‘Style’ is a great name for something with style, but a bad name for ... Style Conversational Week 1140: The Empress ruminates all over this week’s Invitational By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // September 10, 2015 When Future Hall of Famer if He Doesn’t Screw Up Jeff Contompasis suggested we redo the good-name/bad-name contest, I answered, “You think we can just do it one more time, unmodified?” That was because I had it in my tattered little mind that we’d done this contest several times. But no — I just loved the Week 547 results so much, back in 2004, that I felt that they must be a recurring bit of Invitana. So I was thrilled that I could bring back this contest 11 years later for Week 1140 , without fear of running out of material — after all, the pool of product names (and really, just about any other proper noun) is virtually infinite, and of course lots of them didn’t exist back in 2004. Still, you do want to avoid the jokes from the Week 547 results, even the ones grouped in the introduction as too frequent. (You can still use some of the /names /as long as your joke is substantially different.) *Report from Week 547, * in which we asked for things that an existing brand name would be bad for: The Empress received 462 e-mails [wow!!! that is a LOT] for this contest, many of which contained dozens of entries each [there was no 25-entry limit back then], and almost all of which contained an entry suggesting that Microsoft would be a bad name for an erectile-dysfunction drug. Other entries too common to reward: Cheerios for a funeral home, Next Day Blinds for a laser eye surgery center, and Redskins for a football team. The category of laxatives really got you going, so to speak; the litany of bad names included Outback, Grey Poupon, Jiffy Lube, Chunky, Pump & Spray, Big Brownie Blast, Quicken and, but of course, IBM. /Fourth runner-up:/ Rolling Rock is a good name for a beer but a bad name for an insurance company. (Jim Lyons, Arlington) /Third runner-up:/ The Chrysler Building is a good name for a skyscraper but a bad name for an SUV. (John Conti, Norfolk, Mass.) /Second runner-up:/ Antabuse is a good name for an alcoholism drug but a bad name for a magnifying glass. (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) /First runner-up, the winner of the cuddly stuffed Athlete’s Foot and Ulcer toys:/ Wachovia is a good name for a bank but a bad name for a cemetery. (Michael Cisneros, Centreville) /And the winner of the Inker: /Virgin Airways is okay as a name for an airline but not for a cigarette. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Honorable Mentions: BP is a good name for a gas company but a bad name for a honey company. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Renuzit is a good name for a room deodorizer but a bad name for an acne treatment. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) Nine Inch Nails is a good name for a rock group but a bad name for a proctology clinic. (J. F. Martin, Naples, Fla.) Hi-C is a good name for a fruit drink but a bad name for a tutoring service. (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) Open Pit is a good name for a barbecue sauce but a bad name for a toilet bowl cleaner. (Ann Martin, Annapolis) [her first ink; we didn’t start noting that for several more years] Wawa is a good name for a convenience store but a bad name for an antidepressant. (Dave Komornik, Danville, Va.) Iran is a good name for an Islamic republic but a bad name for an infantry platoon. (Ted Einstein, Silver Spring) Newman’s Own is a good name for Paul Newman’s brand of condiments, but it would not be a good name for his brand of condoms. (Russell Beland) IHOP is a good name for a pancake shop but a bad name for a prosthetics company. (Larry Blue, Potomac; Tom Matthews, Fairfax Station; Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls) Ashburn is a good name for a town but a bad name for hemorrhoid ointment. (Karen Tierney, Ashburn) 3-in-One is a good name for a household oil but a bad name for a religion. (Mike Genz, La Plata) Domino’s is a good name for a pizza place but a bad name for a construction company. (Tiffany Getz, Manassas; Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) Nordic Track is a good name for exercise equipment but a bad name for an affirmative action program. (Larry Phillips, Falls Church; Russell Beland) Target is a good name for a retail store in America but a bad name for a retail store in Iraq. (Jeff Martin, Gaithersburg) Chick-fil-A is a good name for a fast-food outlet but not for O.J. Simpson’s next