Style Conversational Week 1143: Our mug runneth over with parodies Add to list On my list Virginia state Senate candidate Carl Loser (rhymes with "poser") with his new Loser Mug. When he thanked me and sent this photo, I immediately asked how I could get his shirt. (Courtesy of Carl Loser) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // October 1, 2015 Maybe he was just not in the mood to think too hard; maybe he was angling for a present for his birthday tomorrow. In any case, when I sent the Deposed Czar of The Style Invitational my list of proposed Ask Backwards categories for Week 1143 , he did not, as is his custom, suggest replacing, oh, about 15 of them with 15 of his own. Instead he said, “I have nothing to add except maybe testicle instead of clavicle?” Okay, then he sent me a few more e-mails suggesting more revisions. But still, I’ll take it as validation. And I guess I’ll take the poor schmo out to lunch tomorrow. (I would also take out Chris Doyle, who contributed “Poutine on the Ritz,” “L’Oreal and Hardy” and “19 Ids and Counting,” but I’m not going to Ponder, Tex.) The Czar’s own first set of Ask Backwards categories, from Week 24 (August 1993): /Janet Reno’s shoes * Herbert Haft’s hair * To get to the other side * Lorena Bobbitt or Hermann Goering */ /Socks * Don’t ask, don’t tell * Michael Jackson’s face * The inventor of the urinary catheter * It’s the economy, stupid * Heidi Fleiss’s notebook * Just Do It * Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Madonna * Tax and spend * Because he didn’t inhale * Ooo-bop-a-loo-bop-a-loo-bop-boom * Marion Barry, Vaclav Havel and that guy in the Taster’s Choice ad/ And the top winners (yes, we had more runners-up back then, usually: the 1990s were not a budget-conscious time for big fat daily newspapers): Sixth Runner-Up: Answer: Socks . Question: Who has also been neutered at the White House? (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Fifth Runner-Up: A. To get to the other side. Q. Why did the chicken enter Dan Quayle’s ear? (Mark A. Hagenau, Bowie) Fourth Runner-Up: A. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Madonna. Q: Name two women whose IQ plus bust size equals 180. (Debby Prigal, Washington) Third Runner-Up: A.Herbert Haft’s hair . Q: What is the only element in the Haft family currently not parted? (Mary Lee Fox Roe, Mount Kisco, N.Y.) Second Runner-Up: A. Socks. Q. What do the Clintons hide when hungry Arkansas relatives show up at the White House? (Audrey Kovalak, Springfield) First Runner-Up: A. Lorena Bobbitt or Mahatma Gandhi. Q. Who are two people whose spouse had a big red dot somewhere on their body? (Joey Zarrow, Herndon) And the winner of the fuzzy moose bedroom slippers plus tickets to a Bowie Baysox game: A. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Madonna. Q. What do you get when you combine Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Madonna? (Jacob Weinstein, Washington) I didn’t have to give a link to remind people who Lorena Bobbitt was, right? The Great Bobbitt Bobbing had taken place in Manassas, Va., in the D.C. area, just a couple of months before this contest. But Lorena and her soon-to-be-ex, John, have continued to provide Invitational fodder ever since. One of my favorite entries ever doesn’t seem to exist online: In 2001 I judged a contest (as Auxiliary Czar) in which people chose a single panel from a Sunday comic strip and write new text for it. Tom Witte chose a panel from the family comic “For Better or for Worse,” in which the wife, Ellie, and husband John are eating dinner; Ellie is holding up a piece of sausage on her fork. In that stunned expression she often had, Ellie says: “I don’t know what it is, but I found it by the side of the road in Manassas.” *Once again, as I note in the directions:* I usually judge this contest by searching through the entries for all the questions for the first answer, selecting the ones I like for a short­list; then going to the second answer, etc. This helps me see duplications and compare similar ideas. But I very well could miss your entry if my search doesn’t land on it. So if you’re writing 10 different entries for, say, “19 Ids and Counting,” and I search for “counting,” I might miss Entries 2 through 10 if you don’t include the word “counting” before them. This is why God invented the copy/paste shortcuts of ctrl-c / ctrl=v. *THE ’RUMP ROAST CONTINUES: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1139 * The novelty of the Week 1139 contest was that there were 64 possible combinations, long form, short form, jokes, poems, songs, politics, shoes. But it was inevitable that most of the space in the results would be hogged by song parodies — both because of their length and because there are /always/ terrific entries. And just as inevitably, there will be excellent parodies that don’t get ink: They’re too similar to another parody, or they’re just one too many — we just can’t expect readers to get to the end of a 30-song list, especially because appreciating a parody really requires that you sing along with it (even if in your head), however long that takes; you can’t just eyeball it as you scan the page. Dave Silberstein’s “Everyone’s Drawn to the Loon” didn’t fail to get ink because it wasn’t good; it’s just that it wasn’t as good as the songs that did run. I was going to run just one verse, but the limitation Dave chose was to include all 26 letters of the alphabet, and they weren’t all in one verse. Here’s the first verse (with areally lovely melody , if you don’t know it): Rattles off nonsense designed to inflame, Crowds full of anger, eager to blame. Polls steadily rising