Style Conversational Week 1173: The Steal Invitational
A Loser gets a book as a present — and finds his own Invite entries
inside
Actually, they are genuine Style Invitational entries (from 1999), as
are lists on five other pages of this ripoff book. Those first two are
by Malcolm Fleschner — who’d been given this book as a gift. The others
are by Chuck Smith, Russell Beland and Jennifer Hart.
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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April 28, 2016
Happy May, folks. If you’re on the Empress’s email list (i.e., if you
get a notice on Thursdays when The Style Invitational goes online), then
within a few days you’ll be getting an invitation to the 22nd annual
Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual awards/ lunch/ songfest. This
year’s festivities — taking place Saturday afternoon, May 21 — will be a
potluck in the neatest venue yet: RK Acres, the home/mini-farm of Loser
Robin Diallo in Lothian, Md., in southern Anne Arundel County. And so in
addition to the usual Loser-schmoozing, toilet paper roll-awarding,
parody-singing, and of course hearty eating, you and your offspring are
invited to pet the horses, miniature pony, baby goats, and even llamas.
And not pet but gaze upon various birds including a peacock.
I’ve just seen the lyrics to one of the song parodies penned by Loser
Nan Reiner — who’s coming up from Florida for the festivities -- and
they’re fabulous. (If you’d like to join an ad hoc OK Chorale during the
afternoon, let me know.) Robin would like us to keep the number of
guests to about 60 (plus a few stray kids), so be sure to RSVP quickly
once you get the invitation; we’d love to see not just the Loser Event
regulars, but also Losers from the Invite’s early years, as well as
those who’ll be meeting their fellow Losers for the first time. You
don’t even have to have earned ink.
(If you’re not on the mailing list, contact me at pat.myers@washpost.com
and I’ll make sure you get an invitation.)
THE STEAL INVITATIONAL
Here’s a letter that I’m drafting up to send to the publishing house
Zest Books. (Or perhaps The Post’s legal department would rather send
something. We’ll see:)
/Dear Zesters: /
Hey, llosers! Robin Diallo’s llamas will welcome you personally at this
year’s Flushies awards potluck May 21 — watch for the email invitation.
(Courtesy of Robin Diallo)
/I run a contest called The Style Invitational. It’s the humor/wordplay
contest that has appeared weekly in The Washington Post since 1993;
we’re currently on Week 1172. /
/This week I heard from a longtime Style Invitational contestant in
California named Malcolm Fleschner. Knowing his fondness for wordplay,
Malcolm’s in-laws had given him The Weird World of Words
by
Mitchell Symons and published by Zest in 2015./
/Malcolm paged at random through the various tidbits about words and
expressions – and then did a double take: On Page 131, he saw the
headline “Genuine Metaphors Taken From English Essays” – followed by two
pages of clever similes … but not from English essays: They were
prize-winning entries (by adults) in two different Washington Post Style
Invitational contests, from 1995
and 1999.
And the first one – the devilishly funny, perfectly crafted joke about
“my brother Phil” – was by Malcolm himself. And what do you know – so
was the second one. With no credit, of course. /
/Malcolm continued to page through the book – and how about that: On
Pages 46 and 47 was a two-page list of “Wonderful New Words.” The
introductory paragraph reads: /
/“Every year, The Washington Post holds a neologism contest, in which
readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words. The
2013 winners were:” /
/What followed was a list of sometimes verbatim, sometimes tinkered-with
entries lifted from Week 266 (1998), with no credit to their authors,
and certainly no permission from The Post to run them. (Here are the
original results;
one of the words, “Frisbeetarianism,” is not from The Style
Invitational; I believe it’s from a George Carlin routine.)/
/But nooo, Mitchell Symons doesn’t stop there! Turn the page to Pages 48
and 49 and we have this: /
/“The Washington Post also asked readers to take any word from the
dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and
supply a new definition. Here were 2013’s winners:” /
/Here, what follows are two pages of entries – with some very bad
additions – from Style Invitational Week 278
(1998),
also without any credit to their authors or, of course, permission. The
bad additions are words like “caterpallor” and “decafalon,” which, of
course, are not one-letter changes from “caterpillar” and “decathlon.”
