Style Conversational Week 1142: The mash game
The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates all over this week’s
contest
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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September 24, 2015
The challenge in this week’s Style Invitational, Week 1142
— to write a Twitter post from a fanciful
hybrid of two people — is a new one, for sure. But it’s the scion of a
long line of Invite portmanteau/mashup contests, and they’ve almost
always been great successes. Today, a look back at some classic mashes
from the Invite’s first decade.
The first Invitational I could find that called explicitly for
combinations of names was Week 54 (1994), “in which we asked you to come
up with*“comical names resulting from marriage or other collaborations.”
* The contest allowed for company names as well as human ones, as well
as chains of several names, but most were about two people. Among the
winners (complete list here
;
scroll down past the Week 57 contest announcement):
/If the daughter of mimeograph magnate A.B. Dick married the son of
designer Edith Head, she would probably keep her maiden name. (Chuck
Smith, Woodbridge; also,Paul Styrene, Olney)
If Queen Latifah married Michael Farraday, she’d be Queen Farraday.
(Annie, Ben, Sandy and David Tevelin, Burke)
If Mama Cass had married John Donne, divorced him and married Alexander
Ptolemy, we’d get Mama Donne Ptolemy. (Al Hattal, Potomac)/
Here’s one asking for*combinations of two products*, à la the spork(Week
265, 1998, one of the first Invites published online)
:
/Fourth Runner-Up -- The Slipscoop: A combination bedroom slipper and
pooper scooper. No need to stop and bend over; simply slipscoop it up
and place-kick it over the neighbor’s fence. Three points! (Sunny C.
Doman, Falls Church)/ /
/ /Third Runner up -- Rogocaine: A cross between Rogaine and cocaine. It
grows nose hair. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)/ /
/ /Second Runner up -- Gromit: Combination syrup of ipecac and tile
grout. Makes triumph out of tragedy when you don’t quite make it to the
toilet bowl. (Russ Beland, Springfield)/ /
/ /First Runner-Up -- The F’c’w’le’ha: A combination forecastle
(fo’c’s’le), gunwale (gunnel) and halfpenny (ha’p’n’y) I have no idea
what it is, I just get a kick out of the idea that no one knows how to
pronounce it. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)/ /
And the winner of the Chinese Propaganda Record -- AK-486: A combination
of an AK-47 and the RU-486 “morning after” pill. This assault weapon has
an automatic-delay firing pin, permitting disgruntled postal workers to
rethink their rage. (T.J. Murphy, Arlington)/
Week 287
was
the*“before and after” game *as on “Wheel of Fortune” and the occasional
“Jeopardy” category. This one featured numerous portmanteau names. :
/Sixth Runner-Up: Lloyd Bridges of Madison County: A rootless
photojournalist and a bored housewife have an underwater knife fight.
(Ralph Scott, Washington)/
/Fifth Runner-Up: Rembrandt Van Rijn Tin Tin-The night watchdog. (Meg
Sullivan, Potomac)/
/Fourth Runner-Up: Heimlichtenstein: A small country firmly lodged
between Austria and Switzerland. (Sandra Hull, Arlington)/
/Third Runner-Up: Darryl F. Zanuck nyuk nyuk-A slapstick filmmaker. (Sue
Lin Chong, Washington)/
/Second Runner-Up: Roseanne Boleyn: Queen who kept talking after being
beheaded. (David Genser, Arlington)/
/First Runner-Up: Anais Nintendo Gameboy: The pocket toy you really
don’t want to give your kids. (Greg and Kristine Griswold, Falls Church)/
/And the winner of the snake wine: Thomas Jefferson Clinton: President
who penned the famous introductory lines: “We hold these half-truths to
be legally accurate ... “ (Douglas Riley, Reston)/
Week 312 asked readers to *combine two works of literature*:
/First Runner-Up: “Green Eggs and Hamlet”: Would you kill him in his
bed? / Thrust a dagger through his head? / I would not, could not, kill
the King. / I could not do that evil thing. / I would not wed this girl,
you see. / Now get her to a nunnery. (Robin Parry, Arlington)/ /
And the Winner of the Dancing Critter: “Fahrenheit 451 of the Vanities”:
An ‘80s yuppie is denied books. He does not object, or even notice.
(Mike Long, Burke)/
Week 376
followed
up with *TV mashups:* /
First Runner-Up: “Everybody Loves All My Children”--Sitcom / /featuring
typical suburban soccer mom. (Chris Shreves, Oak Hill)/ /
And the winner of the Cuban constitution and Chilean handbooks: /
/“L.A.P.D. Victory Garden”--Cops show how to plant evidence. /
/(Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)/
Week 476
was
the first of several contests for *portmanteau words;* the two words had
to overlap by at least two letters:
/Fourth Runner-Up: Estrogeniality: The attribute that compels women to
go to the restroom in pairs. (Joy Vizi, Sterling)/ /
Third Runner-Up: Euphemistress: One’s “niece.” (Chris Doyle, Forsyth,
Mo.)/ /
Second Runner-Up: Nazionist: One truly mixed-up SOB. (Tom Witte,
Gaithersburg)/ /
First Runner-Up: Mulligangster: A hit man who is afforded a second shot
when his first is not successful. (Mike Genz, La Plata) / /
And the winner of the human head replica: Rhinoplasterisk: Indicates
that a person’s appearance on a “Most Beautiful” list may have been
surgically assisted. / /(Meg Sullivan, Potomac)/
Week 489,
*more name combinations*:
/Third Runner-Up: Mr. T.S. Eliot: “I pity the fool, wanderin’ around
half-deserted streets, walkin’ on beaches, talkin’ ‘bout peaches,
mournin’ his lost manhood. I pity the fool.” (Dan Steinberg, Bethesda)
And the winner of the sugar-cookie-scented Eggbutt Horseball: Al
Frankenstein’s Monster: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, gosh
darn it, I’m a big fat idiot.” (Beverly Miller, Clarendon)/
Etc.