since declaring in June -- Everyone’s drawn to the loon. Once again, my choices for the print page favored songs that I hoped the most readers would know, since even the cleverest parodies aren’t much fun to read if you don’t know the tune. Besides Mark Raffman’s winner and Nan Reiner’s and Frank Osen’s runners-up, the parodies appearing in the “fishwrap edition” (as Elden Carnahan refers to it) are Jon Gearhart’s on “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and Mae Scanlan’s on “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” — even though Mae’s two other inking entries are even better, especially the one on “Young at Heart.” *Speaking of Young at Heart: * Mae herself is certainly young at heart — and mind — when it comes to her humor and writing. But her corporeal, 84-year-old pumper has given her all sorts of hassles since the beginning of 2015, And just for the fun of taking on an even bigger challenge, Mae wrote these parodies — and several others! — between bouts of chemo for a misbeheaving pancreas. May the power of mirth and wit brighten her days as hers brightens ours. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that it was Mark Raffman who’d written this week’s Inkin’ Memorial-winning parody: not just because it was both flawlessly written and so freakin’ funny — “They do rapes! They do crimes! They drink beer with sliced-up limes!” — but because /he won’t stop using “Be Our Guest.” / First there was Week 1029, in 2013, and the contest was for song parodies that described particular movies, and Mark chose “Porky’s” : “See a chest! See a chest!/ Tops are coming off with zest! / We’re awaiting an R-rating/ When we show another breast!” That won Mark his third Inkin’ Memorial. And then, this past April, Mark had President Obama singing about Binyamin Netanyahu: (“He’s a pest! He’s a pest! With our atom talks he’s messed!”), and that was a runner-up. And now he racks up Bobble-Linc No. 10 (!!!), once again with the backing of composer Alan Menken and (unheard but important for the wit of the parody) Howard Ashman. *A LOSER SINCE THE DAY HE WAS BORN* Two weeks ago we gave away a first-runner-up prize (oh, yeah, that was to Mark Raffman, too) of a “Loser for Liberty” tote bag, courtesy of the Virginia state Senate campaign of Carl F. Loser of the Richmond area, who is perhaps the only current Libertarian candidate to have his owncampaign rap song . Richmonder Jeff Shirley procured a bag and sent it to me, and I e-mailed the Loser campaign to ask how Mr. Loser pronounced his name. The candidate got back to me himself, explaining that while it actually rhymes with “poser,” he doesn’t correct people who pronounce it our way “because I find that they remember the name better.” At first I didn’t explain why I was interested in the Loser campaign and paraphernalia, but I felt guilty and wrote back to fess up. And I told him I’d send him a Loser mug or T-shirt if he’d pose with it and send me a picture. To my great relief, Carl has a great sense of humor and was delighted with his swag. When he sent me the photo above, I immediately wrote back to ask, “How do I get one of your shirts?” I haven’t heard back. Meanwhile, while Mr. Loser lags slightly behind his District 10 Democratic opponent in fundraising, $679,000 to $4,648, we hold out hope that he’ll be able to continue pronouncing his name his own way come November. *COMING SOON: MEET THE PARENTHESES* While the monthly brunches, annual Flushies awards and holiday parties are among the niftiest aspects of the Loser Community, we’re a worldwide operation and so some of you are just never gonna meet these people in person. But who is this Doyle guy who keeps importing vats of ink to Ponder, Texas? Where did they get this (Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.) with all the songs and the silly-prize donations? Starting, I hope, next week, I’ll be instituting a Style Conversational section called “Meet the Parentheses,” in which one or two veteran Losers will introduce themselves in short-answer format. To start off, let’s feature people who are among the top 20 Losers this year in Elden Carnahan’s standings at nrars.org. You guys, please e-mail me responses to these questions. You can answer either straightforwardly or smart-alecky, but if you’re smart-alecky it has to be funny, not tiresome. You are funny people! You can do this. Name, age: Where you live: Your official loser anagram plus a couple of alternatives if you know some: What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? (This is where you can put stuff about your background, occupation, family or whatever you’d like to say. It doesn’t have to be monosyllabic but don’t write a whole page. Let’s say about 100 words.) How much ink do you have; how long have you been playing? What brought you to Loserdom? What are two favorite entries you’d like to share? What’s an example of something you do (or an anecdote about something you’ve done) that confirms your Loserosity? (Another opportunity to be funny and creative.) Also, please send as an attachment a photo of at least 500Kb resolution. Don’t worry, I won’t plaster it across the top of the page unless it’s truly marvelous; a regular photo will go midway down the left side of the page, at a decorous size. If there’s some information you really don’t want people to know, such as your age, prior convictions, etc., no biggie. I was going to start with Ye Olde Chris Doyle, but Chris does make the case that I’ve written about him many times already, as when he scored his 1,500th blot of ink (he’s now up to 1,718). So: the rest of you Top 20s. Send them to pat.myers@washpost.com.