“Bozone” was lifted from a 1987 Washington Post feature story, “Lost in
the Bozone.” /
/Actually, Mitchell Symons is not by far the first person to use these
particular lists of entries; in fact, they’ve been circulated by e-mail
and the Internet just about as long as there have been e-mail and the
Internet (I’m sure that’s where he saw them, not bothering to ask if he
could include them in a commercial book). And when I see someone post
one of these lists on Facebook or on a little blog, I’ll often follow up
to clarify where/ /these jokes came from, that they’re not really by
high school students, or whatever. I even wrote a story in The Post
about it, in conjunction with The Style Invitational’s 20th anniversary
in 2013. /
/But you know, it really takes it to a whole new level of shamelessness
to steal this work and put it into a book that’s put up for sale. And
that the “author” even says that two of the lists are from The
Washington Post – and hadn’t asked The Post for permission to print
them! If he had, he would have been quickly set straight about when they
had run, what was and wasn’t from The Post, and what didn’t even match
the contest description. /
---
What’s not in the letter is what I think Zest Books should do to make
things right; I’m leaving that to The Post’s lawyers. But this sort of
thing just steams me: You can’t just lift someone else’s published work
and publish it yourself without permission, even if you (kind of) say
where it came from. And while there’s not really a difference legally,
it’s one thing to share a list of Invite jokes on your Facebook page,
and another to put it in a book that you’re selling.
The thing is: If Mitchell Symons had called The Post and asked if he
could include some of our neologisms , I would have let him! In fact,
another author of a similar book a few years ago (I’m kicking myself
because I forget all the details, including the author’s name and the
title of the book) got hold of me and asked for permission to use one of
these lists. After we talked, she ended up quoting entries from several
Invitational neologism contests — all of them crediting the contestants
who’d written them. She also explained to readers what the Invitational
was and included our Web address.
I’m all for sharing the Invite far and wide — but only with proper
credit, and with recognition of the writers. So we’ll see what Legal says.
PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD NAME: THE WEEK 1173 CONTEST
In huge opposition to the Week 1169 acrostics whose results run today,
here’s a super-easy contest that should be fun for readers as well. I
know it will, in fact, because it was fun last time. I’d actually worked
up this contest having forgotten we’d done it seven years ago; I’d
actually narrowed it to food names after the Long-Deposed Czar of The
Style Invitational suggested I do a contest in which you change the
brand of /any/ product. I went ahead with it anyway because in the long
list of examples I’d already worked up, none of them duplicated any of
the many inking entries of Week 841.
Here are the results of that contest from 2009. They’re not otherwise
online on washingtonpost.com, but they appear as a text file on Elden
Carnahan’s Master Contest List
.
Here they are in a format that’s slightly easier to read. Note that both
brand names and generic types of food were used — and we’ll do that
again this year.
*Report from Week 841,* in which we asked you to alter slightly the name
of a food or dish and describe the result: Those who tend to find the
Invite a bit too abstruse and highbrow get a break this week. A lot of
the names submitted (often by many people) were funny in a juvenile way
but gained nothing from their descriptions. That menu includes such
specials as Yucky Charms, Drool Whip, Slime-Jims, Shredded What, Shrimp
Skimpy, Bad Thai, Bananas Fester, flunk steak, meat loathe, buffalo
wangs and fatzo ball soup. For this they went to graduate school, a lot
of these people.
*The winner of the Inker:* Jumbo lump carb cakes: Also known as
doughnuts. (Dave Zarrow, Reston)
*2,* the winner of “The Pop-Up Book of Celebrity Meltdowns”: Reader’s
Digest Condensed Milk: When you’re yearning for something white and
treacly. (Larry Yungk, Arlington)
*3.* Cheaties: Breakfast of Champions With Asterisks. (Mark Richardson,
Washington)
*4.* Steak Tata: Raw ground udders. (Tom Murphy, Bowie)
*Fare Too Middling: Honorable Mentions*
Notdog: Gourmet North Korean sausage. (Kevin Dopart, Washington; Peter
Jenkins, Bethesda)
Seven-Lawyer Dip: Chips sold separately. Not intended for intravenous
use. Void where prohibited by law. Provided “as is” without any warranty
of any kind, expressed or implied . . . (Pam Sweeney, St. Paul, Minn.)
Pol Pot Pie: A low-cal Cambodian dish. Serves hundreds. (Rick Haynes,
Potomac)
Chucky Charms: The cereal that’s magically malicious! (Judy Blanchard,
Novi, Mich.)
Offalafel: A paste of chickpeas and pancreases. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.)
Bunt cake: Made from a light, soft batter. (Kevin Dopart)
Chick in de Van: KFC to go. (Judy Blanchard)
Sole food: Cobbler. (Ron Nessen, Bethesda)
Bean crud: Tofu under a more honest name. (John Shea, Lansdowne, Pa.)
Pecking Duck: Poultry that’s perhaps a little undercooked . . . (Sneha
Kannan, Cambridge, Mass.)
Moo Goo Bed Pan: The orderlies switched the trays again! (Larry Meyer,
Washington, Va., a First Offender)
Egg Phew Young: A summer dish traditionally made from Easter eggs
discovered months later. (Kerry Humphrey, Woodbridge)
Wussabi: Really mild horseradish paste. (May Jampathom, Oakhurst, N.J.)
