Style Conversational Week 1178: We’re collecting!
The Style Invitational Empress talks about this week’s contest and
results
Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson, with the assistance of Latin teacher
Ann Martin, announces Loserfestium Pittsburghium at last month’s
Flushies. Details below. (Denise Sudell)
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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June 2, 2016
I got an email last night from one of the best Losers losing today, with
an idea for a new contest. I replied the way I often do: I immediately
showed him the results — very good ones — of that very same contest,
this one from 1994.
The Loser countered: “Just because something has been successfully done
in the past doesn’t mean that it can’t be completely screwed up when
tried again.”
I told him that we actually would be redoing an old contest this very
week. And: “Tell you what: If my apprehensions about that one prove
foolish, we’ll do this one too.”
So for Style Invitational Week 1178 , lay on
those funny ideas for collective nouns; see what else you can come up
with besides the 40 or so that already got ink. And you know, if there
aren’t enough to fill the page in four weeks — since they’re just one
line long, that’s quite likely — I betcha anything I’ll have some
political song parodies from Week 1177 (whose
deadline, remember, isn’t till June 13).
THE STEEL INVITATIONAL: LOSERFEST IN PITTSBURGH, AUG. 25-28 (NEW DATE!)
In last week’s Conversational , I mentioned that
Kyle Hendrickson had announced that he had once again donned the miter
of Loserfest Pope, reviving the tradtion of arranging a weekend-or-so
field trip for the Greater Loser Community. And this time he and his
cardinals have settled on Pittsburgh. While it’s not exactly Paris, I
went to Pittsburgh myself a few years back for a similar weekend with
relatives, and found plenty to do — especially in the eating department.
The schedule of activities is still in the early stages, so if you have
suggestions, you get to weigh in. Kyle has set up a neato
website,loserfest.org, (amazingly, that domain
was available!); click on the various categories and see the ideas for
activities and restaurants, and leave your name so you can stay in the
loop.
While he’s scheduling four days of Loserfest, you don’t have to stay the
whole time (I probably wouldn’t). The Megabus that leaves from Union
Station is a pleasant six-hour ride (it makes a stop at West Virginia
University) that leaves you off right downtown, and is incredibly
cheap; when I went, I paid something $10 one way and $20 the other.
There’s also Wi-Fi on the bus. So as long as there are at least a couple
of other people there with cars, you should be able to take the bus.
In past years, Loserfests have taken place in places as far-flung as Las
Vegas and as unflung as right in D.C. Obviously, the ones you can do in
a day trip tend to have more people. If history is a guide, this would
be a small group, fewer than a dozen people. But big fat fun.
*THE SIRE NEXT TIME: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1174*
Even with horse names like “Autocorrect: Nose,” “__itm_re” and
“¯\_(ツ)_/¯,” the inking entries from the Week 1170 foal-“breeding”
contest proved a fertile crop, producing — as our spinoff contest has
for a decade — a crop of funny, very clever grandfoals.
As usual, the entry pool was much more manageable this second time
around — about half the number of entries and entrants — with not as
many new Losers; we have just one First Offender this week. But there
were still a whole lot of entries, and I was still helped immeasurably
by the efforts of Jonathan Hardis, who once again used computo-magic
(plus some plain old free labor) to convert a raw document containing
hundreds of emails into an alphabetically sorted (by parent name),
anonymous list that I could eyeball without laboriously searching
through all the mixes of each name (twice) and culling a shortlist.
So after choosing this week’s winners, I was especially tickled to
discover that Jonathan’s “Kar Krashian” was among this week’s four
“above-the-fold” winners. It’s the 49th (and 50th!) ink for Jonathan,
who is steadily gaining on the 73-ink total of his sister and fellow MIT
grad, Kathy Hardis Fraeman.
Meanwhile, it’s the sixth win, and 86th overall, for Larry Gray, for the
perfectly crafted combination of Autocorrect: Nose with Señor Moment to
produce No Sé. And what an imaginative take on Hanukkah Lewinsky x Gimme
Another O from Ben Aronin; it’s Ink No. 78 for him, and his 14th above
the fold. (Did Ben’s entry mystify you? Click on the link I added.) And
oh, look at that — it’s Danielle Nowlin! Because when isn’t it?
Among the entries that I checked off until discovering that they’d been
submitted too frequently:
Sandra Buttock x Significant Udder = Dairy Air
Gimme Another O! x Let My Pimple Go = Let My Pimple Goo
Desitin x Ham Somebody? = Oinkment
Señor Moment x Sphinxter = Old Giza
Desitin x Hanukkah Lewinsky = Rash Hashanah
As always with the grandfoals, almost all the foal names /don’t/
incorporate all aspects of both parents’ names; ooooOoooo, for example,
references both Hanukkah and Gimme Another O!, but not Lewinsky;
Jonathan’s Kiss Me Cait x Nascarf = Kar Krashian gets “Cait” (-lyn
Jenner, stepparent to Kim Kardashian), and NASCAR, but not “kiss me” or
“scarf.” But Larry’s winner comes mighty close: No Sé (Spanish for “I
don’t know”) is both a play on “nose” and of the idea that autocorrect
“doesn’t know” what you’re trying to say. Obviously “Senor” gets in
there, and also the idea of “senior moment,” of not knowing some word or
fact you’ve always known.
But getting in every element of both parents’ names won’t necessarily
earn it ink. There was one combination I noticed that covered everything
but suffered from clumsy punning: Bing Cosby x Hanukkah Lewinsky =
Cherries Jew Bully.
*Horses of an off color: The unprintables*
Just this minute, I got the word that Pam Sweeney’s “St. Arbucks x Yuge
Pianist = Moby Dick” passed the Taste Police to be allowed in the print
edition; I hadn’t been all that optimistic, although of course I think
it’s perfectly fine and a great joke. For the parade of bodily functions
and orifices in the horses below, however, I didn’t even bother to try:
Yuge Pianist x TheTenSuggestions = The Dickalogue (Rob Huffman)
Hanukkah Lewinsky x Ham Somebody? = Candlestick Pork (Dudley Thompson)
Apocalypso x Hanukkah Lewinsky = Labia Menorah (Dave Zarrow)
IM the Walrus x Hanukkah Lewinsky = WhiteMatter Custard? (Rob Huffman)
Gimme Another O! x Dyquick = Death Becums Her (Bill Verkuilen)
Hanukkah Lewinsky x Gimme Another O! = ChristmasIsCumming (Bill
Verkuilen, who’s on a roll here)
Significant Udder x Sphinxter = Cowabunghole! (Stephen Dudzik)
Sphinxter x Thrust But Verify = Cornhole Knowledge (Roy Ashley)