proudly resents ...

 

The Week in Loserdom:

What an exciting week it was, rich in drama and pathos. Oh, wait ... NO IT WASN'T!

First, and most painful, two Losers are on the injured reserve list. Jonathan Paul was mowing his lawn, swerved to avoid a toad, and tumbled down the hill, breaking his leg in two places. (Yeah, yeah ... why didn't he stay out of those places?) Brian Broadus of Charlottesville had surgery on his ear, which explains (as Dave Zarrow pointed out) why Brian has always been half as annoyed as other victims of the Dueling Loser Band.

This is not even counting Chuck Smith, who left for Hawaii on July 1 to recuperate from back surgery. (How the heck did he get Blue Cross to pay for THAT?)

On Sunday, the gala Loser Olympics were held at the Grand Gaymon Island and, same as last year (dammit!), Dave Ferry took home a chest full of gold gator medals. The food, the festivities and the refreshing coolness of the swimming pool were excellent, spoiled only by the sight of Dudzik in swim trunks.

In other news, several Losers qualified in "Jeopardy!" tryouts, including Sarah Gaymon, Sandra Hull, Stephanie Cangin and possibly others I didn't hear about.

Loser (Howard Walderman, Columbia) appeared in the "Life Is Short" feature on page F2.

On the birthday list were Dave Zarrow (the big five-oh) and Joseph Jack Romm (the big four-one).

Results of Week LXXI - Balloonacy^*

Summary:

A difficult contest, don't you think?

As you will see below, more of these cartoons should have been printed. As of 6 p.m. Sunday, there were four extra cartoons on the Post Web site, but unfortunately they've all been attributed to some guy named "Bob Staake." I will point this out to someone and see if it gets changed.

The brilliant Jonathan Paul wins the contest again by thinking as far as possible out of the box. Non-Sequitur Man! Why didn't I think of that??!!

Jean Sorensen gets two, and I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of the four that didn't get printed were hers, too.

That Hart woman got two and what amounts to a Blind T-Shirt, sort of. (I don't know yet *which* entry they found so offensive. It could've been any one of four or five.) If you want to know how I got ink, I will tell you: I wrote down all the phrases on index cards and arranged them on my living room floor. For some reason, seeing them written down helped me visualize cartoons and punch lines. Try it sometime.

Now brace yourself for the Czar's words, 'cos he's on the warpath.

F2.1 (The Czar Speaks):
First off, a serious space screwup resulted in our having to cut four cartoons from the paper. They are drawn, and we will try to have them available on the Web. We're only printing seven, which is disappointing to us; the results were good.

Added to the fine print this week, and forevermore, is: "Pseudonymous entries will be disqualified."

We do not ordinarily explain our actions. We do not have to. However, we have elected to in this instance.

We understand, admire and applaud the urge toward sedition. It is precisely this urge that drives the Invitational, and makes so many of you so funny. In fact, Beland has suggested that publishing this prohibition will merely encourage its promiscuous violation, in the spirit of good fun and good mischief. If so, we request that you curb that urge. We ask this with all respect. We have our reasons. Here they are:

We have worried since the beginning about people using the Invitational for base reasons: grinding political axes, settling scores, etc. These things are not entirely detectable or preventable by us. Someone could submit an entry under the name of someone he dislikes, to embarrass that person, or use the name of a real person in an entry, and so forth. One small but significant factor militating against this is that we have always asked that people submit under their own names; if you have to stand behind what you write, you are less likely to do something bad.

We feel that if people believe they can submit entries pseudonymously, this will open us up to abuse. We are respectfully asking you not to do it, for the good of the Invitational. We are confident that you will understand this, and comply for this reason alone.

You might do it, and get away with it. But if you are caught -- the Czar will encourage tipsters, even anonymous ones -- the repercussions will be severe. Because the Czar will consider it not an act against him, but against The Invitational. And that is bad.

The Siberian Express:

I think the Czar got it right, although I have a special fondness for Dave Ferry's "Salve. I need salve," mainly because the little catcher looks so pathetic, poor thing.

Score Losers:

I'm sure Russie is still enjoying a comfortable lead, but aside from that, beats me! If you want a mathematician, hire Stephen Hawking to write this thing. Feh.

Week LXXV -- What's In a Name?:

The Weak Week Prediction:

We've done this contest before and are used to it, so the results should be pretty good.

The Weak Week Word to the Wise (WWWW) :

The obvious place to start is on the Internet, where there are zillions of anagram generators, including:

www.jti.net/brad/anagram.htm
www.mbhs.edu/~bconnell/anagrams.html
freespace.virgin.net/martin.mamo/anagram.html

However, these sites will only help you to a certain extent, because the Czar said that we can use any letter as many times as we want. If you rely solely on a generator, you'll miss out on an awful lot of funny word combinations. It's probably better to use your brain as the generator, and only turn to the Web as a last resort.

Hart Knocks: On a one-seventeen scale, sixteen being best, Week LXXV gets a:

Some of the Losers LIVE for anagram contests, but the results are usually more fun for the contestants to think up than the readers to read.

How Cool the Drool: On a one-five scale (where five is a stuffed mongoose) this week's genuine vintage Elvis Doll gets a:

I would have given it a one, except that it "looks vaguely like Dracula," which is kind of intriguing.

The Week Link:

Five years ago this weekend -- June 30, 1996 -- was David Kleinbard's blind T-shirt for the difference between the Titanic and Marion Barry's brain. (Remember that one? Marion Barry jokes, ahhhh, those were the days ...)

Read more Weak Weeks

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