business venture. (Tom Witte) The Tinder Box is a good name for a tobacco shop but a bad name for an apartment building. (Dean Evangelista, Silver Spring) Twinkies, HoHos and Ding Dongs are all good names for snack cakes, but not for WNBA teams. (Blythe Marshall, Annandale, and Russell Beland [her stepfather]) Taco Bell is a good name for a Mexican restaurant but a bad name for a Mexican phone company. (Dave Ferry, Purvis, Miss.; Dudley Thompson, Raleigh, N.C.) Snickers is a good name for a candy bar but a bad name for a support group. (Briana Payne, Annapolis) First Impressions is a good name for a dating service but not a bungee jumping center. (Russell Beland) Ayds used to be a good name for a diet candy . . . (Paul Styrene, Olney) Kaboom is a good name for a stain remover but a bad name for a high-fiber cereal. (Kelly Wilson, Milwaukee) The Library of Congress is probably too subtle to be a good name for an adult bookstore. (Russell Beland) First Union is a good name for a bank but a bad name for a Boy Scout camp. (Michael Fribush, Burtonsville) Rent-A-Wreck is a good name for a used-car rental company but a bad name for an escort service. (Marleen May, Rockville) Boeing is a good name for an airplane company but not for a mattress company. (Peter Metrinko, Plymouth, Minn.) The Foot Locker is a good name for a sports shoe store but a bad name for quick-drying cement. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) Wanamaker is a good name for a department store but a bad name for a dating service. (Susan Thompson, Raleigh, N.C.) Excalibur is a good name for a security company but a bad name for a tampon. (Jeff Brechlin) Just Do It is a good slogan for Nike but a bad slogan for a suicide relief center. (Jeff Keenan, Severn) Miracle Whip is a good name for a salad dressing, a bad name for Mel Gibson to use formovie tie-in toy merchandising. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon; Elden Carnahan) Ram Cargo Van is a good name for a vehicle but a bad name for a driving school. (Jeff Brechlin) The Swimsuit Issue might be a good name for a week of Sports Illustrated, but it probably won’t work for Hustler. (Russell Beland) Air France is a good name for an airline but a bad name for a deodorant. (Danny Bravman, Potomac) Sizzler is a good name for a steakhouse but a bad name for a rectal thermometer. (Roy Ashley, Washington) Stove Top Stuffing is a good name for stuffing that you cook on the stove, but not for a book on how to get the romance back in your marriage. (Russell Beland) Kleenex may be a good name for a tissue, but it’s an excellent name for a divorce law firm. (Paul Kondis, Alexandria) --- I expect to be making LOTS of Style Invitational Ink of the Day posters four weeks from now. *WE’RE UP TO THE JEEZ: THE GA- LIMERICKS OF WEEK 1136* Judging limericks isn’t really too bad a thing to do while on vacation (my son got married in Italy, forcing me to spend eight days on sun-soaked beaches, visiting historic treasures, ingesting untold thousands of calories a day — none of which, I assure you, came from Kraft boxes). My 129-page printout of some 1,000 five-liners, along with an AC outlet between the airplane seats, let me pass the time in the plane when I wasn’t going to be able to sleep anyway (as well as when the Wi-fi decided not to work in our hotel room). The “ga-” parameters allowed for plenty of words and names, including some that were new to me, including “gamboge” (a yellow resin used as a pigment) and “gamahuche” (oral sex). The Style Invitational: So educational we ought to get federal funding. Alas, as in every limerick contest, lots of people didn’t check out (or get the message of)“Get Your ’Rick Rolling,” the Invite’s guide; or the many helpful resources at OEDILF.com , the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, the inspiration for and, I hope, the beneficiary of each year’s Limerixicon. And so there were numerous examples of Not a Rhyme and Not in Limerick Meter. I never checked who wrote any of the following Not a Rhymes: Keillor/failure/sailor; superfluous/garrulous/frivolous; strolling/gamboling; gastronomy/colostomy; bully/sully; gamy/grainy; Gaga/Prima; Butchie/Gucci; gadflies/applies; fantastic/gastric; gambler/yammerer; covet/none of it; Brobdingnagian/galleon; patronize/galvanize. But they did move the judging process along. (If you don’t get why the previous are Not a Rhymes: It’s the last ACCENTED syllables of the two words that need to rhyme; and any unaccented syllables after them have to be identical. So gas-TRON-omy doesn’t rhyme with col-OST-omy, because TRON