Style Conversational Week 1169: Beary picking, and a too-early goodbye
Longtime Loser Jan Verrey, in one of the tinfoil hats she made for
trivia parties. A friend remembers complimenting Jan on her “Elizabeth
Taylor eyes”; Jan’s reply: “Bite me.” Jan died this week; see below.
(Eileen Shankle)
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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March 31, 2016
(Click here to skip down <#report> to the reminiscences about the late
Jan Verrey)
*// *In an even more brazen than usual exploitation of Loser loyalty,
I’ve invited each of the five people who’ve scored 1,000 blots of ink to
judge a Style Invitational contest in commemoration of that big K. The
first Loser to reach 1,000 was Russell Beland in 2006, and I think it
was his own idea that judging Week 664
would
be a fitting reward. Chris Doyle and Tom Witte inexplicably declined the
fabulous opportunity, for no monetary compensation, to read through more
than a thousand pathetic attempts at humor to tweeze out a few dozen
that were less so. But in January 2014 Kevin Dopart jumped at the chance
to — for the first time since he began Inviting in the fall of 2005
—/not/ enter the contest, but to judge it: it was his idea in Week 1055
to
ask for neologisms in which K’s were added to or subsituting for the
letters in an existing word.
I was mildly surprised that Brendan was interested in judging Week 1165
, and he agreed to it as soon as I asked. And
it was his own suggestion to follow Kevin’s lead and do a neologism
contest with B’s instead of K’s (his first idea was to require BB’s but
decided that was too limiting).
As I note inthe introduction to today’s results
,
I sent Brendan a list of all 1,200 or so entries, with no clue who’d
written what — it’s the same type of list that I use myself every week.
It wasn’t until the Invite was posted online today that he got to see
who’ll be friending and unfriending him on Facebook.
I asked Brendan to share some thoughts on this week’s entries and on
judging the contest in general. (I see that he encountered a lot of what
I term screediness.)
“First I want to say I’m a little disappointed.
“Knowing that I’d be judging the contest, I spent all of about five
minutes actually thinking about it: What would be the commonly repeated
entries that /tout le mobbe /would all submit, with varying degrees of
cleverness/incoherence in the definitions?
“Clearly, there’d be ‘bonerous’ (painfully, challengingly hard),
‘bestes’ (a man’s very, very closest friends), ‘banal sex’ (I didn’t
think of a definition for that one, so sue me), ‘the Pubic Wars’
(ditto), and more just like them, right? If I drummed up those in five
minutes, then other Losers –some with well-deserved reputations for
funnily filthily edgy neologisms – would get those and more with a week
to work on it…
“ …er, not so much. The four listed above were all goose-eggs.
“Sure, there were plenty of good entries – clever constructions I’d have
never come up with, nicely wry and sly definitions that worked on
multiple levels, and a few laugh-out-loud ones. (And while it didn’t
win, worthy of special note is [Gary Crockett’s] “In the beginning, Bob
created the heavens and the earth.” It’s goofy, it’s just a little
itsy-bit trespassing the contest instructions to “change a word, phrase
or name” (in the same way that Putin is just a little bit trespassing in
Ukraine (or Syria (or your mama))), but sometimes audacity needs to be
rewarded.)
“And yes, there were repeats: about a skazillion riffs on ‘Bashington,’
Tolkien’s lost classic ‘The Bobbit,’ ‘Billary,’ ‘babeball,’ ‘Faceboob,’
and a few others, but so many were depressingly… tame. Tepid. Torpid.
Where was the edginess? Were we becoming… respectable? Conventional?
Banal (in the non-edgy sense of the word, that is)?
“And while we’re on or near the topic of ‘Billary,’ let’s talk about the
other elephants and asses in the room. Yes, we’re all suffering election
fatigue over a campaign that’s been going on for three years and is
going to seem like another three years over the next seven months. But
... still: Oy. Oy and double-oy. So much anger and rant and screed in
some of these entries – sure, trying for topical humor is a good idea,
but just dropping a ‘b’ seemingly at random into the names of this
candidate and that candidate (and especially THAT candidate, if you take
my meaning), and launching into a diatribe -- this is supposed to be a
humor contest, remember? Unless you’re Lewis Black, anger plus rant plus
screed doesn’t equal funny! Lighten the buck up!