Note that portmanteaux work best when it’s clear what both components
are: If you have to explain it, the rest of the joke had better be
wildly clever and funny to compensate.
How to check most easily whether your tweet fits? Go on twitter.com and
type in the “Tweet” box; the too-long part of the tweet will show up in
red. (Well, yes, you would have to have a Twitter account for that, but
it can be anonymous; just go to twitter.com/signup
to create an account, or a second account if
you use a different e-mail address.) .
*GIBE TALKIN’:* THE INKIN’ INSULTS OF WEEK 1138*
*Non-inking headline suggestion from Chris Doyle, who, yes, has at least
most of his entries tossed /every single week/
I started off the results of Week 1138
with
a glib disclaimer because I /know/ that some of these have been
uttered/typed/otherwise put forth by someone at some time. In fact, some
of them showed up in somewhat similar form on Google. But in those cases
that I noticed, the citations were few, not widespread or well known,
and/or years old. If you have encountered them before, well, good for
you. Do your best to maintain your smug grin for the rest of the day. I
would highly, highly doubt that any of the inking entries were
consciously stolen. (Though whoever sent me “his emotions ran the gamut
from A to B,” the ghost of Dorothy Parker Herself is flattered. Fun
fact: Parker’s 1934 comment about Katharine Hepburn’s stage-acting
ability didn’t appear in Parker’s review; she’s only said to have spoken
it during intermission,)
Regular readers of this column and the Devotees page know that 284-time
Loser Mae Scanlan has had a rough year, with an unending series of nasty
health problems that have had her hopping (best she could) from home to
hospital to rehab center to home to rehab to hospital to home — and
that’s not a piece of cake for someone whose younger elementary school
classmate was John McCain. But through it — and I mean virtually every
week — Mae has managed to send in some Invite entries, and sometimes all
25, even when she had to dictate them to her daughter. And they’ve been
really good — Mae has gotten regular ink this whole time, especially for
the light verse for which she’s renowned, as in this poem using the
spelling bee word “vespiary,” a wasp nest:
/Persons should be very wary
Getting near a vespiary.
Do not denigrate the wasp:
It can put you in the hosp./
But while Mae is clever as all get-out, she has a sort of handicap when
it comes to The Style Invitational: She’s not nasty in the slightest,
and she “doesn’t work blue”; in fact, she’s told me that she does the
“pastor test” on her entries: If she thinks she’d be embarrassed showing
up in church on a Sunday when she’s gotten ink, she won’t send in the
entry.
But this week’s winner shows how you can get close to 300 Invite inks
even without being crass or vicious. And I was just tickled to find out
on Tuesday who wrote it. (Here’s the page from a printout
of
Week 1138 entries with the winner at the bottom. Really, I’m not seeing
your names!)
I’m not surprised that Mae doesn’t think much of Donald Trump (I
personally know only a very few people who do), but I’d forgotten that
just a few weeks back, she got ink with this clerihew:
/The only way Donald Trump
Could be less of a chump
Is if he (the whole package: body! shirts! belts!)
Were somebody elts./
David Garratt’s second-place quip appealed to the copy editor in me; I
only wish I were able to emphasize his
semicolon-making-all-the-difference; I just can’t do that sort of
textplay in this publishing system. I think that’s what I’ll do
graphically in a future Style Invitational Ink of the Day
.
*Laugh Out of Courtney:* The fave list this week from copy chief
Courtney Rukan was topped by Frank Osen’s barb that the most
enthusiastic greeting Obama’s gotten lately was from a salmon. Courtney
also tagged The Gulf of Mexico just called Bobby Jindal and told him
it’s running out of sharks to jump (Phil Frankenfeld) ; that Chris
Christie “can fill an arena” (Warren Tanabe): that Trump’s favorite part
of the Bible was Chapter 11 (Kevin Dopart); that when Chuck Talks,
people listen — to George Stephanopoulos (Doug Frank); and that Kim
Davis was not so much Joan of Arc as George Wallace — only not as cute
(Duncan Stevens).
*A BERRA BOOBOO — AND THE INVITE’S TAKE*
In its haste to get out the news about the death of Yogi Berra last
night, the Associated Press sent off a wire with the headline “New York
Yankees Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Bear has died. He was 90.” Several
publications put it right up on their websites. Including, at 2:40 a.m.,
The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, this week the Ink of the Day will feature entries from our
Week 271 “Berra-ism” contest (1998). You do need a Facebook account to
see it. Unless you follow me on Twitter — hey, there’s a reason right
there to set up the account. I’m at @patmyersTWP
.