Style Conversational Week 1195: More bank heads? It’s a no-brainer.
The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and
results
We’ve done Dan Quayle. We’ve done Sarah Palin. And now we have Gary
“Duh” Johnson, inspiration for a trifecta of bank headlines this week.
(Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg)
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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September 29, 2016
Wow, a contest we’d never done before — and not just for movie titles.
Early on in my Empress-ship, I was going to do a contest in which you
altered a headline only with punctuation or capitalization, and I
remember that the Czar, my predecessor, deemed it “impossibly nerdy and
unfunny.”
So, hmm, maybe that one sounds good, too. Doug Frank’s suggestion inhis
Facebook post
(which
for some reason he shared on his own page, rather than that of the Style
Invitational Devotees group, of which he’s a
frequent and popular participant) yielded so many funny ideas for Week
1195 that I even scratched my first plan, to
allow the change-no-letters alteration for any kind of writing, not just
movie titles. But this way, we can use the same idea in a future
contest, with some other category.
Though we’ve never done this particular contest, we’ve done a slew of
them on movie themes — including at least nine that invited plays on
movie titles. This week I’ll share some memorable ink — all winners or
runners-up -- from those contests as I peruse Loser Elden Carnahan’s
immeasurably nerd-fabulous Master Contest List
.
/Week 363, 2000: Make a movie title the answer to a riddle, much as in
our recurring Ask Backwards contest: /
--Answer: The Thirty-Nine Steps. Question: What would a recovery program
look like if it were designed by Congress? (Cindi Rae Caron, Lenoir,
N.C.) [Cindi Rae was a big name in the Invite’s early years, and
suddenly reappeared just a few weeks ago; she gets ink today!]
— A. Nosferatu. Q. What was the sequel to “Nosfera”? (Chris Doyle,
Burke, Va.)
/We repeated that contest in Week 928, 2011:
/ — A. I’m Still Here. Q, What is considered a lame answer to the
question “Do you still love me?” (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)
— A. Toy Story. Q. Whom did Sarah Palin name as her favorite Russian
author? (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)
// /Week, 442, 2002: Take any real book or movie, change one word
slightly, and describe the result:/
— Oedipus Ref: A blind man applies for work in the NBA, is hired because
of EEOC guidelines. Story chronicles his bravery in the face of fan
abuse, including: “Yo, ref, I slept with your mama and I didn’t poke MY
eyes out.” (Roy Ashley, Washington)
— Bambo: A young buck seeks revenge against his mother’s killer.
(Jeffrey Martin, Gaithersburg)
/Week 524, 2003: Rearrange the words in a movie or book title: /
— “You Are 54: Where Car?”: A senior moment strikes in a parking garage.
(Julie Thomas and Will Cramer, Herndon; Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.)
— “Who the Man Shot Liberty Valance?”: In this sequel, Superfly Valance
arrives from Chicago to avenge his brother’s death. (Tom Kreitzberg,
Silver Spring)
— “What? Did Daddy Do You in the War?” A young girl learns of her
father’s overseas affair when a Korean woman comes looking for him.
(Russell Beland, Springfield)
/Week 610, 2005: “Mash” two movies, TV shows, etc., into a single work
of art: /
— Please Don’t Eat Miss Daisy: Hannibal Lecter lands a job driving for a
prim Southern spinster. (Peter Metrinko and Laura Miller, Chantilly)
— Terminators of Endearment: At last, the perfect “compromise” date
movie. (Paul Whittemore, Gaithersburg)
/Week 625, 2005: Make up a new plot for an existing movie title. /
— White Men Can’t Jump: Three-year-old Bobby Fischer learns the rules of
chess. (Kyle Hendrickson, Frederick)
— The Asphalt Jungle: In this series finale, Tarzan suffers his untimely
death. (Kevin Jamison, Montgomery Village)
/Week 851, 2010: “Downsize” the title of a book, movie or play to make
it smaller or less momentous: /
— Slaughterhouse $4.99: A family gets to choose among beef, chicken and
pork with all the trimmings — only at Denny’s! (Greg Arnold, Herndon)
— Three Days of the Condom: Love on a shoestring. (Edmund Conti, Raleigh)
/Week 871, 2010: Change a movie title by one letter or number: /
— Four Weldings and a Funeral: A man attaches a set of rocket engines to
his Chevy and momentarily achieves his dream of driving a flying car.
(Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, a First Offender [Gary, a runner-up this
week, now has 289 blots of ink])
— The Blair Itch Project: Amateur filmmakers realize that before
shooting in the woods, they should have learned what poison ivy looks
like. (Deborah Gilbert, Rixeyville, Va., a First Offender)
/Week 1008, 2013: Rearrange the words in a movie title:/
— The Kwai on the River Bridge: Barbara Walters narrates a moving story
of two lovers saying goodbye above the Seine. (Roy Ashley, Washington)
— Wonderful? It’s a Life: Grandpa Irving pooh-poohs being in the
Greatest Generation. (Ellen Ryan, Rockville, Md.)
At least one or two of the above cry out for a sequel, no?
*BANK-WIT FACILITY*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1191*
/(*Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich. Jesse — and, of course, only
Jesse — is welcome to submit it again in a future bank head contest)/
Man, I never get tired of this contest. It /always / delivers, and it’s
just fun to read. It took control for me to keep the ink to 41 entries,
of which 36 will be in the print paper. And though Elden Carnahan
snarfed up four honorable mentions, the ink is scattered widely: I’ll be
sending swag (such as it is) to 30 Losers, though I’m bummed that there
weren’t any First Offenders this week.
Great timing for running that Gary Johnson trifecta! It was the
presidential candidate’s total-duh “What is Aleppo?” interview that
inspired Danielle Nowlin, Mae Scanlan and Jesse Frankovich (and others)
three weeks ago to compose some of this week’s funniest jokes. But just
yesterday, the isolationist Libertarian redoubled his literal
cluelessness on foreign affairs when he could not give interviewer Chris
Matthews
a
name of a single foreign leader he respected: From the AP story
:
“/You’ve got to do this,” Matthews said. “Anywhere, any continent:
Canada, Mexico, Europe, over there, Asia, South America, Africa. Name a
foreign leader that you respect.” /
/Johnson hung his head slightly — “I’m having a brain freeze” — before
[his running mate, William Weld] came to his rescue, offering the names
of three former Mexican presidents. Johnson settled quickly on Vicente
Fox, calling him “terrific” before Weld named his own favorite foreign
leader: German Chancellor Angela Merkel.”/
We’ll have a whole new category of johnson jokes!
A number of headlines, especially those from the print paper, were
played on similarly by several Losers; they included “Fewer taking Metro
trains” as in thefts, and “Some states don’t want midwives to deliver
babies outside hospitals,” as in right in front of the door. In those
cases, Andrew Hatzyannis’s and Elden Carnahan’s entries made me laugh a
wee bit more than the others. In other cases, such as “After a turn in
harsh spotlight, Melania Trump has been a model of restraint,” the
entries were pretty much the same. Also for a headline about a “ban on
straight-ticket voting” that required voters to choose at least one LGBT
candidate.
The Losers’ Circle this week is filled with Invite veterans: Inkin’
Memorial winner Roy Ashley (with his fifth win) and runners-up Mark
Raffman and Gary Crockett are all in the 300-ink ballpark, with 110
“above the fold” losses among them; next to those obsessives, John
McCooey’s impressive 40 inks (including a win and three RUs) make him
seem like a dabbler. But it’s the beachside retiree who appropriately
snags the whale hat.
There were several kinds of entries that didn’t qualify for ink: In one,
a lowercase word was used to refer to someone’s name; “Obama stands
solo” couldn’t mean that the president had learned to tolerate the
controversial soccer player; “Kaepernick challenges the sporting norm”
couldn’t refer to Norm from “Cheers.” Also, total misspellings of the
intended word didn’t work either, as in “Prosecutors won’t retry
McDonnells/ DA hated Big Mac and will never go back.”
Then there were bank heads whose point was pretty much the same as the
actual story’s: The headline “How Hillary can get that ‘presidential
look’” drew a couple of cynical jabs like “Try gender reassignment
surgery.” But that head came from Alexandra Petri’s highly satirical
humor piece that suggested Clinton model her look on a series of (male,
duh) presidents, as in the George Washington look: “Lose all but one of
your teeth. Replace them with an elaborate contraption containing
hippopotamus ivory, brass screws and human teeth so that you look
slightly uncomfortable at all times. To complete the outfit, steal Ruth
Bader Ginsburg’s neckwear.”
Then there was the occasional headline that, on its face, was simply too
serious to make light of. (This week’s winning headline, “They call it
bunny hunting,” actually goes with agrim (and well-done) article
about children being targeted by online predators, but the headline
itself doesn’t tell you that.) And a sad headline is even more taboo if
the subject of the story is an everyday person, and local.
So while the following entry is a great example of National
Lampoon-style sick humor, it’s too painful for the Invite:
Woman pregnant with twins shot getting sandwich; all expected to survive
Except the sandwich
---
Happy New Year, everyone — those of you who get your repentance in at
this season can start with repenting that you laughed at Duncan
Stevens’s entry above.