Style Conversational Week 1170: Rerun for the Roses
The Style Invitational Empress on this year’s foal name contest —
and what was that winner with rabbits and backpacks?
Kentucky Derby contenders Mohaymen, left, and Nyquist (seen here near
the end of the Florida Derby; Nyquist won) may be tough “breeding”
challenges in this week’s Style Invitational. (Matthew Stockman/Getty
Images)
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
Email //
Bio //
Follow //
April 7, 2016
Yay, it’s horse name week! If Week 1170 is
much like the 21 previous years of Style Invitational foal-“breeding”
contests, I’ll be facing a lot of work but very little worry — because
the results are always fabulously clever. In fact, even the work part
has become far easier now that Loser Jonathan Hardis, for the second
year, will be sorting the entries for me with a computer program he
devised that spares me from having to look at each entry twice: I used
to search through thousands of entries, over and over, to find those
that bred Horse No. 1with Horse 2, Horse 1 with Horse 3, down to Horse
100 — and then ended checking up Horses 15 and 42 and 85 (and every one
between) with Horses 1, 2, 3, etc. Now I can start looking at each new
horse and instantly skip over the matches I’ve already seen.
If you’ve entered this contest before — and thousands of Losers have
over the years — you probably know the drill, and what we’re looking
for. If you’re new ... well, I was going to write up a big description
of the process, the strategy, etc. — but why reinvent the horseshoe?
Just take a look at my Style Conversational for Week 1118
, which was last year’s horse contest.
As I’ve been doing ever since I’ve limited the list of horses to 100
names rather than the some 400 in the full list, I’ve included the
horses who top most prognosticators’ lists of Kentucky Derby favorites
(though they inevitably will change over the next four weeks) — just
because it’s more fun to watch the race and root for “our” horses among
the 20 starters. And this year, some of those horses have what you could
charitably call “challenging” names for this contest — chief among them
the undefeated Nyquist and the previously undefeated Mohaymen, whom
Nyquist just trounced in last weekend’s Florida Derby. I’m hopeful that
some enterprising Loser will come up with some clever offspring for at
least one of them.
The idea for our horse contest came from Loser and serious horse player
Mike Hammer back in 1994. He noted that often, racehorses’ names reflect
those of their parents, or at least their sires: War Admiral was a son
of Man o’ War; Seabiscuit was the son of Hard Tack, who was the son of
Man o’ War. Sometimes a horse’s owner acknowledges that a foal also has
a mother, and incorporates the dam’s name as well; this year’s nominee
Awesome Speed is the product of the love match between Awesome Again and
Speedy Escape.
Okay, that wasn’t exactly clever — but that’s what /you’re/ here for.
You could see the 1,000-some names we’ve given ink to over the past 21
years — not to mention those from the spinoff “grandfoal” contests — by
searching down Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List
for “foal,” then clicking on the link for the results a few contests
later. Or just take a little easy inspiration from these randomly chosen
gems from the past decade. And they’re all honorable mentions rather
than “above the fold”; the bar is high in this contest, every year.
Achilles of Troy x Tug o’War = Heel and Tow (Mark Eckenwiler, 2006)
Clued In x Reporting for Duty = Colonel Mustered (Pam Sweeney, 2007)
Daddy Rabbit x Revenge Is Sweet = Lucky Human’s Foot (Andrew Hoenig, 2008)
Rocket to the Moon x Gluteus Maximus = Tang N Cheek (Barry Koch, 2009)
Beethoven x Lethal Combination = OD to Joy (Steve Price, 2010)
Major Art x Humble and Hungry = Art Major (David Smith, Barbara Turner,
2011)
Boat Trip x Holy Highway = Rowed to Damascus (Jonathan Paul, 2012)
Now and Then x Python = Intermittent Viper (Jeff Contompasis, 2013)
Scotland x Harpoon = Plaid the Impaler (Roy Ashley, 2014)
Tough Customer x Punctuate = Tough, Customer! (Mark Richardson, 2015)
*ASKMASTERS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1166*
/(*Non-inking headline by Tom Witte) /
As with the ponies, our perennial Questionable Journalism contest — in
which you quote a sentence from The Post and write a question that (in a
sillier or snarkier world) it could answer — always produces more great
material than I’ll be able to share. This week’s results
are
as funny as always, with a healthy mix of the topical and the timeless.
For this contest, which I’ve judged at least 10 times, I often like
“answers” whose real context is clear — because it makes the twist to a
new context clear as well; if it’s a big change in meanings, that’s
going to enhance the humor. For example, Jeff Contompasis’s quote about
the shower doors is obviously from some dry ol’ home care advice column
— which makes you laugh out loud when Jeff turns it into a story of
unrequited love (or at least “love”). And among the “above the fold”
winners this week, Brendan Beary’s “community is anticipated to be sold
out” was clearly froma real estate story,
and Mark Raffman’s wordplay on “ground game in South Florida” was
playing off either an unrelated campaign story or one about football (it
was indeed about Marco Rubio
).
But sometimes, even a sentence for which you have no idea of the
original context can fuel a great joke — as in this week’s winner by
John Hutchins, who used a sentence no one else did. And what is it
really that “carries reports about such topics as rabbit farming and
domestically made school backpacks”? Not the product-placement State of
the Union address, but a North Korean government website
that also mentioned that the DPRK could take out Manhattan with a
hydrogen bomb.