“(It was at about the time when I reached this mental state while
reading the list, that I posted that thingie on the Style Invitational
Devotees page about Mr. Bezos not paying Pat
enough for doing this job. If I had to try and face this task week in
and week out, and be sociable, and welcome newcomers, my tiara-topped
head would’ve been in the oven long ago. She must be on some
reeeeeaaaally good meds, and there’s no way they can be cheap. (Well,
yes there is: We could live in a first-world country with a sensible
health-care system. But work with me here.))
“Well, before I turn into Mr. Crankypants here, I’ll shift gears here
and talk numbers . Beautiful, bland, non-judgmental numbers.
“All told, there were approximately 1,200 entries for the contest – not
a yuge amount, but probably more than would’ve yielded from a poetry
contest, which Pat had first suggested. And since they’re quick little
bada-boom-bada-bing one-liners, I got to dole out 50 inks, which was the
main reason I preferred a contest like this – I don’t expect to get
another chance like this (unless I somehow fall out of Pat’s favor and
she needs to punish me). So as long as Daddy’s handing out the candy,
he’s gonna dish out LOTS.
“So, knocking out the skazillion repetitive ones, and doing a first
cull, the initial 1,200 or so was cut down to about 160. And yes, /of
course / all of yours survived the cut; in fact, I actually had that one
of yours – you know the one I mean – making it into the paper, but you
know Pat with that whole column-inches thing, as if the paper were a
tangible physical object – I mean, really. So she’s the one who cut it;
I thought it was hilarious. A nice, nothing-to-be-ashamed-of, 52nd-place
hilarious. Maybe 53rd.
“All in all, it was a fun experience, but maybe not as much fun as I
thought it would be. Were it not an election year, maybe it would’ve
been great fun – a huge, madcap laff riot of sublime immaturity,
resulting in episodes of coffee laughed out noses onto expensive
electronics; and underwear, trousers, skirts, and seat cushions ruined
from laughter-induced bladder failure. I know you can do it. Leave your
rants at the door, and I’m sure you have it in you.
“But I still just can’t believe that no one came up with ‘bonerous.’ ”
----
Given that most of the Usual Suspects got ink from Brendan this week, I
don’t think it’s much more than coincidence that this week’s “above the
fold” entries are all by people who aren’t (yet) regular denizens of the
Losers’ Circle. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial and 16th ink overall from
Ivars Kuskevics (it’s Latvian), who’s also scored two runners-up since
he started Inviting in Week 1001. We’re still waiting to meet Ivars in
person; hopefully he can make it to the Flushies on May 21.
And Lee Graham, Brendan’s second-place finisher with “barbinger,” got
his Fir Stink for his first ink just three weeks ago for his Onion-style
headline “Trump To Drop Presidential Bid After Encounter With Younger,
Prettier Country.” Lee now wins the Sorry, the insult to Indian culture
commissioned by the Empress and created by Barbara Turner from several
old Loser T-shirts. We /really/ want to meet Lee at the Flushies,
wearing the Sorry. For one thing, we don’t know if Lee is a Mr. or a Ms.
We hope that a Loser Mug makes it intact to Michael Rolfe in South
Africa as he scores his fifth blot of ink and his first above the fold
(or maybe he’ll opt for a vintage Loser T-shirt, which might not shatter
into pieces in transit), while David Silberstein ups his ATF yield to a
win and two runners-up in just 14 blots of ink — an impressive ratio.
What Doug Dug: The faves this week of ace copy editor Doug Norwood
included all the top winners plus “the Pabst is prologue” (Gary
Crockett), “Borsche” (Christopher Lamora, Lela Martin) and
“ne’er-do-bell” (Chris Doyle).
Sad news about one of our funniest Losers:
*WELL, THAT BITES: JAN VERREY, 1944-2016*
She had just 16 blots of Style Invitational ink, but Jan Verrey left a
large and indelible mark on the Loser Community — one we’ll always
treasure — with the great sense of humor, sharp wit, salty language and
generous heart that she shared at Loser events and with personal friends
among us.
A picture of Jan barking out “bite me!” should appear in Webster’s in
the entry for “feisty.” A lifelong D.C. area resident, a member of Sen.
