Style Conversational Week 1143: Our mug runneth over with parodies
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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
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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.