Style Conversational Week 1183: Ooh, wouldn’t that make a nice Invite
trophy?
There are exactly 29 Inkin’ Memorials left. Then we’ll need
something new.
The Style Invitational appears in the print Washington Post in
black-and-white, so it didn't make sense to show the Illumibowl there.
Here's this week's second prize. (Illumibowl.com)
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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July 7, 2016
Actually, the photo above is of a full-size toilet (or several of them)
beautified courtesy of the Illumibowl, a little box that might have also
been called the Headlight; I’ll be giving it away to the second-funniest
person in Week 1183 of The Style
Invitational. So no, it wouldn’t be the best choice for a Loser’s
bookshelf, and so I’m now thinking up other ideas for a first-place
trophy to replacethe Inkin’ Memorial
when
I send the last of them away, probably in January.
The Inkin’ Memorial — a.k.a. the Bobble-Linc — made its debut in Week
966, in 2012. It replaced the Inker,
which I instituted when I ascended to the Empress-ship in Week 536 more
than eight years earlier (before that, there was no trophy; the special
gag prize went to the winner). I hadn’t planned on it — the supply of
cheapo “Thinker” bookends had suddenly dried up when I did my annual
surfing of wholesale-kitsch sites to find the best price for the next 50
boxes — which meant that it was a bit of a scramble to come up with
something fitting, cheap, and available in quantities of at least 100.
But after a night of Googling, I did find a bobblehead of the Lincoln
Memorial statue, and bought up the entire supply from Bobbleheads.com —
all 15 of them. And evidently there were no more to be had anywhere. But
after some negotiation in the ensuing weeks, Bobbleheads Honcho Warren
Royal agreed to commission a new Lincoln from a (but of course) Chinese
manufacturer, if we would buy 200 and he’d keep the other 50.
Anyway, even if Warren were interested in doing that all over again, I
think it’s better to get a new first-place trophy. It’s not just that
Abe has had an unfortunate tendency to arrive at the winner’s home,
well, decapitated (the Royal Consort, who’s repaired a number of them,
suggested I send a little tube of superglue with each trophy). It’s that
some Losers have had the rotten luck to win a whole lot of them: Since
Week 966, Kevin Dopart has won six, Chris Doyle eight, Brendan Beary and
Mark Raffman 10 each, and Nan Reiner /thirteen. / Not surprisingly,
they’ve all asked me to stop sending any more of them. Nan arranged hers
in the field of a little baseball diamond along with a designated hitter
before calling off the Lincs.
So come January, I hope to be offering something as Invite-appropriate
as the Inker and the Inkin’ Memorial. I found something that I think
would work really well, but will welcome suggestions. The current guy
cost us about $12 apiece.
The Inkin’ Memorial has served us well as a first-place trophy for more
than four years.
Meanwhile, I do plan to commission very soon a new Grossery Bag for
runners-up, since we’re out of the Whole Fools tote bag and its
predecessor, (Al)most Valuable Player. I think I’ll use one of other the
inking entries from the 2012 contest for bag ideas, Week 964,
which supplied the first two versions. And I’m down to about a dozen
Loser Mugs — between the “This Is Your Brain on Mugs” and LOVE/LOSER
designs — and so hopefully I can get the money for a new mug order as well.
They’re all, in my opinion, great little prizes — even the magnets are.
But I’m also happy that none of these prizes is of significant
/monetary/ value. Because otherwise, disgruntled non-inkers might start
complaining of being robbed financially, rather than just being
unappreciated by an incompetent judge. And you can imagine what can
follow from that. (My robotic answer to kvetchers: If the Invite is no
longer fun for you to play, please don’t play.)
*HONESTLY, WHAT’S TO SAY ABOUT WEEK 1183?*
Well, let’s see: Week 1183 should be a
wide-open contest, since “honest” has a lot of meanings, and I’m willing
to consider any observational humor that’s funny and clever. I’d think
there’d be some similarity in content (not format) with our contests
that asked contestants to translate a quote in the newspaper into “Plain
English,” such as this entry by Russell Beland in Week 729:
Quote: “And — let’s be honest here —”
PE: “And — let me sugarcoat this a little less than usual — ”
Note that I said “roughly in the form of ...” If a slightly different
format results in a better joke, go for it.
*The BACcalaureates*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1179*
/(non-inking headline by Jeff Contompasis)/
The Week 1179 contest was to come up with any three-word A-B-C phrase
(or ACB, BAC, or any other arrangement). In general, I found that I
preferred the phrases that could conceivably be used as an ABC
abbreviation, such as Gary Crockett’s “Business Class Alternative” (you
could imagine an airplane ticket labeled BCA) or Duncan Stevens’s
legalistic Collective Boinking Agreement Ed Gordon’s “BAC” as textspeak
for ancient times, or “before advent of cellphones.” But I also got a
kick out of just-three-words phrases like Amanda Yanovitch’s “ ‘A Bear!’
(Crunch.): The final line in Quentin Tarantino’s new Goldilocks film,”
and this one by Kimberly Baer: “Affairs, Being, Confusion”: How
fifth-grade wiseacre Ethan Splunk responded when asked by his geography
teacher to name three states.
It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial, and just the 10th blot of ink overall,
from newcomer Chris Damm, who proposed Cot And Bagel as a term for a
cheapo bed-and-breakfast. I was delighted to meet Chris in January at
the Losers’ Post-Holiday Party, to which he’d driven all the way from
West Virginia, and am similarly pleased that Chris gets props after
going inkless with a slew of song parodies in Week 1177, some of which
were great but whose length and repetition didn’t work as songs-to-read.
Melissa Balmain has two kids /and / teaches college students, so I’d be
shocked if she turned down the fabulous grandpa-shaped electronic bubble
fart machine that Chris Doyle didn’t want. Her “Aryan Battle Cry,” of
course, has only gotten better in the past week
in a wider context. Meanwhile, Jon Gearhart picks up his seventh ink
“above the fold” as he barrels past the 75-ink mark, and the legsome
Gary Crockett (“don’t send me any more stuff”) snags his 32nd ATF ink as
he lopes toward 300 blots of ink.
There wasn’t a lot of Scarlet Letter fare this week, but there was this
unprintable from Alex Jeffrey:
Bactrian Abortion Clinic: Because a camel’s gotta hump.
We have used “abortion” in Style Invitational a few times in the past 23
years (“a PROLIFERATION of abortion protesters”). Alex’s entry wasn’t
going to be one of them.
*COME HAVE BRUNCH WITH ME AND THE LOSERS, JULY 17*
This month’s Loser brunch is on Sunday, July 17, at noon, at Grevey’s
pub just outside the Beltway in Northern
Virginia. It’s typical brunchy-lunchy food (they’ve dispensed with the
buffet). I’m always eager to meet new Losers and reconnect with the
regulars. RSVP on the Losers’ website at NRARS.org
(click on “Our Social Engorgements”) .
*LOSERFEST CONTINUES TO FESTER*
Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson continues to enhance the slate (or
coal?) of activities for this year’s Loserfest field trip, to Pittsburgh
Aug. 25-28 (or parts thereof). The Royal Consort and I plan to go up on
Friday. Check out Loserfest.org to see what’s in
store, and to sign up. **