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.