clumsily. stoach: To trample. sweven: Dream, vision. tripudiant: Exultant, triumphant truandal: A plural noun referring to beggars or camp-followers. trypall: A slovenly tall, lanky person wayzgoose: An annual entertainment given by a master printer to his workmen. ====================================================================== WEEK 1481, published March 27, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1481: Gotta use the head The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s bank headline contest and product-review results Image without a caption By Pat Myers March 24, 2022 at 4:47 p.m. EDT "They thought they unearthed the world’s largest potato. It turned out not to be a potato at all." Here's how Bob Staake interpreted that headline. Comment Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Bob Staake has been getting into Full Loser Mode lately! Usually, over the course of our 18-plus years working together to come up with a Style Invitational cartoon virtually every week, I’ll send Bob some examples for the next contest, and he’ll usually choose one or two to sketch up, and then I’ll choose something or we’ll first haggle a bit. But over the past few weeks, Bob has repeatedly outplayed my own efforts, trying out the contest himself and sending me back up to a dozen ideas of his own (some, alas, unprintable or at least uncartoonable). For Week 1478 he composed his own poem using the required bank of the 1,000 most common words. And this week, for our annual Mess With Our Heads contest, Week 1481, Bob dug into the pages of washingtonpost.com and promptly sent me five funny reinterpretations of headlines, including the one for the Burger King story from Russia that we ended up using. But even funnier might have been the one pictured above: Real Washington Post headline: They thought they unearthed the world’s largest potato. It turned out not to be a potato at all. Bob’s bank head: World’s largest roll of toilet paper buried alongside provided critical identification clue I declined to run a cartoon of a gigantic steaming human turd in the Washington Post Arts & Style section, next to the dance and theater reviews, but I figured that readers who seek out The Style Conversational — you have to know it to find it — have a different set of standards. (The 17-pound non-potato was actually some other species of tuber.) And if you’re interested in acquiring a unique work by a famed artist for your powder room, I’m guessing that Bob could part with this pencil sketch — or many, many others of the work he’s done for the Invitational over his 28 years with us — if you contact him at his website’s special page for Losers and Invite fans, bobstaake.com*SI. Head-Lyin’ News*: How to do the Week 1481 bank head contest *Headline by Chris Doyle from Week 1115 Cisco Live Get ready for Cisco Live 2022 in Las Vegas Advertisement By Cisco Live Bringing the education, inspiration, and fun of Cisco Live back to you. Make it happen - attend the tech event of the year, June 12-16, 2022. Register today Speaking of Mess With Our Heads, I advised would-be entrants to Week 1481 to come over here to the Convo for further details about the contest. And to provide those guidelines, I’m going to welcome this week’s guest columnist: the Empress of 2021. Whose guest columnist was the Empress of 2020. Etc. In other words, I’m reprinting what I said last March — except where I told everyone I was expecting to be back in The Post’s newsroom by that June: Turns out that The Post just opened this month to the daily staff; I just went in to mail prizes for the first time (except in a deserted building on Sundays) since March 2020. Anyway, here’s Recurring Empress. who also never gets older, followed by a sampling of last year’s winners; text in brackets are today’s emendations: To those who are new to The Style Invitational, below is the FAQ that I ran in a Conversational column a year ago, [2020] which itself linked to earlier [2019] and earlier [2018] Messes. What counts as a headline? In a nutshell, it’s anything above the text of an article or ad, as well as a one-line link to another article, as on the paper’s homepage. You may also use a bank head itself as your headline. Do I have to use every word in the headline? No, but the section you do use can’t mean something hugely different on its own ( “City Passes Out Supplies to Residents” can’t become “City Passes Out”), and you can’t string together unconnected parts of the headline. This is why this year’s entry form asks you to show me the whole headline if you’re just using part; I’ll make the call. Can I change the punctuation or capitalization in the headline? You can’t change the punctuation. You may change capitalization in the following case: If the headline, like The Post’s current heads, is “downstyle” (capitalized like a sentence rather than a title) and there’s a proper name in the head that you’d like to reinterpret as a plain ol’ common noun, or vice versa — say you want “lab” to refer to a Labrador retriever; or it’s about a Lab and you want to mean it’s a laboratory — then you can write the whole head as upstyle, as in a book title. If the head is upstyle to begin with, just leave it that way. [Note that I changed this week’s sample headlines from The Post to upstyle, just to reinforce this. Also, when I quote a headline, I usually use upstyle regardless of how it runs in the paper. But if the head is downstyle and your joke works fine without extra capitalization, leave it down. For one thing, it takes up considerably less space.] Cisco Live Get ready for Cisco Live 2022 in Las Vegas Advertisement By Cisco Live Bringing the education, inspiration, and fun of Cisco Live back to you. Make it happen - attend the tech event of the year, June 12-16, 2022. Register today Can I use the headings that appear in other online stuff besides newspapers? You can! — if it has a date on it and it falls within the required window [March 24-April 4, 2022]. Very helpful to me: Copy the URL (website address) [new: and put it immediately after the entry, without hitting Enter to put it on a separate line.] DO NOT EMBED IT into the headline itself; I’ll see a bunch of garble. (If that URL disappears, don’t worry: see below.) One more thing: Sometimes online headlines are ephemeral, especially on a publication’s homepage; if it no longer exists, I’ll rely on your honor. But come on, don’t rewrite headlines to make them work for your joke; remember: honor. I can’t check every last headline. NEW FORMATTING FOR 2022: In the past year, I’ve been making an effort to shuffle all the entries for the week — which already have the entrants’ names deleted — into one big impersonal list so that I won’t know who sent 25 entries or just one, or whether my opinion on an entry could be colored by the other ones from the same person. This is sort of Above & Beyond in my aim for objectivity, but if it’s doable, I’ll do it. But the only way it will work is if each individual entry has no line breaks; i.e., you can’t press Enter to divide the lines on the entry: When I click on “Sort,” the computer sees each place with an Enter as a separate unit. So this sorting thing won’t work for poems, song parodies, etc.; I can’t read them as one long line. But for headline*bank heads? I think it can. So I’ve given these instructions on this week’s entry form: “For each headline, please write your main headline (the real one) and the bank head as a single line (i.e., don’t use the Enter key within the entry) and make it clear what’s the hed (that’s journalese for headline) and what’s the bank. Something like this: Wizards Overpower Mavericks (Podunk Herald online, March 25) Calves Pass Out on Ground Under Spell of Wand [http:**etc.] “If just about everyone follows this direction, the Empress will be able to shuffle all the headlines and can’t possibly be biased toward or against even an unnamed person.” Note “If just about everyone follows”: Before I hit Sort, I scroll through the file containing all the entries. There are always a few people who don’t follow the directions, but if it’s just a few, I’ll fix those entries up and then send them flying all around with the rest. But if there are scads of broken-up entries this week, I’ll just forgo the sort. I still won’t know who wrote the entries, anyway. Oh, one more thing: At least two Losers evidently misunderstood me but tried to do the right thing anyway, and the sent in ALL their Week 1477 entries as one long line! Thanks for cooperating but NOOOOOO do not do this please! EACH entry is one long line! Different line for each entry! Both of these people had a whole list of 'em, too. I broke them up and then did the sort — and both Losers got ink this week. A sampling of inking entries from last year, Week 1426; full results here — they’re all gems. Note how the humor works best if the reader understands the real meaning of the headline, e.g., that “Auburn Basketball” refers to Auburn University. This is why it’s usually better not to use confusing headlines, or heds with names that aren’t well known; on Monday I saw the headline “Story Goes to Boston, Will Move to Second” and thought: That will not work for Mess With Our Heads because we’d have to explain that there’s a baseball player named Trevor Story. Runners-up: Parade magazine: Give Your Immune System the Support It Needs. Bank hed: ‘C’mon, Immune System! Only a Couple More Months, You Can Make It!’ (Danielle Nowlin) Find a spot for COVID shots: Experts suggest an arm; butts said to slow down line (John Klayman) Texans, let your little light shine: Governor recommends candles for next power outage (Chris Doyle) And the winner of the Clowning Achievement: US 45 resurfacing project starts Monday: Former president getting skin peel, de-oranging (Jesse Frankovich) Jermaine Fowler seeks a name for himself: How about ‘Jermaine Fowler,’ experts suggest (Gary Crockett) Administration backs nation’s biggest wind farm off Martha’s Vineyard: No injuries reported as turbines crash into water (Hannah Seidel) Auburn basketball could be much improved next season: Washing off months of sweat expected to restore bright orange hue (Beverley Sharp) Biden grasped what the media did not: Diane Sawyer’s shoulders long considered off-limits (Todd DeLap) The future remains the focus for the O’s: ‘We’ll get better at this,’ newlyweds vow (Gary Crockett) GOP governors bet on bucking virus rules: Actually, they didn’t say ‘bucking’ (Duncan Stevens) Six lessons to help us move forward: 1. Lift left leg. 2. Bend left knee … (Jesse Rifkin) How will the offensive line competition shake out? Nasties vie for coveted Snarkiest Tweet award (Beverley Sharp) How to strengthen the defensive line: Politicians reveal their secrets to the fine art of excuse-making (Jesse Frankovich) Have at it. Often, totally straight old-fashioned news headlines work best for this contest, and you might have better luck finding them in a local paper (if you have such a thing) than the now-chattier heds in The Post. But there’s plenty of fodder here, too. And you can use ads! Snark plugs*: The Walmart product reviews of Week 1477 *Headline from Week 1244, credited to both Chris Doyle and Jesse Frankovich Switching portals from Amazon [zubzub Jeff Bezos zubzub] to Walmart this time around made not the slightest difference in our recurring contest to review any of several everyday products (plus a wild card, this time a “lion’s mane” costume for a cat). Lots of Amelia Bedelia stuff this week, with just-too-silly literalisms, but in most cases one or two entries made them work with an extra twist. I was about to toss all the entries about not being able to play a tune on a shoehorn, but then I saw Jon Ketzner’s lament that he’d also met with no success playing the limoncello. On the other hand, about people who said they’d bought the Slinky because they wanted something slinky to wear? [Sigh.] I was a bit surprised that no one had suggested using the shoehorn as a front-of-jeans protector*enhancer. Not complaining, though; Kevin Dopart’s suggestion that you put a singly googly eye on the Slinky and duct-tape it to a statue of a “man or beast” to make “a one-googly-eyed Slinky snake” was plenty, thanks. Fresh faces in the Losers’ Circle! It’s the first Clowning Achievement — and just the fourth blot of ink ever — for Bill Cromwell of the Charlottesville, Va., area, who’d gotten honorable mentions in Weeks 1385, 1390 and 1453. Bill offered a glowing review of the alarm clock’s Snooze button that makes you do just that. (I use my phone as an alarm clock, but always end up accidentally turning off the Snooze altogether.) And we have a First Offender in runner-up Karen Lambert, who recounts having a barrel of fun scandalizing Whole Foods shoppers by carrying around a bag of the Great Value White Sandwich Bread in her cart (and even throwing in some Twinkies). While Karen could opt for the Loser Mug, I hope she picks the Whole Fools Grossery Bag — and takes that shopping. Our other two runners-up this week are the unfresh-faced Jesse Frankovich and Duncan Stevens, with more than 1,200 blots of ink between them. How about that thing with the bread wrapper! I was alerted by the entries of three different Losers — Sam Mertens, Steve Leifer and Pam Shermeyer — who’d sleuthed through the menu of photos of the white-bread package, noting that while the top of the bag touted “No High Fructose Corn Syrup,” an accompanying photo of the ingredient list had it right there. So I did what journalists do before printing some embarrassing revelation: I asked for comment. (I did not explain what I had to do, exactly, with this product; but I honestly said that I was with The Washington Post — they get right back to you! — and that “a reader wrote to us to point out a discrepancy between the front and back labels,” and “could you let me know which side of the bread label is correct, and we’ll clarify that to our readers.”) As I’d suspected, Walmart wasn’t lying about the bread; it had posted the wrong ingredient-list photo; “we will have that updated on the site very shortly.” (It’s still there, but it hasn’t been even 24 hours.) What Pleased Ponch: The faves of Ace Copy Editor Panfilo “Ponch” Garcia this week were from the honorables: Terri Berg Smith’s explaining that it would be too hard to use her phone as an alarm clock because she’d have to go down to the charger in the kitchen to turn it off; Lawrence McGuire’s shoehorn testimonial from a woman who had so many children she didn’t know what to do to fit them into the tiny house; a triply credited complaint that the white bread was too spicy, signed Mike Pence (someone else used Mitt Romney but same idea here); another jab by Mark Raffman about his governor, Glenn “Tip Line” Youngkin, complaining about the “woke” comments about white bread; and Frank Mann’s lament from Grizabella the Glamour Cat of about the mortifying lion’s-mane costume — to the tune of “Memory.” Happy springtime to all — now get to reading all the headlines all wrong. ====================================================================== WEEK 1482, published April 3, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1482: We write simple one day The Empress of The Style Invitational asked Randall Munroe how ‘youngling’ ended up as one of his ‘top ten hundred simple words’ Image without a caption By Pat Myers March 31, 2022 at 5:42 p.m. EDT One of these words counts as “less simple,” according to Randall Munroe's handy and otherwise generally sensible checking tool. Loser Coleman Glenn jumped to use the other in one of his Style Invitational “simple word” poems. Comment Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share My son says he can count to ten. "One, two, three, five, six and then, It's seven, eight, and ten I'm done." I say to him, "Oh, you missed one." But I cannot be mad at him, Seems ten less one is not in Simple. Seems ten less one is not in Simple. -- Ward Kay, entry for Week 1478 I simply have to tell you A joke that's really fine: Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate, oh my, one more than eight. -- Milo Sauer So why did Randall Munroe’s Simple Writer tool exclude “nine” — alone among the single digits (and ten) as one of his “top ten hundred” words? The list’s non-nine-ness was one of the puzzling discoveries made by various entrants to Style Invitational Week 1478, our contest to write poems using words that wouldn’t be flagged in red by Simple Writer, a tool that Munroe created for writing Up Goer Five (an annotated diagram of the Saturn V rocket), the book Thing Explainer and his other elegant explanations of technical concepts in the most basic of terms. (We pause for you to read all the glorious results of Week 1478.) Meanwhile, the Loser Community also found numerous words that seem more advanced or complicated than some deemed “less simple”: village yes, camp no; creature, yes, but not mouse, dinosaur, kitten or puppy. And most bizarrely: the inclusion of “youngling,” a word I knew only from the 16th-century ″Coventry Carol,” while “youth,” “infant,” “teen,” “teenager” all get big nopes. My hunch was that since Munroe had engineered his list to include variations in parts of speech (plurals, past tense, etc.), he must have entered “-ling,” as in “Earthling,” as a suffix that would be acceptable no matter which word on the list it was attached to. (I remember realizing this in an early spell-checker at work when I typed in “dogly” and it didn’t bat an eyelash.) But better than hunching is actually finding out. Here’s Randall’s emailed explanations of both matters. (I just knew he’d be a nice guy; I’m currently listening to an audio version of his “What If” book answering readers’ weird science hypotheticals, and it’s a hoot.) ADVERTISING “Pat, “Thanks for reaching out! I’m excited to see the results of the contest. “The absence of ‘nine’ is pretty straightforward. Larger numbers are less common — we say ’8533′ a lot less often than '2′ — though round numbers like 10 and 20 are more common. The numbers one, two, three, four, etc., descend in frequency, and they drop below the top 1,000 at nine. Ten jumps back up, so it makes the list, leaving nine the odd one out. I could have tweaked the wordlist to change that, but I left it because it’s how the data worked out and I thought it was funny that there was one number I couldn’t say. “‘Youngling’ is trickier. “It’s hard to define what a word is. ‘Was’ is ostensibly the same word as 'being’ — they’re both conjugations of ‘be.’ And if ‘spider’ and ‘man’ are both allowed, is ‘spider-man’ okay but not ‘spiderman’? If ‘ugh’ and ‘boring’ were allowed, should ‘ughhhhhh, boooooring’ be, too? There ended up being a lot of subjective judgment in defining the list. I tried to be generous about what I counted, using software to narrow down and group together different forms of words, but rejecting some things that seemed too different. Cisco The network built for the future, and you Advertisement By Cisco Build a modern network that provides scalability, operational efficiencies, and agility for increasing network demands. See solutions “My software suggested that ‘young’ and ‘youngling’ were arguably the same word [well, “youngling” is a singular noun; “young” can be a noun but usually just as a plural — the E]. And honestly, I don’t remember [Simple Writer dates to 2015; here’s his blog post about it from then] whether I didn’t notice it (nestled between ‘younger’ and ‘youngest’) or left it in as a Star Wars easter egg because ‘youngling’ is such a funny word. Either one is plausible, but I went over the list pretty carefully, so I think I must have left it in on purpose. “Sorry if this is too much detail!” So there it is. Your next question might well be: Why would Loser Coleman Glenn think to try out such an obscure word? (Lines from his “simple”-word version of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, naturally in iambic pentameter: “The summer dies, but you will always stay* A youngling in some future reader’s thought.”) It must have been because in last Thursday’s Style Conversational column — after I’d posted the week’s Invitational — I linked to this almost illegible Giant Mess o’ Words that Loser Kevin Dopart had dug up that day. Coleman must have seen it there; his was the only entry to include the word. It’s the first Clowning Achievement — indeed, the first ink “above the fold” — for rookie Pam Shermeyer, but her name has graced the Invite so often recently that bigshotdom seemed inevitable. Pam, who’s an editor for the Detroit News, first got Invite ink this past December in our Week 1463 contest for riddle-type jokes featuring spoonerisms, with this honorable mention: “How is Donald Trump like Mike Pence? One traffics in fibs and lies; the other’s pestered by libs and flies.” Pam next popped up three weeks later in our contest for newspaper corrections: “Yesterday’s article about the Springfield High valedictorian should have said that she would be pursuing a BS-MD program, a path to medical school, rather than a BDSM program.” Then the hits just kept on coming: all honorable mentions, but constantly: One each in Weeks 1068, 1070, 1071, 1074, 1076; then two last week for the product reviews. And now: Disembodied Clown Head on a Stick! Really, is there anything else left to aspire to? The rest of the Losers’ Circle is filled by the Invite-ubiquitous Chris Doyle, Duncan Stevens and — oh, Duncan Stevens, who scored both third and fourth places; both of them got honorable-mention ink as well this week. (I went back and checked the names for non-inking entries on my shortlist, and Duncan is all over that, too; he just had a stellar week.) Cisco New switches! Meet the Catalyst 9000X. Advertisement By Cisco Prepare for the future with converged switching and routing capabilities and automation for a smarter, more agile network. See switches Ace Copy Editors Doug Norwood and Ponch Garcia are off this week, but Also Ace Copy Editor Jordan Melendez cited Duncan’s poem about Tom Brady’s retirement and unretirement as her fave. And here are a couple of other fine but non-inking entries about using Simple Writer: The Missing Peace In this big group of words (One hundred times ten) “Break” is allowed; the same goes for “bend”; “Sister’s” okay, as well as “your brother” Even “War” makes the cut; just not the other. So why is there music, art, love and dance When we’re missing the one thing We should all give a chance? -- Frank Mann This word-search is driving me mad! All the fun I could have, I have had. Look for words you can use; If they're red, then you lose! And the out-come? Not "good," but "less-bad." -- Beverley Sharp The Simple Writer helped me choose the words To put here in these lines for you to read. But why? I think this effort's for the birds: You big-brain people, simple words don’t need. -- Mark Raffman New-word order: This week’s ScrabbleGrams contest (and neologisms in general) Week 1482 is our ninth turn at digging into the 17-year-old “Big Book of ScrabbleGrams” so that you can think of new words and terms that the editors decidedly did not have in mind when they wrote up their various seven-letter sets. This week it’s the same drill as our many other neologism contests; if you’ve been playing the New York Times’s online Spelling Bee game, remember the big difference with ScrabbleGrams: You cannot use a single tile more than once in your term; just think of each letter as a physical tile you can move around. Note also that you don’t have to use all seven letters; I’ll accept five- and six-letter words as well if they’re really good words. Cisco Discover what Wi-Fi 6E can do for you. Advertisement By Cisco Get higher performance, deeper analytics, and better experiences with new Cisco Wi-Fi 6E network solutions. See details I weary even myself with directions on entry formatting, so please read the directions, which are spelled out even more patiently on this week’s entry form. Being able to sort the entries is especially useful in a contest like this, where I’d like to group all the entries for each of the 36 letter sets. (Good practice for next week’s horse names!) Here are the top four from Tile Invitational VIII, about a year ago (the rest are here); huh, they’re all six-letter terms. 4. ACELNPU > UNCLAP: To sheepishly stop applauding when you realize no one else is, then look around to see who the “idiot” was. (Eric Nelkin) 3. AENPRRT > REPANT: What one should do immediately after succumbing to sins of the flesh — especially if there’s a sound at the door. (Deanna Busick) 2. CEIPRST > CREPIT: Not fallen apart yet. “Oh, no, Grandma’s very crepit. ‘Arrhythmia’ is just the name of her dance team.” (Frank Osen) 1. AAEPPRT > PAP ART: My OB*GYN is so skilled, she doesn’t just make a “smear” … (Danielle Nowlin) SOME rules of thumb about writing neologisms: We have different challenges in our various neologism contests: For example, Tour de Fours requires you to use a given four-letter block in any order; Hyphen the Terrible makes you combine halves of two different words. But there are rules of thumb that apply to all. Here are some that occurred to me in some recent Invite neologism contests (I just grabbed some anonymous non-inking entries as examples; I have no idea who wrote them). First of all, virtually all our neologisms are plays on existing words, and almost always, their definitions should relate to them in some way. Here’s one that doesn’t (not to mention it’s in rather bad taste): Interpretive cancer: “Look! Your tumor is shaped kind of like a turtle!” Unless I’m missing something more relevant, the neologism is a one-letter change from “interpretive dancer.” Which has no connection to a tumor-shaped turtle. There ought to be something amusing about it: Duh, but all the time, people think of synonyms that happen to come from the week’s assigned letters or whatever. Here’s one from the recent Hyphen the Terrible contest: Diver-gent + re-search: gent-search: seek male companionship. Okay. Not a joke. Your definition should reflect the part of speech of the word, even a made-up word: Neologisms work for us as words because we can understand them, and often that’s because they contain endings or other elements that identify them as nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. So if your word ends in -tion, -ity, -ment, -ity, that word’s gotta be a noun — even if you made up the word yourself, it still has to be a noun. So this is not good: “Abaility: Capable of getting out of jail while awaiting trial” — “Capable” is an adjective, not a noun. That would have been an acceptable (though not funny) definition for “abailable,” which has the adjective ending -able; it would be playing off “available” rather than “ability” but at least it would make sense. Definitions of combined (portmanteau) words can depend on their order. This didn’t work: “Poliquette: Polite police who knock before breaking the door down.” “Poliquette” wouldn’t be a type of police; it would be a type of etiquette as practiced by police. Your wordplay shouldn’t be based on a misspelling. From the recent Tour de Fours: Dedbirds: What they call the St. Louis Cardinals whenever they’re eliminated. Why “Ded”? Because the challenge was to use the four letters BIDE together in any order, and the A wouldn’t have qualified because the E had to be next to the D. Sorry, but that doesn’t work as a neologism. Avoid repeating the word, or a major part of the word, in your definition. My mother-in-law, bless her heart, once piped up: “What do you call it when all the cars in the nation are pink?” While the Word = Definition structure doesn’t telegraph the punchline, at least, it’s still to be avoided. No: “Eeeeecliner: A chair that reclines too much.” On the other hand, heavy-handed efforts to avoid repeating the word, such as to say “ungulate” rather than “deer,” are not great either. Okay, that’s enough Imperial wisdom for today, children. Have fun with the letters. ‘Everything’s Coming Up Moses’: How to have a Loserly Seder Every Passover when I’m in charge of the Seder, I always include at least a couple of the literally hundreds of parodies for Passover written by Loser Barbara Sarshik, who GIVES AWAY her whole collection of them. They’re always excellent parodies — and you know my standards — of show tunes, Disney numbers, etc., witty and often funny, but never in bad taste. And they fit into various parts of the Seder. This time she’s even providing some karaoke tracks so you can have some accompaniment! And there’s a new parody this year, set to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” for the beginning of the Seder. Funniest verse: The Pharaoh made the Hebrews cry* Because he was a wicked guy.* More evil than Lex Luthor or Darth Vader. But God set all our people free,* Released us from our misery, And that is why we gather at our Seder. It’s our Seder. It’s our Seder. It’s our Seder. It’s our Seder. You can see the extensive index and download a PDF here. www.passoversongparodies.com*lyrics ====================================================================== WEEK 1483, published April 10, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1483: Calling stable geniuses! The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s foal-name contest and Wordle-phrase winners Image without a caption By Pat Myers April 7, 2022 at 5:28 p.m. EDT Great shakes: Epicenter winning last month's Louisiana Derby with Joel Rosario aboard. Like 99 other Triple Crown nominees, he'll have his name up for stud in Style Invitational Week 1483. (His own parentage? Not This Time x Silent Candy. Go figure.) (Lou Hodges Jr.*Hodges Photography via AP) Comment Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share My goodness, the entire premise of The Style Invitational’s Pun for the Roses contest — a.k.a. It’s Post Time, What a Foal Am I, and more — is that traditionally, a racehorse’s name reflects those of its sire and dam. Not as cleverly as the Losers do it, of course — and now in Week 1483 you get to show yourself once again with 100 new names — and never universally, but often enough that it inspired Invite fan and serious horseplayer Mike Hammer to suggest this contest to my predecessor, the Czar, back in 1995. But I was looking at the list of this year’s 300-plus nominees for the Triple Crown races, which also listed each horse’s mom and dad, and whole pages of the printout would go by without a horse named for even one of his (almost always “his”) parents. Presidential? The offspring of Pioneer of the Nile and Uptown Twirl. Slow Down Andy? Nyquist x Edwina E. The early favorite, Epicenter? Not This Time x Silent Candy. But whew, there are at least some names carrying on the tradition. Not cleverly, mind you: They’re clearly leaving that to us. Well, okay, I’ll give some props to Doppelganger, son Into Mischief and Twice the Lady. But mostly: Summer Front x Always Tomorrow = Summer Is Tomorrow. Into Mischief x Kitten’s Point = Kitten Mischief. [Weeps.] ADVERTISING But maybe we’ll inspire the syndicates (or whoever’s naming the horses these days) of tomorrow. Our foal name contest consistently draws the most entries of the year, usually in the neighborhood of 4,000 from close to 400 entrants, and many hundreds of those entries are pretty darn clever. Lots of people send the maximum of 25 entries. I always run the whole list of 100 horses in the print paper, even with its limited space, because there are always a lot of Washington Post readers who’ll be inspired by the names they see, but would never put the paper down and look up the Invite on their computers or phones. The daunting numbers notwithstanding, I look forward to this contest every year, because there’s so much to like. But still, I’m the only judge of all these names, and my deadline is the same every week — and this is why I’m so pleady and naggy about formatting the entries right. With the indispensable help of Loser Jonathan Hardis, who developed a computer program to sort the entries better than plain ol’ Word will (and make them look consistent, to boot), I’m able to compare the various entries efficiently, with a minimum of repetition, and even winnow them down from a “shortlist” of perhaps 200 names to the 60 or so that will get the ink. As long as you use the simple, just-the-text Horse A x Horse B = Foal C format, one to a line. The instructions are in this week’s column, on the entry form, or both, but here are some reminders: As in actual thoroughbred racing, a name may not exceed 18 characters including spaces, but those characters may include punctuation and numerals. Jonathan’s program will flag names that exceed the limit; sometimes there’s an easy fix, sometimes I just toss it. You may run words together to stay within 18 characters, but the name should be easy to read. Strings of 18 solid characters that don’t look like words — especially if letters are dropped in an effort to stay within the length limit — won’t get ink because they’re no fun to read. There’s a horse on the list named Fromanonthamutha; I didn’t use him. On the other hand, one of my examples today does have the words run together: Iron Works x Enough Already = Iron“StopsWorking”; the capital letters and punctuation keep it readable. It doesn’t matter that almost every horse on the list is male. It’s legal even in Kentucky. Don’t bother coming up with a “foal” name that is a third horse on the list; it won’t get ink. It cannot possibly be as clever an idea as the many, many, many excellent original names submitted. My directions on this week’s entry form: "Type each entry in this format, with each entry on a single separate line: Horse A x Horse B = Your Foal Name “Make sure you spell the real horses’ names correctly! Don’t number them, don’t put little bullets or other thingamajigs before them, don’t use tabs or make them into a table. Don’t boldface them. Just plain old text. Thank you, sweetie!” Thank you, sweetie. The three examples I used today include one with a pun (Clapton x Apprehend = Clapton Irons); one a straightforward and uninspired “operation,” in which the first name is altered by the second (Happy Jack x Make It Big = Ecstatic Jack); and one that is an operation but also puns on the meanings of the words (Iron Works x Enough Already = Iron“StopsWorking”) and also shows readers that they can run words together. Puns were richly rewarded in last year’s results, probably because the names made me laugh, not just say, “That works.” When I’m reading through a list of 4,000 names, funny names jump out at me. If the name isn’t a pun, I’ll figure out what the point is — and often it’s inkworthy, too — but funny names probably have an advantage, because they’re probably more funny to readers, too. The three runners-up last year — all of them by Losers who consistently finish in the money in the horse contests — are puns in the purist’s sense, playing on the sound of the original, as well as cleverly reflecting both parents’ names: Fourth place: Count Tolstoy x Uno = War and Pizza (Rob Wolf) Third place: Like the King x Breadman = Elvis Pretzely (Bernard Brink) Second place: Troubadour x Chaos Reigns = Widespread Luting (Jonathan Paul) And except for the “sound” factor, last year’s Clowning Achievement winner is a pun as well: One Fast Cat x Soup and Sandwich = Usain BLT (Matt Monitto) But the “operation” entries scored abundant ink as well last year, including: Cantata x Defunded = Can’tata (Sarah Walsh) Outasite x Chaos Reigns = Outamind (Drew Bennett) O Besos x Defunded = 0 Pesos (Laurie Brink) Fly Like an Eagle x Midnight Bourbon = Fly Like an Emu (George Smith) Count Tolstoy x Elector = Recount Tolstoy (Pam Sweeney) Core Curriculum x Tarantino = Gore Curriculum (Chuck Smith) By George x Overtook = Bye, George (Duncan Stevens) And you never know: Here are my top four choices in 2014, Week 1066 — all of them operations: 1. Toast of New York x General A Rod = Toast in New York (Jim Stiles) 2. Best Plan Yet x Cut the Net = Best Pla_ Y__ (Pie Snelson) 3. I Earned It Baby x Undertaker = I Urned It Baby (Pam Sweeney; Gary Crockett) 4. Russian Humor x Constitution = What Constitution? (Roy Ashley) And then there are clever, wry entries that are neither puns nor operations, and offer a refreshing change of pace. Like these from last year: By George x Untreated = She’s Got It! (Mary McNamara, Washington) Soup and Sandwich x Hyperfocus = Mmph! Talk Later (Joanne Free) Affable x Likable = Bitter Inside (John Folse) You can see literally thousands of foal names on the “Horses” page of the Master Contest List on the Losers’ own website, NRARS.org. Click on a links in the right column to see the result of a particular contest; they date all the way back to 1995. Also, if you’re wondering if the name you’ve thought up has been used for some earlier colt-on-colt action, check the All Invitational Text plain-text file and search for it. (Also very useful if you’re suggesting a headline to run with the results, or the honorable mentions subhead; we’ve already used dozens!) TRULY SILLY JOLLY FOLLY*: The Wordle phrases of Week 1479 *Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich, who got ink instead with the almost as good “FUNNY FIVES FAVES,” which fit on the page I Wordled in my usual four guesses this morning. I also got four on Word Hurdle, which uses six letters and updates twice a day, and five on Le Mot, a French equivalent. I drew the line at Quordle, in which you get nine tries to find four words, not to mention Octordle, ah, come on. Compared with, say, Spelling Bee, the game is over in a flash, and you can’t get sucked into doing it again and again and so you can get on to important matters like horse names. Week 1479 — a contest to write a phrase of all five-letter words, with the extra requirement that a “green” letter must be used in that place for the rest of the grid — clearly proved daunting; there were fewer entries than usual, and more complaints. But this week’s inking entries, especially in the stacked-word format and most especially in four eye-catching grids (color page this week in the print paper!!), make for a short, fun read that displays a variety of approaches to the challenge. (Special thanks to Alla Dreyvitser, the page designer I’ve been reunited with after some musical chairs in the layout department. Alla took a look at the four grids I’d painstakingly created in Microsoft Paint, complimented my effort, then immediately did them all over properly.) I did next to no editing of the entries this week, except to tweak a few of the descriptions. I did find some otherwise inkworthy entries that didn’t meet the only rule I had for the grid: that if a letter is “green” — i.e., if it will appear in the same place in the final word — that letter has to stay in that place for all the remaining words. This one, for example, GIMME SEVEN TRIES, EIGHT MAYBE: A Wordle neophyte’s plaint. “Gimme,” with its last letter of E, needed to be followed with other last-letter-E words to reach “Maybe.” Same problem with this one: ALIEN BEING LANDS, CALLS TRUMP IDIOT: That’s the risk when we take them to our leaders. (The I in “Alien” needed to be repeated as the third letter all the way to “Idiot.”) I did rescue one entry by removing a word that broke the rule, but otherwise I didn’t tinker with the makeup of the grids. It’s the 13th Invite win, and the second Clowning Achievement, for Hildy Zampella, who described “RATES, DATES, MATES, SATES, HATES” as “A brief Tinder love story” alternatively recounted as “Swipe right, spend the night, take flight.” The three runners-up are all veterans of the Losers’ Circle as well: Jon Gearhart with a gibe about people who feel compelled to announce their Wordle scores every day on social media (praying that I don’t get outraged mail about the use of “moron”); Duncan Stevens mocking of Florida’s new law, called “Don’t Say Gay” by its critics, by making use of the conveniently five-lettered “LGBTQ”; and Sarah Walsh with her salute to allergy season. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, who’s back after a several-week vacation (what IS that?), read the 14 entries on the print page and agreed with me on the winners — all four of the grids are on our print page (which — yea! — is in color this week) and also singled out Chris Doyle’s “Solid Waste Audit Chief” as a résumé item for a dumpster diver, plus Jon Gearhart’s “Olive Green Llama Vomit” as the quintessential Loser prize, an entry that works especially well on a week we’re featuring the Poo-Dough kit. Loserfest returns — with a Niagara Falls trip! July 25-29 Just announced: For the farthest-afield Loserly Vacation Safari since Las Vegas in 2008 (the closest: Washington, D.C., 2006), Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson is organizing a trip to Canada-side Niagara Falls and surroundings. The Royal Consort and I haven’t taken a vacation since 2019, so we’re signing up. Consider joining us! (Note: The July 25-29 dates, Monday-Friday including travel on the first and last days, are a change from what I originally posted on April 7.) The Losers have been getting together on offbeat trips almost as long as the Invite has been around; Kyle counts 18 out-of-town (well, one in town) excursions called Loserfest since 1995. We went to the one in Pittsburgh in 2016 and had a great time with about a dozen other Losers and Loser-adjacent folks. Kyle dug up all kinds to things to see and do, including glass-blowing and touring a bicycle museum and lots and lots of food consumption, but the highlight had to have been the leisurely personal tour we were given at an art gallery of its Yayoi Kusama exhibition, which later became one of the most in-demand ever at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. (Just try to get a pass for it now.) Kyle’s set up a website for the Niagara Falls trip. The details aren’t worked out yet, but he wanted to get the word out, especially for people who have to order passports. He welcomes suggestions for the “Fungenda” page of activities that people can opt to do on any given day: “The Fungenda will consist of “touristy” and off-the-beaten path activities. For example, we will definitely be taking the Maid of the Mist cruise (or something similar). But, we might (probably not) also take a jaunt over to Buffalo, NY to take selfies next to Shark Girl. If you have any suggestions, send them to loserfestpope@gmail.com.” Not surprisingly, such long-distance, $$y excursions tend to be small-group affairs, perhaps a dozen or 15 people. But I’ve been to the Niagara area in July and it’s a perfect time of the year to escape the Washington HotHazyHumid. Kyle hopes to organize carpooling for the eight-hour drive, but of course you’re welcome to go on your own. Remember, going to Canada now requires a passport. If you want to go to Ontario and don’t have one, get moving! The process is somewhat easier than in the past (you can more easily make your own photos, for example) but it might take longer — the State Department says eight to 11 weeks. I just discovered that my own passport expired in 2020, but can be renewed rather than requiring me to start from scratch, since it was issued in the past 15 years. And don’t worry, somehow the Invitational will come out that week. ====================================================================== WEEK 1484, published April 17, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1484: That’s what YOU said The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s double-entendre contest and fake-definition winners Image without a caption By Pat Myers April 14, 2022 at 5:02 p.m. EDT What could be said both among Style Invitational Losers and in bed? Ward Kay's joke served an example for Week 1336 in 2019. This week's Style Invitational asks for more double-entendres. (See below to find out how to grab your own personal Staake.) Comment Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Happy Springtime Religious Festival Weekend! Ha, I went to check if “kosher Easter Bunny” was a Googlenope. Nope! 1.5 million hits, and direct links to pages like this one. So this week, in Style Invitational Week 1484, I decided to give a second go-round to a contest from three years ago that had truly classic results. It had its genesis in our laugh-a-minute [citation needed] Style Invitational Devotees group, to which 36.2 percent of all Facebook users have attributed as their main reason for not quitting the platform. My co-admin in the group, the fabulous and beloved Ms. Alex Blackwood — posited the following pressing question to the membership: “What’s something that could be said both among the Losers and during sex?” One hundred twenty-four answers later, Alex messaged me to check out the comments thread. I immediately scheduled a contest, Week 1336, using these Devotees’ posts as examples: ADVERTISING “That’s okay, there’s always next week.” (Ward Kay) “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!” (Jesse Frankovich) “You’d better hurry up — the deadline is midnight Monday.” (Elden Carnahan) “I like it best with the horses.” (Michelle Stupak) “Not bad, but you’re no Jesse Frankovich.” (Jesse Frankovich) To allow for more variety, I offered a number of other categories besides “in bed” and “among Style Invitational Losers.” Two of them, the hairstylist and the absolutely necessary “in bed,” reappear today. See below to make sure you don’t send the same jokes! Here’s a selection of the week’s ink; here’s the full set of results. Fourth place: Something you could say both at a restaurant and in bed: “So we’re a bit short-staffed tonight, are we?” (Lawrence McGuire) Third: Something you could say both at Ikea and when President Trump visits your country: “My God, that orange rug is hideous.” (Frank Osen) Second: Something you could say both at a restaurant and in bed: “You gonna finish that?” (Kevin Dopart) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Something you could say both at a restaurant and when Trump visits your country: “Can we get it to go?” (Rob Cohen) And now the bed x haircut jokes that got ink — don’t send them again this week! — “Could we try that gel again? It worked pretty well last time.” (Diane Lucitt) — “Now that there’s less to work with, let’s try doing it every six weeks instead of once a month.” (Jonathan Jensen) — “You always make the bangs too short.” (Jon Ketzner; William Kennard) And more: At Ikea and at a doctor’s office: “This is the oddest-looking stool I’ve ever seen.” (Stephen Dudzik; Bill Dorner; Jeff Contompasis) Getting a haircut and when Trump visits your country: “Ow, my ears!” (Duncan Stevens) At Ikea and when Trump visits your country: “This nut here seems to be useless.” (Dave Ferry, Purvis, Miss.) At Ikea and in bed: “Huh, it looked much bigger on the website.” (Steve Smith) During a haircut and in a job interview: “I like to take a little off the top — not so much that anyone would notice.” (Roy Ashley) At a job interview and in bed: “You’re on my ‘short’ list.” (Tom Witte) One of several graphics from Week 1336 that ran on the Style Invitational Ink of the Day page on Facebook; I hope to use a bunch from Week 1484 as well. See them all and sign up for more at bit.ly*inkofday. On a game show and in a job interview: “Wheel-spinning is my specialty, Bob.” (Mark Raffman) On a game show and at the doctor: “And the actual retail price is … $23,981!” (Rivka Liss-Levinson) At a doctor’s office and in a job interview: “Should I leave my underwear on?” (Mark Calandra) At a supermarket and among Style Invitational Losers: “Ugh, these lines are awful!” (Jesse Frankovich) Among Style Invitational Losers and when Trump comes to your country: “I can’t believe that stupid thing won!” (Neal Starkman) A HOPEFUL FORMATTING PLEA FOR WEEK 1484: Here’s what it says on this week’s entry form, known to its intimate friends as wapo.st*enter-invite-1484: “HOW TO FORMAT YOUR ENTRIES: It’d be really great if you put each entry on a separate line (with no line break within any single entry) in this format, using the category names as they’re listed above [i.e., as at the top of this week’s Invitational], like this: In bed and in elementary school: Zub zub zub. In bed and on a hike: Zub zub zub. That would let me group all the various combinations together and compare all the “in bed and in elementary school” entries, etc. But if you instead decide to use, say, “Bed*hike,” your entry won’t end up with the ones beginning “IN bed,” and there goes the totally anonymous sorting. So if more than a few people don’t follow these directions, I just won’t sort them, which isn’t the end of the world. I just don’t know what’ll happen. Sometimes the order of the two items matters for humorous effect — usually it’s best to put the more obvious context first, so the less obvious one becomes the “punchline” — so use the order that works best. One more word to the wise: Last time, as I noted in the intro to the results, I didn’t run such crude puns in the “in bed” entries as “bone,” “eat” or “openings.” But I didn’t get any complaints when I ran “short-staffed,” “package,” “positions,” “inflatables,” “bangs” or “entries.” Fortunately, you have 25 chances to find out how prim*fearful I happen to be on Judgment Day. I’ll know it when I see it. Up to our OED tricks*: The fake definitions of Week 1480 *Non-inking headline by Chris Doyle Our Week 1480 challenge to come up with funny fake definitions for any of several dozen oddball words from the Oxford English Dictionary — our fourth go-round of these things since 2007 — is really pretty much a neologism contest: It’s just like making up a word yourself, since you’re ignoring its real meaning. And as I judged the contest, I realized how the same standards generally apply: Observational humor for a situation in real life — “there should be a word for that” — is a plus; funny descriptions and examples go a long way, too. One difference is that there’s going to be a lot more duplication among entries, even with the long list, because everyone’s working from the same set of words. I got 79 definitions of agonistarch, for example, and not surprisingly, many of them referred in some way to the agonies of starch. (But because we’re familiar with how the English language usually works, agonistarch — even with a made-up definition — would refer to a kind of starch, not a kind of agony. So not “Pain suffered when your clothing is too stiff.”) But I had no trouble finding 50 (I lack self-discipline, you lucky Losers, you) funny, creative entries to ink up the joint. It’s the fourth Invite win, but the first Clowning Achievement trophy, for Frank Mann, whose three blots of ink this week put him at 221 all-time. Frank was one of many Losers to characterize lushburg as a town full of drunks, but the only one who said that there were so many drunks that they had a Town Teetotaler. (By the way: “burg” = town; “berg” = iceberg; entries about icebergs or other obstacles were at a disadvantage.) But it’s a new name in the Losers’ Circle in second place: It’s the first “above-the-fold” ink, and just the seventh blot all told, for Allan Zackowitz, whose wayzgoose — “the 12-mile GPS detour around a traffic backup that cleared up in two minutes” — is a trip I’m sure I’ve taken many times. The other two runners-up, Danielle Nowlin and Frank Osen, are perennial Losers’ Circle denizens; Danielle defined eftersoons as the “illusory upcoming time periods in which people will “hang out,” “do lunch” or “get the kids together”; Frank’s anglewitch is “a homemade doll hung in Scandinavian bathrooms, traditionally believed to bring improved aim to males in the family.” After no First Offenders in a while, we have two very promising ones this week: Jenny Epel Muller had a unique definition for agonistarch as that piece of bagel that can lodge in your dry gullet, and Leslie Atkin described her lushburg as where the residents “live within stumbling distance of one another.” I hope that both new Losers come back for more; I expect them to bound off the One-Hit Wonders list on the Loser Stats in no time. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, who read the 37 of the 50 entries that fit on the print page (they’re interspersed this week with the Web-onlies) was partial to Frank’s winner; Allan and Danielle’s runners-up; and these honorable mentions: Agruw (to shudder in horror): To quarrel when inebriated. “How come every time I come home at 2 a.m. we get into an agruwment?” (Byron Miller) Fistmeal (the width of a fist): What Chris Rock and Will Smith went out for after the Oscars. (Jonathan Jensen) Fladge (a broad piece of something): An Old Glory pin worn to display self-proclaimed patriotism. “CPAC requires conference attendees to wear their fladges at all times.” (Steve Smith) Fladge: Sludge from Florida. “DeSantis is as slimy as Okeechobee fladge.” (Bill Dorner) Sprauchle (move clumsily): The second-person masculine past imperative form of whatever it was Zarathustra did. (Lynda Hoover) Sweven (a dream or vision): A bad answer to “Just how many drinks have you had?” (Daniel Galef) [I was concerned that Agruw and Sweven were too similar, but I guess not a problem!] and the sole “And Last” in print: Cag-mag (inferior meat): The “Crappy Alternative Gift” Loser magnet. (Beverley Sharp) Save the date: The Flushies, Saturday afternoon, May 21, Potomac, Md. Our annual awards potluck is on once again in the welcoming backyard of Loser Steve Leifer and wife Jackie. Jonathan Jensen should once again be on hand to accompany (and sing) the Loser-penned parodies, including an ode to the new Loser of the Year. I’ll be sending out an Evite and linking to it in this column in coming weeks. Buy a stack of Staakes (or just one) I don’t have any more mugs with this week’s vintage My Cup Punneth Over design — so classily rendered by Bob Staake. And neither does Bob. But you can get yourself an original Staake drawing from The Style Invitational, from among the literally thousands of sketches and final copies he’s made for the Invite since 1994. He even has a page on his website just for Style Invitational stuff: bobstaake.com*SI. If you have a particular contest in mind and need help figuring out the date (which I’m sure would help Bob find the drawing), feel free to ask me. It’s always parody time! I just luvvvvv Loser collaborations! This just out: Losers and renowned cabaret performers Sandy and Richard Riccardi singing a brand-new parody by 2021 Loser of the Year Jonathan Jensen. It’s of the song “C’est Si Bon.” Have a happy and rewarding Easter, Passover, Ramadan, Whathaveyou! If you’re Sedering, be sure to check out Loser Barbara Sarshik’s ever more elaborate — but still just as free — collection of ace Passover parodies at, where else: PassoverSongParodies.com. ====================================================================== WEEK 1485, published April 24, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1485: Make a difference. (Or else.) The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s neologism contest and bank head winners Image without a caption By Pat Myers April 21, 2022 at 4:55 p.m. EDT Sen. Ted Cruz's reputation for sucking up to Donald Trump -- along with his general unlikability -- inspired numerous Losers in The Style Invitational's Mess With Our Heads contest. (Elizabeth Frantz*Reuters) Comment Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Here are three entries submitted to The Style Invitational’s Mess With Our Heads contest, whose results run today. I. Washington Post online headline, March 28: Cruz’s battle to keep Trump in power has cost him friends, sparks questions Submitted bank headline: First question- Cruz has friends? II. Cruz’s battle to keep Trump in power has cost him friends, sparks questions First question: Cruz has friends? III. Cruz’s battle to keep Trump in power has cost him friends, sparks questions The first of which is: He has friends? Hahaha, made me laugh, Dan Helming! And Chris Doyle! And Drew Bennett! In any Invite contest — and I’ve now judged more than 900 of them since 2003 — I’ll find similar entries; I got about 1,450 bank heads, many of them playing on the same headlines in The Washington Post in print and online over an 11-day period. And so it’s not surprising that two or more people would tell roughly the same joke on a single headline. But three jokes with virtually the same wording — “first question” — that doesn’t tend to happen. At first, I thought someone had sent in the entry over and over; this occasionally happens when the entrant doesn’t get an auto-reply (or, more often, doesn’t see it). But then I noticed the little bitty differences. ADVERTISING If I had run this entry in the results, I would have, of course, credited all three guys. But it just missed the cut in a week in which my “shortlist” ran to some 150 entries and I cut more than two-thirds of it (and even so, arguably ran too many headlines). I judge the contest without seeing the writers’ names, but in this case I knew that I’d have had to credit three people and their hometowns; that did lower its chances for ink. (Had four people sent this joke, I wouldn’t even have considered using it.) There’s nothing I would recommend to Dan, Chris and Drew here so they’d have had a better chance with this headline; it’s done just right — they just had bad luck. But there are some takeaways: Do not send your list of entries more than once — especially with short-form jokes such as the foal names of Week 1483, but even in this week’s contest (Week 1485) to switch two letters in a word, name, phrase, or title of a work and describe the result. Even when the entry includes writing a short description, there’s a chance that I’ll think it’s from two people; if I see too many, I’ll throw it out. So if you don’t get your auto-reply within an hour or so, please go ahead and write me at pat.myers@washpost.com — put something in the subject line to catch my eye (“I didn’t get the auto-reply for Week 1481”) and I promise that I’ll check on it. It’s rare, but occasionally an entry gets lost in the ether. Don’t send several entries that are slight variations on the same idea. This will really confuse me, for obvious reasons, if the entries are sorted and I don’t see them all on the same submission. As regular Losers know, if I can think of a way to make someone’s entry clearer or funnier, I will anyway. A new, promising Loser who’s clearly caught the Invite bug asked in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group if she should stick to one idea or send several slightly different alternatives. Some of her fellow Devotees advised her to go with just the one, “so as not to use up precious entry slots” toward the maximum 25 entries. But the real reason is that I’ll think your idea seems to be a very common one! Do send different entries if they have significantly different jokes. But if it’s just a couple of words, don’t write the entry all over again. Tell you what: If you have an alternative phrasing and you can’t make up your mind which is better (for instance, you don’t know if a certain phrase is too risque), then you can include an alternative in that same entry and I’ll make the call. And to be fair to your fellow Losers, just count that entry as two entries toward the 25-entry maximum. For most people, the “full dance card” isn’t an issue anyway. This week’s contest — to transpose two letters in a word or phrase — has often been an option in our change-a-letter neologism contests over the years. But in a few scans through some randomly chosen results, I didn’t see any in which the change to a word was to switch two letters, rather than to add a letter, drop one, or substitute another one. There have to be some — we’ve run literally thousands of neologisms over the years — but my hunch is that the transpositions would be of adjacent letters, as with “Betty Garble,” one of today’s examples. That’s because in a regular neologism contest, the reader needs to recognize the original word or name you’re playing on; in almost all cases, it’d be too heavy-handed to announce the original. But this week we might end up doing just that: It’s cool that switching two letters turns LEMONADE into DEMON ALE, as Jeff Rackow noted in his recent contest suggestion, but a reader isn’t going to see DEMON ALE and think LEMONADE. So I think we’ll be pointing it out. (By the way, Jeff, as a successful local contest-suggester, you’ve earned an ice cream date with the Empress.) For more obvious alterations, maybe I’ll leave off the explainer. In any case, I’d like you to tell me the original word*name. Here’s what I say on this week’s entry form (which, btw, is named wapo.st*enter-invite1485, without the usual hyphen after “invite,” because of a little Empress-caused blunder): HOW TO FORMAT YOUR ENTRIES: I’m not sure how I’ll ultimately run the results, but to help me out with the judging, please send your entries beginning with the original word, name, etc., followed on the same line with your new word and then the definition*description, like this one from the column: BETTY GRABLE to BETTY GARBLE: Famed pinup model with great legs, not so great a voice. You won’t be able to highlight the two letters that you’re switching -- the entry form doesn’t transmit boldface, italics, underlines, etc. That’s okay; I’ll figure it out. Still, this format, with each entry on one line (i.e., don’t push Enter until you’re finished that whole entry and perhaps start another one), will minimize the time I need to puzzle it out, and I’ll be able to group all the entries playing on “Washington” or “Social Security” or “zebra” or whatever. --- Do check to make sure that the two letters switch positions exactly. I wrote an earlier example that didn’t; fortunately Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood noticed. I’ll check the entries before they run, but I’m not going to be able to fix them! Heads will LOL*: The results of Week 1481 *Headline by Chris Doyle for the Week 1191 contest, 2016 I do love the bank head contest, which appeared once in the Invitational under the Czar in 2001, then became a perennial with the Empress starting in 2004. (Here’s the “Headline” category of contests on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List.) As I mentioned above, we had a deluge of 1,450 entries this time, a large fraction of them using Washington Post headlines, and a large fraction of those were print headlines, though entrants were free to use any print or online source dated within the 11-day entry period. A whopping 46 entries got ink this week, and all but the last four (risque; inside baseball) fit on the print page. Some of them were my favorites among similar ideas; you wouldn’t believe how many people thought about Ted Cruz showing up in Trump’s colonoscopy! The Academy Awards took place during the entry period, allowing for an Instant Classic winner by Bill Dorner: Surveillance Video Captures Man Throwing Rock Through Two Windows Slapped comedian just keeps getting assaulted Bill took advantage of my option to use “upstyle” capitalization, as in a book title, so that “Rock” could be read in two ways, earning himself his first Clowning Achievement trophy (but his third Invite win). Interestingly, the headline Bill used wasn’t from his hometown Indianapolis Star but from Hawaii News Now; he also included entries from OutThereColorado.com and Fox 5 in Las Vegas, among other websites; I’m guessing that Bill was hunting for specific words he could play on. (That resourcefulness is fine with me!) Our three runners-up all have illustrious Loser histories: Sam Mertens — who wins the Boogieing Hillary doll — was Loser of the Year in his rookie season just a couple of years ago, while Milo Sauer was Rookie of the Year in 2003 and Barbara Turner debuted that same year. All three runner-up entries were headlines and*or jokes that other entrants also sent, but these versions made me laugh harder. Sam scored the pith award, too: Catholic University names president: ‘Biden,' duh Barbara won out over various Dahmer-type entries for ‘My goal, ultimately, is to get eyeballs’: Our exclusive interview with Mr. Potato Head; and Milo bested various gibes at the Postal Service with At age 101, he finally got his high school diploma: Plans gap year; parents skeptical What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood — like me, a longtime headline writer (and unlike me, might have written some of the heads we played on this week) — got a big kick out of the top four entries, and also singled out Roxi Slemp’s Racks can make things easier, until it’s time to clean: ‘When I’m scrubbin’ that floor, woo-ee, I tip right over!’ Dolly Parton says as well as First Offender Terry Lewis’s Birth of a Final Four: ‘No more kids!’ vows mother of quadruplets, my choice among a bevy of similar entries. I’m thrilled to have FOUR First Offenders this week: In addition to Terry, we have Paul Frantz of San Francisco, longtime Style Invitational Devotee and brunch-goer Stephanie Smilay, and someone who may well be familiar to longtime Post readers: Ken Bredemeier was a Washington Post reporter and columnist for several decades until the early 2000s; in the early days of The Post’s online chats, Ken discussed workplace issues in his “On the Job” forum. now he’s with Voice of America. I started at The Post in 1982 but Ken and I never crossed paths, as far as I know (it’s a big place); I’m delighted to see a fellow Postie here. Saturday afternoon, May 21, outside: The Flushies Watch here and in the newsletter (and if you’re in the In Crowd, a personal email) for an Evite for the Loser Community’s annual awards picnic potluck songfest etc etc etc, once again on the big back patio of Loser Steve Leifer’s house in Potomac, Md. A parody paean to the new Loser of the Year is being composed as we speak. And keep working on those double-entendres! Deadline Monday, April 25, for Week 1484. ====================================================================== WEEK 1486, published May 1, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1486: Legends of the fail The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s ‘signs of incompetence’ contest and winning neologisms Image without a caption By Pat Myers April 28, 2022 at 5:26 p.m. EDT Bob Staake's alternative sketch for this week's example of a sign of incompetence — the winning entry for Week 439. Bob took the question to mean that the sommelier was so stupid that he didn't think to bring a glass; I thought he was asking if they might just want to drink it out of the bottle, as might a waiter in a cheap restaurant. Anyway, we used Bob's other choice, with the fast-food cashier. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) Comment Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share First of all, have you seen the Evite for the Flushies, the Loser Community’s awards potluck picnic, on May 21? See farther down the page. Suggestion: Don’t enter “Fails to recognize my superb wit” as the Sign of an incompetent Empress of The Style Invitational.” I’ll fail to recognize its wit. This week’s contest, Week 1486 (deadline May 8), a direct repeat of one that my predecessor, the Czar, did in 2002, is a lot more straightforward and short-form than the vast majority of Invites. It’d be hard to fit wordplay into it, also unlike said vast majority. You just have to be funny and creative. Part of it might be the “field” you choose to illustrate the incompetence. As I mention on this week’s entry form, the wording doesn’t necessarily have to follow the examples’ exactly. In fact, “You don’t have to type ‘Sign that xxxx is incompetent’ every time; just begin your entry with say “Doctor:” or whatever. (If you want to word your sentence a different way to tell the joke more creatively, that’s fine; go ahead.)” I’m not going to bite my nails in fear we won’t have enough good stuff to fill the page four weeks from now; for one thing, I could always use extra foal names from next week: Loser Jonathan Hardis, My Rock, just sorted out all 3,566 Week 1483 entries for me, weeded out the entries that were No. 26 and later on people’s lists (one person had 40), flagged the names that had more than 18 characters, fixed misspellings, etc. etc. etc. I’m going to have a rockin’ weekend! Good thing part of it requires me to be a passenger on a long car trip. So here are the results of Week 439, from March 3, 2002. It was called “Week CVI” because the Czar started a new set of numbers — Roman ones — after a hiatus in 2000, but eventually gave it up, thank heavens. Report from Week CVI, in which we asked for signs of incompetence. ADVERTISING Special T-shirt award goes to Jeff Wallenfelt of Waldorf, who sent us eight separate e-mails reading, “Did this get through?” His entry was “sign of an incompetent e-mailer.” Fourth Runner-Up: Sign of an incompetent al-Qaeda terrorist: Hijacks a flight simulator. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville) Third Runner-Up: Sign of an incompetent phone-sex operator: “I’m 39 and sort of dumpy, wearing a pink housecoat … " (Marc Leibert, New York) Second Runner-Up: Sign your lawyer is incompetent: As he is questioning you on the witness stand, he keeps asking you whether you realize you are under oath. (Daniel L. Gray, Washington) First Runner-Up: Sign of an incompetent Tourette’s syndrome sufferer: “You gosh-darned danged noodlehead! What the h-e-double hockey sticks are you …” (Meg Sullivan, Potomac) And the winner of the Redskins Super Bowl XXII mug: Sign of an incompetent sommelier: “Do you want a glass with that?” (Kyle Bonney, Fairfax) Honorable Mentions: [this was before we started inviting Losers to come up with clever subheads] Boxing promoter: His press conferences are marked by regrettable incidents of civility and outbreaks of jovial, good-natured banter. (John C. Feltz, Fairfax) Undertaker: Emphasizes cleavage. (Mark Updike, Crownsville) Alchemist: Tries to turn gold into lead. (Vic Krysko, Yorkshire, England; Barry Blyveis, Columbia) Dominatrix: Fuzzy pink bunny slippers. (Julie Thomas and Will Cramer, Herndon) U.S. attorney general: Sees the world as a place where relative truths contend, instead of the setting for a Manichaean struggle between the purely good and the purely evil. — John Ashcroft, Washington (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville) Metro operator: Uses the PA system to accuse passengers of stealing the steering wheel. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville) Seeing Eye dog: Chases cars. (Lauren Joseff, Reston) Miss America contestant: Asked which person she admires most, she says, “My plastic surgeon.” (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) Middle Eastern terrorist: Travels under the name Joe-Bob El Aziz. (Howard Walderman, Columbia) Enron exec: He’s still waiting for the right time to exercise his stock options. (Walter Webert, Bethesda) Plagiarist: Copies his professor’s doctoral thesis. (Bob Grossman, Columbia) Fast-food employee: You order fries and he asks if you want fries with that. (Garrett Thomson, Toronto; Mel Loftus, Holmen, Wis.) Southern Italian: “Bubba-ding bubba-doom.” (Paul Kondis, Alexandria) Mortician: Muffled screams at funerals. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville) Advertisement Folk-singing family: Flees the Nazis by escaping to the Sudetenland. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Optometrist: “Can you read the FELOPZ line?” (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) Marathon runner: Tries “Olestra loading” before the big race. (Robin Grove, Pasadena, Md.) Voyeur: Wears cameras on his shoes to look up women’s nostrils. (Bob Dalton, Arlington) Liberal: Has a bleeding pancreas. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Terrorist: “Pull my finger” bomb proves ineffective outside five feet. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Chiropractor: Asks if your children have stepped on a crack recently. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) Gynecologist: Refers to the parts by their street names. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia) Hip-hop artist: Chooses a moniker like Soc R Mom or Biggie Fries. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Abstract expressionist painter: Inspires comments from gallery patrons that “My 4-year-old nephew couldn’t do that.” (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Accountant: Uses only Roman numerals. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia) Lawyer: Won’t confer with you without his lawyer present. (M. Lilly Welsh, Oakton) Panhandler: Spends the money on thank-you notes. (Bob Dalton, Arlington) Har Scrabble*: The results of Week 1482 *2013 inking headline by Beverley Sharp Our ninth Tile Invitational — finding new words in any of 36 seven-letter “racks” from the syndicated ScrabbleGrams word game that runs in The Post and many other print papers — proved one of our most successful ever, with a crazy 56 inking entries from a deluge of 1,600. I’m glad that my new box of FirStinks arrived yesterday; we have four First Offenders this week, along with at least two Losers who’d had one lone blot of ink for years and years, and can finally leap off the One-Hit Wonders list on the Loser Stats. Advertisement And it’s a return as well for this week’s Clowning Achievement winner: Jamie Martindale got his previous Invite ink a whole year ago — three honorable mentions in the Week 1428 Tile Invitational. Jamie, who used to work for the Fairfax County, Va., school system but is now teaching in Thailand, grabs not only his first contest win but his first “above-the-fold” since his debut in Week 1072; his two blots today give him an even dozen. Jamie took the letter set ACEFFIN and was one of numerous entrants to produce FACE-FIN: But then he parlayed that into a pertinent big-schnozz joke: “I’m not saying that nose is big, I’m just sayin’ if he was doing the backstroke at the beach, they’d be clearing the water and putting up a red flag.” This week’s three runners-up are already buried in Loser swag: Duncan Stevens accompanied CAR ODE with — but of course — a clever li’l poem; Coleman Glenn gave us BLOGNA for an online recipe that the author “learned … from an old Tuscan woman”; and John Hutchins coined the useful term AND-MAN as the aide who’s even worse than a yes-man: not only does he heartily endorse his boss’s stupid ideas, but he’ll then tack on some of his own. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood — whose headline on Roxanne Roberts’s Style story this week on irritating co-workers was “Suck-ups Return to Their Toadus Operandi” — agreed on my top four this week, and also singled out these honorable mentions: Sarah Walsh’s MISTUBE, to end up with a very different video from the one you were searching for; returnee Bill Hole’s TAXI-CAB, the red wine served in first class on the way to the runway; Eric Nelkin’s A-Z-ANON, for those for whom Q doesn’t offer enough conspiracy theories; Bill Dorner’s BAANO, lead singer of Ewe2; and Bill’s LOO NAG ("Everybody try to go potty, even if you don’t need to!”); William Kennard’s B-LOOGA as cut-rate, phlegmy caviar; and Tom Witte’s GROCE — what grocers do, duh. And for those who were trying to figure out what words were supposed to be in those letter sets: Here’s this year’s list of the intended seven-letter words, from “The Big Book of SCRABBLEgrams,” 2005. Wow, I would not have been happy to have learned that I was supposed to find “apposed” or “subitem” or “woesome.” I would have been woeful. ABBMOST>BOMBAST; CEHIKTT>THICKET; CIOSSUV>VISCOUS; AELNPPY>PLAYPEN; ADEOPPS>APPOSED; ACHINNU>UNCHAIN; ACCDESU>ACCUSED; DDEEILY>YIELDED; AHISTTW>WHATSIT; ADDEISY>DAYSIDE; EENSTVY>SEVENTY; ABNOOSS>BASSOON; AAHPTWY>PATHWAY; ADFPRTU>UPDRAFT; AABCITX>TAXICAB; ACEFFIN>CAFFEIN; BEIMSTU>SUBITEM; DEHNRTU>THUNDER; ADLNORU>NODULAR; ABEIKLT>BATLIKE; BELMPRU>PLUMBER; AAKLOOP>PALOOKA; CDEEILN>DECLINE; ABGLNOO>BOLOGNA; AEMRSTW>WARMEST; EGGIRRT>TRIGGER; AABNNOZ>BONANZA; DDEILOT>DELTOID; AADMNNS>SANDMAN; DEFFISU>DIFFUSE: BHIMSTU>BISMUTH; AELNQUU>UNEQUAL; AAEKMRR>EARMARK; ACDEGOR>CORDAGE; DDGOOOW>DOGWOOD; EEMOOSW>WOESOME You — yes, even you — are invited to the Flushies, May 21 The Evite is out for our return to Chez Loser Leifer — Steve Leifer’s backyard patio in Potomac, Md. — for the 26th (!!!!) Flushies, the Loser Community’s own annual afternoon to “honor” the Loser of the Year, Rookie of the Year, etc., by eating a lot of potluck food, singing Loser-penned song parodies (including some about the Losers themselves), playing some sort of trivia game, and general meetin’ & greetin’. I sent out this Evite by email: to active Losers who’re in the area, to Losers who haven’t been active but used to come to user events back in the day, and to people who were on the mailing list last year. But it’s totally possible that I inadvertently omitted your name. But truly, if you’ve read this far down in The Style Conversational, you qualify as someone we’d love to have join us; please write me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll add your email to the list. The parody-singing is always my favorite part of the festivities, and I’m thrilled that Loser Jonathan Jensen, a member of the Baltimore Symphony, will be accompanying on keyboards (and Loser Jesse Rifkin — the Georgetown Piano Bar Jesse Rifkin — will be in the bullpen). Parodist Extraordinaire Mark Raffman has already penned a very singalongable ode to the Loser of the Year, and Parodist Also Extraordinaire Duncan Stevens is once again looking through our parody contests for other songs that might fit the bill. We do favor songs by people who’ll be there, so if you plan on coming and think we should sing your parody, let me know and Duncan will see what will work. Take a moment to look in the Evite at my note with all the details, and if you’d like to come, please RSVP to it, so you can be sure to get any updates. If I don’t recognize your name, I’ll talk to you online for a bit before handing out the address etc. If you’re thinking of visiting Washington from out of town, May is really the best month of the year. I’ve already heard that Matt Monitto is driving down (yet again) from Connecticut, and we’ll be meeting Loser Rookie Phenom Coleman Glenn from the Philadelphia area, who’s already a household name in the Invite (and inks up the joint this week as well). And on the other end of the timeline, Invite Legend Chuck Smith of Woodbridge will be there as well. Losers Lynne Larkin and Geoff Gabriel — who met through the Invite — might be able to come up from Florida to the Flushies May 21. (Lynne Larkin) And we might even get a visit from our Loser Romantics — a product of my yentadom! A while back, I suggested to a new Loser, Geoff Gabriel of Vero Beach, Fla., that he might want to meet longtime Loser Lynne Larkin of Vero Beach, Fla. And they got together. Now they’re In Lurv — the only (aboveboard) couple I know who met directly through The Style Invitational. And Lynne tells me they’re going to try to both get free from other conflicts to come up from Florida to Flush. Oh, the paths you’ll take with Bob Staake Bob's latest, just in time for graduation. (MINEDITIONUS) I like to think of Style Invitational Cartoonist Since 1994 Bob Staake as our own personal artist, but of course he’s a much bigger deal than that, what with the New Yorker covers and his dozens of popular and beautifully crafted picture books. Now he’s out with “The Path,” “a hip new take on the graduation book,” as his publisher puts it. Its description: “'You will walk. You will walk along a well-worn path that many people have taken—and long before you.’ So begins this inspirational journey over gentle, grassy hills, through fields of wildflowers, over raging rivers, up steep mountains, and even through a dark, chilly cave. When it splits in two, you will have to decide what to do next—and you’ll create a path that’s unique to you.” So it’s one of those books, like Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!,” that work both as a graduation gift and an exciting read for tykes. And I’ll go out on a limb and promise that if you get a copy and tell Bob you’re an Invite fan, he’ll send you a hand-autographed bookplate you can paste inside. Not to mention that he has a special page on his website where you can buy his Invitational drawings: See bobstaake.com*SI. ====================================================================== WEEK 1487, published May 8, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1487: Get back on that horse! The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s winning foal names and grandfoal contest Image without a caption By Pat Myers May 5, 2022 at 5:19 p.m. EDT Charge It works out at Churchill Downs in preparation for Saturday's Kentucky Derby. Regardless of how the colt runs, he's already a proven Style Invitational "sire," producing both Mona Visa (with Smile Happy) and House of Cords (with Congressman). (Charlie Riedel*AP) Comment Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Chalk it up to racing luck. That is, if your foal name didn’t get ink this year in The Style Invitational’s annual “breeding” contest, Week 1483 (results here). If it did, it’s not just luck by any means: It’s definitely one of the most clever pairings of two Triple Crown-nominated horses among the 3,500 entries submitted by more than 300 entrants. But, as always — at least for the 19 years I’ve judged this contest — there were also a couple hundred other entries that were in the same league of wordplay and funniness. My shortlist from which I drew today’s 70 inking entries: 270, not counting the names that too many people sent in, like “G Spot” for Seventh Letter x Epicenter. So 200 eminently inkworthy horses — and yes, of course they included yours — were left at the starting gate. As I promised in the intro to this week’s results, and as an example of how many funny entries there are to choose from at every turn, here are some of the non-inking plays on Grantham, who shares his name with Lord Grantham, a.k.a. Robert Crawley, the fictional patriarch of the soap-without-the-stigma “Downton Abbey.” Some of them were sent by multiple Losers, sometimes with different pairings. This one got ink: Grantham x On Thin Ice = Downturn Abbey (Sarah Walsh), perhaps because it stood apart from the others. YMMV, as they say. Grantham x Cant Be Doin That = Downton Grabby Grantham x Cyberknife = Downton Stabby Grantham x Make It Big = Downton Flabby Verbal x Grantham = Downton Gabby Grantham x Volcanic = Downton Crabby Grantham x Apprehend = DowntoNABbey Grantham x Classic Causeway = Downton Abbey Road Doppelganger x Grantham = Creepy Crawley Bletchley Park x Grantham = Crypto Crawley Flying Drummer x Grantham = Krupa Crawley Grantham x Bloodline = Tudor Manor Born Grantham x Bureau = Lord of the Files Grantham x Beyond Best = Lord of the Manna Absolute Ruler x Grantham = Lordy, Lordy Grantham x Hopper = Lord’s a-Leaping Grantham x Rockefeller = Standard Earl And for something completely different, although two people had this idea: Congressman x Grantham = Pork Subsidy (grant a ham!) And there weren’t even all that many Grantham entries — in fact, that name was one of the least used, with a mere 36 entries in all. The most? Absolute Ruler, with 205 pairings, according to Count Jonathan Hardis, the Loser who tabulated the horses’ “fertility” along with sorting and making consistent and fixing the spelling of all the entries from the anonymous list I sent him. Grantham the horse’s own parentage, by the way? Declaration of War x Darby Blush. Sigh. These horse owners should contact the Loser Community. (I couldn’t find out whom Grantham is actually named for; he’s not running in the Derby, anyway.) Sometimes I’d get the roughly the same pun in a pairing, but liked one framing of it the most. Pairing Rhetoric with Courvoisier yielded these variations (among others): Courvoisier x Rhetoric: (1) Cognyak, (2) Cognac-ety Yak, (3) Cognackity-yak ADVERTISING But I thought Drew Bennett’s (4) Con Yak was clearly the best of these -- not only is it elegantly pithy, and instantly readable, but it also plays into the meaning of “rhetoric” as empty or misleading political speech — in other words, a con. (Meanwhile, Courvoisier also got ink paired with Absolute Ruler for Genghis Cognac, one of three inks this week by Coleman Glenn.) Readability was an important criterion for me throughout; entries that were squeezed into 18 characters by dropped letters, “your” changed to “ur,” etc., had little chance (e.g., Barber Road x Gunfighter = Hair2dayGun2morrow). If we’re going to have readers look at 70 of these things, we don’t want to make them weary just trying to see what they say. I did run several entries with words run together, but I had no trouble reading, say, ShavingPrivateRyan (Mark Raffman; Barber Road x American Icon). I realized that when it came to choosing among so many funny puns, I had a standard about foal names that were puns on people’s names: I tend to prefer when that person relates to one of the parents’ names. For example, Barber Road x Hopper = Sweeney Toad (Laurie Brink; Rob Wolf) works because Sweeney Todd is a barber. Or Witty x Peaceful Waters = Oscar Milde (Jesse Rifkin); Oscar Wilde is synonymous with witty. Or Presidential x Strobe = Abe Blinkin’ (Dave Zarrow). Contrast those with, say, Tawny Port x Octane = Vin Diesel, or Win the Day x Rattle N Roll = Victor Yugo. Nice puns, but I like to see the connection with the person. There are always exceptions, though: Kevin Dopart got ink with Echo Zulu x Crown Pride = Zulu Zulu Top (though you could argue that Z.Z. Top’s band members are renowned for their hair, it’s really beard and not crown). And most notably, Jon Gearhart got lots of acclaim this morning in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group for the super-creative Bloodline x Trademark = Auntâ„¢, even with zero Oz connection. One standard I didn’t use was to wonder how useful they’d be for this week’s contest, the “grandfoals” of Week 1487. But now, looking at the list that I compiled at the bottom of this week’s online Invite, I’m predicting lots of success, especially considering that a number of them aren’t already full of the puns that make breeding those names an extra challenge. So I’m expecting lots of crosses with such foals as Sure I Can and Says Nobody and Sharp Dresser (that last one was a pun, Cyberknife x Bureau, but the result itself doesn’t show it). The formatting rules for the grandfoals are just like the ones for the foals. But for newbies, here’s what’s on this week’s entry form: “HOW TO FORMAT YOUR ENTRIES: This is important because the Empress will sort your entries alphabetically. Type each entry in this format, with each entry on a single line: Horse A x Horse B = Your Foal Name. Make sure you spell the real horses’ names correctly! DON’T number your entries or begin them with bullets or the like; just use the names. Don’t use tabs or make them into a table. Don’t boldface them. Just plain old text. Thank you to almost everyone who entered Week 1483 for following these directions.” Jonathan tells me that actually his program will just toss out the numbers and bullets and such before the names, but on weeks when I have to sort the entries myself, I have to take them out by hand. The grandfoals are a bit of a challenge because of the aforementioned pun-on-pun action. The good news is that you don’t have to incorporate every element of the name on every level. For guidance and inspiration, let’s look at some of last year’s inking grandfoals (full results from Week 1434 here): Fourth place: Dodger x Outamind = Ducker Carlson (Jesse Frankovich) No obvious puns in the parents’ names, so complete! Dodger = ducker. Outamind = Tucker Carlson. Third place: Widespread Luting x TamingOfTheShroom = PlayThatFungiMusic (J.D. Berry) This time, both parents are puns, but J.D. plays only on the words on the page, Luting and Shroom (rather than “looting” etc.), for his own pun. Second place: CruMBS x Lip Loch = Ruthless Ness (Mark Raffman) Also bursting with punnage. Here, Mark goes not to “crumbs” but to the source, “MBS,” a.k.a. Mohammed bin Salman, and uses “Loch” but not “lip lock,” or kissing. Still works great, and it’s timely and sharp. And last year’s winner, HaberDasher x It’s All Over = RIP What You Sew (Jonathan Paul), once again plays on the words on the page; it’s clear from the capitalization that HaberDasher was a pun of some sort (Savile Row x Santa Cruiser, by Fred Shuback), but there’s no spelling or pronunciation change. Oh, two more: Merch Madness x Capital BLTway = NCAAA (Jonathan Hardis). Both sides back to the source here: Jonathan skips “Merch” and references March Madness, for NCAA, and Capital Beltway, no sandwich, for the AAA part. And the opposite is true for this one: Merch Madness x Parasite = Buy 1 Get 1 Flea (Eric Nelkin; J.D. Berry). Here, there’s nothing about basketball but only the “merch.” And “Parasite” isn’t a pun in itself, so Eric and J.D. could pun on it in his grandfoal without having to consider a second level. The good news: Almost always, there are far fewer entries for the grandfoal contest, usually 30 to 50 percent fewer. So you have a way better chance. Give it a shot. It’s the sixth Invite win — but the first of our newer Clowning Achievements — for Genuine Dubliner John O’Byrne, who’s been a chronic Invite Loser for at least 20 years, and has a longtime passion for American history and politics. And so I wasn’t surprised when his all too timely We the People x Absolute Ruler = I the People turned out to have his name attached. I’m hoping that the Clowner trophy, the Disembodied Clown Head on a Stick, will clear customs and won’t be chewed up by the police dogs at Dublin Airport. Incorrigible recidivists fill out this week’s Losers’ Circle as well: Craig Dykstra adds to his 300-plus inks with Bloodline x Dean’s List = IV League; Hall of Famer Gary Crockett continues to saunter past 500 with the operative (A x B = A modified by B) Smarten Up x Simplification = Dumben Down, and Fairly Recent but Thoroughly Ubiquitous Jonathan Jensen has a super pun with Volcanic x Cant Be Doin That = Erupt to No Good; I’m a sucker for a word that’s a pun on two or more other words. Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood dug everything this week: Too many good ones to single out, he told me. But he did get a kick out of “the end of the 28-year drought” for Bill Epstein, whose previous two inks were from Weeks 80 and 77. Bill gets his first magnet (back then they got bumper stickers) for Cant Be Doin That x Congressman = Sure I Can. No First Offenders, though! This may well be the first time that’s true in a horse name contest. You can still RSVP for the Flushies! Saturday, May 21 We’re up to about 50 Losers, their handlers, and Just Fans for this year’s Flushies, the Losers’ own annual picnic*awards*songfest. It’s Saturday afternoon, May 21, and outside in a nice open space, Steve and Jackie Leifer’s backyard in Potomac, Md. This Evite is for YOU, even if you didn’t get a personal email. Please see the details in last week’s Style Conversational at wapo.st*conv1486. I’d love to meet you and chat, as long as you don’t harangue me about your perfect horse name that didn’t get ink. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m going to take a long nap this evening. If you got ink this week and you’re sufficiently magnetized with this year’s Loser magnets and are good with getting your “prize” letter as an email attachment (and haven’t already signed up for No More Tchotchkes), let me know. And on Saturday at 6:57 Eastern time, root for any of the 16 horses in the Derby field that got ink today — everyone but Zandon, Pioneer of Medina, Taiba and Mo Donegal. I’m going with Epicenter. Go, Loser Ponies! ====================================================================== WEEK 1488, published May 15, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1488: What’s the (re)use? The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s repurposed-materials contest and double-entendre results Image without a caption By Pat Myers May 12, 2022 at 5:31 p.m. EDT An alternative sketch by Bob Staake for this week's Style Invitational contest for repurposed surplus goods. Bob offers his Invite sketches and finished drawings to Losers and fans at bobstaake.com*SI. Comment Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share You know those giant twist-ties that circle big bunches of kale and collard greens? Well, let me tell you that they are perfect, in multiples of three, to bunch together the slats of a bathroom-size venetian blind whose 35-year-old cord decided to fail on one side only. The Style Invitational Greater Loser Community has repeatedly proved itself cleverly imaginative at figuring out, say, what single sentence can be used in two different situations (oh, that’s this week’s results!). And while this week’s contest, Week 1488, calls for more than wordplay, I’m confident that y’all will come up with a variety of wacky ideas to repurpose materials sold by, duh, RepurposedMaterials, a nationwide company that specializes in selling goods that are no longer useful to their original owner but could be, with some resourcefulness, given a new life as another product: For example, its founder says, an out-of-commission fire hose can be just the thing to wrap around the posts of a boat pier so the hulls won’t get scratched. (So yes, “Recycle” in my headline isn’t technically the right term; in the industry, that means to melt down or shred the original and make something different out of it, a process that’s not as nice to the planet as simply using the original in a different way.) I’m especially confident of good results because I’m letting you choose anything from the website this time; this should ensure a wider variety of ideas. Since our 2015, RepurposedMaterials seems to have expanded quite a bit; it now says: “We’re now extending our ‘repurposing’ mission*concept to include things like Chemicals and Ingredients, Products and Inventories, Equipment and Machinery, and even Real Estate. Anything that is obsolete to its primary industry is of interest to us.” And there’s a “WeirdStuff” category encompassing not only the hamburger bun pans and blast-resistant trash cans, but also a 6-by-6-foot diesel truck chassis ($250,000). So here’s the ink from Round 1. Keep these entries in mind as you tour the site; the bowling alley wood is still there — and so, amazingly, are the purple napkins. Of course, you can still use them; just come up with a significantly different idea. And I see that y’all did use a fair amount of wordplay after all. LAUGHEDOVERS*: RECYCLING IDEAS FROM WEEK 1135 [*Headline by Tom Witte] In Week 1131 we listed some items available from RepurposedMaterialsInc.com — everything from mineral oil to Jersey barriers to a hockey rink — and asked for some imaginative ideas for using them singly or in combination. Many people suggested using the synthetic turf to accompany that non-crabmeat for an all-fake “surf and turf.” 4th place: 100-foot diameter military cargo parachutes: Your Mama can use one as a skirt. Well, more of a miniskirt. (Ben Aronin, Washington) 3rd place: Purple linen napkins: Sew 50 of them together to make a Baltimore Ravens uniform. Or sew two together to make a Baltimore Ravens cheerleader uniform. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) 2nd place and the ceramic outhouse “sculpture”: Plastic ballot boxes: To keep illegal immigrants far away from Donald Trump, use the plastic ballot boxes to build a thick wall around him. (Matt Monitto, Bristol, Conn.) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: 10-milliliter glass vials: Want to see how clever squirrels really are? Make a glass harp — that set of glasses that makes music when you put water in the glasses and rub the edges — and set it up in front of a screen with a walnut behind it. When the squirrel learns to play “Anticipation,” the screen opens and it gets the nut — and you’ll get a zillion views on Instagram. You do have to be patient; it took more than 10 minutes for the ones in my yard to solve it. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis) ADVERTISING Re(f) used: honorable mentions [By Jeff Shirley} Boardwalk boards: Surprise the wife and cover your bedroom ceiling with boardwalk boards, throw some sand and seaweed on the bed and relive some Drifters magic. (Jeff Shirley, Richmond) Bowling alley wood: Great for kitchen countertops and tables — especially when paired with repurposed pinsetters that automatically serve and clear away your meals. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) Bowling alley wood: Roof your house with it: Based on my experience, anything that lands on it will quickly end up in the gutter. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.; Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) Carpet tiles: Perfect vehicles for very small genies. (Beverley Sharp) Carpet tiles: Install them on a brick patio in the D.C. area and you’ll quickly have a mushroom farm growing out of the carpet just a step away from your kitchen door. (Lawrence McGuire, Waldorf, Md.) Carpet tiles: To avoid the expense of carpeting and to make a fashion statement, glue carpet tiles to all your shoes. (Jeff Shirley) Carpet tiles: Make a home exfoliation spa! 1. Cover the kid’s slide in the backyard with carpet tiles. 2. Disrobe. 3. Slide down four times: front, back, left, right. 4. Did we forget to recommend a privacy screen? (For extra exfoliation, substitute the asphalt shingles.) (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.; Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.) Escalator handrails: They’ll fit perfectly as handrails for Metro’s stairs. (Ben Aronin; Matt Monitto) Escalator handrails: Advertise a handrail as the world’s largest piece of licorice, and charge skeptics to take a bite because really, who could tell? (Jeff Shirley) Concrete barriers and planters: Always dreamed of living in a building as warm and welcoming as the HHS headquarters? Some of these will give you that same friendly ambiance! (Kevin Dopart, Washington) A plastic hockey rink: How many times have you said, “Let’s play plastic hockey!” and you had no rink? (Edmund Conti, Raleigh, N.C.) Jersey barriers: Okay, Christie’s contained. Now we need two dozen other state barriers. (Ellen Ryan, Rockville, Md.) Purple linen napkins: Start a blog called Build the Purple Line Now! Ask for supporters to buy your “Purple Line Flags” and display them on trees and utility poles in their neighborhoods. Then buy another truckload, paint a red slash on each napkin, and start a blog called No Purple Line in My Backyard! (Joseph Mat Schech, Colesville, Md.) Purple linen napkins: Finally I can make curtains to match my Chivas Regal bag duvet cover! (Barbara Turner) Purple linen napkins: A new line of “Mankinis by Prince.” (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.; Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) Plastic pallets: The Republican National Committee should stock up now — disposable platforms will be essential after the primaries. (Kevin Dopart) Fire hose and mineral oil: Elephants may still be vulnerable to poachers and loss of habitat, but with enough of these, you can cross constipation off their list of worries. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) Particle board: States with awful health-care systems can use them to build cheap coffins; they can even call the boards “death panels.” (Kevin Dopart) Ski lift cable: Research proves that children who have ski lift cable running directly from bed to bus stop have fewer absences and tardies. (Rob Huffman) 10-ml vials: Fill them with Coke, then advertise “97 percent less high-fructose corn syrup compared to our regular can of Coke!” (Joseph Mat Schech) 8-foot-diameter tires: Cruise lines need new life rings for their American passengers, especially on the final days of the cruise. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) Combination of items: Use the carpet tiles on the walls to upgrade the soundproofing of your rumpus room. Use the climbing rope, rubber sheets and mineral oil to upgrade your rumpus. (Doug Frank, Crosby, Tex.) Odor-eater fabric: Instead of parchment when publishing “The Best of The Style Invitational: Premium Collector’s Edition” … (Kevin Dopart) A note about entries: If you’re choosing an item not on the list I supplied, please include either a link or another easy way for me to check it out, e.g., “In the Weird Stuff section.” I didn’t ask you to submit entries in a particular format, because I figured that I wouldn’t have that many to group together. But it never hurts to keep each entry as a single line, without using the Enter key within a single entry. That way I could, if it turns out that most people just used the 10 items on my list. Double-meant fun*: The results of Week 1484 *Mark Raffman’s inking headline from Week 1336 So. My original intro to the results of Week 1484, after I cited three frequently submitted entries, added this: “Not to mention many gas station*bed jokes about pumping and lube; and church*bed about kneeling; and Supreme Court*bed with briefs. We’ll spare you.” It now says: “Not to mention many duplicative ‘in bed’ pairings that wouldn’t have been printable anyway.” Note to self: Never type the word “lube.” (Whuh-oh.) I wasn’t going to throw a tanty to the management of The Washington Post insisting on the reader’s right to know the genres of some risque jokes that were too overused to run anyway. But I had to laugh, because I’d just been asked in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group whether I’d have been able to run this non-inking entry: “At a gas station and in bed: ‘Don’t forget to check under the hood.’ ” I’d actually thought the entry was about the corresponding part on the opposite sex, but I said I wasn’t sure, but that it probably would be considered too graphic. So that question’s pretty much answered. A few of the 1,600 double-entendre entries in Week 1484. (Screen image*TWP) Gawd, glad I didn’t try this one: “At a religious service and in bed: No, don’t chew it, just swallow.” (From the Brit-in-Paris Brian Allgar, whose work often ends up in this column. By the way, here’s an interesting discussion on the issue from CatholicForum.com.) Yeah, nothing like jokes combining religion with graphic sex references to catapult immediately into UnprintableLand. “Massive organ”! “Get on your knees!” And, inevitably, “second coming.” No way, people. But still, “In bed,” a category summoned for a return performance after its success in Week 1336 three years ago, figured in a full dozen inking entries in this week’s results — none of which, let me clarify, was censored; it was just that lead-in line. I was deluged with 1,600 entries to this contest — fewer than half of the foal names from the previous week (that’s always the year’s biggest contest), but hundreds more than usual and ended up running 40, almost all of them in the print paper as well as online (Steve Smith’s “log” joke excepted). Special thanks to Alex Blackwood, my co-admin of the Devotees group, for suggesting some of them, including the Supreme Court and the Jan. 6 committee; they were both especially fruitful categories and provided a good channel for political humor, a welcome respite from the onslaught of nudge-nudge jokes. (I am thrilled that Alex is coming in from Houston next weekend to attend the Flushies, the Losers’ award picnic*songfest; see below for one last reminder.) It’s the first Clowning Achievement but the third Invite win over the years for John Glenn of Tyler, Tex. (not of Space). John has been Inviting almost as long as the Empress has; he got his first ink in Week 684 in 2006. But he plays a precision game: He enters fairly regularly but sends very few entries in a given week — sometimes just one. But that one entry often gets ink. This week he used a wordplay that many others did, punning on “dumbbell,” but his made me laugh: At the gym and in the Jan. 6 committee: “Did you really think you could work with that 250-pound dumbbell and not get hurt?” (I don’t know if there are 250-pound dumbbells — a dumbbell is lifted with one hand — but it made me laugh.) And it’s a rookie phenom who took second place and snagged the vintage 2012 Loser mug: Karen Lambert’s chatty quote that could be from the gas station or the hairstylist was fun to read when so many of the entries were one short phrase: “Very funny, ha ha — no, I wasn’t under the influence when I did this.” I’ll be giving Karen her mug at the Flushies, her debut Loser event. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood found this week’s results especially fun, though he did helpfully point out that the gas station*Jan. 6 committee joke “That much for just a battery charge?” didn’t really work because the committee doesn’t charge people with crimes. (Sorry, Steve Dudzik.) Doug thought all the top winners were great, and also singled out several honorable mentions: Leif Picoult’s “Yeah, it shouldn’t leak like that” (gas station*bed) “made me laugh and recoil”; Terri Berg Smith’s “My neighbor highly recommended you” (hairstylist*bed); Sam Mertens for hairstylist*Supreme Court “I prefer how Ruth used to do it”; Francis Cavanaugh’s for elementary school*bed “How would you like it if someone did that to you?”; and especially Robert Schechter’s entry that listed every single setting for “I won the election in a landslide!” Doug also liked Hannah Seidel’s hairstylist*bed “Can you do longer bangs?” but I dropped it last night after realizing that a very similar entry got ink in the 2019 contest. You can still RSVP for the Flushies! Saturday, May 21 We’re currently at 53 Losers, their handlers, and Just Fans for this year’s Flushies, the Losers’ own annual picnic*awards*songfest. It’s Saturday afternoon, May 21, and outside in a nice open space, Steve and Jackie Leifer’s backyard in Potomac, Md. This Evite is for YOU, even if you didn’t get a personal email. Please see the details in the Week 1486 Style Conversational at wapo.st*conv1486; a note has gone out with the Leifers’ address and phone number to those who’ve RSVP’ed Yes; if you’re signing up now, let me know and I’ll send it to you as well. Latest development: Superloser Duncan Stevens has just written a SPECTACULAR parody for the occasion, in addition to the others already on the schedule. And if you can’t make it to the proceedings, we hope to record — and maybe even live stream — the song and award sections to air in the Devotees group. ====================================================================== WEEK 1489, published May 22, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1489: Switching one switch for another The Style Invitational Empress on rearranging words (this time) and transposing letters (last time) Image without a caption By Pat Myers May 19, 2022 at 4:31 p.m. EDT Bob Staake's alternative sketch for this week's contest example to rearrange the words of a movie title (his own idea as well): “The Unsinkable Brown Molly: When DEA agents conduct a raid on the rave, partyers find it impossible to flush their Ecstasy down the toilet.” Bob offers his Style Invitational sketches and finished work for sale to fans at bobstaake.com*SI. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) Comment Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Hi, everyone! It’s last call for RSVP to the Flushies in Potomac, Md., on Saturday, May 21, 1 to 5 (structured festivities in the middle hours). Though the forecast is for one of those D.C. hot ’n’ humid afternoons, host Steve Leifer has his indoor pool beckoning; it’s right next to the patio where we’ll be potlucking and awarding and triviagaming and parodysinging. So bring a swimsuit if you’d like. (I’ll have to see what I have in the way of swim tiaras.) I’m especially excited that close to a dozen Losers and Style Invitational Devotees will be attending their first Flushies, or even their first Loser event. This is the Loser Community’s 26th annual awards “banquet,” and I think this one is my 20th. It goes without saying that you have to be totally vaccinated, and while we’re outside, feel free to mask up. We didn’t Flush in 2020, but last year’s event — at the same lovely home of the ultra-gracious Steve (the Loser) and Jackie (the very good sport) Leifer — went off beautifully, and no one caught anything except for a Nerf-type human brain that was tossed from Loser to Loser during the solemn award ceremonies. If you have found your way to This Secret Page, unknown even to 99.99 percent of Washington Post staff, and are still reading, then you are indeed invited. Here’s the Evite; for the exact house address, contact me at pat.myers@washpost.com and include “Flushies” in the subject line so I’ll notice it. Can’t make it? Live in Nepal, Venezuela, Gaithersburg? You’re in luck (if all goes well): Loser Sarah Walsh has volunteered to live-stream the presentation*singing part of the day to the Devotees group starting about 2:30 Eastern time, and it’ll be recorded for future viewing as well. And I hope to share some clips right here in next week’s Conversational. Swap meets*: This week’s new contest — and this week’s results *A headline submitted by several Losers for Week 1485 It was a coincidence — or at least I didn’t consciously plan it — that both this week’s new contest, Style Invitational Week 1489, and this week’s results of Week 1485 involve rearranging elements of a word, name or title; this time you’ll rearrange the words of a movie title to make a new one, while 1485 asked the Losers to switch the positions of just two letters. But there’s another significant difference between the two contests. For about half the entries in Week 1485 I took the unusual step of showing what the original word*name was, followed by the alteration and then the description. I avoid spelling out jokes as a rule, but in a number of cases, switching two letters (usually far apart) made it surprisingly hard to notice the original — and that transformation itself was cool. Witness Barrett Swink’s LEGO > GELO, toys that make it much safer to go barefoot in your kid’s room; and Marli Melton’s COMPUTER > ROMPUTEC, a device exclusively for dating apps. The goal is to let readers enjoy the cleverness of the transformation without making them work through it like a puzzle, but also without beating them over the head with obviousness. Looking over the results again, I think that most of the inking entries, especially phrases, didn’t need the help, but I also don’t think it weakened the joke, and I didn’t want to go back and forth between the two types. And of course, this week’s winner, Frank Osen’s TODAY > TOADY, simply wouldn’t have worked without showing both words. But for Week 1489, the shuffling of the words in a movie title, I am not going to show the original, just as I didn’t back in 2013 in Week 1008, and just as my predecessor, the Czar, didn’t in 2003 in Week 524. So don’t just dig up some obscure Western from 1938 that would make a funny rearranged phrase, because the reader won’t sense the transformation (and see, even if I did list this unknown title beforehand, there’s no fun in seeing it). This doesn’t mean it has to be a brand-new movie; it just has to be reasonably well known to the public. ADVERTISING Another thing: Given today’s franchise releases, there are lots of titles that contain opening phrases and such. You don’t have to use the technically complete title of the movie; you could say “The Phantom Menace” rather than “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.” But you don’t get to just drop inconvenient words from the main part of the title because it didn’t work for your new name. (And of course you may use the full title.) And yet another thing: Your humor has to derive from the rearranging of the words; if your joke works just as well with the original title, no ink. You have lotsa guidance this time because both previous contests generated lotsa ink. The movies they’re playing off aren’t off limits for this contest, but you obviously can’t use the same jokes. Here are both sets of results. First from the 2013 contest: Report from Week 1008, in which we asked you to rearrange the words of a movie title and describe the resulting new film: The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: The Kwai on the River Bridge: Barbara Walters narrates a moving story of two lovers saying goodbye above the Seine. (Roy Ashley, Washington) 2. Ralph It, Wreck!: A less-than-compassionate sidekick counsels a rock star through her latest drinking binge. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) 3. Rich Little, Poor Girl: An aging impressionist tricks young women into blind dates by imitating Ryan Gosling, Daniel Craig, George Clooney and Justin Bieber. (Dan O’Day, Alexandria, Va., a First Offender) 4. Wonderful? It’s a Life: Grandpa Irving pooh-poohs being in the Greatest Generation. (Ellen Ryan, Rockville, Md.) In Translation: Lost — honorable mentions [subhead by Kevin Dopart] About 10, I Hate You Things: The story of a frazzled day-care provider. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) The Spider, Amazing, Man: Cheech and Chong contemplate their pet tarantula. (Jerry Birchmore, Springfield, Va.) The Fear of Wages: A hedge fund manager has nightmares about having his income taxed like his secretary’s. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) How Stella Got Her Back Groove: Dangers of a wrinkled mattress pad. (Ellen Ryan) Sarah Forgetting Marshall: Ms. Palin attempts to name all the black Supreme Court justices in U.S. history. (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.) High Times at Ridgemont Fast: Hilarity ensues when David and Sara smuggle marijuana into Yom Kippur services. (Doug Wadler, Potomac, Md., a First Offender) The Presidents: All Men: A 2017 film about the way things used to be. (Janelle Gibb, Rockville, Md., a First Offender) [Sigh.] The Queen — African?: Birthers challenge Elizabeth II. (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) The Mile Green: A documentary about the world’s most difficult Putt-Putt hole. (Jason Russo, Annandale, Va.) Who’s Dinner Coming To? Guess!: Sadistic parents pit siblings against each other at mealtimes. (Howard Walderman, Columbia, Md.) Weeks Later, 28: Innocently enough, parents get their daughter two mice for Christmas … (Brendan Beary) From Eternity to Here?: A Buddhist dung beetle contemplates how big a jerk he must have been in his previous life. (Christopher Lamora, Guatemala City) Talk, Pillow!: A lonely woman wishes her most intimate partner would just love her back. (Kathye Hamilton, Annandale, Va.) Lovers of the Last Red Hot: Two amorous moviegoers share the piece of candy stuck at the bottom of the package. (Jeff Loren, Manassas, Va.) Paris Last in Tango: Sobbing and screaming, Hilton bombs on “Dancing With the Stars.” (Brian Allgar, Paris) Jedi of the Return: An elite group of consumers gets full refunds on unwanted merchandise — without the original store receipts! (Bonnie Speary Devore, Gaithersburg, Md.) Girl Wants a What?: Dad thinks he’s taking his daughter to Piercing Palace to get her ears done, but Little Princess has other ideas … (Brendan Beary) Wants What? A Girl?: Gay dads face the reality that their figure-skater son is straight. (Pam Sweeney, Burlington, Mass.) Austin Man: Mystery of International Powers: Rick Perry realizes he only has until 2016 to learn something about world events. (Brendan Beary) Iron the Lady: An evil dermatologist finds a new way to rid women of wrinkles. (Tzvia Berrin-Reinstein, Boston, a First Offender) Can’t You Take It With You?: Woman hopes to get rid of boyfriend and ugly couch all at once. (Susan Thompson, Cary, N.C.) Dirty the Dozen: The Rugrats struggle to adapt to training pants. (Russell Beland, Fairfax, Va.) Place Peyton to Return: The Denver Broncos shock fans by putting their quarterback on special teams. (Elizabeth Kline, Frederick, Md., a First Offender) Do the Thing Right: After 30 years of marriage, Louise decides to give Hank some feedback on his performance. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) The Hunter Deer: Bambi changes his name to Bambo and seeks revenge. (Gary Crockett) Sing? Sing in 20,000 Years: A documentary that answers the question “When should Kathie Lee Gifford sing?” (William C. Kennard, Arlington, Va.) The Lightness of Being Unbearable: Self-help video on how to become less tense by telling people what you really think of them. (Barrie Collins, Long Sault, Ontario) Me Stand By: Cookie Monster loiters outside a Pepperidge Farm factory. (Robert Schechter, Dix Hills, N.Y.) Washington Goes to Mr. Smith: The nation’s capital is auctioned off to cut the deficit. (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.) Sixty Gone in Seconds: The hall is almost full when Joe Biden starts his speech, but .?.?. (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.) Eight Out Men: Major League Baseball is scandalized, until everyone promptly gets over it. (Nancy Schwalb, Washington) Show the Truman!: The alleged coverup in the search for a new Nationals mascot (Craig Dykstra, Centreville, Va.) I Shrunk the Kids’ Honey: New York Mayor Bloomberg starts limiting container sizes for ALL sweet consumables. (Trevor Kerr, Chesapeake, Va.) Kids, I Shrunk the Honey: One family manages just fine on unsweetened tea. (James Kruger, Butha-Buthe, Lesotho, a First Offender) 50 Dates First: Sally starts to wonder if she might be waiting a little too long before “putting out.” (William Verkuilen, Brooklyn Park, Minn.) Good Hunting, Will: Prince Charles sends his son to Dick Cheney’s ranch for a long weekend. (Andrew Ballard, London) And Last: Dog the Wag: The never-ending pursuit of a Style Invitational Loser by his obsessed fans. (The Famed Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) Plus a couple from the year-end do-over contest: Sheba, Come Back Little: A man sends his spouse to a fat farm. (Howard Walderman, Columbia, Md.) Club Dallas Buyers: When a Black Friday riot breaks out, Texas mall cops take matters into their own hands. (Mark Raffman) ----- And from the Czar in 2003, his last year of Czarring (note that this one also includes books): Results from Week 524, in which you were asked to scramble the words of any book or movie, and come up with a new product. An extraordinary week; great entries, and in great numbers. Good ideas too popular to reward with prizes: Ferris Bueller’s Off-Day (a boring movie); Mr. Washington Goes to Smith (the father of our country as a cross-dresser); The Rye in the Catcher (a documentary on alcoholism in sports), and The Wrath of Grapes (various vegetal revenge scenarios). Sixth Runner-Up: “The Brief Pelican”: Impressed with the success of the Aflac Duck, the Hanes underwear company signs a new mascot. (Gene McMath, Reston) Fifth Runner-Up: “Kampf Mein”: And other German-Chinese recipes. (Bob Wallace, Reston) Fourth Runner-Up: “Space A: 2001 Odyssey”: Student filmmakers park a two-year-old Honda minivan in Daniel Snyder’s reserved spot at FedEx Field and recount the action as it unfolds. (Malcolm Fleschner, San Mateo, Calif.) Third Runner-Up: “You Are 54: Where Car?”: A senior moment strikes in a parking garage. (Julie Thomas and Will Cramer, Herndon; Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) [This is one of my favorite entries ever — it just cracks me up every time.] Second Runner-Up: “French the Lieutenant’s Woman”: The enlisted man’s guide to courts-martial. (Frank Mullen III, Aledo, Ill.) First Runner-Up: “Who the Man Shot Liberty Valance?”: In this sequel, Superfly Valance arrives from Chicago to avenge his brother’s death. (Tom Kreitzberg, Silver Spring) And the winner of the log containing a diorama containing a plastic fawn: “What? Did Daddy Do You in the War?” A young girl learns of her father’s overseas affair when a Korean woman comes looking for him. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Honorable Mentions: Love Thing: A Many-Splendored “Is”: Bill Clinton’s guide through the pitfalls of romance and semantics. (Mary Ann Henningsen, Hayward, Calif.) Dogs’ Reservoir: Documentary on house pets and their fascination with drinking from the toilet. (Kevin Doherty, Manassas Park) Heat Body: Episode 1 in the suspenseful trilogy “Reviving Ted Williams.” Coming soon: “Episode 2: Attach Head.” (Jeff Kraus, Ashburn) The Red Man with One Shoe: The story of Nikita Khruschchev. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) OK Gunfight at the Corral: One thumb up for this B-movie western. (Tom Kreitzberg, Silver Spring) Enemy Behind-Lines: A workout book to eliminate butt wrinkles. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Asphalt the Jungle: Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” becomes a feature film. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney) Powers of Austin Man: International Mystery: How the governor of Texas became president of the United States. (Brian Lochrie and Jennie Reiff, Lake Forest, Calif.) Private-Saving Ryan: The touching story of a man who decided to wait till marriage. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Ted’s Excellent Bill and Adventure: A day in the life of a senator from Massachusetts who passes an important piece of legislation AND scores with an intern. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) Wrong! She Done HIM!: A Clinton apologist reviews the Monica affair. (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) F.J.K.: In this documentary, disappointed Harry Potter fans complain about the author. (David Vacca, Washington) [I’m surprised they let this into the paper 19 years ago.] You Were Always Afraid to Know About Everything to Ask, But Wanted Sex: A teenage angst coming-of-age sequel. (William Spencer, Exeter, N.H.) Out? No Way!: A biopic on the life of Rock Hudson. (Glen Crawford, Germantown) From Dawn Till Dusk: The most boring vampire picture ever. (Steven J. Allen, Manassas) Dalmatians 101: Everything you wanted to know about these fascinating dogs. In black and white. (Marcia Asquith, Washington) The Lightness of Being Unbearable: The Richard Simmons story. (Drew Knoblauch, Falls Church) The Virtues of Book: Bill Bennett’s guide to Vegas gambling. (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) [This story had just broken about President George W. Bush’s secretary of education and the author of the best-selling “Book of Virtues”] The Man Who Mistook His Hat for a Wife: The sequel to “Portnoy’s Complaint.” (Jonathan Kaye, Washington) Big Wedding, My Fat Greek!: The behind-the-scenes story of Jackie’s ultimatum to Onassis. (Judith Cottrill, New York) The Titanic Raise: Dick Grasso’s guide to negotiating your salary. (Carl Northrop, Fairfax) Life: It’s a-Wonderful: The Lawrence Welk Story. (Joe Cackler, Falls Church) [Joe was a high school student! He learned about Lawrence Welk from an aunt or grandma.] Stupid With I.M.: A sociological study on how computer chatting is ruining our children’s minds. (Kelli Midgley-Biggs, Columbia) She-Him Done Wrong: The true story of a botched sex change operation. (Steven L. Harris, Mountain View, Calif.) [Well, that’s an entry we wouldn’t run these days.) Pizza Mystic: It’s the mushrooms. (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park) Phantom Wars Episode Menace the One-Star: A brigadier general tries to avoid becoming the scapegoat for America’s failure to find the weapons of mass destruction. (David Vacca, Washington) The Earnest Being of Importance: John Ashcroft’s life and times. (Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls) The Too Much Man: Who Knew! A jockey continually surprises his dates. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Black at Bad Rock Day: A young African American tries to make sense of Ozzfest 2003. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Can Me If You Catch: Charlie the Tuna taunts the Old Man in the Sea. (Nick and Chris Sibilla, Reston; Michael Gips, Bethesda) Left? My Foot! The Democratic presidential candidates squabble over who’s the most liberal. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) Escape From the Apes of the Planet: A single gal struggles with the dating scene. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) Blue Devil in a Dress: High jinks ensue when the Duke basketball team fields a transvestite power forward. (David Vacca, Washington) Bride of the Father: The unauthorized biography of Soon-Yi Previn. (Larry Cynkin, Kensington) So like that. Formatting: From this week’s entry form: “Please begin each entry with the name of your rearranged movie, followed by your description on the same line (i.e., don’t hit the Enter key in the middle of an entry). This will let the Empress sort similar entries together. You DON’T have to include the original title because if it’s not clear to me in your entry, I won’t use it anyway. (So it’s not a good idea to play on obscure titles.)” ---- So how about today’s ink! So much to choose from among about 1,500 entries for the week. In virtually all cases, the original and switched words were related in some way. So I didn’t use, say, BOOKKEEPER > KOOK BEEPER in an entry about QAnon that had nothing to do with bookkeeping. Some people didn’t make an exact switch of positions between words; in THE EASTER BUNNY > THE TEASER BUNNY (it hides empty plastic eggs), the T moves to the front but the E doesn’t move to where the T was. A couple of people just scrambled the letters into total anagrams. I don’t know how to check this factoid, short of looking at the results of every week since we’ve named our third and fourth Hall of Famers in 2002, but I’m thinking this very well could be the first Losers’ Circle filled by four Style Invitational Hall of Fame members. Together, Frank Osen, Tom Witte (of the 2002 HoF), Kevin Dopart and Duncan Stevens account for a ridiculous vat of Style Invitational ink — close to 5,000 blots among them. Call it a witload. Frank Osen gets his second Clowning Achievement winner — he scored the first-ever Clowner in Week 1409 — but his 27th Invite win for TODAY > TOADY: It’s always at the top of Kevin McCarthy’s desk calendar. Frank lives in Southern California, and while I don’t think that the House for-now-minority leader is his own congressman in Pasadena, he’s close enough to wince. What Pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia, filling in for vacationing AGAIN Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, cited a bunch of honorable mentions for his faves this week: Beverley’s Sharp’s DIMWIT > MIDWIT, “someone who’s not quite as dumb as you thought” Don Norum’s RUBBISH > BURBISH, “the faintest possible praise for a housing development”; Gary Crockett’s MY BIG AFT GREEK WEDDING, featuring Kim Kardashian; Chris Doyle’s TENFLIX, “a severely downsized movie streaming service, and Frank Mann’s IDIOT > IDIOT (”I switched the I’s!”). Frank’s entry was one of several that did the switch-the-same-letters joke, but he picked the best word. And the Scarlet Letter: Preeety clever, but I don’t think printable in the Invite: ELECTORAL COLLEGE > CLEETORAL COLLEGE: Men with this education will get the popular vote. A tip of the hood to Craig Dykstra. See you Saturday! ====================================================================== WEEK 1490, published May 29, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1490: Smile though your heart is aching The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s song contest and ‘signs of incompetence’ results Image without a caption By Pat Myers May 26, 2022 at 5:44 p.m. EDT Bob Staake's alternative sketch for this week's illustration, for Rob Cohen's winning entry in Week 1490 (signs of incompetence in a particular field). Bob makes his Invite sketches, as well as the pre-computer form of his finished work, available for sale to the Loser Community at bobstaake.com*SI. Comment Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Yes, nobody’s feeling funny today. But I hope that over the next 18 days — you have that extra week — you might find something in the news to write some funny lyrics about for Style Invitational Week 1490. Invite song parody contests always deliver, thanks to our perennial Loserbards as well as those who often get their first Invite ink in these contests. As a contest for lyrics that will be read in print (at least in the newspaper version), the Invitational puts a higher premium on rhyme and recognizable meter than it would if it were an all-video contest; and the songs’ lines can’t be repetitive because that makes tedious reading. If you’re new to Style Invitational song contests, PLEEZ read this 2021 Style Conversational column that spells out what works best for Invite purposes. (But remember that the dates mentioned were for Week 1440, last summer!) The column also includes numerous links to songs from earlier contests. If this isn’t addressed in the Week 1440 column: I’m pretty expansive on what constitutes “news.” It doesn’t have to play off a specific news item, but the topic should concern someone or something that’s currently mentioned in the news. So while you might pen a love song to Benedict Cumberbatch, especially if it mentions his current movies, it’d be harder to justify a love song to your cat. For the nuts ’n’ bolts of submitting an entry, here’s what I write on this week’s entry form, which restates and expands a bit on the directions in the Invite itself: "In this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1490, write a satiric song about anything in the news these days, set to a familiar tune (or if you’re making a video, feel free to use an original tune). Do mention which song (if any) you are parodying, even if it’s obvious to you. And if there’s a recording of the original on YouTube or elsewhere on the Internet that matches your parody, please include the URL so the Empress can listen and, if you get ink, share it with readers. "If you make a video of either a parody or your original tune, please include the lyrics here but also a YouTube link to your video that the Empress could share with Invite fans. (Lyrics ON the video are best of all, but not required.) Important! If you’ve made a video, be sure to indicate that in your entry along with the link (e.g., “video of me singing the song”). You want to make sure I know that the link goes to a performance of YOUR song and not just a recording of the original. "In the print version of the Invite -- including the four top winners -- the songs being parodied must be very widely known so that readers will be able to know the melodies as they read the lyrics. Online, however, we can do parodies of less iconic songs, since we can link to a clip of the original. Please don’t embed links in text; just copy and paste the URL above or below your song; otherwise the Empress ends up with garble. "Your song may not have been already published elsewhere, except for some online sharing or posting for a small audience; if you’re not sure if your song qualifies, go ahead and submit it along with a note, and the Empress will make a ruling. (If you send an email to pat.myers@washpost.com whose subject line mentions this, she’ll see your question much earlier.) ADVERTISING "You get an extra week! Entry deadline is midnight is one moment before midnight on Monday, June 13, wherever you are. (However, if some terrible thing happens and you have to do it the next day, go ahead; you won’t be locked out. But don’t make a regular practice of it.)” I LURRRRRVE THE PARODIES. LOL in a day’s work*: The results of Week 1486 *Non-inking headline submitted by both Jesse Frankovich and Chris Doyle I’m glad I decided to give another go to our 2002 contest asking for indications of incompetence in a particular field: Week 1486 drew a deluge of some 2,000 entries, of which I run 54 in this week’s results online, and fit about 40 in print (almost all were very short). Most of the inking entries featured funny quotes, though for some, just the concept did the trick (e.g., Kevin Dopart’s Incompetent rabbi: wears a yarmulke with a propeller). It’s the first Clowning Achievement trophy, but the fifth Invite first-place win, for Rob Cohen, who nailed the quote included in the cartoon atop this page. Like many of today’s entries, it bested a few other funny entries with the same general idea. In second place, rookie Karen Lambert continues her swift ascent into Invite-fixturehood; in fact, she also placed second just two weeks ago for something you could say both at the hairstylist and when bringing your car to the gas station: “Very funny, ha ha – no, I wasn’t under the influence when I did this.” This time, her incompetent comic asks, “There aren’t any of those oversensitive people in the audience tonight, are there?” Hall of Famer Frank Osen conjures a future Cake Wrecks case with “Happy Birthday Brian With a Y!” And because Bob didn’t want to draw a picture of a song, Diana Oertel gets her incompetent astronaut (“Are we there yet?”) turned into a full-color artwork. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me on this week’s top winners, and also singled out Jean Sorensen’s brain surgeon “(whispers to self) “You got this!”; Tim Livengood’s dairy farmer (“I like these cows that got only one — they take a lot less time to milk”); and Coleman Glenn’s wine taster (“I’m detecting notes of … grape? Yeah, definitely grapy”). Bonus: Annabeth’s Bets: “Slot,” or copy desk supervisor, Annabeth Carlson gave the print Invite another read on Thursday, and she had different favorites, though she said she liked the whole list so much that it was hard to choose. She finally cited Kate Sammons’s accountant, who got rid of the company’s red ink with one easy trick; Howard Walderman’s doctor’s receptionist, who calls on people by their maladies, like “Mr. Hernia”; Bill Bouyer’s Fox News anchor (“I can’t read this. It’s too ridiculous”); and, from First Offender Aaron Olszewski, the cat trainer (“They think their job is possible”). Why they call him Loser of the Year, and other thoughts on the Hot Flushies: Yes, the thermometer pushed past 90 degrees last Saturday in the backyard Loser Steve Leifer in Potomac, Md., but a well-spaced crowd of some 70 Losers and various hangers-on had the usual boffo time at the 26th (!) Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual awards potluck*singalong*general revelry. Several of the tables were moved off the patio into shadier spots, and a few of us took Steve up on his invitation to wallow in the pool. The Empress, Duncan Stevens, Sarah Walsh and Matt Monitto belted out a series of singalong odes to Loserdom at the May 21 Flushies. (Kathleen Delano) The singalong consisted of a set consisting entirely of Style Invitational-themed parodies (plus Jonathan Jensen’s classic original “Love Me, I’m a Loser”). It was beamed live to the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, but alas, I haven’t been able to find a recording, except for Duncan Stevens’s “Keeper of the Stats” (“Master of the House”), a tribute to Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan, who’s been maintaining an indispensable database and meticulous tables — covering the whole era of Loserdom since Week 1 in 1993 — at NRARS.org. Elden wasn’t able to attend on Saturday, having just had people poking around in his brain and still grooving on the subsequent meds, but he — and you — can enjoy the parody here on the Devs page (Duncan’s amazing lyrics are in the comment thread). This year’s Loser of the Year, Frank Mann, proved especially apt for the title. First of all, it doesn’t necessarily go to the year’s highest-scoring loser; it’s for the highest-scoring Loser who hasn’t won the title before. So while Frank did score an impressive 50 blots of ink from March to March 2021-22, his totals were surpassed by former LOTY Jesse Frankovich. And former LOTY Duncan Stevens. And (ditto) Chris Doyle. And Mark Raffman. And Kevin Dopart. And Tom Witte. And Jonathan Jensen. And Beverley Sharp. And Jeff Contompasis. But still! Pretty good company! And Frank had lots of hilarious ink in lots of different contests, and certainly was worthy of the Loser of the Year plaque he took home. Then, this very afternoon, Frank, who’s a lawyer for a federal agency, sent me this note: “Ok. This is super embarrassing. In trying to hang my LOTY plaque. It slipped through the crack behind a 7 foot cabinet that DEA thoughtfully bolted to the wall. In other words, it’s now a wonderful time capsule that won’t be unearthed for another 15 years — if then. Don’t ask me about the various steps I went to to try and retrieve it, but safe to say, it’s gone until the next renovation or massive earthquake. Is there any way to pay someone to make a duplicate? If not, I’ll just go on happily as Loser (and Clod) of the year.” The Bob Staake graphic that adorns the Loser of the Year plaque. Days after Frank Mann won his, he managed to drop it irretrievably behind a permanently attached cabinet in his federal office. Yes, that’s right. Frank works for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Which seems not to be able to pull something out from behind a cabinet. We’re getting Frank another plaque. Loser. See It Now! Loser Jonathan Jensen’s musical to open in Baltimore Move over, “Fiorello”: The Royal Consort and I are definitely going — and we’d love to be part of a Loser contingent — up to Baltimore in mid-July to see “Do It Now!,” a musical about the city’s legendarily colorful 1970s-'80s mayor William Donald Schaefer, with both music and lyrics by Loser Jonathan Jensen. The show has been in the works forever — there was an article about it in the Baltimore Sun in 2012 — and finally, after much reworking, makes its debut at the Fells Point Corner Theater July 16-31, as part of the Baltimore Playwrights Festival (tickets and info here). We’re going up to Niagara Falls, Ontario, for the Loserfest vacation trip July 25-29, so we’ll want to go on one of the first two weekends. We’ll set up an event listing on the Devotees page to coordinate. (Meanwhile, Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson can fit a couple more people into the Niagara festivities; check here for the Fungenda and lots of other info. He’s set a May 31 rough deadline.) So have fun writing a song (or, for many of you, taking a week off from entering), but remember that Week 1489, the contest to rearrange the words in a movie title to make a new movie, is still running; deadline May 30. ====================================================================== WEEK 1491, published June 5, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1491: Bring a plus-one The Empress of the Style Invitational on this week’s neologism contest and ‘grandfoal’ results Image without a caption By Pat Myers June 2, 2022 at 5:29 p.m. EDT Bob Staake's alternative sketch for the Week 1491 add-a-letter contest, with his own idea: DOMINOSE, what plastic surgeons play to pass the time between procedures. (_) Comment Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Looking at Bob Staake’s sketch above — I chose his other alternative for this week’s contest example — I do think it would have made a funny cartoon, funnier in fact than the one that ran this week. I decided against it not because of the picture, but because I thought Bob’s neologism itself wasn’t a good example for the contest: First of all, Merriam-Webster’s primary spelling for the plural of “domino” is “dominoes”; “dominos” is listed as a less common spelling. So “dominose” could well be read as transposing the S and E at the end, rather than adding an E. Also, I tend to prefer neologisms that have some relation to the real world, rather than being concepts that wouldn’t exist except to supply a word to this contest. The visual of the line of noses is hilarious, but as just a written definition, not as much. But the spelling — when that’s the focus of the contest — pretty much doomed it as a choice. Bob, by the way, offers all his Invite pencil sketches and pen-and-ink work available for sale to the Loser Community at bobstaake.com*SI. If you have a favorite picture from the past and need to know the date it ran, etc., write to me and I’ll try to help. Your add here: The Week 1491 neologism contest It’s our stock in trade, really: the 1.2 gajillion times we’ve asked you to slightly alter a word*name*phrase and make a new one; it’s just a matter of limiting the pool in some way. This time that’s (A) adding one letter, rather than dropping the letter, substituting a letter with another one, etc.; plus (B) limiting the original words to ones that start with A through E. (Note that the letter you ADD can be any letter, not just A-E) and that your neologism doesn’t have to start with A-E; you can start the word with your added letter.) On the other hand, we’re also throwing in a little (and I expect it to be little) expander: You can take that single letter and add it multiple times to make your new term. I’m saying “that single letter” to stress that adding one letter in two places is not the same as adding two different letters. I say this only because a dear man whose name is not Blob Stuck didn’t notice this requirement when coming up with some possible contest examples. The best way to see if a certain neologism has already been used in the Invitational is to take a look at the All Invitational Text file, which currently ends at Week 1476 (its compiler, Loser Elden Carnahan, is still dealing with some health things) but should be enough for now. Just search for the word you’re thinking of using. A word about the formatting: Usually in a neologism contest, I don’t tell the reader what your original word was; I just show the altered one. And so that relationship needs to be clear to the reader or else the humor dies. But in our recent contest to switch the positions of two letters, I asked you to show me the original, and ended up including it in about half the results (including Frank Osen’s winner, which switched “today” to “toady,” then described it as what’s on House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s daily calendar). So if you think your entry works better with the original given first — that it would be hard to get on its own, yet quoting the original doesn’t step on the humor — go ahead. I’ll decide whether to use it. And since I’d like to sort the entries alphabetically, please don’t hit the Enter key within an individual entry; if you do that, the two halves will scatter into different areas of my list and it will be mighty hard to enjoy them. For Ye Olde Guidance and Inspiration, here are some letter-added neologisms from earlier contests whose original word begins with A-E, in addition to the ones atop this week’s contest. Alexpandria: A town known for its buffet restaurants. (Tom Witte) Apocalypstic: The little smudge I came home with on my collar that makes my wife act like it’s the end of the world. (Brendan Beary) Defenestraction: A ruse to divert the cop’s attention while you throw the evidence out the window. (Seth Brown) Amoebra: An undergarment that lifts and separates and separates and separates. (Eric Murphy) Dyspeepsia: The result of eating too much Easter candy. (Marian Phelps) Capital Gone: What used to be in your wallet? (Jerome Uher) Jockeylarity:* The ‘grandfoals’ of Week 1487 *Earlier inking headline by Jon Gearhart Combining two fictional names rather than those of real horses, and almost requiring you to ignore some elements of the puns they include, The Style Invitational’s “grandfoal” contests not quite as sublime as the primary wordplay challenge each year to “breed” two Triple Crown nominees and name the foal. Still, this spinoff contest still brings out the punsters — this year, in Week 1487, to the tune of some 2,200 entries (plus another 250 for the headline and honorable-mention subhead suggestions). And almost a tenth of those entries made my initial list of inkworthies, which I finally pared down to the 67 grandfoals in this week’s results. (Your clearly superior grandfoals didn’t get ink? Hold on to your horses, then, for the second-chance contest in December.) Since I don’t see entrants’ names when I’m judging, I wouldn’t know unless I went back and researched, but I’m pretty sure that there are few brand-new Losers entering the grandfoal contest; the submissions tend to be more on target than are many in the first round. The only part of the judging that’s no fun is to say, “Okay, this is absolutely the last one I can include” — and there are all these clever entries I have to ignore. Today’s Clowning Achievement winner, Laurie Brink, began entering the Invitational a good 15 years ago, after her friend Seth Brown, who was making a big splash in the Invite, told her about it. And ba-ding, her first ink was a runner-up in the 2007 foal contest: Warn x Gentle Romeo = She’s Not Dead! Since then, Laurie has racked up a variety of ink, but the horses are her specialty: Laurie has scored ink in twenty-eight Invite horse name contests, often several blots at a time: In the Week 1405 grandfoal contest, she got seven. And this year’s foal contest earned her four: Vladimirror, Mona Visa, Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re: and Sweeney Toad were all hers. And it was a grandfoal who brought Laurie her previous win: Round Yon Virgin x Free Brrr = Madonna & Chilled, from Week 1020 in 2013. Today’s Clowner winner, Atom and Heave x Pig Penn = Hurls Before Swine, will be surely getting a little extra hay in Laurie’s ink-stable. Soon after catching the horse-contest bug, Laurie recruited her father, Bernard, to enter as well; he’s been getting regular ink through the years, too — and has a blot today: Dead Gunfighter x Heir Jordans = Billy the GOAT. And last year Laurie showed us another talent: She made a video of herself singing “Rudy’s Crazy,” a hilarious parody of “Sherry Baby.” I hope she’ll send something in for our current song contest, Week 1490 (deadline June 13). On the other hand, it’s the first horse-name ink for Pam Shermeyer, but this rookie has been inking up the joint since she debuted in December. Pam gets the cuddle-toy Flesh-Eating Bacteria for Catch Some Z’s x I the People = Nap Bonaparte. Andrew Hatziyannis gets his first “above the fold” ink, his sixth in all, for Finals Are Today x Catch Some Z’s = Got Some F’s, and our latest Loser of the Year, Frank Mann, continues past the 200-ink mark with No-Knock Warrant x Lake Flaccid = DEA’d in the Water. (Frank’s co-workers at the Drug Enforcement Administration should like that one.) ADVERTISING Too many people had the same idea with several puns, often with different pairings: A half dozen people submitted CloningAchievement x The Wee Peephole = Twin Peeks. Other too-manys: Abe Blinkin’ x I the People = Eye the People; Sharp Dresser x Vladimirror = Putin on the Ritz (in fact, I’ve gotten too-manys for Putin on the Ritz in several contests); Lava First Sight x Not a B There = Magma Cum Laude; Trad _ _ ark x Missing Everything = _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _; Lake Flaccid x Via Gra = Lake Erect, Lake Turgid, Lake Superior, etc. Knowing that I’d be swimming in clever entries, I didn’t spend much time puzzling out ones that I didn’t get. Including: Wait, Mr. Lincoln! x The Very Model! = Model #1-4-D Road!; Zulu Zulu Top x Dead Gunfighter = QuickerNguniOnDraw; and Trad _ _ ark x Smear Is Tomorrow = Noah Q Appearance. Other people included helpful explainers — helpful in their explaining, not helpful in the humor department: Decoder Ring x ShavingPrivateRyan = GNPastVNavyHairier (anagram of “foal” #2) and, my fave in this category: “AlexanderTheGrape x Snippitydoodah = SangAmidDaVinciOp (reference: Da Vinci remote surgical precision system first demonstrated on a grape’s skin, creating meme 2018).” AHA!! What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood seconded my choices for the top four winners, and also called these out from the honorable mentions: CloningAchievement x All Over the Road = One to Many (Dave Matuskey), one that takes a second or two to process entirely; IV League x Fat Man = Prince Ton (Ward Foeller); G Whiz x Missing Everything = G Wizards (a dig at D.C.'s mediocre NBA team by Jesse Rifkin); Resting Rich Face x LiedAboutThatToo = Resting Mitch Face (Stephen Dudzik); and LiedAboutThatToo x Catch Some Z’s = Bull Dozer (Jeff Contompasis). Horse of a blue color: Some unprintables: I figured that anyone who’d read 67 of these entries wouldn’t feel put out to see, at the bottom of the list, Mr Red x All Over the Road = Skid Marx (Barbara Turner) and Erupt to No Good x Lake Flaccid = Erupt to No Wood (Leif Picoult). But I didn’t think it was a good idea to run any of these: MoltenJoeDiMaggio x Whackatoa = New York Yankers (Jeff Shirley) The Wee Peephole x Decoder Ring = Inspect Her Gadget (John Hutchins) Via Gra x Wine and Jeez = Hardonnay (Jeff Shirley, again) Hair on a G String x Veto Corleone (or Give It Arrest) = Pubic Enemy #1 (several people) Die Happy x Whackatoa = Die Fappy (Jeff Shirley, AGAIN) Oh, Jeff. ====================================================================== WEEK 1492, published June 12, 2022 Style Conversational Week 1492: It’s parity time The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s contest for conservative-leaning humor Image without a caption By Pat Myers June 9, 2022 at 5:22 p.m. EDT The BubbleYou Bubble Tower, made with various items from RepurposedMaterials. Much too useful for our purposes, of course. Comment Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Bill Coleman of Denver read about our Week 1488 contest through the RepuposedMaterials newsletter and sent us this photo of his BubbleYou party attraction. Made with such “upcycled” materials as table linens, coffee sacks and billboard vinyl, the solar-powered tower and other models (one is a “cow” with an udder hanging from the top bar) spout off bushel-size bubbles to the delight of all. But much too useful, of course, for The Style Invitational. I discuss the Week 1488 results farther down the page. The Style Conservatitional? This week’s contest 2009, expressions reflecting contemporary society: “Giving him the Nobel”: Heaping praise on someone you hope will be worthy of it one day. (Drew Bennett; Mark Richardson in his first ink; he’s up to around 150 by now) This one got ink three weeks ago, for the contest to switch the places of two letters: PELOSI to LEPOSI: A disease caused by staying in one position for too long. (Craig Dykstra) Back when my son was in fifth and sixth grade — a time covering the Balkan War and the 2000 election — I used to visit his class every week to lead a discussion on current events. I tried, evidently with some success, not to reveal my own political views when explaining what “liberal” and “conservative” meant, and would put forth both sides of some issues of the day to the best of my ability in an accessible manner. I remember a kid coming up to me and saying, “You’re a Republican, aren’t you?” That was gratifying. I demurred on the answer, but no, I’m not a Republican; the last Republican I voted for was Maryland Sen. Charles Mathias in 1980, my first election. I believe that people should look out for one another by contributing to a government that helps those who need help, at home and around the world, and by enacting policies that help not just ourselves but those who will be affected in future generations. But I also am a super-thrifty person who hates to see that money wasted or misspent, and am also seriously uncomfortable when citizens are afraid to express their opinions for fear of being attacked by a self-appointed virtue brigade and swiftly ostracized. So when I get the online surveys, I check “liberal” but not “very liberal.” But I’ve always tried, as Empress of The Style Invitational — as undemocratic a job as can be, I concede — to welcome humor that digs at people and institutions I might not have thought to go after myself. And that’s what I’m welcoming with our contest this week, Week 1492 (a tenuous link to Columbus, but I really wanted to use the “conservative leaning” guy’s entries in the intro). I did this contest just once before, after 3½ years of George W. Bush as president, and just a few months after taking over as Empress. Here’s how it went down back in Week 558, I think the inking entries from 18 years ago should provide a good idea of what I have in mind for Week 1492 as well. I’ve added a number of comments in brackets, some of which might be helpful this week. My intro published May 16, 2004, in the heat of an election year: Week 558: Set Us Right “What is the difference between JFK (1960) and JFK (2004)? “John F. Kennedy had no problem with charisma, and a bad spine. John F. Kerry has a bad problem with charisma, and no spine. “Over the years, The Invitational has been accused of awarding prizes (such as they are) to political humor that tends to veer maybe a wee bit to the left. So, to compensate for any perceived liberal bias, The Empress decided this week to print only right-leaning anagrams [from Week 554] in the results below. Nah, not really; that would have been wrong. In fact, it would have been impossible — because there weren’t any right-leaning ones to choose from: The spectrum of the political anagrams submitted ranged from Gentle Tweaking of the Administration to Raving Leftist Screed. ADVERTISING “This week’s contest, suggested by Mark Cackler of Falls Church [I’m guessing that he also supplied the example, but don’t have a record of it]: See if you can give us some Fair and Balance — send us conservative-leaning humor in any of the following genres: (1) Knock-knock jokes; (2) limericks; (3) “how can you tell” riddles; (4) “what’s the difference” riddles; (5) four-line rhyming poems. Jokes about Bill Clinton’s sex life do not qualify; they transcend ideological barriers. And needless to say, joke plagiarists will be abused and humiliated. “First-prize winner receives the Inker, the official Style Invitational Trophy. First runner-up wins an autographed copy of ‘The Hype About Hydrogen’ by Joseph Romm, a longtime Loser who donated his new book as a prize in a desperate attempt to see it mentioned in The Washington Post. (Joe is perhaps more famous for having also donated as a prize, in 1995, his underpants.)” --- As you’ll see from the results of Week 558 below, the poems and limericks generated almost no ink, so I dropped those options this time. (We’ll be doing poems soon enough anyway.) This week’s “Q&A” format encompasses both Options 3 and 4 above, and I’m leaving the knock-knocks, too. How sincere is the humor and how much of liberals trying their best to be open-minded (or at least trying their best to score some ink)? Hard to know. Which is good enough. Report from Week 558, in which we asked for right-leaning political humor in any of several standard joke forms. The Empress wasn’t overly surprised to receive some entries that were, let’s say, a bit disingenuous, such as this one from Brendan Beary of Great Mills: “Beware, let me tell you* Of that damned ACLU* And their whole Bill of Rights,* I mean, goods, that they’d sell you.” Fourth Runner-Up: How can you tell if a pickup truck is owned by a liberal? That’s a trick question — Volvo doesn’t make pickup trucks! (Bruce W. Alter) Third Runner-Up: What’s the difference between the National Education Association and the National Rifle Association? The NRA wants to teach kids to set their sights on something. (Bob Dalton) Second Runner-Up: What’s the difference between John Kerry and John Paul II? Only one of them is supposed to pontificate endlessly. (Joseph Romm, Washington) [It’s highly ironic that Joe Romm — Clinton administration energy official turned famed climate change activist — got ink in a contest seeking conservative-leaning humor. But his entry illustrates what we can call The Liberal Out: You can be liberal and find plenty of material for making fun of Democrats; but for this contest, you can’t do it from a left-wing perspective — for instance, digging at them for caving to the demands of Sen. Joe Manchin.] First Runner-Up, winner of the autographed copy of Joseph Romm’s book “The Hype About Hydrogen”: What’s the difference between conservative and liberal faith-based initiatives? Well, we could find only one example of the latter — Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ.” (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) [That was a photograph of a crucifix immersed in the artist’s urine, one of the artworks that set off a right-wing campaign to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, which had given a grant for a 1989 tour in which the photograph was included.] And the winner of the Inker: How can you tell that The Washington Post is liberal? Conservative Invitational entries can be published only by affirmative action. (Danny Bravman, Potomac) [That’s not really true! Only somewhat true.] Honorable Mentions: What’s the difference between . . … “The Catcher in the Rye” and the Pledge of Allegiance? We might have to stop teaching the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools because its content might offend somebody. (Russell Beland, Springfield) … Michael Moore and Osama bin Laden? One directed “9*11” to demoralize America, and the other is a terrorist. (Bob Dalton) … a stopped-up toilet and a liberal? Eventually, you can get the toilet to work. (Milo Sauer, Fairfax) … Karl Marx and Harpo Marx? Harpo had the good sense to keep quiet. (Russell Beland) … a rich liberal and a rich conservative? A rich conservative thinks he deserves his money, while a rich liberal thinks the conservative should give it to charity. (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) … a conservative and a liberal? To improve the economy, the first would buy a Hummer, while the second would hire a bum. (Chris Doyle) … unborn children and mass murderers: Some people are confused about which group the Constitution should protect. (Russell Beland) [In 2022, in a country in which gun rights are considered so important that their obsessive defenders end up siding with the AR-15-toting shooters of children, or condemn their victims, this entry no longer works.] … a conservative commentator and a liberal commentator? One is called a conservative commentator; the other is called a commentator. (Jeffrey Contompasis, Ashburn) [Jeff’s first Style Invitational ink, after he batted zero in several previous Invites. The Fir Stink prize hadn’t been created yet, though.] … a conservative and a liberal? Conservatives love John Birch; liberals love birch johns. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) [Not political humor, just the very gentlest tease of liberal tree-hugging, but I’ll take that. Cute wordplay.] … Jesse James and Jesse Jackson? Jesse James was wanted in a lot of places. (George Vary, Bethesda) … Kerry and Carrie? At least Carrie generates some heat. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) … John Kerry and John Edwards? Kerry will be a senator in January. (Chuck Smith) [Sen Edwards, Kerry’s terminally handsome running mate (and primary-season rival) in 2004, blew his ultra-promising political career with a paternity scandal and coverup. He’s now a personal-injury lawyer back in North Carolina.] … predictions of global warming and the college football rankings? One is the complex numerical analysis and evaluation of a topic with factors having major importance to concerned citizens across the country. The other is just a bogus weather report. (Greg Arnold, Herndon) [I don’t know whether Greg in 2004 thought that global warming wouldn’t happen; to mock the idea in 2022, however, is not a valid argument.] … a conservative and a liberal? The conservative keeps his hand close to his vest; the liberal keeps his hand close to your pocket. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) … an illegal Mexican immigrant and a Texas Democrat? The Mexican seeks democracy by sneaking into Texas. (Bob Dalton) [This referred to a mass exit by Democratic state legislators in 2003 to New Mexico to prevent a quorum and thus a vote on redistricting that would ensure a large Republican majority — just like a maneuver last year to prevent restrictive voting laws. Like the later one, it ultimately didn’t work. (Thanks to Duncan Stevens for reminding me what this entry was about.)] … John Kerry and a roulette wheel? When a roulette wheel stops spinning, there’s at least a small chance it won’t cost you money. (Allan Moore, Washington) … John Kerry and a knock-knock joke? In a knock-knock joke, you learn who is really there. (Carl Northrop, Fairfax) Knock, knock . . . . . . Who’s there? Kerry. Kerry who? Kerry your water for you, Mr. Chirac? (John McMillan, Manassas) [Kerry tended to appeal to Europeans, especially the French; he speaks fluent French and attended school in Geneva. The GOP successfully turned that into a liability at home, implying that the presidential candidate was an out-of-touch elitist. It didn’t help when he ordered a Philly cheesesteak “with Swiss,” prompting the Philadelphia Inquirer food critic to declare his choice evidence of “an alternative lifestyle.” So what if George W. Bush grew up in a family that had a chauffeur? He didn’t speak French, for sure!] Knock-knock. Who’s there? Your car engine, running on EPA-formula gas. (Peter Metrinko, Plymouth, Minn.) [I know that in the early days of newly required unleaded gas, some car engines would knock because of bad combustion; I’d doubt that was still a problem in 2004, but whatever.] … Who’s there? John Kerry. John Kerry who? Who do you want me to be? (Bob Dalton; Robert L. Hershey, Washington) [Jokes about pandering candidates are pretty much 100 percent transferrable.] … Who’s there? Big government. Big government who? Just kidding — big government doesn’t knock, it bashes in the door and takes your gun away. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) [This seems totally disingenuous to me, but it’s fine.] … Who’s there? Global warming. Global warming who? Actually there’s nobody here, but global warming could be here soon. (Seth Brown) [Again, pooh-poohing those who warned of devastating climate change.] Kerry won the nomination, Promptly took a short vacation; Said he needed to unwind. Put on flip-flops, changed his mind. (Bob Dalton) [You could probably zip in most elected officials’ names in this one.] How can you tell if a liberal has just won a presidential election? He finally reveals his definition of “middle class.” Bulletin: It doesn’t include you. (Tom Witte) And Last: How can you tell if a humor contest has a liberal bias? The prize is an environmental screed by some low-level Clinton appointee. (Joseph Romm) [Joe was being humble. He headed the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, as acting assistant secretary of energy.] So since then? After the Invite’s first eight years, which coincided with President Clinton’s two terms and featured TONS of humor at his expense, especially of course with the Lewinsky scandal, the Invitational’s political humor certainly has continued to attack Republicans and their causes much more than Democrats and theirs. A lot of it was aimed at the George W. Bush administration, except for a letup in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Then eight of those years spanned the terms of the almost scandal-free Obama White House. Obama was just a hard person to mock — you know that when the mockers had to resort to a tan suit he once wore — and the digs shifted over to the virulent anti-Obama forces. And then, of course, Donald Trump. Never had the Invite been so political. Of course, never had “SNL” been so political. And never had the late-night shows been so political. What else could you do? But in the years since, the polarization is worse than ever, and that person continues to wield a disturbing amount of influence over our heavily damaged political system. Tonight, I can’t bring myself to watch those Jan. 6 hearings because I’m convinced that they’re futile. I can tell you, it’s hard as hell to have a sense of humor sometimes. There have been days when I had to put the entries away and go take a long walk, because nothing seemed funny to me at that moment. But we need to be able to laugh, even if sometimes grimly, at our world. We’re here for that. I think that in the face of a person and a movement that was not simply a political system that many of us disagreed with, but one that repeatedly has sought to undermine the principles of democracy and the respect for truth, it’s understandable that some citizens are loath to criticize the current president and administration for anything, let alone make jokes about them. But really, that’s not healthy either. Let’s see what we can do this week. Scrap medals*: The results of Week 1488 *Non-inking headline by Tom Witte Not so much political humor in this week’s results — a contest in which, for the second time, I asked readers to look at RepurposedMaterialsInc.com and come up with creative ideas (though not usable ones) for reusing the various surplus items individually or combined. Most of the 1,000 or so entries submitted referred to items I’d included in a list in the introduction to Week 1488; relatively few people seem to have rooted around the website. However, a number of them did find the page advertising the Snozzle Boom, which turns out to be a brand name for a boom, or crane arm. This particular item, decommissioned from a firetruck, will telescope to 54 feet high and can be yours for $3,000. The majority of the entries, however, said it was most useful for letting you say “Snozzle Boom” a lot. It’s the second Clowning Achievement for Jonathan Jensen, but his fifth Invite win overall (not counting many other trips to the Losers’ Circle with runners-up). Jonathan suggested that Appalachian Trail hikers keep their feet clean and comfy by rolling out the 80 feet of artificial turf, trotting down to the end, then repeating it “in just 145,200 easy stages.” Leif Picoult was the only Loser to suggest a use for a mall kiosk display — set it up in your house to re-create the mall experience by walking right by it. Kevin Dopart — who spends each summer in Greece and plans to move there permanently when a new house is built — was one of several to covet the steel pipe nipples (rejected by the client because they were pink) but the only one to suggest they be used to decorate Confederate statues. And Jeff Contompasis saw the cups of the 134 hamburger roll baking tins as the perfect way to grow his mosquito farm. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me on the top four entries, and also singled out from the honorable mentions: Lee Graham’s idea to sell the 500 pieces of rope at MAGA rallies as “Jan. 6 souvenirs”; Frank Osen’s plan to sell the 750 feet of bubble wrap as “Mini-Bubble-Stress-Anxiety-Fidget-Relief-Push-Popper-Sensory-Squeezers” and also Kevin Dopart’s plan to use the wrap next Halloween to dress as “the Michelin Man with monkeypox.” I’m sorry to announce that this is Doug’s final Invite as a Washington Post Ace Copy Editor; now that he qualifies for retirement benefits, he’s going to retire … straight into a similar job (minus the Invite, duh) at the Los Angeles Times D.C. bureau. Back in 1992, when we were both almost tots — he was even tottier than I was — I hired Doug, who was then at the Orlando Sentinel, as a copy editor in the Style section to catch all the mistakes and write lots of puns in the headlines. It was clearly one of my best moves ever. After I’d burned out from 12 years as copy desk chief, Doug and I switched jobs and he became my boss for another decade. I officially retired from The Post in a 2008 buyout; Doug stayed to experience a huge transformation in the operations and purpose of the copy desk, adapting seamlessly and staying many more years as a brilliant, respected and beloved colleague. I will miss his support terribly each week, but I’m thrilled that he’s getting such a great deal. The L.A. Times is too. ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1493: A ’hoot for Doug Remembering the beloved Loser/Devotee Doug Frank with a ‘feghoot’ contest Image without a caption By Pat Myers June 16, 2022 at 6:00 p.m. EDT Doug's first blot of Style Invitational ink, the Week 625 “be-” limerick contest. See bit.ly/inkofday on Facebook for daily-ish Invite entries in graphic form. Comment 0 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share It’s been a hard week for the Loser Community. Last week on Wednesday night, my Style Invitational Devotees co-admin, Alex Blackwood, and another Loser, Chuck Salerno, met at a Houston area restaurant and awaited the other guest: Doug Frank, whom each had befriended closely through Facebook for years and years. Chuck had never met Doug in person, Alex just a couple of times. They’d all touched base a couple of days previously. Doug didn’t show. Alex, who’s extraordinarily sensitive to the feelings and actions of others, knew she couldn’t just roll her eyes and shrug off the no-show. Through online research, she quickly tracked down Doug’s sister Amy, who also lives in the area. Amy went to check on him. Devotee Tara Haelle epitomized many of the comments in the Devotees group on Facebook: “Doug is one of those good FB friends that I’ve ‘known’ for years even if we haven’t met in person, and I’m deeply sad that we never will.” Doug was only 62. As I note in this week’s Style Invitational introduction, to Week 1493, Doug was one of the great personalities of the Devotees, as well as a leading light of Loserdom especially in the mid-2000s. For example, out of nowhere he posted this random fictoid a few years ago: “In Estonia, the phrase is rendered, “He’s a few beets short of a Happy Meal.' ” And this writing lesson: “Sample of an incomplete sentence: ‘I cooked a pound and a half of bacon so I’d have some to add to sandwiches. I had five slices.’ The corrected sentence: ‘I cooked a pound and a half of bacon so I’d have some to add to sandwiches. I had five slices left.’ ” But there was also the Doug who truly bared his soul to our social community: a series of health problems, including diabetes, and most painful of all, the terrible stroke suffered by his wife, Diann, whom Doug nursed and advocated for in a devastating series of ups and downs and ups and downs and downs and downs until her death. He was simultaneously knocked back, as someone who worked in the science side of the oil industry, by the blows to that industry through the recession. He surely was buoyed by both the diversion of the Invite’s and Losers’ humor and by the heartfelt support of the Devotees themselves. Chuck and Tara and so many of us have missed that chance to meet him in person, but we have his jokes from the Invite — 85 of them. In his memory, let’s laugh. Here’s a sampling of Doug’s Invite ink over the years. New college courses (Week 626, 2005): The winner of the Inker: LANG 238: Ancient Voices. Who were the Ink Spots? Country Joe and the Fish? What does “nanu-nanu” mean? Intense immersion into the language and culture of 15 to 50 years ago will enable the student to understand and converse with older relatives and prospective employers. Prerequisite for all INTN (Internship) classes. Plus this honorable mention: The late Doug Frank. (Amy Frank Ricks) WORK 1601: McJob Practicum. Prerequisite for LIFE. Perform mindless, pointless and degrading tasks all day while taking guff from perfect strangers and feckless idiots. Try to find meaning and maintain your basic human dignity, especially after you get your first paycheck. Imagine doing this the rest of your life and suddenly finals week seems like Club Med. NOW are you ready to pick a major? Week 632, “backronyms”: Seattle Tycoon Accumulates Riches Because Upscale Consumers Keep Sipping. Week 640, state mottoes: Hawaii: We’ve Got a Word That Means Both “Tourist” and “Sucker,” Too Week 644, new Winter Olympic events: Blobsledding: The 275-pound weight class. Week 648, calls to companies’ help lines: Lysol: “Your label says your product kills 99.9 percent of germs in 30 seconds — but what about that 0.1 percent? Isn’t that tough little booger the one I should really be worried about? What do I use to kill HIM?” Week 654, environmentally friendly ideas: Surely those elementary school long-division problems have all been done many times before, so why continue to create reams of waste paper? Put them all in a database so kids can just look them up. Week 666, evidence of work of the Devil: How devious is the Trickster! He beckons to our gluttony with lures of Extra Value! He coddles our avarice with specials and prizes! Is not his masked servant Ronald garbed in the very colors of blood and brimstone? Does he not brazenly display the giant golden “M” of Mephistopheles? Beware, brethren: Wide is the service counter to Hades, and easy the way through the drive-thru! Week 925, 2011, new definitions for words: Indigo: Harrison Ford’s epitaph. Week 941, unlikely quotations: “I’m of the opinion that those who question American hegemony are being either disingenuous or facetious.” — Snooki Week 965, foal names: Flashy Sunrise x Alpha = Greet the Nude A Week 966, word ladder (change each word by one letter): And Last: LOSER, loner, boner, bone, bore, sore, swore, sworn, worn, morn, MORON. Week 1058, good/bad/ugly jokes: Good: Your state is raising taxes — but only on the 1 percent! Bad: You are part of that 1 percent. Ugly: It’s the bottom 1 percent. Week 1138, 2015: Snarky insults about celebrities: On Chuck Todd of “Meet the Press”: When Todd talks, people listen. To George Stephanopoulos. Week 1142: Twitter accounts combining two people: @GenPaulMacArthurny: I shall go back! Go back! Go back to where I once belonged! Our hearts go out to Doug’s sister Amy, to the rest of his family, and to so many people who’d grown close to him online. Pun & Ink: This week’s feghoot contest Online, Doug delighted in sharing stories with ridiculously contrived scenarios ending in groaner puns. Last time the Invite did a contest for them, in 2014, we called them feghoots. The name “Feghoot” for the genre comes from “Through Time and Space With Ferdinand Feghoot,” a series of whimsical science fiction stories, beginning in the 1950s, by “Grendel Briarton” (an anagram of the author’s name, Reginald Bretnor). Here’s selected ink from Week 1100; read the whole set here. They should give you a good idea of what we’re looking for in this week’s contest, Week 1493. GAME OF GROANS: STORY PUNS FROM WEEK 1100 In Week 1100 we asked for feghoots — little stories that end in a pun on some well-known line or expression. The format of the Invitational demands very little stories; perhaps we’ll call them fhts. Warning: These puns are outrageous groaners. It’s part of the genre. The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Despite trying and trying and trying and not getting any early action on WMDs, Operation Iraqi Freedom did ultimately nab Hussein and many of his henchmen. But after the former Iraqi president was hanged, Dubya nixed the plan to transfer the rest of the inner circle to Guantánamo. “Political opposition is too great,” he said. “I can’t Gitmo Saddam’s faction.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) 2nd place and the tiny rubbery brain and plastic nose: The famed businessman Victor Kiam told a story about his service in World War II: “At the Battle of the Bulge, a colonel kept ordering waves of grunts like me out of the trench we were in, only to see them cut down by cannon fire. So I shouted, “Hey, why are you doing that?” He replied, “Look, Kiam, you’re fodder.” (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) 3rd place: Yet another reason for Americans’ expanding waistlines — this time it’s the recent craze of adding fatty fish to your diet. They may be getting lots of omega-3 and all that, but still, their butts for the grease of cod go wide. (Marc Shapiro, Alexandria, Va.) 4th place: The place: Heaven. The event: the annual cook-off. This year, Chinese. The team: the inventor of the sewing machine, the grande dame of the Grand Ole Opry, the founder of what is now Zimbabwe, and Charles Gulden of condiment fame. The group was just about to complete its pièce de résistance when in flew the Angel in Charge to announce that time was up: “Howe, Minnie, Rhodes, Mustard Man — wok down!” (Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.) THIN PUN ALLEY: HONORABLE MENTIONS Methane released by livestock is a major contributor to global warming. For several years, climatologists have been working with the tea industry to develop crops that thrive on these greenhouse gases. It doesn’t look promising, though; they’ve been trying for fart-oolong. (Brian Cohen, Norfolk, Va.) When I arrived for a three-month stay on Olympus, Mercury told me he would rent his house to me while I was there, at a very low cost. There was only one restriction: I could not remove the carcass of a songbird from his freezer, because Zeus had promised to restore it to life when he returned. When I entered the house I went straight to the refrigerator and looked in: Yep. Chilled wren of a lessor god. (Ted Remington, Marion, N.C., a First Offender) A mystic from the East came to visit a small Nebraska town and received quite a welcome in the town hall. But a Native American man made a joke about “real Indians,” which confused the visitor and embarrassed the other townspeople. The joker then felt terrible, as no slight had been intended. You see, things like this weigh down a Pawnee swami-ribber. (Mae Scanlan) The tribal council wanted to hold an event for married couples only, so it decided to require each couple to display wedding rings at the door. As the sign read: “A band on all Hopi who enter here.” (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) Down on his luck, Sylvester Stallone was appearing off-off-Broadway in a production of “Hair,” for which he had to let his locks grow long and tangled. But he wouldn’t even tidy himself on his off days — even though his friends pleaded: “There’s no play, Sly! Comb!” (Ann Martin, Falls Church, Va.) Young romance could be risky in the old days in the mountains. During one 19th-century family feud, a young Romeo tried to elope with his Juliet. But the girl’s daddy hunted them down, shot the boy in the ankles and dragged his daughter home — leaving him footless and fiancee-free. (Jeff Contompasis) And from Week 347, our first contest of this sort (not termed feghoots), posted by my predecessor, the Czar, in 2000: (Plain-text file of the complete results here; scroll down past that week’s new contest.) Report from Week 347, in which you were asked to contrive elaborate scenarios that end in painful puns: As usual for a contest such as this, the Steal Invitationalists were out in force, submitting anciently unoriginal jokes as their own: You can’t heat your kayak and have it, too; with fronds like that, who needs anemones; I can see Claire Lee now, Lorraine has gone; transporting gulls over a staid lion for immortal porpoises; only Hugh can prevent florist friars; picking bunions on a Sesame Street bus; repaint and thin no more; making an obscene clone fall; and of course, the creakiest, rheumiest granddaddy of them all: No pun in ten did. We are pretty sure those below are original. Second Runner-Up: Maggie Thatcher went to see the doctor about a painful boil. The doctor told his nurse to administer a local anesthetic and let him know when she was ready for treatment. When the nurse returned, the doctor said: “Is Thatcher Fine? I’ll Lance Her.” (Chris Doyle, Burke) First Runner-Up: Lithuania’s King Lothar loved golf. Competing in a tournament at the famed Pair of Dice golf course in Las Vegas, Lothar and his partner finished the 18th hole leading the field at one stroke over par. Waiting nervously in the clubhouse, however, he received bad news about his rivals’ results: “They played Pair of Dice and put up a par, King Lot.”(Sue Lin Chong, Washington) And the winner of the huge men’s underpants: Two park rangers are making their rounds in the Rockies when they discover a guy named Nathan erecting an oil rig on the side of a mountain. He explains that he has been inspired by those ads on the radio, and has decided to drill for beer. The rangers are going to issue a citation, but decide to do something crueler: let him try. Winking to his partner, one ranger observes that since the mountain won’t really be injured, “Why don’t we just let Nate here take its Coors?” (Bill Strider, Gaithersburg) After a series of box office failures, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career was in trouble. Then he made a comeback with a triumphant performance on Broadway as the lead in a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” with background music based on the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. When asked the secret of his newfound success, Arnold said: “Albee-Bach.” (Joseph Romm, Washington) Intrigued by rumors that a group of Tennessee Jews has been successfully marketing a brand of chewing tobacco, kosher food giant Manischewitz sends someone to investigate. He approaches a group of men loitering outside a Baptist church, spitting into cans, and he asks: “Pardon me, goys, is that the Chattanooga Jews’ chew?” (Charles Frick, Kensington) A man is trying to decide between two careers in journalism: He wants either to be an investigative reporter, spending much of his time digging through files like a mole, or to write an advice column. He consults an editor friend, who cautions him against both paths, with the immortal advice: “Neither a burrower nor Ann Landers be.” (Meg Sullivan, Potomac) It is a little-known fact that Golda Meir’s fierce nationalism was forged when she was a young woman. Golda had a waitressing job on the Haifa ferry, serving smoked-salmon snacks to travelers. She was deeply moved when, one day, the ferry had to transport for burial the bodies of three civilians killed by terrorists. To this day Israeli children are told “the ferry tale of Golda, lox and the three biers.” (Chris Doyle, Burke) Animal activist Bo Derek was horrified to learn that the queen of England wears antique sable coats. When she confronted the queen at a recent London affair, Elizabeth responded haughtily: “Some wear old fur to reign, Bo.” (Chris Doyle, Burke) Yes, Chris Doyle still enters The Style Invitational. He’s cleverer than you are. Sorry! But I promise I’ll give ink to other people as well, so go ahead and enter anyway. Hollywood Shuffle*: The rearranged movie titles of Week 1489 *Non-inking headline — just a little too long this week for print — by both Tom Witte and Kevin Dopart As I’d predicted, there was plenty of life left in a twice-done contest to rearrange the words in a movie title and describe the new movie. And plenty of interest: I received just about 2,000 entries for Week 1489 from more than 250 people — well more than the grandfoal contest, for example. My “shortlist” ran 11 single-spaced pages; keeping this week’s results to 36 entries wasn’t as painful as usual, given that I’ll have a chance to run some more at the end of July when I’m on vacation (first one in three years!). As often happens when there are more entries and entrants than usual, the ink tends to be spread around more. This week’s four top winners, while all Invite veterans, aren’t the Usual Suspects in the Losers’ Circle, but their entries may all be heading for instant-classicdom. While Right — Do the Thing — story of an absent-minded yes-man — is Don Norum’s second Clowning Achievement, he’s been Inviting for less than a year. San Diegan Susan Geariety gets the “Office” characters Pez dispenser for 2-Toy Story: “Ungrateful grandkids get an earful about what it was like to grow up with just a jump rope and a Mr. Potato Head that was an actual potato.” Greater (or at least Great) Bostonian Mark Calandra played the D.C. angle anyway with his dig at the Commanders, Bad News: The Bears; and the only local Loser in the top four this week, Ryan Martinez, with one of the relatively few political entries this week, Rush Fools In, the story of how the GOP got those Trump judicial nominees confirmed so quickly. There were lots more inkworthy entries than the 36 that ran today. Which is good because I can run some (along with extras from other contests) at the end of July, the week I’ll be up in Niagara Falls for our Loserfest vacation adventure. What Pleased Ponch: Now that Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood’s retired from The Post after 30 pun-heady years, we’ll be featuring the faves of Still Here Ace Copy Editor Panfilo “Ponch” Garcia. While Ponch reports finding this week’s ink “uniformly witty,” he did single out several honorable mentions: Thou Art Where? O Brother! (Ed Neveleff, in just his second week ink), an Elizabethan having to bail out his wastrel brother from the stocks; Lesser Children of a God (Steve Smith), Don Jr.'s look at “Marla’s and Melania’s kids.”; Miller and Mrs. McCabe, Joel Cockrell’s clever tie-in with Trump administration figures Stephen Miller and Andrew McCabe; Andre With My Dinner (Terri Berg Smith), a rich kid settles for cheap champagne; and Home Spider? No Way, Man (John Klayman), putting the kibosh on a roommate’s pet. Plus an Annabeth’s Best Bet: “Slot” editor Annabeth Carlson, who gave the second read, gave an unsolicited shout-out to First, 50 Dates (Leif Picoult), the Dried-Fruit Preliminary Round of the hot-dog-eating contest. “This is just so clever and unexpected!” What didn’t work? I ruled out a number of entries for various reasons other than my usual “just not as funny as the ones I chose.” First there were the ones that had already gotten ink in our previous title rearrangement contests, which I’d directed readers to; they include “The Presidents: All Men” and “Wonderful? It’s a Life.” Then there were ones that misspelled or misquoted the name of the movie, or used homonyms instead of the actual word, like “Lady, My Fare”: Eliza Doolittle tries to stiff her cabbie; or “Rein In the Singin': A bar owner reconsiders karaoke night.” Or “The Right Are All Kids: Michael Moore looks into arrested development to explain Jan. 6″; the title is “The Kids Are Alright,” and that wouldn’t have worked. Or “Gates’ Heaven: every computer runs Windows and searches with Bing,” The movie was “Heaven’s Gate,” not Gates. (It could have worked, however, as “Heaven of Gates,” a play on the movie “Gates of Heaven.”) Finally, I tended not to go with descriptions that would have worked fine with the real title; the rearrangement of the words wasn’t necessary to the joke. Such as “12 Men, Angry: When the pizza is delivered cold to the jury room, watch out.” (Frank Mann instead got ink with “Angry Men 12,” the 11th sequel and they still can’t come to a verdict.) Or “With Love From Russia: A new perfume with the latest nerve agents from Vladimir Putin.” (Also, the latter would have required a big tweak to be a description of a movie plot.) Finally, your unprintable of the week, submitted by both Tom Witte and Teddy Weitzman (who used to be allowed to use the pseudonym Paul Styrene): Bang Bang Kiss Kiss: An ill-advised comedy about a serial necrophiliac. Sorry, guys, but our quota for serial-necrophiliac jokes has already been reached. It is zero. Join us in Baltimore July 17 to see Jonathan Jensen’s musical! The Royal Consort and I, along with others in the Loser Community, are heading up to Baltimore’s Fells Point Corner Theatre on Sunday afternoon, July 17, to see “Do It Now,” a musical about the city’s legendarily colorful mayor William Donald Schaefer. Its music and lyrics are by Loser Jonathan Jensen — well known for his Invite song parodies as well as buckets of other ink. After the show, we can get something to eat in the lively Fells Point neighborhood near the water, and Jonathan should be able to join us. You can get $20 tickets here for that show (or others; it runs Friday-Sunday from July 15 through 31) at the theater’s website. If you’re joining us, drop me a line to let me know. No word on whether we’ll be sitting on one of the city’s 3.2 zillion park benches labeled with the 1970s-'80s mayor’s name. ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1494: Bee — our jest The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s spelling-bee-poem contest and winning parodies Image without a caption By Pat Myers June 23, 2022 at 5:13 p.m. EDT Harini Logan is hereby personally invited to write a funny poem containing any of the words from this month's Scripps National Spelling Bee. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Comment 0 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share I linked to this clip in this week’s Style Invitational, but just take 90 seconds to watch 14-year-old Harini Logan of San Antonio rattle off, with seemingly utter calmness, the spellings of 26 words — some of which would take you a few seconds to read — in the 90-second spell-off tiebreaker, the first (and surely a keeper) in this year’s National Spelling Bee. She got four of them wrong (the judges went back and listened carefully, probably with the recording slowed down, to determine this) but it was more than enough to take home the trophy. Harini can now retire from spelling thousands of words that get no Google hits other than dictionary definitions, and direct toward something relevant and consequential her extraordinary powers of absorbing and recalling material. But before relevance and consequence, there’s The Style Invitational! And we’ll give you two whole minutes per poem! Once again, in Week 1494, we challenge you to write something funny and clever that includes a word from the year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee. I’ve invited you to choose any word from Round 4 or higher at spellingbee.com; click on a number at the top, and you’ll see a list of the words from that round. Or you can use one of the 20 pretty much random words I listed and nutshell-defined at the bottom of the online Invite. And don’t do what we in The Post’s Style section did one fateful year in the 1980s or ’90s: We inadvertently worked from a list of spellings the kids used — and they were, of course, often wrong. On this year’s webpages, you want the first spelling in each row; the second one is from the kid. (Also, another year, in one of my Most Embarrassingly Ironic Moments Ever, I personally misspelled the name of the winner in a headline.) Note that I magnanimously extended the deadline a day to July 5, even though you don’t have to get back to the office to fax your entry, the way the Losers used to. I am such a softy these days — I’m almost down to corundum on the Mohs scale. There are — particularly in Round 9, a vocabulary round — a few actually common words in the list. I’m not saying you can’t use “rattan” or “bastille,” but the spirit of the contest is for obscure words. So your common-word poem would have to be Especially Funny And Clever if it used an everyday word. A cursory search through the Invite archives didn’t yield to me any poems using this year’s words (the bee does reuse them over the years), but for guidance, inspiration and, if not a belly laugh, then maybe a little gas bubble, here’s some ink from yore: Affliction by leeches -- hirudiniasis: Bloody disgusting, however you spin it. They trigger our deep-seated hygienic biases: But worst is that one of them's born every minute. (Mark Eckenwiler, 2007) Strepitous (STREP-itous): noisy, boisterous: : Here’s why geezers aren’t strepitous: : They are, simply too decrepitous. (the late Mae Scanlan, 2016) Grognard, an old soldier: I worked for seven years inside a home for Jewish vets, Grognards who moaned and kvetched all day while venting their regrets. None bought the farm while I was there, so I am proud to say That /my /old soldiers never died; they just oy-veyed away. (Chris Doyle, Week 1283, 2018) Trophallactic, sharing regurgitated food, as ants and bees do: Met her on a dating website, Hoped she’d fill my lusty thirst, Thinking we should meet in person; Fortunately, she asked first. “Won’t you come and share a meal?” So I rushed over, rang her bell; Turned out she was trophallactic And the date did not go well. (Rob Cohen, 2021) Argentous, containing silver: Second place! An achievement momentous! A feather this puts in my cap! But instead of a medal argentous, Pat sent me some lame piece of crap. (Jesse Frankovich, 2021 – and of course it placed second; I sent him a squeeze-toy “stress reliever” in the shape of a bathroom scale) Song sung news: The parodies of Week 1490 Have you sung along with the 21 songs in the results of Week 1490? Watched those videos? Not yet? Then I don’t want to keep you very long; enjoy the wordplay, the zingers, the musicality and visuals of the recordings. It’s a lot to see, but heck, they’re so good. And it was all I could do not to double that list with equally good ones from the hundreds of songs submitted. The Clowning Achievement this week goes to an almost brand-new Loser: Michael Stein learned about the Invitational in the past year from a friend who’d seen his years-old Gilbert and Sullivan parody “When Trump Was a Lad,” and got his first ink two months ago with a related neologism: “Bozanna: A shout of worshipful praise for an orange-haired clown.” And he introduced himself to the Loser Community in a big way at the Flushies award picnic in May with an inside-baseball song — turning “The Heart of the Appaloosa” into “The Heart of the WaPo Loser” — that seemed as if he’d been Inviting forever. And for Week 1490 he made a very long entry worth the space with an ingenious threefer: a full song each from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (“If I Only Had a Brain”), Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (“… a Heart) and Sen. Lindsey The Toady Graham (“… the Nerve”), matching to the beat — Michael’s a semiprofessional cellist — Howard Arlen and Yip Harburg’s three-part song from “The Wizard of Oz.” The only improvement would have been to see the GOP Three in Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion costumes. Anyone up to make that video? Speaking of videos: While none of this year’s inking (or whatever you call it) videos didn’t include the lavish production values and ambitious scope of Sophie Crafts’s “Two Darn Shots” of a year ago, they were all clever and fun and eminently watchable — and all of them helped by on-screen titles for the lyrics; even the clearest singer benefits from them (Right, Randy Rainbow?). Two First Offenders provided videos this week: Dave Scheiber — and a band including some family members — channeled Billy Joel for more MTG digs, and fellow Floridian Sam Gold provided a lively slide show of clips and photos of that irrepressible Rep. Madison Cawthorn in “Dumb Dumb Dum” (as in “Fun Fun Fun”). Go watch them! I noted in the lead-in to Beverley Sharp’s parody of the 1950 standard “Mona Lisa” that it was one of two very fine takes — with the same song — on the recent stunt by a climate change activist to smear the Louvre’s Mona Lisa — actually its totally protective bulletproof-glass covering — with a “cakelike substance.” I really couldn’t decide which one to use, and they weren’t soooo different that I should run both. So in what I’m pretty sure was an unprecedented move, yesterday I posted (anonymously) both songs in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, and asked for votes. Beverley’s won out, 20 to 19 — but had Chris Doyle voted for his own song, it would have been an even 20-20. Here are both: Chris’s sublime wordplay and incorporation of the climate change theme, Beverley’s lighter take. Chris Doyle: Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, someone smeared you, Slathered layer cake to hide your mystic smile. But it's only 'cause this troubled man revered you That he chose your famous visage to defile. Mother Earth's the thing he fears for, Mona Lisa. What will come if mankind has no change of heart? Fossil fuels—coal and oil—we're still burning Ever faster bode disaster. Once we're gone, can't you see, Mona Lisa, How you will be a truly lonely work of art? Beverley Sharp: Mona Lisa, look alert! He tried to smash you; So precautions it's imperative to take! Someone nuts just had the guts to try to trash you With a hammer and a large amount of cake. Did you smile and drive him crazy, Mona Lisa? Are you sorry that he failed in his attack? Do you hunger at times, Mona Lisa? Does your tongue ache For that cream cake? Do you live, do you breathe, Mona Lisa? Then (after all these years!) you prob'ly need a snack! There were many other super-clever entries that didn’t get ink this week. At least I’ll have some room in the Invitational at the end of July when, because there won’t be a new contest next week (though we’ll have a column of results), I’ll fill the page with extra entries from this and other contests. First time in three years! The headline “Bee — our jest” was Tom Witte’s head for the results of an earlier contest. ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1495: A few makeup tips The Empress of The Style Invitational on writing neologisms, like the made-up words in this week’s results Image without a caption By Pat Myers June 30, 2022 at 5:27 p.m. EDT Bob Staake's first sketch for Joanne Free's neologism “chompulsion,” stemming from reading the phrase “urge to fight” differently from the Empress. Read more about this below. Comment 0 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share As I almost always do when judging a Style Invitational neologism contest — I figure conservatively that I’ve judged close to 100,000 ideas for new words over my 19-year reign as Empress — I found lots of funny, clever ideas to like among the 1,100 entries to Week 1491, a challenge to add a letter to an existing word and describe the new word. In fact, my “shortlist” of inkworthies included about 1 in 10 of the entries, and — due to extra room on the print page — more than half of those got ink in this week’s results. (See, Losers, the odds are actually pretty good! Compare with The New Yorker’s cartoon caption contest: typically 5,000-plus entries, three get ink. This week, the Invite has 63. New Yorker: You get one try per week. We give you 25.) But I also got, as I always do, entries that didn’t do the trick, even when they had a germ of a good idea, even a purulent rash of a good idea. Today I’ll use some non-inking entries from Week 1491 to illustrate some problem areas (I never looked up who wrote them, so your secret is safe with not-even-me), for the add-a-letter contest in particular and neologisms in general. I’ve gone through this exercise in past columns, but the hits just keep on coming, so … Does the definition match the part of speech of the neologism? What? Your neologism isn’t even a real word — how I can Smarty Pants Empress declare that it’s an adjective when you, the creator, defined it as a noun? Because as English-readers we’re attuned to the word endings and other cues that tell us — and, mainly, because it’s usually modifying a word we do know. Here’s one entry: “Racknowledge: Experienced breast man.” Acknowledge: Verb. Breast man: Noun. No no no. “Abombinable: A very bad bomb maker, such as one that blows himself up while making or testing the bomb.” (More on this one later.) Yes, a noun may end in an adjectival ending, you deplorable. But not this noun. Here’s one in which the writer understood that their [I’m practicing using the singular “they”] neologism was a verb (since “adorn” is a verb), because they used it as a verb in their sentence. But still they defined it as a noun, a thing. “Badorn: A failure in home decor. ‘When Stephanie badorned her bedroom, her sister made an emergency call to Martha Stewart.’” The fix here is easy: “Badorn: To fail at home decor.” (If an entry is otherwise thrilling, I’m willing to fix this problem if it’s easy to do.) Arrow ECS North America Explore distribution’s role in the technology value chain Advertisement By Arrow ECS North America New technologies are being introduced at a dramatic pace, making the role of IT distribution ever more important. In this article, Arrow’s global president Kristin D. Russell explains how IT distributors like Arrow continue guiding the channel. Learn more One way out of this problem: If you have a good word but your definition seems too obvious or clunky — defining adjectives with “pertaining to,” etc., can seem leaden — you can fudge it by just going to the funny part. That’s what Karen Lambert did with Carcophony: “Are we there yet?” “It’s my turn to sit up front!” “Are we there yet?” “I need to use the bathroom! “She pushed me!” “Are we there yet?” “Did not, he pushed me first!” “Are we there yet?” Is there anything funny about it? “Dockument: Boat slip receipt.” Okay, that could be amusing if you turned in your boat slip receipt at the marina office and included a note saying, “Here’s my DOCKument hahahah.” Or not. Reading it out of context in the newspaper? Not. It also doesn’t help to have wordy, unconversational language in the description: “MamoMeba: Proliferating ABBA derivatives.” “Abombinable: A very bad bomb maker, such as one that blows himself up while making or testing the bomb.” Does the definition relate at least a little to the original word? If it does, your joke is far more likely to be funny; if it doesn’t, readers might be scratching their heads to get it. Look at this one, a change from “bovine”: “Brovine: the frat boy gossip network. ‘I heard through the brovine, McKenzie says you need to manscape, bro.’ ” A cow? On top of that, the writer abandons “bovine” after adding the letter, playing instead on “grapevine,” sapping the humor from a promising idea. Also: “Began > Beegan: Someone who eats only honey.” "Carmen > Charmen: Barbeque guys, as in ‘We made the salads and desserts, but the Charmen cooked the meat.’” Carmen? Do you stomp on the joke by repeating the key word? “Abombinable: A very bad bomb maker.” “Abysmale: Obnoxious male.” Try for a graceful alternative, like Roger Dalrymple’s “Abysmale: Your doofus brother-in-law.” But: Do you awkwardly avoid repeating the key word? “Camelra: A video recording device hidden under a desert pack animal’s false hump.” You might say “dromedary” instead of “desert pack animal.” But it’d also have helped to come up with a funny scenario of why there was a camera hidden in a fake camel hump. Does the definition have any relevance to our lives? “Barksheesh: A bribe paid to dog groomers in parts of Asia and North Africa.” I particularly enjoy neologisms that we can use in the real world; I’m going to guess that this one wouldn’t have a lot of use. (One notable exception this week: Jesse Frankovich’s utterly zany “Chat on a Hot Tin Roof”: “OMG, this tin roof is hot!” “LOL, I know, right?”) Has it already gotten ink in an earlier contest? Thanks to the Super-Fabulous Loser Elden Carnahan, you can instantly search for your word through every Invite since Week 1 by going to this text file. (Or click on “All Invitational Text” on the homepage of the Losers’ website, NRARS.org.) Submitted in Week 1491 with definitions pretty much the same as — or almost identical to — the earlier Invite ink: “Compenisation: Buying a Porsche.” 2003: “Compenisate: To buy a red Porsche for reasons you don’t quite understand.” (Stephen Dudzik) “Dyspeepsia: What you get from eating too many marshmallow chicks on Easter.” “Dyspeepsia: The result of eating too much Easter candy.” (Marian Phelps) “Defibrillatte: A coffee drink strong enough to revive the dead.” “Defibrillatte: Really, really strong coffee. (John Griessmayer) That last definition was better than the original, but not different enough. Is it too common in general? “Demockracy: If I lose, it’s fraud.” The word with the same general meaning generates tens of thousands of Google hits. For this particular add-a-letter contest: Did you really substitute another letter? “Ambidsextrous: having equal dexterity from either side of the bed.” “Ambisextrous” would have been a good neologism, but that D is extraneous; it’s there just to meet the rules of the contest. This one almost got big ink until I noticed that it was missing an M — and was weakened when I added it: Coomentary: Play-by-play at the Puppy Bowl, featuring such analysis as “Awwwww” and “Oh, awwww.” It would have had to be Coommentary, which isn’t “coo.” Is your writing clear? As true for virtually everything that everyone writes, it’s useful to have someone else read it to see if the reader understands what you’re getting at (not to mention flag embarrassing typos). Case in point: The original definition for Joanne Free’s neologism “chompulsion” was “the deep urge one has to fight while in the dentist’s chair.” I myself cop to having occasionally felt like biting the hand that drilled me, so I sent Joanne’s entry to Bob Staake as possible cartoon fodder. What hadn’t occurred to me was that the entry’s wording had a certain ambiguity — enough for Bob to read “the deep urge one has to fight” as “a deep urge to fight,” rather than “one has to fight the urge,” leading to the sketch of the tooth-pulling at the top of this page. You can argue that “chompulsion” is obviously about chomping, but I’d just received proof that it can be misread. So I tweaked it to “The deep urge one has to fight while the dentist is jabbing you in the mouth.” While “fight” might still be read about fighting the dentist rather than the urge, at least we’re clearly talking about biting. (As always, Bob offers both sketches and finished drawings for his Style Invitational work at bobstaake.com/SI; I saw that he recently sold off a big set of small drawings to a Staake fan who might not even have been an Invite fan.) What Pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia — who’ll be our usual copy editor for the Invite now that Doug Norwood has retired from The Post — had a good time reading the entries this week, all of which appear both in print and online. His faves all came from the honorable mentions: Abhortionist: One who uses personal biases to orchestrate a miscarriage of justice. (Byron Miller) Children of the Corny: Kids who suffer through dad jokes. (Duncan Stevens) Apooplectic: So angry that you lose your … temper. (Frank Mann) Aromageddon: Cataclysmic event that occurs when you enter your teenager’s room. (Duncan Stevens) Bawdminton: The shuttlecock has a different function in this party version. (Diane Lucitt, Ellicott City) Chat on a Hot Tin Roof: “OMG, this tin roof is hot!” “LOL, I know, right?” (Jesse Frankovich) [Yup, zany nonsense does work once in a while!] Malice’s Restaurant: They won’t let you have a single thing you want. (Ann Martin) Cheeriots: Favorite breakfast of the Oat Keepers. (Jonathan Jensen) And the “And Last," so apropos to a discussion of writing short-form entries: Agonym: That short Style Invitational entry that’s a sure winner if you can just get the wording right, though maybe, if you change the — no, that’d be too abstruse, it needs to be more obvious, but — hey, how about — no, you already tried that, so … (Frank Mullen III, whose 49 blots of ink date back to 2002) No addmission* -- A couple of unprintables: (*Kevin Dopart’s non-inking honorable-mention subhead) Man, if you’ve read this far, surely you’re not going to complain over these funny-but-no entries (I felt that Wendy Shang’s “exaggerbate” for overstating your need for sex was as far as I could go in the Invite). Erecticon: :---- Texting shorthand for “Thinking about you.” (Frank Mullen III) And even more noey: Ejaculatte: coffee with steamy milk. (Jeff Hazle) Oh, Jeff … You’d think it was the Fourth of July or something … Enjoy the week off! Skipping this week’s contest is the only sane way I can get the July 28/31 Invitational done before the Royal Consort and I leave for Loserfest in Niagara Falls, Ontario, July 25-30. That week’s column will have the new contest of Week 1499, along with the compilation of extra ink from earlier contests, and I’ll have them finished in advance before we leave on Monday morning, ready to go up on the morning of Thursday the 28th. The cycle continues, though: Though most of the Festering Losers, as Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson refers to the tripsters, probably won’t even mention the Invite for the duration, I’ll be taking a set of entries to judge while I’m in riding the car or wherever (we’re carpooling). And I’ll make sure from Niagara that the Invite goes up on Thursday the 28th, share it on Facebook, send out the newsletter, etc. And the prizes from the week before, I’ll catch up with them when I get back; you’ll all chill, I know. Go have a good weekend and celebrate whatever freedom you have left. Next week we’ll see how that conservative-humor contest pans out. And don’t forget that you still have till Tuesday, July 5, to send me poems using National Spelling Bee words! wapo.st/invite1494. ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1496: The LOL opposition The Empress of The Style Conversational on this week’s conservative-humor results and new compare/contrast contest Image without a caption By Pat Myers July 7, 2022 at 5:59 p.m. EDT Bob Staake's alternative sketch, for the other example atop Week 1496, likening the Mohammed bin Salman-funded LIV golf tour with flushable baby wipes. (We went with the sleepy office worker.) Much of Bob's Invite work is available at bobstaake.com/SI. Comment 1 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share “I don’t know about this one,” several Losers told me after seeing Style Invitational Week 1492, a contest seeking conservative-leaning humor. After all, since January 2021 the Empress had received almost no entries that dared tease the current administration for actions (or inactions) that, had a Republican been in office, would have had the Loserly darts flying nonstop. Some every-week Losers wrote to tell me they were going to skip the contest; others were thinking the same way, then decided to try anyway. And there were indeed far fewer entries than usual for Week 1492, about 750 from only 115 entrants (more typical numbers would be 1,200/175, though they vary greatly). But at least most of the regulars gave it a shot. (Oops, I mean “a go.”) “This is one of the most difficult of any of the contests I’ve tried,” said one Loser in a note at the bottom of the entry form. Another said: “I have been THE most Liberal person I know for decades. This was hard! But gosh, awful fun.” I’d specifically noted in the contest instructions that I wasn’t looking for anything “bigoted or hateful,” and I thought I’d made it clear that I wasn’t looking for entries purportedly by a Trumpist election-denier type but obviously written to mock that person. The idea, for once, was to tease the libs. My initial reply to the doubters was that I wasn’t worried — even if not enough results were usable, I could always fill the page with more song parodies from Week 1490. But this week’s results of Week 1492 turned out just fine — and if you’re outraged at these 33 jokes, you shouldn’t be reading humor pages. Like the winning joke: “How do you spot a liberal wearing cowboy boots? He’s holding a trick-or-treat bag.” Not political, but funny and expertly worded. It’s the second Clowning Achievement for Leif (rhymes with “waif” but he’s perfectly hale) Picoult, and his 39th (plus his 40th) blot of ink since his debut with Week 1401. Leif couldn’t resist sharing to me this week that he’d had that Unusual-Named Loser Moment of Fame: A staff member at his local library had noticed his name and recognized it from his Invitational credits. “I was wondering what you looked like,” she told him. Maybe the librarian noted the name because of the mega-selling novelist Jodi Picoult (she’s Leif’s cousin, it turns out), but still! And Jodi doesn’t have even one Loser magnet. Second-place winner Ira Allen, who came of age in the student protest days of the late 1960s, had no problem joking about the current “person first” practice to avoid labeling people with adjectival nouns; they’re “persons experiencing homelessness” — a description of their current situation — rather than “the homeless,” a permanent-sounding identity. Ira described a bunch of losers as “persons temporarily experiencing defeat.” His double reward: an electric pen in the shape of a young Donald Trump that might or might not talk, and an old paperback containing the speeches of Spiro Agnew. Invite Hall of Famer Frank Osen scored yet another runner-up (he has dozens) with a joke that people on the far left side of the aisle might appreciate: Q. What’s the difference between Trump and Biden? A. Joe’s managing to bring us together — soon nobody will approve of how he’s doing. And Steve Honley grabs his 15th ink “above the fold” for another jab at divisions among Democrats: Q. What is the main problem with the Democrat Party? A. Its left hand doesn’t know what its far-left hand is doing. (“Much as I loathe the GOP’s refusal to say ‘Democratic Party,’” noted Steve, a retired State Department diplomat, “I decided to go for authenticity here.”) While I had plenty of good entries to choose from, the ones I marked as possible examples of NO made a list half as long as my shortlist of RIGHT, in addition to ones like this that I got maybe a dozen times. Q: Why do Democrats make lousy bridge players? A: Because they only know how to bid No Trump. (Zzzz.) The worst (I never check the writers’ names when I cite these) were the mean-spirited, and lame — let’s make that ‘weak’ — to boot: “If liberals want to get rid of cows, why don’t they start with Nancy Pelosi?” Or “How many liberals can you fit in a dipsy dumpster? It depends on if you put them in whole or in pieces." Yecch. “What do you call two members of ‘the Squad’? Half a brain.” It’s one thing to call Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene brainless for ranting on about “Jewish space lasers” and the “gazpacho police” and growing things in a “peach tree dish,” and another to do the same to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, winner of a prize from the prestigious Intel Science and Engineering Fair for her microbiology research. I’m going to charitably say that this entrant thought the idea was to try to imitate a horrible person in telling this thing: “You know how mean kids can be. Should we feel bad for Obama, since his initials are B.O? A. Nah, probably all the kids in Kenya smelled bad.” Others were just weak: “What do Democrats want to rename Washington, DC? Steinem, District of Sanders.” Huh? “What’s the difference between a liberal activist and a firefighter? A liberal activist speaks of national ‘dumpster fire’ issues and then adds fuel to the fire(s), whereas a firefighter extinguishes dumpster fires.” “How can you tell if your neighbor leans severely to the Left? When driving, he/she only makes left turns, regardless of how many miles are added to the trip.” “Knock, knock Who’s there? Wayne. Wayne who? Wayne-ing popularity bodes ill for mid-terms.” (True, I get weak entries every week, but we might have had a larger percentage this time. Or maybe I just bothered to collect more of them.) No particular point characterizing something liberals do, just lazy name-calling: “Q: What do you get when you cross a liberal with an idiot? A: A smarter liberal.” "What’s the new name conservatives have bestowed on the Democrats? The Damnocrats,” Others didn’t understand the contest, and told jokes about conservatives: “How does a conservative tell time? He steps outside and checks his sundial.” “What’s the difference between Al Gore and Donald Trump? One wrote ‘An Inconvenient Truth’; the other finds truth inconvenient.” Okay, enough of the chaff. Let’s salute more wheat. What Pleased Ponch: The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia: How can you tell a liberal customer at Starbucks? They ask for a cappuccinx. (Jonathan Jensen) Why do liberals love toothy British smiles? Nobody expects them to be straight and white. (Kevin Dopart) Why were the liberal’s shoes too tight? He was trying to reduce his carbon footprint. (Karen Lambert) “Bonus points for qualifying as a dad joke as well,” notes Dad Ponch. How do you know the California Forty-Niners were liberals? They used the proper pronouns referring to “gold in them/their hills.” (Bill Cromwell) What’s the difference between conservatives and liberals? Conservatives want to eliminate taxes; liberals want to eliminate Texas. (Karen Lambert) [Karen, an Invite rookie phenom, had four blots of ink this week!] What did the liberal restaurant owner do when his dishwasher was busted? Hired an immigration lawyer. (Bird Waring) What do you call a liberal at a gun range? A reporter. (Chris Doyle) Just not right — an unprintable: I was actually going to run this joke as an “And Last” but was talked out of it by a wiser person who lives with me: Is The Style Invitational left-leaning? More like left-fluffing. (Tom Witte) This headline “The LOL Opposition” atop this column was a non-inking (too long) entry by Kevin Dopart. Laugh-long relationships: This week’s contest, Week 1496 Not much more to say about this sure-fire perennial contest; even when I hear some Losers griping that they can’t find much to work with in that year’s list of random items, there are always plenty of inkworthiness at the end — even by the the gripers. If you’re not familiar with our many, many compare-and-contrast contests, you’ll get the best guidance 'n' inspiration by looking at some earlier results. Here are links to a few recent ones, plus last year’s top winners: Results of Week 1442, 2021 12 gallons of hand sanitizer: Purell. An evening with Mitch McConnell: Pure 'ell. (The winning entry, credited to almost identical entries from Jesse Frankovich and Jeff Rackow) A quarantine puppy and the world’s largest pants: Both come out of a dog giving birth. (Daniel Galef) An Olympic pole vaulter: Man with a 17-foot pole. An evening with Mitch McConnell: Man! Not with a 17-foot pole! (Jon Gearhart) The difference between Simone Biles and the Texas power grid: You can count on only one of them to light up an arena. (Kevin Dopart) Week 1390, 2020 (pandemic edition!) An extra-long nasal swab is like John Bolton’s ego: Each is definitely irritating, but we can tolerate it if it helps defeat a deadly menace. (Jonathan Jensen) The difference between a Confederate statue and sourdough starter: Everyone will smile when you announce that the starter will rise again. (John Doherty) How a Zoom wedding is like a seat at the Tulsa rally: In both cases, the best man is somewhere else. (Mark Raffman) Trump’s tie rack: Red neckwear. A skull-motif face mask: Redneck wear. (Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.) Week 1348, 2019 A dot matrix printer: You get to watch it make a lot of noise and print. Fifty-yard-line Redskins tickets: You get to watch them make a lot of noise and punt. (Warren Tanabe) Clown Shoe Friday: Flopsy. Boris Johnson’s hair: Mopsy. Jockey shorts: Cotton tail. (Jesse Frankovich) Charred mollusk on a stick and Sean Spicer doing the tango: Each could be described as a slug with a stick up its butt, but only the mollusk would be described as well done. (Mary McNamara) A hard Brexit and Jockey shorts: Two things we hope we never see Boris Johnson pull off. (Jon Ketzner) And we’ll go out on the Boris Johnson joke — as Boris Johnson the Joke goes out. ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1497: Pun intended, but . . . Can you figure out what these ‘feghoot’ punchlines were trying to say? Image without a caption By Pat Myers July 14, 2022 at 4:35 p.m. EDT The Empire carpet phone number, sung in an earworm of a jingle for many years, inspired Gary Crockett's feghoot about bowling scores, a DeLorean and a baseball game, culminating in “800, five 88s, two 300s, Umpire!” Comment 47 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share I realized while judging (and judging and judging) 1,000 or so “feghoot” story-puns in Style Invitational Week 1493, whose results run today, that I should have trotted out my regular advice to entrants in our song parody or “joint legislation” contests: Have someone else — preferably someone you’re sure will love you no matter what — read your entry out loud, with no cues from you, and see if the person can figure out what you’re getting at, what’s so clear in your own personal head. Because a bunch of them sure weren’t obvious in mine. Obviously, I figured out the punchlines in today’s 25 inking stories (about 20 fit on the print page in Sunday’s Arts & Style Section) and got a kick out of all of them. But just in case you didn’t know the reference — as in the ubiquitous carpet commercial for Empire carpet that Gary Crockett used so creatively — I embedded explanatory links into most of the punchlines. (Don’t complain to me that your intelligence is insulted.) In fact, my first-pass shortlist numbers close to 100 inkworthy feghoots, most to be robbed of ink. (I’ll have room for a few more in two weeks, when I’ll run some extras from several recent contests.) But on the way to finding these gems, a pretty constant refrain was “Huh?” When I was stumped as to what expression the writer was punning on, I’d say the line out loud. Sometimes I’d get it and say “Oh, I see. No.” Other times, the Royal Consort got it first. Here are some of the entries that stumped me. YMMV, as they say; the puns might jump right out at you. If so, or if you just want to guess, leave a comment right here at the bottom of the column, rather than in the usual forum of the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook. I’m reprinting the entries as they came in, with no editing except to fix spelling, typos, etc. I didn’t check at all who wrote them, though if their authors want to reveal themselves in the comments thread, fine with me! — “Who’s the stupidest person you know?” “Easy! Arsehead (them dumb).” — Eileen unwrapped the crackling plastic, clattering the lozenge into her mouth, and was promptly wracked by raucous, raspy hacking and rowdy, gravelly croaks. As these subsided to harsh, screechy wheezing, she gurgled, “Wow, what great cacophony drops!” — An apocryphal book of the Bible recounts the time Satan attempted to destroy the world’s original woman so that the human race would be unable to multiply. He sent to Eden one of his demonic minions: a cannibalistic, wizened old troll. And Satan did whisper into his servant’s ear: “Eat Eve, oh gnome.” — An elderly Oklahoman gentleman decided to sell erectile enhancement pills from his home. He used outside speakers to advertise it loud and clear to the neighborhood. A local paper picked up the story and called it: The audio Viagra feed of an Okie. — A young woman from Bulgaria came to the U.S. to work caring for a family’s young children in their home. Her real ambition was to use the family computers for a variety of online scams. The family was unaware of her activities, but the police found out and went to arrest her. She put up a fight and had to be subdued with a taser. A journalist on the scene caught it all on his phone, but to his dismay the officer in charge confiscated the device. The journalist objected loudly that this was an outrageous violation of the First Amendment. The policeman responded that this was just stun dart au pair raiding press seizure. — A woman accidentally used Pledge on the wooden floor at her husband’s parents’ house. It was an honest mistake, but she felt like she had to make it up to them since they’d slipped and fallen. When the husband’s parents arrived to spend the day telling her, in excruciating depth, all about their trip to the ER, the husband called out, “Oh, Mama! I’m in here. Bore my wife, plumb the wrong harm of in-laws.” — At his latest rally, Trump had to keep pushing his loose dental plate back in. But this was no surprise to either his base or detractors as any First Amendment restrictions would have applied to Trump only if he had been a private citizen. The former president’s mouth has always threatened public safety as a “glarin’ press-in denture.” — After Cecil Rhodes, the founder of De Beers, became wealthy, he always had a haberdasher’s carriage accompany him to social functions for any last-minute changes he might need to avoid a fashion faux pas. This was a point of fascination around town. When asked by a passerby about a large pile of neckwear in his carriage, the haberdasher said, “A tie mound is for error.” — A wool producer noticed cracks around his animals’ mouths most likely caused by the local weather to which they were unaccustomed. After several attempts, he created a balm containing petroleum jelly. When he tried marketing the treatment, investors stayed away because no one wanted to be responsible for producing a clear shine of the alpaca lips. — A family of British giants loved nothing more than to feast on Jordanian royalty. But the kids always squabbled over who got to eat whom. One day Tommy came to his parents complaining about his sister: “Jill et the best Amman king yet!” — Donald Trump wouldn’t eat Justice Alito’s pancakes, complaining fluffy flapjack batter might upset his digestion at that afternoon’s golf tournament. He relented after Alito promised he’d be fine. Later, though, Trump’s golf pants told another story. Newspapers headlined: “Batter Too Light! Alito Scandal — Don Tuchus Too Dark!” — Doug tried a variety of healthy cooking. One day he said he hated quinoa so much. It was just a big nothing in taste and texture, he said, and if he could go back in time, he’d buttonhole any ark-builders and say “Quinoa, How long are you gonna keep working on that groat? You’re crazy, Noah, it’s never gonna be a grain.” — Doug went through a Walter Raleigh phase, hair and goatee. He longed for a Three-Musketeers outfit to complete it, but with diabetes and heartbreak going on, he said he’d just settle for just one Musketeer and a promise of a Babe Ruth. — Noel and his son crossed the pond for a visit to the Big Easy. After days of jazz clubs, étouffée and jambalaya, Noel started limping. His son asked: “Pater, do your feet hurt from keeping the beat at the clubs?” Noel replied: “No. Bad dogs and crayfish mean gout in the body, son.” — The first ambulance service was instituted in New York City in 1865. From the moment their horse-drawn carriages hit the streets, lawyer Vinnie “The Shark” Guiliani was there, “looking out for the poor victims.” He brought so many frivolous lawsuits to trial that “ambulance chaser” became a household word. The next time you’re quick to distrust a lawyer or about to tell a baseless joke about them, just remember: Attorney tags of “louse” and “vile” began with a single schlub. — Returning to my rented cabin, I found that the door had been kicked in and the storage chest with my food had been ransacked, but everything else was undisturbed. I asked the park ranger if this was unusual and he said, “Nope. Bears know hutch Pringles’ve real crunch.” — I took my munchkin cat on a road trip to southern Mexico. He ran away but, fortunately, a flock of birds brought him back. He’s so freaked out though that he’s spending the rest of the day in the back seat trying to cuddle with the food: Toucans’ fetched dwarf lies with a kneaded Yukon within a car. Then there are the ones that I managed to figure out, or the Royal Consort did, but really, noooo. — “Ma’am, uh, Thor’s speedo is FULL. Need a spread.” Compare with Gary Crockett’s inking entry ending “Damn the four Speedos! (full screed ahead).” NOW it seems clearer, right? Because you already know what it’s supposed to be. — “Taekwondo-in’ pastor Owen: date ye eight bottles of beer, and thaw all!” (TAKE ONE DOWN AND PASS IT AROUND, 88 bottles of beer on the wall!!! Nononono.) — Marilyn Monroe and Alfred Hitchcock [zub zub zub] “Die, Monza-Ray! Gulls, bash Fran!” (Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. This is not a girl’s best feghoot.) — Billy Joel loved fish and chips — particularly the Treacher’s fast-food variety — and never more than when he had lit up a spliff. He bought himself a franchise, which his friends called his “weed-interest Arthur fryer.” (The Billy Joel reference helped toward “We didn’t start the fire,” but it still doesn’t work; “interest” has too many sounds that aren’t in the original.) — In Athens, birthing professionals celebrate Midsummer’s Night by entertaining the children they’ve delivered over the years with silly mechanical, chimeric animal toys. The children laugh at what fools these medics be, but sometimes they are disappointed when a toy contraption fails. This year for example, “duck-horse of doula never did fun moves.” (I guess this has to be a play on “the course of true love never did run smooth.” It provoked from me a midsummer night’s scream.) — Having given chef the night off, Evelyn Waugh decided to make Christmas dinner himself. Waugh was a bit prickly, and got infuriated by little things — like recalcitrant salsa or dribbling Worcestershire. And so, as the carol tells us, “Cooking when the sauce oozed out often cheesed off Evelyn.” (I credit the Royal Consort for discerning “Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen.”) — One of Santa’s helpers needed a ride, so he called for an Uber. It was driven by a very contrary woman, and Mike Tyson was in the passenger seat. Suddenly Tyson reenacted a scene from one of his famous fights, leaving the poor little passenger with a pained expression. It was the story of “Half-ears Elf, a Mary-limo grimace.” (“Half-ears Elf” works, but you don’t have to be the Grinch to insist that “limo grimace” is not “little Christmas.”) One Loser helpfully explained that “Yo, Stan, we have a prop plane” was punning on “Houston, we have a problem.” At least the person realized that nobody could be expected to get that otherwise. I’m charitably saying that some people must have come up independently with “This is the awning of the cage of asparagus” (which I’ve seen a million times online) or even “only Hugh can prevent florist friars” or “the beer that made Mel Famey walk us,” which I heard as a child in the late Triassic period. (Anyway, jokes that rely on contrived names like “Mel Famey” tend to telegraph the punchline and just not be that clever. I got one entry about a man named “Depottle Black.”) If one of today’s inking entries is an old joke, oh, well. But please, people, one more time: Don’t send me the best joke you ever heard. Send me the best joke you ever came up with on your own. Really, do you want to look like a thief in The Washington Post with your name right there? While the pun didn’t have to sound exactly like the original, it had to be pretty close. “A turd in a can is worth more than George Bush” is not a pun. Or “Crime’s tried when you have no funds.” Or “Tantalizing Jane” for “little Liza Jane.” Or — aaack — “when Damon hits Yuri” for “when the moon hits your eye.” That’s a-misery. So you can appreciate even more the cleverness of today’s inking Losers. It’s the fourth Clowning Achievement for Mark Raffman — he gets a little “IV” flag to attach to the base of his Disembodied Clown head trophy — and his, erp, 28th first-place finish all-time. And yet another stellar week for Rookie Phenom Karen Lambert, who wins the probably terrible party game What’s That Smell? for second place. All three runners-up this week are women; along with Karen, we have recent-years regular Hannah Seidel and just-her-third-blot Fran Ludman. Given the Invite’s disturbing wild imbalance over the years toward male-won ink, I’m delighted to see a string of feminine names in the Losers’ Circle. (I don’t see the writers’ names until after I make my picks.) What Pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia, who thought he knew from puns because “I’m a dad,” found himself in a whole new realm this week. “Some of the devotees must smoke a lot of weed,” Ponch posited. He enjoyed the tour, though, and singled out these as favorites: Duncan Stevens’s “Luke before Yul? Eep!”; Chuck Smith’s “Clothes, but no cigar,” a phrase we’ve run before but not in the Clinton intern context; Coleman Glenn’s warning about speaking cruelly to your potato plants because you can “kill tubers with one’s tone”; and Kevin Dopart on the happy worldwide refusal to accept a Beatles/MAGA tour, “Isn’t it good no region would?” Just imagine: The Week 1497 ‘what if’ contest The main challenge for this week’s “what if” contest might be in its almost endless scope: if something in history had gone another way; if some sort of thing existed that hasn’t yet been created; if people did something they didn’t really do. But we’ve had lots of success with earlier contests, all the way back to Week 140 in 1995: Sample ink from Week 140: What if, instead of air bags, they put sharp metal spikes on the steering column? Seat belt use would go way up. (Art Grinath) What if instead of the speed of light, the “c” in Einstein’s equation had been equal to the maximum safe speed of a Ford Pinto? Then, by traveling at a mere 70 mph, we could go back in time to prevent past mistakes. Such as the Ford Pinto. (John Kammer) What if “what could have been” were not the saddest words? Then the words “the Jerry Lewis Telethon is on again” would have to move up. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) If the glove had fitted / They still wouldn’ta convitted. (Russell Beland) You can see the rest of that week’s (pre-internet) inking entries in a plain-text version here; scroll down past the new contest. And a contest for alternative history, from 1998 (complete results here in another text file); What if Germany had not attacked Russia during World War II? The expression would be “As American as apple strudel.” (Chuck Smith) What if Johnny Appleseed had planted marijuana instead of apples? Our national pastime would be Hacky Sack. (Steve Fahey) What if Adam and Eve don’t eat the apple? [“History” was interpreted broadly by the Czar.] Worms eat the apple, obtain Knowledge, and rule the planet. The Macarena and the high-five are never invented. (Ned Bent) What if television had been invented in 1832 instead of 1932? “Our American Cousin” is broadcast live. In front of cameras, John Wilkes Booth shoots President Lincoln in the ear, and jumps to the stage shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis!” The crowd responds by leaping to its feet and stadium-clapping while yelling “Woof! Woof! Woof!” Later, Jerry Springer’s great-great-grandpa interviews Booth and asks him about his feelings. He tries to arrange an on-air reconciliation between Booth and Mrs. Lincoln. Booth becomes an instant celeb. After a jury acquits him, he gets a running part in Springer’s show, sneaking up behind people and shooting them in the ear. (Andrew B. Gibson) And, in the modern era, from 2018 (full results of Week 1304 here): What if night suddenly became day, and day became night? I’m sorry, what were you saying? I was checking my phone. (Ivars Kuskevics) What if anagrams always came true? Robert Mueller could TRAP A FOUL MAN just by using PAUL MANAFORT. (Jon Gearhart) What if instead of the Stanley Cup it was a Stanley Jockstrap? It would be easier to hold above your head, but players probably wouldn’t drink out of it so much. (Jeff Shirley) ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1498: It’s the Invitational multiverse! The Empress dishes on this week’s poetry contests, coming and going. Image without a caption By Pat Myers July 21, 2022 at 5:11 p.m. EDT Now we have something else to call an armadillo: a dasypodid. Sarah Walsh and Beverley Sharp did it in poems. (National Wildlife Federation) Comment 0 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share I have to put together next week’s Invitational column before tomorrow morning (see my note at the bottom of this page), so I’ll try to restrict the usual blatherama this week. This week’s new contest, Style Invitational Week 1498, was initially suggested by Sarah Walsh last month in a very different form. “Here’s the idea,” she pitched: “Provide a new definition for words with prefixes (whether or not the prefix acts as a prefix or is just part of the word), as in “Retreat, v: To give your kid one more cookie so they stop whining already. “Preface, n: What I have before putting on makeup. “Debunk, v: Graduate the twins to their own rooms.” Believe it or not, I don’t like to reject people’s ideas. But I told her that it wouldn’t work: “We’ve certainly done general contests to redefine existing words,” I said. But “I worry, though, that limiting it to words with prefixes (or seeming prefixes) might end up with everyone sending the same ideas, going to the re- and con- and sub- sections of the dictionary and … then it’s going to be obvious what the joke will be. Re-treat: give another treat, or give some more medicine. Debunk: remove from a bunk. Maybe if it came down to the funniest way to use it in a sentence …” Sarah — channeling the indefatigable Abigail Adams, whom she’s portrayed many times as a historical interpreter — didn’t say the usual okay never mind. Three days later she wrote me again: “How about if we work the non-prefix joke into a poem?” And she enclosed the “debunk” verse that serves as this week’s example, and proved thoroughly Staakeable as well. I further expanded the contest to include any word with a not-really-the-meaning, rather than restrict it to a list of prefixes. (Feel free, of course, to limit the contest yourself any way you like.) Also, your word doesn’t have to be pronounced the same as the original — as long as a decently smart reader will get the joke. While we haven’t run this particular contest before, our several contests to redefine existing words have produced some classic entries. In fact, a corrupted list of inking entries from Week 278 in 1995 is still circulating around the internet (before that, it traveled through that newfangled email thing), often credited to “this year’s contest of the Washington Post Mensa Invitational” (typical post; see the second list). Here are the (actual) winners from that week (some of the Losers are still active in the Invite); go ahead and parlay any of these idea into a poem if you also include your own flair and preferably another clever element. Seventh Runner-Up: Carcinoma: n., a valley in California, notable for its heavy smog. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) [Seventh runner-up! The Czar pretty much had an unlimited prize budget. The Empress, well, does not.] Sixth Runner-Up: Asunder: adj., supine. (Jo Lombard, McLean) Fifth Runner-Up: Esplanade: v., to attempt an explanation while drunk. (Kevin Mellema, Falls Church) Fourth Runner-Up: Willy-nilly: adj., impotent. (Beth Benson, Lanham) Third Runner-Up: Flabbergasted: adj., appalled over how much weight you have gained. (Michelle Feeley, Arlington) Second Runner-Up: Negligent: adj., describes a condition in which you absent-mindedly answer the door in your nightie. (Sandra Hull, Arlington) First Runner-Up: Excruciate: n., the ligament that attaches your ex-wife to your paycheck. (Kevin Cuddihy, Fairfax) And the winner of the bag of 49 whoopee cushions: Canticle — n., a modular office space so small and lightless that it saps an employee of all motivation. (Jacob Weinstein, Los Angeles) Honorable Mentions: Perplexed — adj., lost in a movie theater. (Michelle Feeley, Arlington) Population — n., that nice sensation you get when drinking soda. (Lee Mayer and Paul Laporte, Washington) Racket — n., a small pair of breasts. (Jerry Pannullo, Kensington) Lymph — v., to walk with a lisp. (Paul Kocak, Syracuse) Cafeteria — n., A women’s coffeehouse, where the clients drink coffee and cry. (Michael A. Genz, La Plata) Morass — n., the mess you make when you can never have enough. (Kevin Mellema, Falls Church) Gargoyle — n., an olive-flavored mouthwash. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Bustard — n., A very rude Metrobus driver. (Christopher Hapner, Savannah) Debentures — n., false teeth bought on credit. (John Allen, Charlottesville) Nincompoop — n., the military command responsible for battlefield sanitation. (Bill Strider, Gaithersburg) Ineffable — adj., describes someone you absolutely cannot swear in front of, such as the Queen Mum, or Martha Stewart. (Jessica Henig, Northampton, Mass.) Pontificate — n., a document given to each graduating pope. (Brian C. Broadus, Charlottesville) Seersucker — n., an avid follower of Sydney Omarr, Serena Sabak, etc. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park) Coffee — n., a person who is coughed upon. (David Hoffman, San Diego) Pimple — n., a panderer’s apprentice. (Meg Sullivan, Potomac) Discussion — n., a Frisbee-related head injury. (Sandra Hull, Arlington) Flatulence — n., the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller. (Russ Beland, Springfield) Hysteria — n., the anguish caused by listening to low fidelity audio systems. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Peons — n., service personnel who must endure the rabid tirades of angry customers. (Kevin Mellema, Silver Spring) Internet — n., the web of interns in which Ken Starr has tried to snare Bill Clinton. (Phil Frankenfeld, Washington) Balderdash — n., a rapidly receding hairline. (Paul Kocak, Syracuse) Polarize — n., a very cold look. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Brisket — n., a straw container for a mohel’s instruments. (T.J. Murphy, Arlington) Bluestockings — n., a woman’s term for unfulfilled sexual arousal. (Kevin Mellema, Silver Spring) Mausoleum — n., floor covering used in crypts. Attractive from the top and bottom. (Barbara Harrison, Hagerstown) Cursive — adj., sort of cursing, i.e., “Oh, fiddlesticks,” or “H-E-double toothpicks.” (Kevin Mellema, Falls Church) Ozone — n., area in which the G-spot is located. (Irwin L. Singer, Washington) Semantics — n., pranks conducted by young men studying for the priesthood, including such things as gluing the pages of the priest’s prayer book together just before vespers. (T.J. Murphy, Arlington) Rectitude — n., the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you. (Kyle Bonney, Fairfax) Asterisk — v., to inquire about the danger of a certain situation. (Jo Lombard, McLean) Buttress — n., a long strand of derriere hair. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington; Stephen Dudzik, Silver Spring) Lobster — n., a slick-talking, oily, obnoxious person who represents special interest groups on Capitol Hill. (Elizabeth Monte, Fairfax) Foundling — n., an apprehended child molester. (E.J. Lloyd, Fairfax Station) Amenorrhea — n., excessive exaltations of the audience of some sleazy TV preacher. (Paul Styrene, Olney) Shadow — n., a fish whose husband has died. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Macadam — n., the first man on Earth, according to the Celtic bible. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia) Marionettes — n., residents of Washington who have been jerked around by the mayor. (Gary L. Kunz, Gaithersburg) Abdicate — v., to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Oyster — n., a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions. (Meg Sullivan, Potomac) Circumvent — n., the opening in the front of boxer shorts. (Greg Arnold, Herndon) Filibuster — v., to issue a command to a service station attendant. (Jo Lombard, McLean) Flattery — n., a place that manufactures A and B cup brassieres only. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Testicle — n., a humorous question on an exam. (Paul Kocak, Syracuse) Searching through Elden Carnahan’s indispensable Master Contest List, I’m seeing four other times we did this contest, from 2004 though 2016 (the last three using particular sections of the alphabet). Here’s a selection, plus links to plain-text versions of the whole set of results; sometimes you’ll have to scroll down past that week’s new contest. Week 564, 2004 Apiary: An apartment shared by three bachelors. (Jon Reiser, Hilton, N.Y.) Juggernaut: A flat-chested woman. (Maja Keech, New Carrollton) And the Winner of the Inker: Gypsum: The primary ingredient in car undercoating. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) [We wouldn’t run this joke today, because of the racial slur “gyp,” a reference to Gypsies, now called the Roma people of Europe; it really is analogous to using the verb “jew” to mean to cheat someone out of money.] Abed: Defeated in a debate. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) [Pronounce it as a one-syllable word.] Asinine: An almost perfect derriere. (Robin D. Grove, Chevy Chase) Bedpan: To have an affair with a man who never grew up. (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) Crocodiles: Calls from telemarketers. (Andrea Kelly, Brookeville) Downplay: To pillow-fight. (Kyle Hendrickson, Dunkirk) Flatulent: A rental property. (Tom Witte) Gauche: What librarians do. (Sara St. Thomas, Winchester, Va.) Rubberneckers: A couple practicing very safe sex. (Ross Elliffe, Picton, New Zealand) Empress: Use a phony title to increase one’s self-esteem. (Stephen Litterst, Ithaca, N.Y.) Week 749, 2008 Cremate: Coffee-Mate’s unsuccessful initial brand name. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) And the Winner of the Inker Arms Akimbo: The notorious Nigerian gunrunner. (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) Abjectness: The degree to which your belly protrudes. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Adverb: Buy! (Duncan Seed, Robin Hood’s Bay, North Yorkshire, England) Arsenal: Completely, all-inclusive. (Bird Waring, New York) Bandage: Instruments, amps, mics, cocaine, etc. (Tom Witte) Biceps: Half of a forceps. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) Bristling: A newly circumcised baby. (Phyllis Reinhard, East Fallowfield, Pa.) Cupola: Breast enhancement scams. (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.) Electrocute: Use a Hello Kitty taser. (Kevin Dopart) Hispanic: What Lou Dobbs demonstrates every time he opens his mouth about immigration. (Christopher Lamora) Hungarian: Someone who’s always on a diet. (Marty McCullen, Gettysburg, Pa.) Week 925, 2011 The winner of the Inker: Knothole: Someone who isn’t a jerk. (Jamie Pazur, St. Simons Island, Ga., a First Offender) Linguine: A person who insists on correcting someone’s grammar or pronunciation when others are present. (Theresa Kowal, Silver Spring, Md.) Ignorant (n.): A typical blog post. (Kevin Dopart, Washington; Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) Megawatt: A state of total bewilderment or disbelief. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) Lassitude: “Timmy can get himself out of the #*@!@ well. I have better things to do.” (Steve Langer, Chevy Chase; Laurie Brink, Cleveland, Mo.) Incantation: Singing on the toilet. (Ann Martin, Bracknell, England) Increase: Where the thong went. (Pam Sweeney, Burlington, Mass.) Indigo: Harrison Ford’s epitaph. (Doug Frank, Crosby, Tex.) Open-pit: Describing a sleeveless dress. (Dixon Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.) Installer: A quickie in the restroom. (Craig Dykstra) Monsoon: Jamaican farewell. (Chris Doyle) Orthodox: Dentists. (Matt Monitto, Myrtle Beach, S.C.) Lasso: The Marx sister. (Judy Blanchard) Midwife: Bride bridging Marriages No. 1 and No. 3. (David Klann, Washington) Nutmeg: A million Losers. (Kathy Hardis Fraeman) … and Week 1160, 2016 PITUITARY: So foul-tasting you have to spit it out. (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.) SCATTERBRAIN: A typical stage direction in a zombie movie. (Joanne Free, Clifton, Va.) STUD POKER: Personal protective device to ward off conceited suitors. (Howard Walderman, Columbia, Md.) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: PERMUTATION: How Chernobyl Fried Chicken offers refunds. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) POTHOLE: An obnoxious stoner. (Andrea Dewhurst, Lynn, Mass.) QUIBBLE: Pet food for finicky eaters. (Frank Osen) TYPEFACE: The result of falling asleep at your keyboard. (Ben Aronin, Washington) YO-YO: Greeting between friends. (Jennifer Dickey, Silver Spring, Md.) The bards and the bee*: The results of Week 1494 *Headline by Tom Witte for the first time we did this contest, Week 716 — hard to top that one! Okay, maybe they’re not as coffee-spittingly hawhaw as some weeks’ Invite humor, but in the results of Week 1494, once again our Loserbards were pretty dang funny writing poems containing words that most of us had never heard of, and in some cases couldn’t even pronounce. Twenty-five of them get ink online this week, and about 20 on the print page — quite the florilegium. And I had at least another dozen on my shortlist. Another option this week, for the less bardular, was to use the word (all had to be taken from Round 4 or later of this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee) in a Q&A-type joke. There were a few good ones, but they all ended up trumped by the poems, often with the same joke idea. So I didn’t run any, though I have in previous years. I didn’t do a scientific tally, but I think a sizable majority of the poems were from a list of 20 words I’d provided with the Week 1494 Invitational. However, many intrepid Losers looked at the various pages (one per round, 18 rounds and a lightning round) at spellingbee.com, discovering gems like “cacoepy,” meaning the mispronunciation of a word — how timely is that! (Kudos to both Frank Osen and Duncan Stevens for their excellent takes.) I always look forward to seeing new names among the inking Losers, but I wasn’t surprised that this week’s results consisted of a Loserbard A-team. Chris Doyle, who should grow a GOATee, walks off with — I swear I am not making this up — his sixty-second first-place win, with his “chimichurri” ode featuring mass puking at a rest stop: A funny-tasting chimichurri taco from a Taco Bell Along a highway in Missouri brought me to E. coli hell: A restroom filled with puking men where not a single stall was free. Does misery love company? So people say, but hey, not me. Kevin Dopart and Melissa Balmain are also fixtures in the Losers’ Circle — Melissa in particular for poetry — but we hadn’t heard much from Stephen Gold in a while. I’m glad to see that the former Glaswegian — whom some of us got to meet when he and his wife visited the States some years ago and proved to be total experts on “The Wire” — couldn’t resist writing a rhyme about the Scottish oatmeal dish called brose, in this case well flavored with malt whisky by “a cereal offender.” What Pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia chose his faves this week from the honorable mentions: He singled out Frank Mann’s “torrefaction” parody, Kevin Dopart’s “Fraternity Brose” and both Frank Osen’s and Duncan Stevens’s “cacoepy.” That makes me feel relieved that I didn’t need to telegraph Frank Mann’s joke with a YouTube link, letting the reader figure out during the poem that it was a song parody — which becomes obvious when it reaches “I can’t get no torrefaction.” And I’m not surprised that a copy editor — whose job it is to notice and fix mistakes — would get a kick out of the two takes on “cacoepy,” the mispronunciation of a word. Frank Osen highlighted GOPers’ deliberate “kaMALa,” as if they’re proud they can’t pronounce the vice president’s name correctly, and especially Duncan Stevens’s digest of a slew of commonly butchered words. See you in two weeks! But I’ll be in touch next Thursday. Next week, for the first time in almost three years, the Royal Consort and I are going on vacation for a few days — we’ll be joining about a dozen Style Invitational types on a five-day Loserfest trip to Niagara Falls, Canada side — and so I won’t be doing a Conversational next week. But there will, of course, be an Invitational — we haven’t not had a column since, hmm, it looks like Jan. 23, 2000. Next week’s Invite, Week 1499, will be a Bob Staake cartoon contest, and the results will comprise an assortment of robbed-of-ink entries from several recent contests (maybe even this one). I do plan to send out the Substack email newsletter with a link to the new column — what, you haven’t signed up??? — sometime next Thursday, July 28. ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1500: Loserfestering in Niagara Falls The Style Invitational Empress talks about this week’s contest and results, and tells about last week’s Loserfest trip. Image without a caption By Pat Myers August 4, 2022 at 4:49 p.m. EDT L of a time: The Empress, tiaraless and, despite the expression, having a wonderful time amid a passel of Losers at one of several get-all-sprayed attractions on our trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario, last week. Comment 1 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Hi, everyone! It’s taken at least six days to decompress and get back in gear from a five-day vacation last week — one that I enjoyed every minute of. A dozen of us Invite-types, including me and the Royal Consort (celebrating our 40th anniversary), gathered in Niagara Falls, Ontario, for another Loserfest, organized once again with immense enthusiasm by Loser Kyle Hendrickson, dubbed Loserfest Pope years ago by who-knows-who. The RC and I rode up with local Losers Mike Creveling and Ann Martin; Kyle, Kathleen Delano and Sarah Worcester came in another car, and Jonathan Hardis in a third; Miriam Nadel flew in from another trip; Edward Gordon and his friend Doug came from Austin by way of Toronto. And Sharon Neeman — visiting from Israel — came over from a friend’s in Buffalo to join us one morning on the New York side. Kyle’s optimistically planned “Fungenda” proved flexible and resilient when things ran late, a site was closed, etc., allowing us to sample all sorts of activities that the town offers. Of course there’s the literally breathtaking experience of getting right up to the falls — by boat and by observation decks in which you’re issued essentially a floor-length plastic bag to encase yourself, somewhat futilely, against the spray. But we also took in an artsy light show in a power plant turned museum (celebrating the miracle of hydroelectric energy!), and Kyle even found a way for us to be shuttled up a hill one night to a nondescript administration building, where we were taken to a back deck and took turns flipping switches that lit up the Horseshoe Falls in our choice of colors. "Loserfest Pope" Kyle Hendrickson and a Moosie Mountie. (Pat Myers/TWP) Throughout, everyone stayed cheerful and even-tempered during the inevitable snags, making and solidifying friendships that are sure to continue. While the Invitational itself was tangential, at most, to the vacation, it once again reinforced the Invite as a three-decade-old social community. Kyle’s taking suggestions for where the next Loserfest will be; I’m favoring one closer to home, where local Losers and Devotees have the option of making it a day trip on one day of the festivities (and not having to break the piggy bank). In the past we’ve gone to Baltimore and Frederick and Delaware and even downtown D.C. Kyle also needs your suggestions on where to have our monthly Loser Brunches over the next year; he’s taking over the duty of scheduling the rotation from Elden Carnahan. (See “Important note” below.) In addition to scheduling approximately 943 activities for the four-day excursion, Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson designed a commemorative T-shirt ("Barrelly Met My Expectations"). Here's it's modeled by the Empress (in black) and Losers Ann Martin, Kathleen Delano and Sarah Worcester. (Kyle Hendrickson) Nice pair! The results of Week 1496 When I compile the list of items to liken, differ or otherwise link in The Style Invitational’s more or less annual Same Difference contest — the results of Week 1496 went up this morning — I really do try for randomness: Sometimes I’ll look around the room and write down some object I see, or something that catches my eye in that morning’s paper on the kitchen table. And even when I scroll down the comment thread from my solicitation in the Style Invitational Devotees group, I’ll choose among literally hundreds of Losers’ suggestions without much pondering how much humor they’ll generate — and no thought of how one item will relate to another. Because the Losers always find clever ways to relate these random items. Or at least enough of them. There were plenty of good ideas among Week 1496′s roughly 1,050 entries (plus a hundred-odd headline ideas); my “shortlist” numbered 10 percent of the total. Some of those, though, were various versions of the same joke; either I didn’t credit anyone personally, as in the puns on “high interest,” or I chose one entry that hit me as a little better than the rest: pithier, using less explanation, more parallel, sometimes including a funnier word. Example of the same good idea with one funnier word : Didn’t make it: Both a flushable wipe and six Supreme Court justices all want to get up in women’s genitals. Made it: A flushable wipe and six Supreme Court justices: They’re both up in my business. (Deb Stewart, Damascus) In many other cases, the joke was unique among the entries. That was the case with this week’s Clowning Achievement by Kevin Dopart: The difference between a hypersonic missile and a banned book: “You can open-carry the missile in Texas.” It’s the fourth Clowner trophy for Kevin Dopart — but it’s his 36th contest win since Kevin started Inviting in 2005, immediately swamping the contest with ink and going on to be the highest-scoring Loser for seven years straight. In fact, with his four blots this week (or it might have been in the last few weeks), Kevin sails past the 1,700-ink mark to pass Tom Witte for second place in all-time ink. The longtime marathoner will have to sprint mightily, though, to catch up with GOAT Chris Doyle’s 2,400-plus. The rest of the Losers’ Circle is composed of veteran Losers as well, from Hall of Famer Mark Raffman to relative newbies — but both immediate stars — Steve Smith (debuted in Week 1326) and Hannah Seidel (Week 1383). I don’t see the names of the authors of the entries until I choose them, so I was excited to see how many women got ink this week; the M/F imbalance in the Invite has always been a bit mysterious and frankly embarrassing. So I’ll happily congratulate Hannah Seidel, Deb Stewart, First Offender Katherine Schaepman, Karen Lambert (four times over!), Beverley Sharp, Pam Shermeyer (x 3), Barbara Turner and First Offender Michie March on having scored about a third of the week’s ink. Getting there! Important note: I get all these stats from the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. The stats have been maintained since Week 1 by Elden Carnahan — but because of health issues these past few months, Elden hasn’t been able to devote his usual efforts to maintaining the Loser Stats, Master Contest List, the All Invitational Text file, brunch rotation, and many other things that we’re only now noticing in their absence. And he’s now in the process of handing over the reins to others in the Loser Community. This evening, Kyle Hendrickson will host a Zoom meeting with a number of people who’ve expressed willingness to take on a small part of what Elden has been doing virtually on his own. If you’d like to help maintain this indispensable resource — especially if you have programming skills, but not necessarily — let me know and I’ll put you in touch with Kyle. My deepest thanks to all of you who’ve stepped forward (and those who will) — and of course to Elden himself, the father of our feast. Elden had wanted to join us in Niagara Falls last week but wisely decided to stay home (very wisely, it turned out, considering the nonstop activities) — so we’ll instead go to him: We’re hoping to schedule a Loser brunch or other meal sometime in the next few weeks out in his home base of Laurel, Md. — or, as he terms it, Nether Scaggsville. Stay tuned. What Pleased Ponch: “Lots of gems this week!” reported Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia after reading the print Invite, which contains about 40 of the total of, I think, 48 inking entries. Ponch’s faves all came from the Honorables: A flushable wipe and six Supreme Court justices: They’re both up in my business. (Deb Stewart) Six Supreme Court justices vs. a worn-out toothbrush: Only the justices will control your cavities. (Kevin Dopart) Cat hair and a romance novel: Lots of nasty stuff on the furniture. (Jesse Frankovich) 8 percent inflation and Old Bay: They’ve both been added lately to every item in the grocery store. (Ben Aronin) A romance novel vs. cat hair: One involves mattresses and the other involves cat tresses. (Leif Picoult) 8 percent inflation can make your money worthless; a period-tracking app can keep your honey birthless. (Gary Crockett) A worn-out toothbrush: The bristles overused. Cat hair: The Bissell’s overused. (Chris Doyle) 8 percent inflation: What you’ve earned is worth less. A Style Invitational second prize: What you’ve earned is worthless. (Jesse Frankovich) The square deal for Week 1500: This week’s neologism contest Yes, Week 1500 is yet another chance to coin new words, one that’s pretty clear on what to do. We did the same contest for 14-point words in Week 1402; here are some of the results, for your guidance & inspiration & just plain entertainment. And you know, don’t send in these same words below and tack an S on the end. Do note that definitions match the part of speech of the word: noun for noun, adjective for adjective, etc. Or how they avoid the problem by not using definition form. (See rant in Style Conversational Week 1495.) 4. SHAMNESIA: “Hush money? I don’t remember anything about that. Maybe you should ask Michael Cohen. I hardly know the guy.” (Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.) 3. DUMBRAGE: Indignation based on ignorance. “How dare you say you’d like to emulate me, you filthy pervert!” (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) 2. NAGIVATION: The art of backseat driving. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: BUPHOON: An ill wind from Washington that blows nobody any good. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.) NOSHTALGIA: Remember when we could gorge on nachos and beer and not gain a pound? (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) TYRANNODON: Creature we thought could not possibly exist today. (William Kennard, Arlington, Va.) ABSENTIFA: A group of dangerous anarchists that terrorizes people by not showing up. (Jonathan Jensen) ATLASHRUGS: Gestures that show you don’t care. “When asked about the death rate, the White House official gave an atlashrug.” (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) THISTOPIA: 2020. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) BELLOWIER: What one candidate tries to be in a “debate.” (J. Larry Schott, West Plains, Mo.) BIFECAL: They used to be rose-colored, but lately I’ve been seeing the world through this kind of glasses. (Bill Dorner, Indianapolis) BULLIGERENT: Not only spouting total BS, but doing it while someone else is trying to talk. “In tonight’s debate, the president was . . .” (Jonathan Jensen) CARDAVER: The mannequin you put in your passenger seat when you’re driving solo in the HOV-2 lane. (Wendy Shang, Falls Church, Va.) CONDUMB: What you are when you insist on using Durex XXLs but they keep falling off. (Jeff Shirley, Richmond, Va.) COVFEE: Miracle potion drunk by POTUS to cure himself. (Edward Gordon, Austin) DORKLY: Extra-clumsily. “Coming in from the patio, Ernie walked through a glass dorkly.” (Chris Doyle) EGONOMICS: Maybe that was Trump’s major in business school. (Chris Doyle) FRETTORIC: Playing to the audience’s fears — or creating fears for them. “ ‘He will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream,’ he began in a speech full of frettoric.” (Jeff Rackow, Bethesda, Md.) VOODOODOO: The Curse of 2020. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) NOTCAKES: The quintessential commercial failure: “The new sardine-flavored protein bars sold like notcakes.” (Perry Beider, Silver Spring, Md.) MAILINGNANT: Current state of the Postal Service. (Edward Gordon) QUITR: The kid who dropped out of the spelling bee. (Frank Mann) RALPHIEST: “I shouldn’t have eaten the jalapeño chili with the pork vindaloo. It was the ralphiest combo ever.” (Roy Ashley, Washington) FLOPTILLA: The Trumpers’ boat parade that sank itself in its own wake. (Frank Mann) SCOTUSBALL: Political sporting event in which the rules change depending upon who has the whistle. (Mike Greene, Richmond, Va) WEDNOODLE: A honeymoon downer. (Chris Doyle) WHATAGE: The lack of clarity produced by a dim bulb. “The journalists tried to parse the president’s debate answer, but were overwhelmed by the whatage. (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.) MOJOE: It had better be working, is all I can say. (Jonathan Jensen) LOLLAPALOSER: A wannabe comedian who thinks somebody will publish all 25 of his entries. (Chuck Helwig, Centreville, Va., who at least was 1 for 18 this week) ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1501: We’ll never forget you A team of Losers takes the reins from Elden Carnahan as Keeper of the Stats Image without a caption By Pat Myers August 11, 2022 at 5:14 p.m. EDT Bob Staake's alternative sketch with his own "act of 'kindness'" for this week's Style Invitational: "When I’m in an elevator I thoughtfully press all the buttons to make sure that the door opens on every passenger’s floor." This and many other Invite sketches and final cartoons can be purchased at bobstaake.com/si. Comment 1 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Back in March, right around his 70th birthday, Elden Carnahan fell over. Fortunately, he had decided that day not to go up on his roof and clear stuff off it. But the out-of-the-blue seizure convinced the essential Father of Loserdom — the guy who, in 1993, opened a phone book and started calling the other people whose names also appeared in this new humor contest in The Washington Post — that it was time to ask again, more forcefully now, for others to take over the tasks of maintaining the Loser Stats and a host of other roles that he’d assumed over the decades, after taking over the stats and website from Sandra Hull. Elden’s been through a lot these past months: a long process to find the problem; the discovery of a thing in his head; the decision about what to do with the thing; the radiation and the nausea and the other unfun. Throughout, the Eldster has kept his wry humor, reveling in the companionship of his wife, daughters and grandchildren; one of his daughters lives just across the street in Laurel, Md. “I’m finally down to my college weight,” he reports. He even had a pedicure, if his Facebook post is for real. But of course, something had to give, and that’s been the never-ending weekly process of doing the stats. You might have noticed that the Losers’ website at NRARS.org (named for the Losers’ original and “official” name, the Not Ready for the Algonquin Round-table Society) is a number of weeks behind, and some of the various lists aren’t up at all. But we’re on our way back! Elden, who’s feeling better now that he’s not radiating, is working with a large team of Losers who’ve all volunteered their time to maintain, re-create and refine the multitude of tasks that he’d been doing week after week decades, mostly on his own — including some we were barely aware of until we started missing them. An incomplete list: — To run a program to automatically search each week’s results and tally up the ink for each Loser, then automatically update the stats tables for the current year’s standings (which also includes all-time stats for those on that list) as well as on the temporarily suspended all-time lists, one sorted by wins, runners-up, honorable mentions, etc.; the other by how much ink per year. Plus a separate One-Hit Wonders list of thousands of Losers who’ve never gotten a second blot of ink. — To maintain and refine the Master Contest List, that indispensable collection of descriptions of each contest from Week 1 on — complete with one or more links to the contest itself (in text files and PDFs of the print and Web pages), with its sub-lists in a host of categories (horse names, limericks, fictoids, neologisms, etc.). Currently it runs through Week 1492. — To update, every week, the All Invitational Text file, with all the text of all the Invites on one big, easy-to-search page — a must-have for all regular players so they’ll know what jokes and headlines not to repeat from earlier contests. Currently it’s up to mid-June 2022. — To coordinate and list the monthly Loser brunches and other “Social Engorgements” such as the annual Flushies awards and winter party. That’s current — including our Aug. 21 brunch: see below! — Work out and post a Loser Anagram — a.k.a. Granola Smear — for each new Loser. — Maintain the website itself, the hosting, etc. — And maybe, if they can get to it eventually, one of Elden’s newer projects, Permanent Inkstains: You click on your (or anyone’s) name to see what sort of blot you got in any given week. (This is currently offline.) Those answering the call in various ways, and meeting on Zoom, include, first Kyle Hendrickson, who’s leading the group, scheduling the meetings, etc., as well as stepping up to schedule and coordinate social events (assisted by Kathleen Delano); Gary Crockett, who’s reprogramming the stats; Jeff Contompasis, who’s refining the Master Contest List; Todd DeLap, who’s doing some other Important Computer Thing; and various other contributions from Duncan Stevens, Jonathan Hardis, Jon Gearhart, Chris Doyle and Jesse Frankovich. I answer questions, feed them PDFs of the pages, and try to stay out of the way. I am literally getting teary here on my back deck as I write this, in appreciation of the blood, tears, toil and drool (see Duncan’s inking entry today) so many of you have expended to keep the Loser culture thriving. Elden was really hoping to join us at the Niagara Falls Loserfest a couple of weeks ago, but that just wasn’t workable (though now that he’s finished the radiation, he’s way more comfortable). So instead, we’re going to join him: Join us for brunch on Sunday, Aug. 21, at First Watch in Elden’s home base of Laurel, Md., or, as he likes to call it, “nether Scaggsville,” after the nearby village. First Watch, a chain that does only breakfast, brunch and lunch, doesn’t take reservations, so they told us to arrive by 11:45 so we can officially get in line; we can’t do that until most of the party is there. RSVP to brunch coordinator Kyle Hendrickson at BrunchOfLosers@gmail.com ASAP if you’d like to come. The restaurant is in the Towne Center shopping center on Route 1 (Baltimore Avenue); Laurel is midway between D.C. and Baltimore, conveniently reached from both I-95 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, or just up (or down) Route 1 from the D.C. or Baltimore Beltway if you enjoy stoplights. Musements*: The what-ifs from Week 1497 *Headline by Duncan Stevens from the last time we did this contest, in Week 1304 I was a bit concerned that for the Week 1497 “what if” contest, I hadn’t offered enough structure — you could muse on any hypothetical, past or present or future, any subject, though it did seem to work well when we did the same one in the first time we tried it, in 2018. The lack of guidance might have resulted in the relatively few entries this week, about 900. But I got a kick out of a good 5 percent of them: We have some 45 inking entries this week, about 40 of them on the print page. (Actually, my initial “shortlist” was more like 8 percent. Really plenty to choose from.) It’s the 15th Invite win for Hall of Famer Jeff Contompasis, but it’s his first since we started giving out the Clowning Achievement trophy in December 2020. Finally scoring the Clowner turns out to be slightly problematic for JefCon: “I’ll have to hide it in the SI shrine in my Enchanted Grotto a.k.a. That Pile of Junk in the Basement,” Jeff told me after I posted the Invite this morning. “My wife actually suffers from coulrophobia.” Maybe we should also send Sarah Walsh’s dog. Speaking of Jeff vis-a-vis Sarah: Jeff, a chemical engineer “whose name rhymes with ‘quantum gases,’ ” notes that there is something like what Sarah posited in one of her three inking entries: an anti-helium that makes your voice lower (if not exactly Barry White-romantic): It’s sulfur hexafluoride. Like this! Oooh, baby, now that is mood music. AKA the Disembodied Clown Head on a Stick. (Pat Myers/TWP) What Pleased Ponch: Once again, the faves of Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia were all honorable mentions this week. (Though Ponch’s predecessor Doug Norwood used to agree more with my top picks, it doesn’t bother me at all that Ponch makes different choices: I like all the entries that run; if I didn’t, I wouldn’t run them.) Here are Ponch’s picks in no particular order: If Earth had two moons, men would have twice as many reasons to blame women for everything. (Sarah Walsh) What if all the brokenhearted people living in the world agreed? They’d let it be. (Dave Airozo) What if alternating-current inventor Nikola Tesla came forward in time and discovered that the cars named for him run on direct current? He’d be the first person to unfollow Elon Musk for nothing he said. (Michie March) [It’s the second blot of ink ever for Michie (short for Michelle); she got the first one just last week.] What if kids came with an instruction manual? My luck, it would be from Ikea. (Aaron Olszewski) Ran-dum acts of kindness: This week’s contest, Week 1501 The creators of “WuMo,” seen on The Post's comics pages, were in sync today with Week 1501 of The Style Invitational. (Andrews McMeel via The Post) I’m not a regular habitue of Reddit; I have an account, but I’m full up with Facebook, what with my own page, the Style Invitational Devotees group, and the Style Invitational Ink of the Day dailyish graphic. And neither, I bet, was longtime Invite fan (and recent First Offender) Al Lubran, who sent me a recent listicle from an ad-riddled British aggregator site called The Poke. Which turned out to have lifted 18 examples from a Redditor’s thread asking in deadpan slyness, “What act of kindness do you do for strangers?” And of course, what it really is is a different format for peeves about stupid behavior. Your mission for Week 1501 will be to come up with fresh observational humor about the irritants in life, in the guise of cheery helpfulness. Feel free to write conversationally in whatever format seems most fun to read (as long as it’s just a sentence or two, not a giant tome). I’ll cross my fingers that y’all — or at least some of y’all — will come through. You always do. And then next week we’re back with the most formatty format we do each year: the Limerixicon. Stay tuned. And I hope to see lots of you at brunch on the 21st. ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1502: Limericks on hi- The Empress of The Style Invitational on our annual Limerixicon contest and this week’s winners By Pat Myers August 18, 2022 at 5:10 p.m. EDT It might not be featured in this week's prize book from the Museum of Bad Art, but Loser Fred Dawson's youthful portrait “Woman With White Face, Red Hair, Scary Mouth and Little Tiny Claw Hand” was one of The Style Invitational's best prizes ever back in 2006. Loser Stephen Dudzik had the image made into a sheet of stickers, above. Comment 0 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share (*See Loser Brunch Update near the end of this page about the Aug. 21 event) I’m always happy when The Style Invitational’s Limerixicon rolls around every August, as OEDILF.com — officially the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, so as not to upset some other OED — continues to amass its five-line rhyming and galloping entries. I first asked the Loser Community to help get the project going with some ai- through ar- limericks in August 2004, in my first year as Empress; Chris J. Strolin, then a Midwestern knife salesman, had started his website a few months earlier. Week 572 brought a deluge of limericks from all over the English-speaking world, and each Limerixicon continues to generate some 1,000 limericks focusing on whichever sliver of the dictionary Chris is up to by then. In 2020 we did the Ha- limericks; in 2021, the He-. Now, in Week 1502, we say “Hi-.” And as I’ve done in recent years, I’ve superficially updated and republished “Get Your ’Rick Rolling,” our guide to what limerick meter and rhyme are, according to the Empress. If you’re already a recidivist Loser, there aren’t any important new rules hidden inside; just do your thing, a few pages farther into the dictionary. (The only logistical update: Since the entry form has been deleting the extra space you put in between entries, please add a line of ---- or === or $$$ or ^&^&^&^&^ or whatever between your limericks, so that I can see instantly where one ends and the next begins. We’ll do this for all poetry contests.) But if you want to be less analytical about it, you can just absorb the rhyme and meter by reading our inking limericks from preceding years. Below are the top four limericks from 2021′s “he-” contest along with several honorable mentions. For more complete lists — they’re all fab — here are links to the full results of the past three years. Week 1448, 2021 (he-) Week 1396, 2020 (ha-) Week 1344, 2019 (gr-) Note that you can use proper names — oh, say, “Hillary” — and that the limerick need not function as a dictionary definition. It just has to include the hi- word more than tangentially; preferably it should be a major element of the limerick. Because we’re a humor contest, your limerick should essentially be a joke, which means you need a strong final line; it’s like its punchline. Wordplay is especially welcome. (Not welcome: obscenities, rape humor, racist humor. Duh, right? Well, I got all three of these in the Week 1498 poems.) As always, feel free to submit your entries — inking or not — to OEDILF as well; just please wait till the results of Week 1502 are posted online Sept. 15. If your entry does get Invite ink, please mention that when you send it to the ’ilfers. (They call us “WPSI” like some radio station.) 4th place: Some people are sneerin’ and scoffin’ At jabs like some anti-vax Waffen. But they’d better take heed, Get those shots that they need, Or they’re risking a bad fit of coffin. (Ward Foeller) 3rd place: Henry Winkler was hoping to play Old King Lear, perhaps Hamlet, one day , But when “Happy Days” called, His dramatic plans stalled, And he went for a role in the heyyyy. (Mark Raffman) 2nd place: [This was during the Andrew Cuomo scandal] There once was a powerful rooster Who posed as a feminist booster Till hen after hen Decreed, “Never again!” And revealed how that rooster had goosed her. (Melissa Balmain) And the winner of the Clowning Achievement: A rumor is also called hearsay; It's what gossipy people, I fear, say. And it might not be true — Only something that you (After three or four bottles of beer) say. (Beverley Sharp) “Bigger government”? Part of the lexicon. It’s the altar the taxpayer’s neck’s upon. Someday soon, we may see An enhanced DoD In its new, upsized building: the Hexagon. (George Thompson) When my herbivore girlfriend repeats How she loves all her vegan-ish treats I just cut up my steak And say, “Give me a break — Girl, a salad’s what my dinner eats!” (Craig Dykstra) The lumberjacks train the new guy To fell trees more than 20 feet high: As you chop, hear it crack, Shout “Tim-ber!” Step back. You could say it’s a great hew and cry. (Sarah Walsh) Redef comedy jam*: The results of Week 1498 (*Non-inking headline by Duncan Stevens) Sarah Walsh’s first idea for what became Week 1498 was to choose a word that has a prefix, then redefine it by reinterpreting the syllables of the word: “debunk,” for example, to mean take the bunk beds apart. Nah, I said: People would just go through the pages of dictionary beginning with de- or sub- or co-, and 20 people would send in the same definition. And it would become the same heavy-handed joke over and over. But then, after pondering this just a short time, Sarah countered: How about if people then had to write a poem using the new meaning? Like this one! Ha, sold. We ended up with a contest that not only produced a large variety of witty ideas, but was also especially fun to do, according to several Losers (though I don’t know if their minds changed when they didn’t get ink). Some of the entries used sound-puns rather than follow the original idea of reinterpreting prefixes, etc., but they certainly fell within the instruction to use words “in other than their actual meanings.” Anyway, the sound-puns that got ink were very funny sound-puns, and I’d be splitting hairs and benefiting no one had I refused, say, Kevin Ahern’s “It’s the Samsung all over again.” It’s the second Clowning Achievement for Bob Kruger, who’s consistently funny and creative, but doesn’t enter the contest week after week, not enough for me to guess that a certain poem was a genuine Kruger. His play on “dumbfounded” — imagining that QAnon types were around for our nation’s birth — was the only submission using that word, and Bob’s syntax was readable and natural. And of course timeliness never hurts. I’ll be sending Bob a little “II” flag to attach to the base of his Week 140 Clowner; I have around 30 more trophies to give out to future contest winners who haven’t won one already. Along with the hundreds of witty, fresh-sounding verses I read for this contest — I can’t count multiline entries automatically, so I can’t give you a figure this week — I saw some that were alarmingly Not Any More You Don’t. One was a “Little Willie” joke, a rhyming genre about a chronically dastardly child. We did a contest for Little Willies in 2011, and while some of the inking poems back then were traditionally gruesome, the, uh, grue tended to be cartoon violence rather than the graphic, victim-in-distress rapiness of this one (though the word in question is clever and unusual): Little Willie, known rapscallion,/ Leapt from high upon a stallion./ Landed on a girl, that demon./ From his imp-act, she was screamin’. And then there was the limerick that began thus. In 2022 — not 1922, or 1822 — in the United States. “Cried a fat negress [sic], ‘Lord bless ma soul!’ ” If you wrote that line — I don’t know who did it — perhaps it’s best that you no longer enter The Style Invitational. *Loser brunch update — new venue If you RSVP’ed yes for this Sunday’s Loser brunch in Laurel, Md., to party with retiring Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan, you should have gotten an email saying that because of the large group we’ve become (more than 25 people), organizer Kyle Hendrickson (wisely) switched the restaurant to another one in the same shopping center — one that takes reservations. Here’s the new info: BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse, Laurel Towne Center, 14714 Baltimore Ave. (U.S. 1), Laurel, Md. — Sunday, Aug. 21, at noon By now, unless you know Elden personally (in which case please come!), I don’t think you want to add to the crowd this time around; see the Our Social Engorgements calendar at NRARS.org for future events (next one: Sept. 18 at Kilroy’s in Northern Virginia). But if you and Elden go back a ways, please drop a line to Kyle at brunchoflosers@gmail.com. We’ll get you in. See you there! ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1503: Dish up the songs! The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s food-themed parody contest and winning (and losing) cartoon captions Image without a caption By Pat Myers August 25, 2022 at 5:10 p.m. EDT (Courtesy of Kyle Hendrickson) Comment 0 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Above: Thirty-four Losers and auxiliaries of all ages, some from the early days of the Invitational, came out to BJ’s Brewhouse in Laurel, Md., last Sunday to celebrate the retiring Keeper of the Invite Stats Elden Carnahan (who’s almost invisible in a ball cap in the middle of the row). The next, surely smaller Loser brunch is at Kilroy’s pub in Springfield, Va., just outside the Beltway, at noon on Sunday, Sept. 18. See the Losers’ website for more info and to RSVP. Sing is here, ah, sing is here! It’s parody time once again with Style Invitational Week 1503. I lurve judging the Invite’s song contests, which I’ve run about twice a year ever since I deposed the Czar almost 19 years ago (that’s one of our few differences about the Invite: he has no interest at all in song parodies, even though he always loved doing light-verse contests). Our Loserbards have always produced the wittiest, funniest lyrics around that you can read as well as see performed — an essential requirement for the Invite’s print version, which runs on the back page of The Post’s Arts & Style section each Sunday. But in recent years, we’ve also been increasingly blessed with entertaining videos to share, everything from expressive singing into a phone in your bedroom to a whole performance with a band. The technology and skills to produce a watchable video are clearly being picked up by an ever-widening group of clever singer-songwriters, and I’m happy to pass them along. But still, especially for the week’s top winners, the lyrics are the thing, and the vast majority of Invite parody ink is with printed lyrics alone. What am I looking for? As I’ve done now in a series of Conversationals published the weeks of parody contests, I’m going to send you right over to an earlier column, one that in turn quotes even earlier one. So here’s Style Conversational Week 1440 (June 2021), which offers Pearls (or at least Mardi Gras Beads) of Wisdom about: The importance of rhyme Matching your lyrics to the original tune How well known does the song have to be? Can you have a double credit? (also see an extra note below) How to include a clip of the original tune you’re parodying Can you ask me questions before the contest deadline? Links to earlier results Just remember! You’ll be reading a column from last year — don’t use the dates mentioned in it! A few notes that have occurred to me that might not be in the earlier columns: — Crediting helpers on videos. For videos, it’s the writer of the lyrics who officially earns the ink, the prize (such as it is), and the point in the Loser Stats. But I’ll also be happy to credit a guest singer, an accompanist, the person who came up with graphics or costumes for a video, etc. But if you want to share the loot, you’ll have to cut up your Loser Mug or Grossery Bag or FirStink into pieces. — If you’re making a video, leave promotional material off it. You can have a title or ending with your name, and credits to anyone who helped you, but not with your website, “I play bar mitzvahs,” etc. — Don’t publicize the video until I post the results on Thursday, Sept. 22. Until then, please set the visibility to “Unlisted” (click on Edit Video, then see the visibility setting at the top right). This lets people see it only if they have the link — which you’ll be sharing with me and, if you get “ink,” I’ll share with readers. After that, you can change it back to Public. Meanwhile, here are some classics from parody contests that ran after that column did. The first two are set to the song that’s become a running gag in our parody contests because it’s used almost every time: “Be Our Guest” from “Beauty and the Beast,” whose first verse is just long enough — 32 bars, I think — to feel like a self-contained song that a reader could sing along with, and that invites lots of clever interior rhyme. From Week 1440 in summer 2021, for songs about things in the news (full results here): IRS: it’s a mess! Decades straight of “more with less” Mean few audits and no plaudits (‘cept from tax cheats, who say “Yes!”) Downsized staff, ancient tech make our oversight a wreck; Might as well claim that deduction for your tummy liposuction! uch abuse we can’t catch—systems here aren’t up to scratch— So to fraud we have to meekly acquiesce; Enforcement: have to fudge it, ‘cause they’ve slashed our budget; Reassess! No BS: IRS! (Duncan Stevens) Here’s a basic but adorable video by Sarah Walsh about the deluge of 17-year cicadas, with the patient assistance of a stuffed dog. Last year we also had a contest to write a song “by” some particular person. (Full results of Week 1459 here.) Eve (To the “Addams Family” theme) If Genesis you’re readin’, You’ll find me there in Eden. A snack is what we’re needin’, The Adam family! I find it pretty neat here; I must say, life is sweet here! But still, we’ve gotta eat here — Say, what’s up in that tree? Snake…. spake: “Partake!” Well, hesitate? I might’ve…. Until I got a sight of And got to take a bite of That apple from the tree! How dumb I was to dare it; My conscience couldn’t bear it, And so I had to share it! (It brought us misery.) ‘Cause just as God predicted, The tree had been restricted; So now we’ve been evicted, The Adam family. (Beverley Sharp) And here’s a fabulous Loser collaboration: Jonathan Jensen’s lyrics performed by pro cabaret duo (but also proud members of the Loser Community) Sandy and Richard Riccardi. Yuk of the draw*: The cartoon captions of Week 1499 *Headline submitted by both Chris Doyle and Jesse Frankovich for an earlier contest In addition to his honorable mention for his cartoon caption in our Week 1499 contest, I owe Loser Dan Helming a finder’s fee for posting a link to the contest in the Facebook group New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest Rejects (and Enthusiasts), as well as the group’s admin Beth Lawler for letting us encroach on NYer fandom. Because a nice big stream of NYCCCRandEs decided to send some captions to the Invite, as well as join the Style Invitational Devotees and sign up for the Invite’s weekly notification emails. Not surprising, really, since the New Yorker publishes a grand total of three captions a week — first, second and third prizes. Today I ran 43. And sure enough, New Yorker caption fans Robert Welch and Mel Simoneau got Invite ink the first time out. Perhaps our three other First Offenders this week — Daniel Jarrell, Cheryl Gracey and Maier Schreiber — are bicartoonal as well. While the New Yorker contest gets a lot more entries than the Invite does — more than 5,000 a week for a single cartoon, while I got 1,300 spread out over four pictures — there’s still often a lot of duplication of ideas, sometimes even virtually identical submissions. In my case, if I have several that are pretty much the same, and I can’t determine that one of them is in some way better than the rest, I toss the lot of them. That’s what happened with the “bear necessities” jokes (20 entries), for example. On the other hand, of 46 entries mentioning “woods” in the bear cartoon, I thought Mark Raffman phrased it best (though one could argue that the quote didn’t sound angry as the man’s face looked). Speaking of facial expressions: I think that next time I’ll ask Bob to make them a bit more ambiguous: The travel agent, supermarket clerk, office women, and couple at the restaurant were all clearly upset or worried, which meant that a cheery quote didn’t quite fit. It’s only the second blot (well, second and third) of Invite Ink for Clowning Achievement winner Carol Lasky, whose first ink was in our March 2021 caption contest. Carol aced it with simple but surprising and funny wordplay in the pithiest of sentences — as the waiter walked past (or away from) the diners carrying a huge covered dish, one of them says, “Well, he did ask if he could take our order.” And nobody else did that joke. Picture 4 of The Style Invitational's Week 1499 caption contest. (Bob Staake/For The Washington Post) Bob hardly ever comments on the entries for any particular contest, and I haven’t heard from him today about this week’s results. But he is on record as not enjoying the jokes that riff off details in the pictures that people see in the cartoon, rather than the general setup. But I always enjoy including a few such entries, usually near the bottom of the list. Today, I enjoyed the different interpretations of the nose-hanging mustache of the man in Picture 1, with the travel agent — odor blocks, a mask substitute, Hitler. And Jon Gearhart went after the man’s nose length (he’ll have to book the seat in front of him), while Richard Franklin wondered how the travel agent’s head was attached, given that her giant mouth went all the way to the back of it. What Pleased Ponch: As usual these days, Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia chose his faves from the honorable mentions: Supermarket clerk to bear: “It’s in the back and on the right … but I thought you guys went in the woods …” (Mark Raffman) Travel agent: “You’ve seen London? You’ve seen France? Then I’m afraid the ‘Netherlands’ are off-limits to you, sir.” (Stephen Dudzik) Kid with older women at office computer: “All I did was ask about your enhanced proxy-layered security protocols and you look at me like I’ve got two heads.” (Jonathan Jensen) Couple at restaurant: Emma later told Date Lab she appreciated James’s “well-groomed nostrils.” (Steve Smith) They all pleased me! So have fun with the songs — and if you’d like to keep your versifying to five lines, remember that our “hi-”word limerick contest, Week 1502, is running through Monday night, Aug. 29. ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1504: Send me a hundred letters The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s 100-Scrabble-tile anagram contest and winning neologisms Image without a caption By Pat Myers September 1, 2022 at 4:55 p.m. EDT A GIF showing the transformation of the 100 tiles in a Scrabble set (with the blanks as N's) to David Cohen's paraphrase of Hamlet's Soliloquy. If you do a “Scrabblegram” for Week 1504 of The Style Invitational, you can animate it as well. Comment 0 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Okay, it’s pretty clear that David G. Cohen, MD, is not your ordinary internist. For one thing, for more than 20 years he’s worked the night shift, only the night shift, at hospitals in San Francisco and now Atlanta. (As someone who worked nights for 26 years and still am often up at 3 a.m., I can relate.) And for another thing … This week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1504, asks you and your fellow Losers to take all 100 Scrabble tiles — the nine A’s, the two B’s, etc. — and write something: not just some words that, whew, use every one of those letters and no more, but some piece of writing that will be fun to read. That will read like normal English and not Yoda-syntax and not be rife with skipped words and strange apostrophes. And that make an interesting or entertaining point. And might even be funny. Dr. Dave has been doing one of these nigh-miraculous feats every day. Take a few minutes — not too long; I need you here! — to scroll/page through his Twitter feed and his website: There are what he calls “freestyle poems” that paraphrase works of literature or film (like “To be, or not to be” in the graphic above, or “The Wizard of Oz”), salute noteworthy people such as Aretha Franklin, or muse on the beauty of a hummingbird. And just this morning, Dave posted this one (why do I have a hunch that Dave might do pretty well at chess?): And this past Monday, as a tribute to puzzle master Will Shortz, Dave even came up with a 100-character puzzle: Not only do the 10 answers form a Scrabblegram, but the 10 crossword-style clues also form a Scrabblegram! But c’mon, I’m not asking you to be Dr. Daily Scrabblegram. I’m just asking for one of these babies. And Dave doesn’t get to play. And for once, I, a renowned fretter, am not fretting that this contest might bomb; in fact, I’m supremely confident that Dave himself is going to let loose a wow or two. Because I can point to the results of Week 1318, when I asked the Losers to anagram anything they liked beyond just a person’s name … and this was fourth place. The opening of “A Tale of Two Cities”: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. [227 characters] Anagram: Sigh, how to begin? “It was London, it was Paris. It was the stain of woebegone teeth, it was the spot of armpit hair. It was the time of awful foods, it was the time of less cheeky help. It was wan, fetid cheeses, it was soft, soft cheeses.” These spoofs: It is the far, far worse thing I do. (Kevin Dopart) And this was third place: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. Anagram: BS! I often itch to gnaw her hot love-tushy. (Mark Raffman) And this was second (it was 2019): “I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.” [99 characters] Anagram: “I, Donald J. Trump, attest that I will offend you, expel the White House staff, and fleece the country for side millions.” (Jesse Frankovich) And THIS was the winner: an anagram of the entire Gettysburg Address. Dig this, my men. A few decades back, some hep, cool creative guys hath invented a sovereign country somewhere right around here that was devoted to increasing human equality. It's true, man; I saw, ah, documentation on the teevee. I call that radical! Too hot, hot, hot! But now, there's definitely a bad vibe. Wretched indignation advanced to total hatred, bitter warfare, and terrible attrition. Thousands of hale men, both Northern-trained Federal and hotheaded, pro-apartheid Confederate, everyone frightened, fighting with revolvers and rifles to decide whether survival of that great, progressive doctrine of reform and human tolerance is necessary — or a total menace. We have gathered at the, ah, scene tonight to give high props to a thin, fantastic posse that hitherto laid it all ten-tenths down for the cause. That be word. Word is bond. Nay, do listen to this oath, congregation: Whatever grateful oration we, ah, bother to deliver ain’t near enough. Not near appropriate or worthwhile. Here, a dreaded Death flowered beneath the feet of, and collected, honored men. The, ah, righteous thugs and heroic hos that we celebrate achieved the whole deal; all we can do is riff charming, insignificant stuff that people will never recall. So we all gotta keep on keeping on, in order to see to it that things evolve better for our, ah, descendants so the worthwhile peeps rule twenty-four/seven. Be real. Yahoo. Whatever. (J.J. Gertler) One thousand one hundred ninety-seven characters. You’ll notice that Kevin, Mark and Jesse got ink, as usual, this very week. I’ll make sure J.J. sees this contest. (See the rest of the Week 1318 winners here.) Dave Cohen was inspired to start Scrabblegramming like a madman after his 23-year-old Scrabblegram-limerick about clowns was featured in a 2020 article about the genre by Beyond Wordplay blogger Eric Chaikin, “Scrabblegrams — Never Be Bored at the Board.” Chaikin’s a Scrabble aficionado and snagged an Emmy nomination for “Word Wars,” a documentary he made about tournaments, and his article not only goes into the history of Scrabblegrams and the various forms they’ve taken, but also offers tips about how to make them. Such as to make sure you don’t waste letters like H, which appears very frequently in words but appears only on two tiles, while figuring out early on how you’re going to fit in that Q and Z. On the other hand, Chaikin values difficult parameters more than I do: If he were judging this week’s Invite, he might give extra credit to someone who didn’t repeat any letters on each line, something like that. But I’m going to care more about the content: the syntax and the wit and the humor. Of course, timeliness never hurts in Loserland. One thing you won’t be grousing about in four weeks: She rewrote my joke. I can’t very well tinker with these babies. But if they turn out not to be valid, I’m not going to try to fix them. So do use — it’s an order — the Wordsmith Anagram Checker. And while you’re there, you might as well have fun and use Anu Garg’s own Anagram Animator, which is super-easy to use: You just put in the source letters followed by an equals-sign and then your anagram and click “Generate Animation.” Click on “Advanced” and you can change the font, the speed, even add background art, and you can create and download a GIF, the constantly moving image that appears at the top of this page. (By the way: I initially published the online Invite using Dave’s paraphrase of the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy as the example, but an editor was concerned that a quote about someone weighing whether to commit suicide — and in modern rather than 400-year-old language — wasn’t the best lead-in to a humor contest. So I substituted Dave’s synopsis of “The Wizard of Oz,” with that witty observation that Dorothy ultimately appreciates “the exquisite value of red footwear.”) The Quinze Festival: The 15-point neologisms of Week 1500 Much like its 14-letter predecessor from Week 1402, the challenge to create words whose letters totaled 15 Scrabble points proved as good an excuse as any to add neologisms to the Loser Lexicon. I received a manageable, not-bad-for-summer 1,050 entries, of which no more than 800 were bleah, and I think 43 of them got ink on the web page, and about a half-dozen got axed for space on the print page — which, happily, has lately appearing almost all the time on the back of Arts & Style, which means it’s not buried inside the section and Bob Staake’s cartoon is in color. A huge shout-out to Hall of Fame Loser and Genuine Nice Guy Jeff Contompasis, who built a spreadsheet — and shared it with both me and his rival Losers — in which you just type in your word, hit Enter, and see how many Scrabble points it adds up to. It took me just a couple of minutes to handle all 43 entries that appear in this week’s results — no fails except for one that accidentally dropped a letter and came in at 14. (And of course, this week’s intentionally wrong second place.) Because the entries are one-liners, I was able to shuffle all the entries into one big alphabetical anonymous list — meaning that, yes, I picked a Karen Lambert entry five different times without knowing that all five were from the same person. And, zzzzz, once again I was won over by the work of Chris Doyle, coiner of “dadolescent,” the father who just wants to play with his kids. Chris extends his GOAT of the Invite status with his fourth Clowning Achievement trophy and his Some Unimaginable Numberth all-time win (the Loser Stats team is hard at work updating them as they take the reins from the retiring Elden Carnahan; after that, I’ll have real numbers again). Erika Reinfeld, whom I remember meeting at a Loser event 2002 or so when she was a college student still in the D.C. area, dropped by from New England to win the dog-butt coat hooks with her “QAnon: It IS 15 points — you counted it wrong.” And Invite regulars Jonathan Jensen and Jeff Shirley snarf up yet more Loser swag with, (dis) respectively, “vegenerates” — what the MAGA crowd would call people who dare eat plant-based sausage at Cracker Barrel, and “subpeony,” a flower that’s currently in bloom in Florida and Georgia. What pleased Ponch: As he does virtually every week, Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia chose his faves from the honorable mentions: Neil Kurland’s pithily funny “Beetbarf: Borscht”; “Gundamental: Apparently, the only right the Supreme Court believes in protecting absolutely” (Dave Airozo) and Plodometer: My Fitbit, usually. (Karen Lambert) Next Loser sighting: Kilroy’s, Sunday, Sept. 18, at noon Even though it no longer offers its brunch buffet, I plan to be at Kilroy’s, the WWII-decorated pub in Springfield-ish where we’ve had many a Loser brunch. Not only is it always fun to meet new Losers and Invite just-fans and of course the brunchin’ regulars, but my favorite Asian supermarket, Lotte, is in the same shopping center, so I’ll have a chance to stop by. The food is Standard Pub, there are interesting pictures on the walls, and it’s easy to get to and park; it’s in the old Ravenswood shopping center just outside the Beltway at the Braddock Road exit. Please RSVP to our new brunch coordinator Kyle Hendrickson at BrunchOfLosers@gmail.com; details on the Our Social Engorgements page of the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1505: A nice pair of cities The Empress of The Style Invitational dishes on this week’s ‘sister cities’ contest and the (un)helpful results Image without a caption By Pat Myers September 8, 2022 at 5:00 p.m. EDT Bob Staake's illustration for Style Invitational Week 546 in February 2004. (It doesn't note, alas, where the towns of Hilly and Flat are located, but maybe you can find them while you work on this week's reprise, Week 1505. (See bobstaake.com/SI about buying this or other Invite artwork.) Comment 1 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share Believe it or not, that headline up there is the one I used for Style Invitational Week 546, Feb. 22, 2004. Whether Bob Staake was inspired by my headline or I was inspired by Bob’s illustration (or it was just a coincidence) is lost to history. I thought better of using it again this week, for our repeat of the contest in Week 1505 (deadline Sept. 19). Clearly, back then — in just my 11th Invite as Empress (I’m now about 30 weeks away from my 1,000th) — I wanted to assure readers and contestants that I could be just as risque and crude as my predecessor, the Czar. I was probably pretty proud of myself for that headline. And then there’s the cartoon — one I wouldn’t have gone with now. Granted, it’s not lewd; the woman’s getting a breast reduction procedure at the Hilly/Flat clinic, not doing a striptease. Even the “party of two” is amusing. But the boobs didn’t have to be half-naked. But my real problem with it now is that in the years since 2004 — or really, it’s been just the past few years — the general humor of making fun of people’s bodies has become really distasteful to many readers. Especially in a cartoon. (The joke itself is perfectly fine.) Anyway, we’re giving another go to a contest firmly in the Invite tradition of pairing two elements (or stringing together several) with wordplay, something we regularly do with racehorse names, congressional names, other people’s names, businesses, animals, several etcs. It’s shorter-form than most of them, since it doesn’t demand a line of description (though this isn’t forbidden). Perhaps the closest similarity is with our “Joint Legislation” contest, in which you combine the names of two or more new members of Congress to “sponsor” a bill reflecting their names, like last year’s runner-up “Moore-Greene-Salazar-Good Act” that mandates fresh leafy veggies to school lunch programs. (We’ll be back with that one in January at the start of the 118th Congress.) But because so many people’s names have to be, uh, flexibly interpreted to sound like common words, Joint Legislation sometimes even needs explainers. I don’t plan to translate the entries for Week 1505, given the thousands upon thousands of U.S. and Canadian place names available. In 2004, at least for me, it wasn’t yet second nature to check every name with a quick Googling. This time, I don’t care how you find the town name, but if it’s not online with something identifying it as a town (rather than, say, a housing subdivision, or part of a longer name) I don’t want to count it. (Be sure to say what state/province it’s in, or I won’t be able to check it! I couldn’t find “Hilly,” for example, for the cartoon.) You well might find it most efficient to find an actual atlas book, which would have indexes you could quickly eyeball. I’ve heard that some libraries still stock these relics. In 2004, to convey what we were doing, I included the state name in parentheses after each name, as I did in the first example today: The Keokuk (Iowa)-Chappaqua (N.Y.) Conference on Jazz Drumming Sounds. I made an exception when several names were strung together, as in Chris Doyle’s “Enid-Laredo-Yoder-Aldine (Okla., Tex., Wyo., Tex.) National Palindrome Competition.” This time, though, we’re going to move those little abbreviations to the end of the line, after the joke. And as I share below some of the results of Week 546 (complete list here; scroll past that week’s new contest), I’ll move the IDs there as well. (As I note in this week’s entry form: “You can either spell out the state names or use an abbreviation, since The Post has its own style for abbreviations and I’ll probably have to change them anyway; just don’t use, say, ‘AR’ to mean Arizona since that’s the postal abbreviation for Arkansas (AZ is Arizona).”) Third runner-up: The Rocky-Mountain-Oyster Masquerade Ball (Okla, N.D., Va.) (Chris Doyle) Second runner-up: The Kissimmee-Ona-Butts Career Development Center (Fla., Ore., Mo.) (Jeff Nadler) First runner-up: The Watton-Hellam-Ida-Ware “Dress for Success” Seminar (Mich., Pa., Okla., Mass.) (Brendan Beary) And the winner of the Inker: The Pierce-Naples-Garner-Hurt-Lake-Kell-Venice-Yankton Festival of Body Decoration (Fla., Fla., N.C., Va., Miss., Ill., Calif., S.D.) (Dudley Thompson) (Did that one need the explainer? “Pierced nipple’s gonna hurt like hell when it’s yanked on.”) Honorable Mentions: The Enid-Laredo-Yoder-Aldine National Palindrome Competition (Okla., Tex., Wyo., Tex.)(Chris Doyle) The Mystic-Chickasaw-Helper Magicians’ Assistants’ Conference (Conn., Ala., Utah) (Seth Brown) Islip, Crane Neck & Sioux City Personal Injury Associates (N.Y., N.Y., Iowa) (Jeff Brechlin) [I wanted to use this one for this week’s example, but couldn’t quickly find a town named Crane Neck] The Minnehaha-Van Clown Car Factory (Wash., W.Va.) (Bruce W. Alter) The Tightwad-Bosses-Skidoo-Withee-Golden-Parachute Commission on Executive Pay (Mo., Va., Calif., Wash., Miss., Colo.) (Chris Doyle) The Hartselle-Gypsum Convention of Used-Car Salesmen (Ala., Colo.) (Chuck Smith) [While the term had been in use quite innocently for ages, we no longer use the term “gyp” to mean cheat a customer, given its reference to Gypsies, or Roma people of Europe, any more than we would use “jew” to mean to defraud, a use still allowed in Scrabble as an uncapitalized word but struck from the Merriam-Webster definition.] The Gurley-Callender-Onda-Wall Auto Shop (Neb., Calif., Ark., Tex.) (Brendan Beary) The Maxwell-Silver-Hammer Center for Pataphysical Science (Calif., Tex., S.D.) (Carole Lyons) The Feather Falls-Rock Falls Galileo Museum (Calif., Ill.) (Jerome Alfred) The Smart-Ware-Coats-Wilder-Dumfries School of Dressing for the Elements (Va., Utah, N.C., Minn., Va.) (Brendan Beary) The Lay-Dees-Canby-All-Man Gender Modification Center (Scott Campisi) (Colo., Ill., Calif., Mo., W.Va.) [Here’s another thing we wouldn’t be doing in 2022] The Bland-Normal-Plainville-Blandford Super Duper Wacky Fun Festival (Seth Brown) (Mo., Ill., Conn., Mass.) The Accident-Talley-Box Elder-Leeman Investigation Into Premature Burial (Md., Ark., S.D., Wis.) (Elden Carnahan) The Whypo-Nott-Rich Conference on Income Inequities (N.M., Ky., Ky.) (Elden Carnahan) The Quigley-Robbins-Tudor-Bat Cave Emergency Response Team (La., N.C., Calif., N.C.) (Dudley Thompson) The Hurd-Trudy-Grapevine Center for Rumor Control (N.D., Ga., Ky.) (Brendan Beary) The White City-Gunn City Republican Convention (Fla., Mo.) (Seth Brown) [Some things don’t change.] The Jerry-Springerville Planned Community for Transgendered Crack Addicts Who Have Sex With Extraterrestrials (N.C., Ariz.) (Brendan Beary) And Last: The Complete-Entry-Not-Worth-Effort Something Something (Miss., W.Va., Mo., Ga., Pa.) (Mark Hagenau) And Really Last: The Athol-Folks Bugs Bunny Fan Club (Mass., Ga.) Help unwanted*: The good (not) deeds of Week 1501 *Non-inking headline submitted by Chris Doyle, Jesse Frankovich and Beverley Sharp Our Week 1501 contest for misguidedly “helpful” acts — inspired by (translation: stolen from) a Reddit thread with the same type of joke — was essentially a pet-peeve contest with a twist: a clueless narrator blithely performing said peeve. The best of the 1,100 entries (35 online, 26 in print) went beyond the stock irritants with fresh oh-noooo ideas of comically horrible cluelessness/creepiness, or especially entertaining ways of phrasing the reliables. Those reliables, to no surprise (and this was my apprehension about the contest), appeared by the dozen, in fairly similar ways: taking two parking spaces, driving slowly in the left lane, talking rudely on one’s phone in someone else’s presence, explaining things in the movie theater, fertilizing the neighbor’s lawn with one’s dog. And, regrettably canceling out one another, something like “I know Joe would be overwhelmed with clutter in the Oval Office, so I moved out some boxes and am keeping them here …” The Clowning Achievement goes, for the fourth time already, to Coleman Glenn, our Rookie of the Year just last year. Coleman found the Invite from some fellow poets (he’s excellent in both light verse and the weightier stuff) and turned out to be hilarious in every Invite format. His winning entry today spills out so smoothly to the surprise at the end, much like a visual joke whose punchline isn’t revealed till you scroll down an inch on your phone: When I see tourist couples trying to take selfies, I always offer to take the photo for them because I have really long arms and they probably enjoy having a local in the picture. Congratulations also to Coleman and his wife, Anne Grace — whom we also met when they came down from the Philadelphia area this past May for the Flushie Awards: They’re expecting their fifth child. Among the runners-up, Sam Mertens is the only Usual Suspect in the Losers’ Circle (he was third last week, too), landing there with his method of always following the rule in the express checkout: breaking his full cart into separate purchases of 12 items each. But the other two are rarer sightings: May Jampathom, who’s accumulated 27 blots of ink over more than a decade, wins the silly socks with this helpful tip: “Nobody likes being told in public that their zipper’s down, so I just walk up and discreetly zip it back up for them.” And Paul Brown, husband of fellow Loser Lori Lipman Brown, scores his choice of Loser Mug or Grossery bag with one of the week’s ewwwiest entries: “For their birthdays, I give my grandchildren underwear I’d saved from when I was their age, so they can treasure the link between our generations.” What Pleased Ponch: After Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia cited yet another week of faves all from the honorable mentions, I finally asked him last night: “I’ve noticed that you never choose any of the four top winners. Do you think it might just take you more than four jokes to get into the swing, or do they just never move you?” Ponch: “Oh, I just figured the those were a given.” So starting next week, if he doesn’t mention the winner or any runners-up, he really didn’t love them. But this week, here are Ponch’s favorite HMs from Week 1501: At home, I always leave the toilet seat up so my wife can see at a glance whether she needs to clean it. (Jeff Hazle) Every time I take a sip from the Communion chalice, I always spit it back in to make sure there’s enough for the next person. (First Offender Mark Wakefield, who might get some side-eye this Sunday at Mass) When I get a 2-for-1 coupon for a good restaurant near my job, I always invite a co-worker to come with me so we can both enjoy some friendly conversation while I eat my free lunch. (Jeff Contompasis) When I see someone parked in a handicap spot without the sticker, I help them stay out of trouble by spray-painting a little wheelchair on their windshield. (Mark Raffman) When I’m alone in an elevator with another person, I subtly signal that I’m not a threat by intoning nursery rhymes under my breath. (Coleman Glenn) Join us at the next Loser sighting: Sunday, Sept. 18, noon (Copied verbatim from last week’s Convo) Even though it no longer offers its brunch buffet, I plan to be at Kilroy’s, the WWII-decorated pub in Springfield-ish where we’ve had many a Loser brunch. Not only is it always fun to meet new Losers and Invite just-fans and of course the brunchin’ regulars, but my favorite Asian supermarket, Lotte, is in the same shopping center, so I’ll have a chance to stop by. The food is Standard Pub, there are interesting pictures on the walls, and it’s easy to get to and park; it’s in the old Ravenswood shopping center just outside the Beltway at the Braddock Road exit. Please RSVP to our new brunch coordinator Kyle Hendrickson at BrunchOfLosers@gmail.com; details on the Our Social Engorgements page of the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1506: The limerick? Nice. The story? Wow. The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s new-word-poem contest and Limerixicon results Image without a caption By Pat Myers September 15, 2022 at 5:00 p.m. EDT Bob Prouty's limerick about a hippopotamus was based on more expertise than he'd expected to have. (Bernard Dupont /Wikipedia, Creative Commons) Comment 1 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share I received this limerick in The Style Invitational’s Limerixicon contest, Week 1502. It’s pretty good — rhymes well, scans well — but like hundreds of other pretty good limericks I received, it didn’t end up with ink in today’s stellar results. I got bit by a hippo — quite gory — On my rear. Now I’m all hunky-dory. Though the scar, for some folks, Is the butt of their jokes, Bottom line. I am fine. End of story. Then there’s a place on the entry form where the writer can leave me a note. I went on to read: “For whatever merit the limerick lacks poetically, this actually happened to me …” EXCUSE ME? I don’t see the entrants’ names when I judge the contests, but I had to look this person up and ask. “It’s a bit of an embarrassing story,” begins Bob Prouty of Arlington, Va., whom we know primarily as the dad of the precocious Sean Bender-Prouty, who snarfed up multiple blots of Invite ink when he was still in middle school. “I got bit in the only place I can’t show off my scars. “It happened in 1983 when I was running a secondary school in what was then Zaire. I feel as if I have to preface the story by saying that I thought I was being careful, or that there were other people in the water before I got in, no hippos in sight, but — “I was swimming in the Semliki River at a place called Ishango, along with dozens of other people, but somehow I was the one in the wrong place at the wrong time. It took me under the surface for half a minute or so — and the only thing I could think was: ‘Isn’t my life supposed to be flashing before my eyes? I’m getting nothing.’ “So it was all a bit anticlimactic. I curled up in a ball. It walked around on the bottom of the river with me in its mouth, and just when I was beginning to wonder how long I could hold my breath, it let me go. No serious damage done. A few sore ribs, quite a few stitches, and all I have to show for it are some very impressive scars that you’ll have to take my word for.” Loser Bob Prouty in Zaire or possibly Rwanda in the 1980s — at least a little distance from the hippos submerged in the river. (Courtesy of Bob Prouty) I’m sorry, Bob, but having a hippopotamus (typical weight: more than 3,000 pounds, well over twice the size of a horse) pick up your balled-up self in its mouth — a mouth that is two feet wide and contains “large tusk-like canines and razor-sharp incisors, capable of biting a small boat in half” — and stroll around with you underwater until disgorging you back into the Semliki River: Anticlimactic? Welp, so much for my war story of being attacked in my driveway by the rabid raccoon nine years ago. On the other hand, I’m good, thanks. Anyway, today’s inking limericks: As always, they’re outstanding, just as in our 18 previous Limerixicon contests, each of which focused on some sliver of the dictionary being compiled, in such order since 2004, at OEDILF.com, the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick form. (As long as you promise not to forsake the Invite, I encourage you to submit limericks there as well, including both your inking and non-inking entries to this contest; if you did get ink, let OEDILF know and credit us. There’s a team of veteran limericians who’ll “workshop” your limerick with you to improve both form and content.) The “Jane EyreBandB” earns the first Clowning Achievement trophy but by no means the first Invitational win for Stephen Gold, formerly of Glasgow and now of London. Stephen started entering the Invite (and immediately getting ink) during Limerixicon 5 in 2008 and has continued to drop by occasionally — virtually always successfully — ever since with limericks, song parodies and the occasional non-Loserbard contest. Stephen also played host to at least two Losers visiting Scotland over the years, and he and his wife had dinner with a group of us — and a delightful lunch with me when I couldn’t make it — when they visited Washington in 2012. Like many of today’s inking Losers, Stephen also sent some worthy entries that made my shortlist but missed the final cut. (YOU, dear non-inking reader, may also have suffered this fate; I don’t know, though, because I looked up only the inking entries, to see who’d written them; only then did I see what else that Loser had sent.) Here was one of Stephen’s that, in limerick tradition, was clever but questionably tasteful: Jim yearned for a smoking physique, But attaining it only last week Felt a little belated. His being cremated Was a hint he had gone past his peak. The other three members of this week’s Losers’ Circle have become Invite household names: Chris Doyle as the unsurpassable GOAT, and Karen Lambert and Coleman Glenn, two almost-newbies who’ve already made an enormous impact on the recent Invite. As tennis star Frances Tiafoe said of 19-year-old super-phenom Carlos Alcaraz last Sunday after losing to him at the U.S. Open, they’re “gonna be a problem for a long time.” I — and Style Invitational fans — certainly hope so. What Pleased Ponch: Faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia include Stephen Gold’s winner “Jane EyreBandB”; Karen Lambert’s runner-up with “hitch your star to a wagon” — what Lassie’s director wanted to do when the pooch was “laggin’ ”; Coleman Glenn’s encounter with a skunk: “Though the tail that arises/ Is his, the surprise is: /The high-tailing party is me”; Karen Lambert’s doctor who refused to operate on an elbow because his Hippocratic oath was to “do no arm”; Beverley Sharp’s “hip joint” (a pun we’ve done before, but not in limerick form); and Joan Welsh’s take on the children’s picture book “A House Is a House for Me,” as performed by Donald Trump, who, it can charitably be said, tends not to color within the lines. Another dose of Merriament*: New-word poems for Week 1506 *” Merriament” was Tom Witte’s headline for our 2018 contest. If you’re still in the limericking mood, you’re free to indulge once again for this week’s contest, Week 1506. But any form of poetry up to eight lines is fine. (No multi-verse song parodies, though.) As always, Merriam-Webster adds several hundred new terms and meanings every year but declines to tell the public what they are, except for what’s in its news release. I did get all pouty to Meghan the very nice PR person, and she did, just yesterday, come through with about a dozen more, most of which I used in today’s 32-term list. As with our similar annual contest for words from the National Spelling Bee, I avoided technical terms and just went with hunches about what had the most humor potential. When I say “new words,” I’m not being accurate; they’re new to the dictionary. In fact, the entries usually say what year the word was first seen in that particular use. Or almost: “Pumpkin spice” has been a thing since 1931, M-W says, but I’m guessing that meant it was used in pumpkin pies, not coffee, cat litter and deodorant. First use of “pwn”: 1999. They say it probably comes from the idea of mistyping “own,” as in to dominate, and so is pronounced “pone.” I have no problem with waiting 23 years to see if a slang word has staying power. Note that I give you an extra day, even if you won’t be spending it writing entries in shul at Rosh Hashanah services. I would never recommend such a thing, even in the boring sections. Anyway, you have till Tuesday night, Sept. 27. I’ve been working on a same-genre schedule lately: a new poetry contest runs along with the results of a previous one, as in this week’s new words/limericks; before that, the Week 1502 limericks appeared with the results of Week 1498, the contest that asked you to use the word in a meaning it doesn’t really have. I figure that our Loserbards, especially people who don’t always look at the Invite every week, will be more likely to notice the new contest if they look at the results of the old one. It also keeps me from crowding poetry contests too close together. Well, there are the food songs of Week 1503 — and it’s a lock that I’ll be back next Thursday with a bumper crop of them. Last call for the Loser brunch at Kilroy’s, Sunday, Sept. 18, noon (Lifted right from an earlier Conversational) Even though it no longer offers its brunch buffet, I plan to be at Kilroy’s, the WWII-decorated pub in Springfield-ish where we’ve had many a Loser brunch. Not only is it always fun to meet new Losers and Invite just-fans and of course the brunchin’ regulars, but my favorite Asian supermarket, Lotte, is in the same shopping center, so I’ll have a chance to stop by. The food is Standard Pub, there are interesting pictures on the walls, and it’s easy to get to and park; it’s in the old Ravenswood shopping center just outside the Beltway at the Braddock Road exit. Please RSVP to our obliging new brunch coordinator Kyle Hendrickson at BrunchOfLosers@gmail.com; details on the Our Social Engorgements page of the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. ====================================================================== Style Conversational Week 1507: Eat our words The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s inking food songs and new state slogan contest By Pat Myers September 22, 2022 at 5:09 p.m. EDT Marty Gold and great-sport kids Nora and Ari in their “Chinese Buffet/'YMCA'” video from Style Invitational Week 1503. (Screen image) Comment 0 Add to your saved stories Save Gift Article Share It’s always a joy to judge The Style Invitational’s song parody contests, which I’ve run more than 20 times since 2004. Well, except for the part where I have to — have to — deny ink to dozens of people who not only spent a significant amount of their week to produce one or more elaborate parodies or even videos, but who did them really impressively. The results of Week 1503 — a contest for songs relating in some way to food — are thoroughly a case in point. If you were to sing along to the 19 songs, including six video performances, you’d reach No. 19, what, a half-hour later? An hour? Even with an emphasis on shorter songs up top, cutting out repetition, etc., it’s the most I could expect from a reasonable reader. And so my lengthy “shortlist” is full of clever, funny, well-crafted parodies that should be wearing Loser T-shirts. I do hope you’ll take the time to look down the page at all the honorable mentions, and so I’ll try not to keep you long here at the Convo. But just as an example of how deep our bench is: I hadn’t anticipated this, but a number of Losers cleverly used Week 1503′s food theme to write about that renowned lunch table tantrum: the Trump White House Ketchup Splat, recounted rivetingly by aide Cassidy Hutchinson during the Jan. 6 hearings. Several Ketchup Splat entries made my shortlist, with veteran Loser parodist Barbara Sarshik scoring a runner-up. Here are the other Splat finalists, in whole or part: Pout All That You Can Pout (to “The Army Goes Rolling Along,” the U.S. Army Song) He would yell, mad as hell, when it wasn’t going well, and the ketchup would slither on down. Get irate, full of hate, throw his hamberder (and plate), with the ketchup just oozing on down. He would fume and shake, then heave a well-done steak, dyeing the walls a reddish-brown. White House taste defiled by a rotten child as the ketchup kept dribbling on down. (West Point grad and longtime Loser Randy Lee) To “Up, Up and Away” Would you like to dine with a beautiful tycoon? Would you rather hide from the angry orange baboon? We could have a lovely lunch together ruined by When burgers fly; yes. he let fly Ketchup and away, Like a pie-throwing, an angry child cartoon The dining room's defaced by this tantrum-throwing loon. The country's been debased by this Looney Tunes maroon. He will call the porter, blame it on some other guy For he can lie, he can lie Ketchup and away Like a condiment, a condiment typhoon! (Bridge) He's stepping over the broken crockery We’ll crawl the floor for a space to hide us. If by some chance your thoughts turn to mockery; He's trying to divide us, This loser, fools' gold Midas. He's immortalized by a big baby balloon Way up in the air, allies lampoon our buffoon With his tiny hands he'll toss our dreams across the sky For he can lie, and he will lie. Ketchup and away With our beautiful, our big hot air balloon Buffoon Put, put him away. (Longtime Loser J. Larry Schott) To "Counting Flowers on the Wall” (an excerpt) … Throwing ketchup at the wall That don’t bother me at all. Grabbing at my driver’s throat When I need to block the vote. Claiming each court where I’ve lost is just a kangaroo. Now don’t tell me, I’ve nothing to do. (Barbara Sarshik) As I regularly do with our overabundance of excellent entries in our parody contests, I’ll be sharing other inkworthy “noinks” over the next few days in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook; just search on #parodies and a list of the posts should come up. At least one of those noinks will belong to Duncan Stevens, who can console himself by having won yet another Clowning Achievement to be the first five-time winner of the Disembodied Clown Head on a Stick trophy. Sing along with his parody of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and see how the accents of the lyrics fit perfectly with the melody and rhythm — and, even more important, how they make you laugh: “Pumpkin-flavored spice in Belgian waffle/ Pumpkin-flavored spice potato chips/ Pumpkin-flavored burgers: that’s just awful/ Pumpkin-flavored Spam? Not on my lips.” And at least one more will go to runner-up Mark Raffman, who pulls off a fairly rare-for-the-Invite feat of parodying a power-chord rock song, in this case the Survivor screamer “Eye of the Tiger” — its youthful vigor deliciously ironic when used for a song about battling constipation with a “high-fiber diet.” (Meanwhile, Mark’s usual go-to parody fodder, “Be Our Guest,” ended up with no ink this week, even though at least six Losers — none of them Mark — submitted “Guest” songs.) Two more veterans fill this week’s Losers’ Circle: Rob Cohen’s overeating song with a punchline, and Barbara Sarshik’s Ketchup Splat ballad add to their voluminous parody songlists. Meanwhile, I was totally won over by Marty Gold & Kids’ exuberant video “Ode to the Chinese Buffet,” and not just because I’ve always been a sucker for said establishments. Clever lyrics (dad Sam gets a co-credit), pretty good singing, an infectious joyfulness — and is that Marty playing, one-man-band style, the first-ever orchestration of “YMCA” for multiple clarinets? But you don’t need a whole staged production to make a great video: I was also charmed by First Offender Judy Freed of Florida, who simply sang (beautifully and utterly clearly) into a camera, backed by a karaoke track, for a knockout parody of the “Pippin” song “Corner of the Sky” in which she touts therapy-by-pie. Judy also kept her video to under two minutes, as did Jonathan Jensen — who can sing, play the piano and look at the camera simultaneously (not to mention make funny faces) — with “It’s Not Easy Eating Beans.” Without a story or significant visuals (e.g., a slide show or on-camera action — like Sandy Riccardi’s video putting the “nut” in Nutella), you’re asking a lot of the viewer to sit there and wait for your next line for several minutes at a time. It helps if the music moves along as well. Meanwhile, if you were robbed of ink this time, most of the parodies shouldn’t seem old by the time we do the second-chance retrospective contest in December. I’ll probably run one from Week 1503. What Pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Ponch Garcia read the print Invite, which had space for nine of this week’s 19 parodies, and pronounced them “uniformly clever.” Everyone’s a winner! The print list — which favors songs, especially shorter songs, that I think will be familiar to multiple generations — comprised the top four winners plus Beverley Sharp’s Dracula ballad, “If I Only Had a Vein”; Melissa Balmain’s and Hildy Zampella’s “Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious” verses (even the title was truncated to fit in one column of type); Nancy McWhorter’s “My Favorite (fattening) Things”; and excerpts from Marty Gold’s “Chinese Buffet” and Sarah Walsh’s “This S’more That I’m Eating.” We’re routing for you: This week’s brand-new state slogan contest Your more obsessive Style Invitational readers may have noticed Bob Staake’s greater involvement lately beyond drawing the Invite’s cartoon weekly since 1994: Instead of “What do you want me to draw?” Bob has often produced his own examples for recent contests, even supplying a well-crafted one for the Limerixicon. I’m delighted to have Bob as a collaborator — after all, it was his creative input as a temporary replacement in Year 2 that prompted my predecessor, the Czar, to keep him on forever. But as he became a wildly successful and famous artist and author over the next three decades, Bob understandably turned his creative efforts elsewhere, in many directions at once, and sort of stopped by the Invite once a week for old times’ sake. Maybe it’s nostalgia on his part, or just a temporary catching of breath from all his book projects and speaking engagements, but in the past few months I’ve once again begun to think of him more as a partner than just the guy I send an assignment to. And then, just recently, Bob sent me an email: “ “This came to me in a dream last night and I think it has terrific potential.” Then he proceeded to lay out what with almost no alteration is this week’s contest, Week 1507, along with several persuasive examples. Since just two weeks ago I ran another place-name contest, for “sister cities,” denizens of the Loser Community might still be in map mode, and ready to apply that to this week’s contest: Use the first letters of consecutive U.S. states in a “route” as the first letters of a slogan describing the state at the beginning of the rout. Sooo much easier to show an example, like this one of Bob’s I didn’t use: FLORIDA: A Gator Always Tastes gamy (Fla. Ala, Ga., Ala, Tenn., Ga.) Meanwhile: We have done contests for state slogans in the past, but not for a long time. One warning: Don’t describe any state by saying that there’s nothing interesting about it. In other words, don’t brag that you’re ignorant. Text files to past slogan ink (scroll past that week’s new contest to the winning slogans): Week 640, state mottoes (my contest) Week 231, mottos for the backs of the then-new state-themed quarters (the Czar’s contest) Week 2 (!!), motto for Maryland Give it a shot. If I don’t have enough good stuff in four weeks … I think I could find an extra song parody to run. Inking out loud: Coming — the Invite and Convo on audio! I’m eager to see what happens with next week’s Invitational and Conversational: Like many other Post articles, they’ll offer the option of an audio version! It’s automated, but it’s usually so good that it takes a minute to realize it. (Here’s a random story from today’s paper; click on the “Listen” icon just under the photo.) Next week’s results will be the 100-Scrabble-tile passages from Week 1504, which Ms. AI should be able to handle — but what’s going to happen when we get to neologisms? Okay, go enjoy those parodies: Happy New Year for those who count to 5783 — remember, everyone gets another day for Week 1506; deadline is Tuesday, Sept. 27. ======================================================================