Style Conversational Week 1135: Type A to continue ... — and what are
you waiting for?
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The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates all over this week’s
new contest and results
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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July 30, 2015
And really, Week 1135 is a pretty
straightforward contest, not requiring much elaboration from me. But my
hunch is that, as with Week 1131, whose results run this week, it won’t
draw as many entrants as a typical Style Invitational wordplay contest,
or even a poetry contest. Contests like these call for, in addition to
imagination, a flair for comedy writing, and the entry pool tends to be
made up mostly of the week-in-week-out Losers — call them the
season-ticket holders (but they can’t scalp their ink). This particular
week, it will be a challenge to avoid — or at least deliver with great
panache — the most common, overdone tropes of observational humor; I’m
apt to welcome creatively funny, unique ideas of situations that ought
to have some time limit, not to mention their appropriate penalty
(please try to avoid graphic and/or sadistic violence).
Okay, okay, let’s move on. Time’s a-wastin’. (Yet another appropriate
Style Invitational motto.)
*Refashionistas:* The results of Week 1131 *
/*One of the few entries by Kevin Dopart that DIDN’T get ink this week./
The Royal Consort, bless his heart, is constantly suggesting contest
ideas to the Empress, with about the same success rate as suggesters
from the Greater Loser Community (lousy). But I did like the idea of
sending the Losers loose on the website of RepurposedMaterialsInc.com
with nothing but their naked
imaginations and a thirst for ink. Though not many more than 100
entrants reported back, many of them had fairly lengthy lists of cool
plans for those rubber sheets, eight-foot tires, ski lift cable and
sundry other cool things. (Also uncool things, like purple napkins.)
At the Loser Brunch in Old Town Alexandria, Va., in June, the Empress
used this week’s second prize as a substitute tiara. (Nan Reiner)
Not surprisingly, it’s all familiar names “above the fold” this week.
It’s the fourth win and 262nd ink overall for Dave Prevar, who got a
single blot of ink back during the Czarist era in Week 339, but
otherwise didn’t get going until the Early Empressionist. Matt
Monittowon a Camaro last year
on
“Wheel of Fortune,” but until today he had never won a ceramic outhouse
with a little ceramic embarrassed person inside. It’s also Matt’s 70th
blot of Invite ink, and seventh above the fold. Mark Raffman and Ben
Aronin will let me know whether they want mugs or bags, won’t they?
(Also an option for these perennial bigshot Losers: one of the
vintage-design Loser T-shirts donated by Loser Since Genesis Elden
Carnahan.)
*Laugh Out of Courtney: * Copy chief Courtney Rukan was partial to Jeff
Shirley’s idea for repurposing boardwalk boards by putting them on the
bedroom ceiling and thus “relive some Drifters magic.” Jeff’s entry
didn’t spell out the name of the song in question (I link to it in the
entry), and I wonder if that made it a bit more fun for Courtney, who
does concede that “any old doo-wop references always make me smile.”
*Awwww, Bob .... *
If you’re one of the 5,000 “friends” of Bob Staake on Facebook
, you know that he’ll often
share some fascinating insights or various works in progress — his many
children’s books, rearrangements to his studio, his technique of
creating art with an ancient version of Photoshop. But despite the
occasional awwwish shared photo of a tyke reading “The Red Lemon” or
“Bluebird,” Bob doesn’t tend to get all sentimental — especially when it
comes to his longest-running work relationship, not to mention the lady
he tends not to exactly suck up to
.
So I was just moved to pieces — and reminded how lucky we are to have
Bob every week — when I walked out of the gym yesterday evening, checked
my phone, and read this Facebook post (I’ve hyphened out the profanities
per Post rules):
“For 22 [21] years now — rain or come shine ... sickness or health --
from FedEx to fax machine to email -- I have done a WEEKLY illustration
for a newspaper called The Washington Post. Ben Bradlee used to
illustrate all these articles, but then he started losing it. That’s
where I came in -- with badass art director Michael Drew, then with Gene
Weingarten, and then with my current editor, the lovely and tiny Pat
Myers (I know, because next to 6’3”, DAMN that girl comes off as tiny).