Here are some more sources of potentially puzzling sentences.
/A. Sometimes their bottom halves were nearly the full width of the
runway./ — Not obese pilots (Kimberly Baer) but a fashion show featuring
the weird designs of Rei Kawakubo
/A. “I just grayed out or blacked out a little bit.” /— Not a minstrel
show but University of Virginia basketball coach collapsed during a game
/A. When the angry words darted over my head as I worked on my coloring
book, I barely heard them./ — Possibly not really Ben Carson at the
debate (Frank Osen) but the writer remembers her parents fighting when
she was a child
/A. Virginia was a little bit quicker, a little bit sharper, and a
little bit more athletic./ — Not a perky intern (First Offender Jim
McCormack) but UVA beats Miami in basketball
// /A. Plus, they have a food source with the Potomac River nearby./ —
Not Mitch McConnell’s suggestions for where D.C.’s poor should eat
without food stamps (Chris Doyle), but a pair of ravens seen nesting in
D.C.
/A. A reporter for the Midland Reporter-Telegram described the spectacle
as “a spaghetti of writhing angry reptiles” that emanates “a strange
dense smell with an evil vomit-like edge to it.”/ — Not a description of
the local bar association luncheon (Mark Raffman, with another
self-deprecating lawyer joke) but of a rattlesnake roundup in Texas
// /(This sentence, as well as others from the same article, was used
for numerous entries, several of them about Trump rallies and GOP
debates — like Frank Osen’s about “the dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum
reverberating all around you”)./
// /A. It is very messy to clean them out./ — Not the clients of divorce
lawyers (another Raffman joke) but Heloise on bagless vacuum cleaners
/A. Both are repugnant, both dangerous and both deserving of the most
unreserved condemnation. /— Not the opinion of a stripper’s breasts by a
hypocritical clergyman (Mae Scanlan) but Charles Krauthammer on both the
hecklers at Trump rallies and the menacing behavior of the Trump camp
/A. Do you have houseplants? You can sprinkle some in them./ — Not handy
toilet substitutes (Jeff Shirley) but uses for coffee grounds
/A. Other requests included chocolate mousse, berries and a three-foot
piece of bacon. — /Not suggested words for poop (Ann Martin) but some
second-graders’ favorite birthday foods
/A. I wanted to give you the feeling of walking through a garden when
all the flowers start to bloom. — /Not explaining why I released a bunch
of bees at your wedding (Dave Prevar) but the White House florist about
a state dinner
/A. We don’t think of the organ as an intimate instrument./ — Not the
views of polygamist wives (Kate Cross) but, duh,an article about an
organist
// /A. “The swivel feature on this model is a nice bonus.”/ — Not
billionaires choosing which candidate to buy (Jesse Frankovich) but a
designer talking about a chair for a child’s room
/A. Today, that hill is a mountain. /— Not the result of Kim
Kardashian’s surgery (William Kennard) but theuphill battle to sell a
certain very costly drug
/A. Just think about how clapboard siding works./ — Not a trick “to
delay, y’know, happy endings” (Brendan Beary) but, well, how clapboard
siding works.
While all three runners-up this week are frequent visitors to the
Losers’ Circle, Inkin’ Memorial winner John Hutchins (of the State of
the Union with the backpacks) got his first blot of Invite ink just four
weeks ago, and his second last week. John’s based in the D.C. area,
which makes me wonder where he’s been all these years. Ditto for newbie
Kimberly Baer, who was a First Offender just last week with “bumpkin
pie” and submitted several inkworthy entries for this contest as well.
In announcing this contest, I had specifically stated that headlines
were off limits as sentences — because we have another perennial contest
for that, “Mess With Our Heads.” Which is the only reason this one gets
no ink for Duncan Stevens:
/A. Wizards fail to heed advice, still pull out win /
Q. Can you summarize the plot of every Harry Potter book?
*LOSERS ON THE RIVER: NEXT BRUNCH, ANNAPOLIS, APRIL 17*
The brunch buffet at Buddy’s Crabs and Ribs, right near the Annapolis
City Dock, is once again the site of a Loser Brunch. I don’t think I can
make this one, but I’ve been there several times and it’s a friendly
place in a historic district that’s great for a sightseeing walk
afterward. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Loser website, NRARS.org
(click on “Our Social Engorgements”).
And do write in — in blood, please — Saturday afternoon, May 21, on your
calendar for the Flushies, the Loser Community’s (but open to all)
annual “banquet,” this year a potluck at the little farmy place of Loser
Robin Diallo in Lothian, Md., about 15 miles south of Annapolis. And you
can bring the family — there are not just horses to pet, but baby goats
as well. And Elden Carnahan. As always, there will be awards for Loser
milestones; song parodies written for the occasion; and plenty of time
to meet the Losers whose work you’ve always admired. And Elden Carnahan.
The Losers will also be assembling a team of participants for theannual
Post Hunt extravaganza
the next day — and for the first time ever, it’ll be held indoors, at
the Washington Convention Center. We’ve come very close to winning!