Ted Kennedy’s staff, and for many years a freelance transcriptionist,
Jan died Monday night of congestive heart failure at a hospital near her
Alexandria, Va., home, just past her 72nd birthday; she’d had health
problems for some time. A public funeral is not planned, but a memorial
service may be held later this spring.
Jan’s ink, which dates mostly from the Invite’s first decade, included
this one for stupid questions — “What does the A in UVA stand for?” —
and one for ideas for absurd art installations: “Five million yards of
gold lamé are used to sew an evening gown for the J. Edgar Hoover
Building.”
I visited Jan’s apartment several times for New Year’s parties, and rode
to a Loser party with her in Jan’s bright purple PT Cruiser that looked
like an eggplant on wheels. (We got lost.) I heard about her passing on
Facebook, where there were many posts on her page
from friends who knew her from a
community similar in many ways to the Losers: They’re AOL Triviots,
veterans of chat rooms focusing on trivia games, some of which date back
to the days of dial-up. Like the Losers, the Triviots also put on
in-person social events, and Jan played host to several “Capital Bashes”
— at which the making and wearing of tinfoil hats (like the one in the
photo above) was a perennial activity. I asked the friends and relatives
who’d posted on Jan’s page if they’d share some reminiscences for the
Conversational, and several wrote to me with stories that made me laugh
out loud. Here are just a few.
*From longtime friend Amy Bobchek (her subject line read “best story
ever”): *
I’ve often repeated this story she once shared with me:
For her 16th birthday, her dad gave Jan a cherry-red Pontiac GTO
convertible. One summer evening, with her boyfriend and a half-smoked
bag of pot in the car, she took the GTO joyriding on the George
Washington Parkway. She said, “We were going so fast I could feel the
G-force making my cheeks ripple.” When they were inevitably pulled over
— and they quickly ate the remainder of the, er, evidence — the police
officer asked how fast she thought she was going. Although she knew it
was over 90 mph, she said, “I don’t know…maybe 60? 65?” The officer
looked at her quizzically and said, “Miss, you were going /eleven/ miles
per hour.”
I’ll miss Jan for the rest of my life.
*From longtime Loser Sandra Hull:* So many of Jan’s stories were great
because of the way she told them. Animated, punctuated by funny voices
and gestures, always with an underlying tone of amusement over how
absurd life is. She was a born storyteller.
The one I remembered that made me laugh out loud yesterday morning as I
brushed my teeth and nearly aspirated some Sensodyne toothpaste was
about how she was in an emergency room for something or other that
required a pelvic exam. During the procedure, it became clear to all the
attending personnel just how tense she was when there was a loud
cracking noise. She had broken the speculum. Not with her hands.
Aside from the obvious comedy and feat of strength that story conveys,
it also paints an accurate picture of Jan: vulnerable, yet stronger than
she knew. And not afraid to laugh at herself.
*From fellow Triviot Anna Priscilla: * Jan and I attended the Simon and
Garfunkel concert at the MCI Center in 2003 after dinner at Tony
Chang’s. We paid a lot for the tickets — I think $180 apiece — and Jan
really got into the concert, standing and singing along with a lot of
other people. The people behind us, however, grumbled for her to sit
down and be quiet. When I told her what they said, she said (in a bit of
a loud voice) that she paid a lot of money for her ticket and was going
to do what she damn well pleased.
*From Brooksanne Cline, who posted this on Facebook: * When I lost the
sight in my eye, It was obviously a very hard time for me. Jan sent me a
big can of Hershey chocolates, with a simple note that said BITE ME!
*From longtime From longtime Loser Tom Witte, writing from California,
where he’s on vacation: *Jan liked that I enjoyed eating and drinking a
lot, like her. I think she had one Loser brunch at her apartment, but I
was also there for some smaller gatherings, and I also went out to
dinner with her once — one of those Argentinian all-the-meat-you-can-eat
places. Many years ago, when she was in the hospital recovering from a
heart attack, I looked at the wires and machinery on her and remarked
that she looked like a carburetor. Despite her invitation, I didn’t bite
her.
------
I’ll post something on the Style Invitational Devotees page as soon as I
hear about arrangements for a service. Thanks to all who shared their
memories of the unforgettable Jan.