Happily, I could retire from drawing stupid cartoons years ago and
concentrate on my children’s books — while continuing to draw stupid
s[---] for just TWO clients: MAD magazine and The Washington Post. (NOT
a good sign, right?) And THAT’s what I’m doing tonight; reading Pat’s
manuscript for The Style Invitational; coming up with an idea, getting
approval of a sketch — and then going to finish. For a kid who never
went to an art class post-high school and instead majored in print
journalism and international relations, this bizarre weekly gig has
ALWAYS kept me on my journalistic toes. The day will come when I post a
portfolio of 26 years’ worth of Staake WaPo art ... but i thank you,
Mike, and Pat -- and KNOW that this sort of effusive bulls[---] makes
Gene Weingarten run to the hills. I’m right behind you, a-h[---]!”
So I got kind of goopy this morning to see this week’s cartoon come in
right on time (as always), and know that Bob was moved to make those
comments even though I’d rejected his first draft entirely (as less than
always).
*Please keep in your thoughts ... *
** Two of our most renowned and beloved Losers, Mae Scanlan and Beverley
Sharp
,
both sent me e-mails in the past couple of days, both with their usual
cheery, witty, upbeat tone. And with this tone Mae somehow let me know
that she would be having surgery today for pancreatic cancer (“I’m
feeling okay with this – I just want to get the operation over with, and
get home so I can watch Donald Trump behave outrageously at the Aug. 6
debate”).
And Beverley slipped in the news that a relapse of her breast cancer had
been diagnosed, that she’d had surgery two weeks ago, and that she’d be
going through a year of aggressive treatment (“I’m telling you this so
that if I have to cut back on my entries, you won’t think it’s lack of
interest!”).
I hope that Mae’s daughter Mary Pershing will have a moment to give us
updates; write to me at pat.myers@washpost.com if you’d like Mae’s
address so you can send a card. Meanwhile, Beverley has been given the
okay to go on a family beach trip before the treatments start, and even
to take a long-arranged trip to Southeast Asia in October with husband
Dick Amberg. So why do I think that both Mae’s and Beverley’s entries
will continue to bump out yours, just as they have been through this
very week?
*While I don’t normally endorse political candiates ...*
I may have to make an exception in the Virginia Senate race. If anyone
in the Richmond area would like to procure a campaign sign, button,
etc.., for this candidate , I would so
give that away as a prize.
*We got our auto- repaired! Just about!*
One of the more embarrassing aspects of being Empress is having to admit
that The Post’s newsroom e-mail system can’t be counted on to send an
auto-reply when you send your entries to the losers@washpost.com
“dropbox.” So for the past several months, most of the “auto-replies”
you get are actually sent by me (which is why they sometimes arrive
hours later). But this past Tuesday, the Real Auto-Reply kicked back in,
and has been working since — except when it hasn’t. The IT folks are
continuing to work on it.
Meanwhile, I’ll try to keep an eye out for entries that weren’t
auto-replied to (I can search the Sent Items list) and reply to those
manually. If you haven’t heard anything in 24 hours, please feel free to
ask me to check that it’s arrived. Handy tip on how to know if you got
the Real Auto-Reply or the Empress’s Fake Auto-Reply: The real on will
say “Auto reply” in the subject line; the E’s will say just “Re:.”
*Remember the assault on Gettysburg! *
The annual Loser lunch/ day trip to Gettysburg will be on Sunday, Aug.
16 — and this time the tour will take in some spots in the historic town
itself, not just the battlefields. See Loser Roger Dalrymple’s pitch in
last week’s Conversational, near the bottom of the column here
.
*You’ll just have to build a plastic hockey rink or something*
There won’t be a new contest next weekend: Four weeks from then, the
Empress will be in Italy, marrying off her kid, and has learned from at
least two experiences that it just doesn’t work to try to produce that
week’s Invite from some hotel room with sketchy Wi-Fi and a big time
zone difference. There will be a column, though, with something that can
be produced ahead of time — either some great entries that weren’t
published before, or some greatest hits. I’ll take suggestions over the
next day or two.