Shiksabob: Pork, shrimp and cheese on a skewer. (Judy Blanchard)
Margarrhea: Tequila mixed with Triple Sec and prune juice. (Dion Black,
Washington)
Prime Ribbon: The diet roast beef platter. (Carolyn Eskew, Leesburg, a
First Offender)
Spleenda: No-cal giblet substitute. (Judy Blanchard)
Coquilles Saint Joan: Flambeed scallops. (Jane Pacelli, Annandale)
Stir-fly: A popular meal in North Korea. (Rick Haynes)
Dulce de Lecher: Hooters’ new dessert item. (Ed Gordon, Georgetown, Tex.)
Belgian Awfuls: A phlegmish dish, similar to Crappes Suzettes. (Michael
Fransella, Arlington)
Half-Baked Alaska: A crusty, sweet, insubstantial traditional dish that
removes itself prematurely from intense heat. (Mike Gips, Bethesda)
Porn Flakes: With a surprise in every box. (Jeff Seigle, Vienna)
Mike Like’n Ike: That famous fruity flavor is coming out in new rainbow
colors (not available in all states). (Craig Dykstra, Centreville)
Fellini Alfredo: Pasta with dream sauce. (Rick Haynes)
Faux gras: Spam. (Patrick Mattimore, Gex, France)
Hostess Hos: A guilty pleasure. (Craig Dykstra)
Kid Knee Pie: One of Jeffrey Dahmer’s favorite desserts. (Tom Witte,
Montgomery Village)
Prize Nobel Peas: Grown in the White House garden. You can pick them
even before they’re ripe. (Dan Ward, Springfield, a First Offender)
Lemon harangue pie: “You didn’t beat the egg whites long enough, and the
oven’s too hot, and you’re slopping the filling out the sides . . .”
(Lois Douthitt, Arlington)
Limbaugher cheese: So vile you just listen to a wedge of it and gag. (G.
Smith, New York)
Honeycrips: Apples the whole gang will enjoy. (Peter Metrinko, Gainesville)
BACKRONUMBS: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1169
Well, that was a hard one. Making an acrostic, or “backronym,” from the
full title of a book, movie, etc. — describing it in a phrase or
sentence whose words began with each letter of the title — produced a
lot of entries for which the best I could say was “Well, that does spell
out the title.” (Some, such as at least two entries that spelled out
“Ghandi,” didn’t reach even that standard.)
But several dozen of you did manage to produce clever acrostics — and
some of them were even funny. It just proved to be more of an “ooh,
clever” contest than a “bwahahaha” one.
This week’s Losers’ Circle includes some relatively unusual names,
Invite-wise: It’s only the 10th ink for Kurt Stahl of Frederick, Md. —
but his plea to author George R.R. Martin to get another “Game of
Thrones” book done already is his second win: In 2012 Kurt won an Inker,
the predecessor of the Inkin’ Memorial, with this entry for Week 959, a
contest to move a TV show to a different channel: “ ‘The Amazing Race’
moves to Fox News and becomes a show that chronicles the many
adversities white people have overcome throughout history.”
Our Glasgow, Scotland, Loser Bureau, consisting of Stephen Gold, blots
up Ink No. 56 (and 57) this week — not to mention a Number Two Pencil
complete with a blob of plastic poo on its eraser end — with his
acrostic on “Psycho,” the best of a veritable shower of “Psycho”
entries. Stephen also got ink with his zippy description of “The Ten
Commandments” that, like Kurt’s and like Hildy Zampella’s third-place
entry, was one of the few long-title acrostics that weren’t a slog to read.
Hildy’s vision for a “Hamilton”-style “Marriage of Figaro” is just her
third blot of ink — and the first “above the fold,” but she also scored
last week in the two-items-from-a-list contest. Hildy gets her choice of
Loser mugs or a vintage Loser T-shirt. And rounding out the ATF agents
is regular denizen Jon Gearhart, who scores his fifth runner-up prize
and his 62nd blot of ink overall. (Huh, I hadn’t realized till just now
that Jon is still on the Losers’ “Cantinkerous”
list — the most frequently
inking Losers who’ve never won a contest; he’s in fifth place, well
behind 85 Inks and Barely Counting Kyle Hendrickson.)
In addition to the people who based their entries on a misspelled title,
some other people misunderstood what we were asking for: Instead of
using each letter of the work’s title, these people came up with words
matching only the first letters of the title, like “The History Boys”:
“Teaching homosexual broadmindedness.”
And then there was one that I almost let slip in: RAY: Rhythm and Use.
(Tom Witte) That would have been a uge mistake.
Welp, it’s time to get cracking on those 3,900 names — results next
week. So watch for that Flushies invitation — hope to see you there on
May 21.