Style Conversational Week 1141: The principles of banking, Loser-style
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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September 17, 2015
Yay, my favorite contest! But even I experienced some momentary
apprehension about running one more Mess With Our Heads contest, in
which we ask you to misinterpret (or wryly comment on) a Post story or
ad by writing a bank head, or subtitle.
It’s not because we’ve done it too many times (by my count, Week 1141
is the 12th iteration, not counting a few
variations); there are always headlines to choose from that are unlike
previous ones. It’s more that bank heads themselves — as well as the
“headlinese” that this contest often spoofs — may be starting to become
an archaic form. Online stories rarely have bank heads, and both main
heads and banks are less likely to be written in the word-stingy
elliptical style that drops articles (e.g., “the”) and forms of “to be”
so that the head can fit in a narrow column or two on the page. These
days, even in the print paper, a headline reads more like an actual
sentence. Or two.
Nah, not to worry. For easy-to-misinterpret elliptical heads, we have
only to go to The Post’s home page, which is full of tight head orders
(though not bank heads). Just this morning, the lead headline was “Carly
Fiorina subdued in victory lap after debate performance.” Bank head
crying out to be written? “Envious Trump socks exuberant rival with
toupee.” Actually, the ambiguity in that headline doesn’t even rely on
the missing “is”; it’s because “subdued” can be a verb or an adjective.
The evolution in headlines has caused us to redefine, over the years,
what we’re going to count as a headline. I used to say it had to have
text under it; after all, it’s a “head.” But it would be a shame to
disqualify all those home page headlines or blurbs or refers or whatever
they’re called these days. We’ll continue also to allow any heading that
has text below: the “jump head” on a print story that continues to
another page; a real bank head (they do exist online for those who’ve
learned to click on the Special Hidden Methode Button; see this column
and the Invite); a headline on a stand-alone picture, but not the
caption to the picture.
Also, as we have usually (but not always) done, you’re allowed you to
use just part of a headline — but not to take just a little snippet, or
to take that part out of context from the original head. In my sloppily
scribbled-on graphic above, I circled some headlines and parts of
headlines that would be okay to use for Week 1141. Then I attempted to
put a wide, skinny X over part of it. And on the left, I put an X over
part of one: The headline says, “Trump suggested vaccines cause autism.
And no one stopped him.” While you may use “Trump suggested vaccines
cause autism” (I can’t imagine how), you /don’t/ get to use “Trump
suggested vaccines.”
Some headlines and partial heads that would qualify for Week 1141. The
fragment with the sloppy X says “Trump suggested vaccines”; we don’t
want you to pull snippets out of context. (Screen shot with scribbling
by The Empress)
The Invite’s first bank head contest was Week 391 (March 2001), and was
suggested by Loser Greg Arnold. That was during the Czarist era, but it
was during a three-month stretch during which the Czar was on leave and
the Invite was being put out by the “Uberczar” (aka the Czar’s friend
Tom Shroder, who was then heading the Post Magazine), who was
responsible for the contests and chose the final winners; and by the
“Auxiliary Czar” (yours truly), who read the entries and chose which
ones would ink, then let the Uberczar select the final winners.
The top winners of the 2001 contest, as usual often alluding to
then-current events:
Fourth runner-up: *Let’s Enroll Our Kids in Shooting Classes*
/Frustrated, Michael Jordan Looks to the Future /(Charlie Myers, Laurel)
[Jordan was at that time an executive for the Wizards, the beleaguered
local NBA team]
Third runner-up: *Police Warn D.C. Judge of ‘Hex’*
/‘It’s Okay,’ Assures Judge, ‘I Shop at Sax’/ (Jean Sorensen, Herndon)
[Hecht’s was a Washington department store; Hecht stores are now Macy’s.]
Second runner-up:*Croat Hard-Liners Seek Separation in Bosnia*
/Cite Career Conflicts, Deny Scientology a Factor in Split/ (Ben F.
