The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over the new contest and results By Pat Myers July 2, 2015 Talk about recycling: We’ve actually done a contest like Week 1131 before! Twice! Sort of. In one of the Empress’s very first contests, Week 550 (March 2004), the E asked for ideas to reuse, singly or in combination, these things “or other disposable household thingies”: Plastic milk jugs; those little rectangular bread bag closures; Washington Post plastic delivery bags; AOL sign-up CDs that come in the mail [remember those?]; coffee cans; packing peanuts; worn-out disposable razors. Week 550 is particularly dear to my heart because of one entry that wasn’t even above the fold: Worried at that early stage of my Empress-ship that I’d be called self-indulgent, I gave only an honorable mention to this work of art by Loser Kevin Mellema — an actual gallery-shown artist — incorporating every one of the materials listed. I forgot how Kevin delivered it to the newsroom, but a Post photographer put it on a Corinthian pedestal for display in the Invite (fortunately on a day we could use color). Kevin plastic milk jug for the face, a disposable razor for the nose, a sheared coffee can for the crown, plastic Post delivery bags for the hair, the middles of CDs for the eyes (this is really where Kevin’s artistic skill is evident; if I had cut those eyes, I guarantee they wouldn’t have had that compelling expression); bread clips for the earrings; and green as well as packing peanuts inside the jug to lend a interesting skin tone. I clearly robbed Kevin of an Inker, although the winner, by Anthony “Bird” Waring, was pretty cool, too: “Stand an empty coffee can on the ground. Prop two chopsticks against the can and a third one across the mouth. Glue a CD covered with duck sauce to the top chopstick. The mouse crawls up a chopstick and onto the CD for the duck sauce. The CD flips over, sending the mouse into the can, trapped by the CD on top. The world beats a path to your door.” But Kevin’s definitely had it over this runner-up from Scott Campisi, even though it contained such lovely sweat socks. And four years ago, in Week 909, we asked you to repurpose some Invite swag, among other things: the lnker, a Loser T-shirt, the Loser mug, a Loser magnet, the FirStink air “freshener,” pantyhose with a run, old National Geographics, a handful of pennies, a charger for your previous cellphone, one perfectly good shoelace, and tattered underwear. By then, obviously, I was no longer worried about being overly self-referential, and Kevin Dopart got an Inker for an arrangement featuring two of them. (I’m glad he didn’t create some tattered undwear for them.) Actually, we did a third recycling contest, but it didn’t work with a list of objects: Week 654 was in honor of Earth Day 2006 and invited recycling of anything except old Style Invitational entries. The results were topped by these four useful ideas: 4. Some people throw away their shredded financial records, and I’ve found you can make them into challenging jigsaw puzzles. Plus, once you finish them, you can sell them to this guy I know. (Russell Beland) 3. The White House could use the old Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, to reassure us about winning the war. (Yoyo Zhou) 2. Little paper circles from office hole-punchers could be tossed at newlywed bureaucrats. (Jay Shuck) And the Winner of the Inker: Use old prisons as office buildings. It’s a nice, secure environment for employees -- and they have restrooms right in their cubicles. (Dave Prevar) For Week 1131, I’m expecting written descriptions of the ideas for reusing the industrial products listed on RepurposedMaterialsInc.com, but it’s certainly fun to show a graphic, if it’s presentable enough. You can send a photo or other graphic as an attachment or as a link to a website where it can be downloaded, but do me a favor and, on the e-mail, say, “see this link,” “see attachment,” etc. That way, if I’m seeing your entry as raw text, which is what happens when I combine the entries into one big list, I’ll know to go back to your e-mail and take a look. Nutwork programming*: The results of Week 1127 *One of the few Week 1127 submissions by Mark Raffman that DIDN’T get ink. It’s no secret to Invite regulars that I watch almost no TV, myself; 26 years of working nights, combined with a reluctance to schedule time to watch recorded shows the next day, have left me totally out of the practice of sitting down on the couch and clicking the remote. Thanks to Netflix, in recent years the Royal Consort and I did fill in a bit of our TV-ignorance vacuum by working our way through “The Wire,” “Sherlock,” “The West Wing” and episodes from a few other series, but still, my knowledge of current TV tends to be secondhand. But as in most Invite contests, superficial knowledge is all you need to get the joke; when your audience is as broad as ours, thoroughly inside humor tends not to work anyway. And I this week’s results don’t require more than the most passing familiarity with the show — and sometimes not even that. Since I asked for spinoffs, not just our frequent “change the title and redefine,” I don’t think I used any entries that were totally unrelated to the content of the original show, such as “As the World Terminates: Reviews the disastrous effects of mankind on the environment.” Because it’s more fun to get a joke that hasn’t been explained to you, but also because it’s no fun not to get a joke at all, I published some of the answers in two ways: In the print version, I first name the show that Kevin’s “Pitcher, Houston Astro” is based on; online, I link to it from the title. I don’t know anything about the viewing habits of Mark Raffman (except that he watches Nationals games), but he certainly went to town in Week 1127, winning the Inkin’ Memorial, a runner-up and two honorable mentions (and there were more entries on my shortlist). Mark has amassed more than 230 blots of ink in only three years, so the corporate lawyer from suburban Virginia is clearly destined for the Invitational Hall of Fame, assuming that we’re both around for that 500th ink. Mark’s juggernaut echoes but doesn’t quite match that of Kevin Dopart, who will mark his first decade with the Invite in October. Even though Kevin’s astonishing ink-snarfing rate has settled down a bit in the past couple of years, he’ll average more than 100 blots of ink in each of those first 10 Loser years. (As we speak, Kevin on his family’s annual vacation in Greece; perhaps he’ll be bringing back some drachmas as a prize.) In much saner realms, but certainly no slouch in the Invite department, Rob Cohen gets his third above-the-fold ink and his 38th blot overall. .Laughed Out of Courtney: Copy chief Courtney Rukan says she liked all the top winners, “as well as the contest’s spirit animal, ‘The Cosby Show: SVU,’ by Bird Waring. She also enjoyed “ERR” (Jason Russo), “Crib Your Enthusiasm” (Mark Raffman), “Open Sesame” Street (Bruce Carlson), “Survivor: Gilligan’s Island” (Warren Tanabe) and Leave IT to Beaver” (Jeff Contompasis). But Rob Huffman wins my heart with the most subtle and deadpan entry of the week (“Jeopardy!” spun off to “Jeopardy.” With Stephen Wright.) It’s so subtle, in fact, that I read over it at first before the “Reservoir Dogs” voice popped into my head. Brilliant!” Next Loser Sighting: Sunday, July 19 It’s at Moose Creek Steakhouse, a.ka. the restaurant at the College Park Holiday Inn. Time TBA at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). They at least used to have a breakfast buffet, and that was pretty good. Right off the Beltway, plenty of free parking, and Ikea is right next door. Have a happy Fourth, everyone!