Style Conversational Week 1197: Gallant in Goofusland The Highlights for Children poet who won our ‘Bad Little Children’s Books’ prize One of the more than 120 “offensively tweaked covers” in “Bad Little Children’s Books,” our second prize this week. (Abrams Image, 2016) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // October 13, 2016 Almost always when I judge Style Invitational contests, it’s not until I’ve chosen the winning entries, and even copied them into the column, that I then search the entry pool and find out which Losers wrote them. And so it was especially fun to find out thatthis week’s second prize — a signed copy of the new “Bad Little Children’s Books” — would be going to Robert Schechter. Because besides being a 181-time Loser (and Loser of the Year in his rookie season), Robert has had several of his poems published in the venerable Highlights for Children, the favorite magazine of my childhood, at least till I discovered Mad. Such as“My Nose”: It rumbles loudly when I doze. It sometimes strikes a snooty pose. And when I catch a cold, it flows. Yet when I stop to smell a rose, life’s frantic hustle-bustle slows and such a joy inside me grows that from my head down to my toes my favorite thing on earth’s my nose. Bob’s prize will /not / be featured in Highlights. “Bad Little Children’s Books” is subtitled “Kid-Lit Parodies, Shameless Spoofs, Offensively Tweaked Covers.” Presented by the art book publisher Abrams as a fancy faux-replica of the Little Golden Books (such as this one or this one ), the book consists of more than 120 devilishly altered old-time children’s-book covers — though none of them of an actual Golden Book — like the three featured here in the Conversational. And those are among the tamer ones; there are also: — “If Tommy Was Jewish He Wouldn’t Suck as Much at the Violin” — “The Little Aryan Youth Academy” — “The First Time Asian Driver” — “Fido Finds a Dildo” — “Gloryhole Initiation” — “Tiny T-Rex Arms on a Woman Are Always a Buzzkill” Ad almost infinitum. Who is this devilish alterer? The author is one “Arthur C. Gackley.” As the book’s introduction and acknowledgments explain, Mr. Gackley (born 1923, disappeared mysteriously 1978) spent his life assiduously cutting up and reworking children’s-book covers with an X-acto knife and duct tape; and his disciple and executor, Schlomo J. Flaffstein, Esq., has finally brought them to the 21st-century literary world. And how did someone who vanished 48 years ago come to write “The Little Engine That Couldn’t Get It Up Without Viagra”? Well, that is the work of Gackley’s sole intern, Thad Fenwick, who also presumably contributed “Soap Derby Bass on Wheels: The Stephen Hawking Story.” Yet another book cover parody in “Bad Little Children’s Books. (Abrams Image, 2016) So congratulations to Robert Schechter — whose book is even signed and delivered by Arthur C. Gackley himself, perhaps via through-the-coffin mail. *MEANWHILE, HERE ARE FOUR PICTURES BY BOB STAAKE * Who once again turns away from his miles-long list of children’s-book projects to bring us Week 1197, the latest in his dozens of cartoon caption contests for The Style Invitational. There’s not much to explain here; I did ask Bob this time to include a couple of multi-character drawings so that we might have some dialogue (or at least someone talking) in some of the captions. Inevitably in caption contests — like all contests in which everyone is working from a short list of prompts, rather than, say, everything in the newspaper or everything in the dictionary between A and D — warped minds think alike; people will have the same general joke or wordplay. If too many people send essentially the same thing, no one will get individual credit for it. But I’ll give the ink to an entry that makes the joke most concisely, or has a certain element that makes me laugh more. (I don’t take off for bad spelling, etc., but jeez, people, you’re entering a contest judged by a human (and a former copy editor); don’t just send me something that looks as if you butt-texted it in your sleep. I’ve implored you both in the contest and on the entry form to preface each individual entry “Picture 1,” “Picture 2,” etc. If you don’t, I’ll do my best to look for each of your captions as I read through the big fat list of what will probably be at least 1,000 entries. But doing this will guarantee that I see every entry that you sent. Thanks, guys! *POEDunks: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1193 * It was an interesting format that I found in the depths of the Invite archives: the “Poeds” of Week 169, from 1996. And in this encore contest, I actually got a pretty big pile of entries, from a Loser pool that included some 20 new entrants. And I did find acouple dozen four-line verses that cleverly worked with the difficult form. But almost all the Poeds fell prey to the biggest challenge of the form: to make a punch line out of a single six-syllable word to end a very short joke. Many of this week’s inking entries used a humorous made-up word to do it; it also helped a lot if the third and fourth lines rhymed. Some entrants added a note that they enjoyed the contest, but I have a feeling that a lot of people felt more like Double Hall of Famer Tom Witte, who sent: Why waste my time on this Pointless, prizeless, senseless, Trivial, meaningless Dillydallying? Arthur C. Gackley didn’t have to do as much with his X-acto knife in this book cover parody. (Abrams Image, 2016 / ) (In his other entries, Tom did display an ability to count to 6 in the last line.) *Arriving late, but on a happy note — Laugh Out of Courtney:* Copy chief Courtney Rukan, whom we hadn’t heard from in a few months, just e-mailed me with her faves, and she’s very enthusiastic: -- “Fire. Flood. Bad switch. Failed rails./ Metro’s SafeTrack routing. /Everyday commuting /Reliability. (Kevin Dopart). I’M A SUCKER FOR ANYTHING THAT SLAMS METRO. THIS IS PERFECT. — “A bell rings, a dog drools./ Ivan Pavlov’s simple/ Notation: “Fabulous! /RinTinTinabulous!” (Chris Doyle) THIS HIT MY PUNNY BONE IN TWO PLACES. — “What if they taxed “hand” size? Surely, bragging ceases . . . Adjusted decimal . . . Infinitesimal! (Mark Raffman) BWAHAHAHAHA!!! — Really liked the second-place entry and the winner, too.” *And what Doug Dug: * Ace copy editor Doug Norwood favored Chris Doyle’s “EpiPenurious” and Jesse Frankovich’s “Pumpkinspicifying.” *COME TO BRUNCH ON SUNDAY, GET YOUR PICTURE IN THE PAPER* I will be bringing to this Sunday’s Loser brunch — it’s at noon at the Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia, Md. — a hat much like this one, sent to me from England by Loser Ed Edwards. Of course it’s a future Invite prize and I’d like to photograph someone wearing it. And even if you don’t want to look like Crocheted Chthulhu, come join us; RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”).