doesn’t rhyme with OST. su-PER-fluous doesn’t rhyme with GAR-rulous. GAD-flies doesn’t rhyme with ap-PLIES.) The Not a Rhymes shouldn’t be confused with limericks in which a word is pronounced differently in different locales — usually because of different vowel sounds, and sometimes in accents. For example, as a native Philadelphian, I don’t rhyme “pollen” with “befallen”; I say “PAH-lin” and “be-FAW-lin.” But certainly many people do, especially in the South. And I had no problem picking up Kirk Miller’s nifty “a pollen” pun. And, as in every limerick contest, there were many entries that didn’t have (or convey to a first-time reader) the “hickory-dickory-dock/ dickory-dock” rhythm that is essential to a limerick. Sometimes, the writer clearly didn’t know the rules: “Elmer Fudd, a hunter of dubious repute/ Desired to shoot a long-eared galoot.” “I could only take to gawking/ When I saw you out there walking.” “There once was a gambler/ Who was an avid rambler.” But more often, a Bad Meter happened because the writer heard the correct rhythm in his own head, because he was accenting the words in his line differently from how a reader would. This is why I beg and beg y’all to have someone else read the limerick out loud, so you can see if the person comes up with the hickory-dickory-dock. This writer didn’t do this with these opening lines: “When music’s what I want to hear/ With no MP3 player near.” If he’d asked a friend, the person would surely have read: “When MU-sic’s WHAT i WANT to HEAR.” The writer, however, was thinking: “When MU-sic’s what /I/ want to HEAR...” (And no, you can’t just put the “I” in italics, unless the emphasis is relevant to the text of the poem.) Sometimes a line /might/ be read in limerick meter, but not necessarily. Take this Line 3: “He must think we’re stupid.” You /could/ read it “He MUST think we’re STUpid,” but you could easily (and probably) say “HE must THINK we’re STUpid.” The best solution in cases like this is to use a phrase that will be accented only one way, like: “He knows that we’re stupid”; since you’ll never accent “THAT,” the reader intuitively will emphasize “KNOWS.” I’ve found that the master limerick writers are especially good at finding words whose accents are unambiguous. (Also, you have a little more leeway in Lines 4 and 5, because the reader has already read previous lines in the same rhythm and is more apt to shift the accents himself.) Another thing I really value in limericks is natural syntax: light verse shouldn’t be a chore to read. It’s a great skill to write limericks whose word order is just as you’d talk in conversation (unless weird syntax is part of the joke, of course). I think today’s inking entries all have excellent syntax. Not so much for, say, “Definitions do not constant stay/ From their meanings words oft go astray.” Almost never going astray — Invite-quality-wise — are this week’s top winners, all of them hugely successful in the Invite, with great sloshes of ink among them, including limerick and other verse contests. One thing, though: Among them, only first runner-up Robert Schechter was an experienced light-verse poet before starting to enter the Invitational; he found us after hearing about us from the poetry group Eratosphere (and then, bless his heart, recruiting such future Invite stars as Frank Osen, Brian Allgar and Melissa Balmain). Kevin Dopart, Craig Dykstra and Nan Reiner are just very smart, very funny people who took up the challenge of expressing their wit in yet one more form — and mastered it. Meanwhile, we welcome several First Offenders this week, including what might be our first Loser from Belgium. They’ll be getting their FirStink for their first ink, and I hope to follow it up soon with a real prize for their next loss (or even an Inkin’ Memorial win). So what was that limerick with the new-to-me word “gamahuche”? It was a very good one by the clearly British Bob Turvey, who charmingly rhymes “Clinton” and “intern” I would like to define “gamahuche”: It’s a sort of quite intimate touch. When President Clinton Did it with an intern; He said it was not sex “as such.” (I’d have replaced “DID it” with “ca-ROUSED.) Happy New Year to all — catch you in 5776! Oh, by the way: I could judge limericks on vacation, but I couldn’t mail people their prizes. Please bear with me as you await your swag from Week 1135 , in which you were asked to be impatient. Those who got ink in the second go-round of the Week 1133 clerihew contest should have their magnets/ FirStinks now or shortly; if you got ink both times, you don’t get squat for Part 2.