Style Conversational: Eight neat things about (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)
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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.