Style Conversational Week 1115: They’re slaying our songs
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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)