Noviello, Fairfax) [An allusion to the Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman marriage
woes]
First runner-up: *Buy One, Get One Free*
/Latest Pardon Revelation Startles Even Die-Hard Clinton Supporters
/(Ervin Stembol, Alexandria) [President Clinton, on his last day of
office, offered pardons to 450 convicted criminals, including fraudster
Marc Rich, whose wife had made big donations to Clinton’s campaign]
And the winner of the festive Economic Report of the President coffee mug:*
The Buck Goes There*
New Patrons Don’t Know Tipping Etiquette, Exotic Dancers Complain (Sarah
W. Gaymon, Gambrills) [Some things need no historical knowledge.]
*How do I know you didn’t make up the headline you’re using?* For print
headlines, please include the date and page number. For online heads —
just make sure you’re copying them correctly; I’ll check them by just
searching on the text in The Post’s records or through Google. Still,
there has to be an element of the honor system, since some headlines
just don’t stick around the Web for weeks on end.
*Capitalization:* The Post’s headlines used to be “upstyle,” with major
words capitalized, as in a book or movie title. Now they’re “downstyle,”
which does remove some opportunities for ambiguity. If the headline is
about “peace accords,” you can’t pretend that “accords” are a brand of
car. On the other hand, a word that /is/ capitalized in a headline —
remember, you can use ads -- still tends to work as a joke to mean a
common noun: “25% off Jockey” still works with “Pudgy rider makes weight
as amputee,” as Pam Sweeney wrote in 2006.
*TITLED PUERILITY: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1137*
Week 1137 was basically a single joke: Use another meaning of a
dirty-sounding expression to refer to something boringly wholesome. How
much you’ll laugh at this week’s winners depends on how much of one joke
you like to read. I thinkthis week’s results
are
pretty funny, but I also think you’d have more fun reading 28 of these
entries than reading 1,200 of them. That said, the Loser Community did
come up with a number of creative takes on the
nah-it’s-not-really-dirty-after-all humor.
While this week’s three runners-up all have long-term leases on plots in
the Losers’ Circle, it’s only the eighth blot of ink — and the first
“above the fold” — for Amy Harris of Charlottesville, Va. Amy has been
in Loserdom only a few months, though, and I’m expecting lots more from
her. One of her neologisms: “Ladenfreude: The collective American cheer
when we learned that the Navy SEALs got their man.”
Not surprisingly, when we ask for spicy titles, some are going to be
/too/ spicy — even when they’re jokingly presented as totally wholesome.
It reminds me of theresults of Week 1090,
in which we asked for poems that used — correctly — words that sounded
dirty but weren’t, like “aholehole” and “cockchafer.” The editors ended
up pulling most of the poems out of the print paper.
This time, I was asked to cut this one by Rob Huffman: “Rim Jobs: The
Evolving Workplace of the Grand Canyon Perimeter.” Given that they let
me keep “The Joy of Doggy Style” (Frank Mann), “Young, Hot and Wet” (Jon
Gearhart) and Frank Osen’s “MILF” joke, I wasn’t going to fight it. But
at that point I realized that I shouldn’t run, even online: “Become a
Master at Fingering and Tonguing: Etudes for Clarinet, Vol. 6” (Hugh
Thirlway) or
“A Guide to Digital Intercourse” (previously titled “The White Pages”)
from Danielle Nowlin.
*EAT HARD ALEE: LOSER BRUNCH THIS SUNDAY AT HEAVY SEAS ALEHOUSE*
Loser Brunch No. 180 (!!!) is at a new venue, the Heavy Seas Alehouse
in Arlington, just
a short walk from the Rosslyn Metro station. I won’t be able to make it
this month, but I know that a number of regulars will be there at noon.
Remember, all attendees get a genuine Czarist-era Style Invitational
bumper sticker, the honorable-mention prize that preceded our Loser
Magnets.