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.