Style Conversational Week 1233: You were expecting sophisticated repartee?
The Losers’ 22nd annual Flushies award ‘banquet’
Not exactly the Algonquin Round Table: Style Invitational Losers Cate
Hagman, Matt Monitto and Duncan Stevens display their ball skillz at the
22nd annual Flushies, the Losers' award festivities, on June 17. (Mark
Holt)
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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June 22, 2017
It always makes me laugh, if in exasperation, when some Style
Invitational newbie tells me that he’s “not ready” to come to a brunch
with some fellow Losers, that “I’m not clever enough,” that it would be
“intimidating.” Clearly the person has an image of a little gathering of
tweedy toffs trading bons mots as they knock down martinis
There’s a reason that the official name for the Loser Community is the
Not Ready for the Algonquin Round Table Society.
And at the Flushies — the apotheosis of the Loser event calendar each
year — you’re most likely to hear buns mots. Begun 22 years ago, in the
Invite’s salad days, by Loser Since Year 1 Elden Carnahan and a few
fellow obsessives, the Flushies “honor (and by ‘honor’ we mean ‘attempt
to cover in abuse and ridicule’) many who have appeared in the
Invitational in the past contest year.”
This year’s event, for the second straight year, took place at RK Acres,
the home and little farm of Loser Robin Diallo and her husband, Khalil.
Actually Robin, a State Department official, arranged to avoid the
festivities by being stationed in Baghdad (soon it’ll be Haiti); she
greeted us via Skype.
As did this year’s Loser of the Year, Jesse Frankovich. Jesse, who lives
in Lansing, Mich. — he would have flown in, but he’s getting ready to
move to a new house — amassed 101 inks during Loser Year 24 (March
2016-March 2017) and got ink in 41 of the year’s contests. Though he
first appeared in the Invitational way back in 2004, Jesse went on to
have a real life after that, working for the Michigan transportation
department, and it’s only in the past couple of years that he came back
to us and started inkin’ up the joint. Here’s some of the classic
Frankovich entries that I shared with the 55-odd (or 55 odd) Flushies
guests:
His first ink: “Earth Day: April twenty-second” anagrams to “Hardy
planet? We CAN destroy it!”
Clad in a vintage Loser T-shirt, Loser and light-verse poet Edmund Conti
shows off his prize fidget spinner. (Catherine Hagman)
Super Soaker is a good name for a water gun but a bad name for a
mortgage company.
George Ohwell: “You know, those telescreens do help with security . . .”
/Neologisms containing S, H, A, R and P:/ Ballparkish: Only
approximately approximate.
/Fictoids about how inventions came about:/ The first airplane seatwas
designed for Wilbur Wright, who was 5-2 and weighed 126 pounds. In honor
of his contributions to aviation, modern engineers use the same
specifications to this day.
President Trump’s skin tone is so unusual, nothing rhymes with it.
Change a movie title without changing its letters: Mad Ma X:In the 10th
installment of the series, little Billy still hasn’t cleaned his pigsty
of a room!
Collective nouns: A Y’ALLIANCE of Southerners, a PRESCHOOL of roe, and
an ANARGASM of anagrams.
Flushies founder Elden Carnahan prepares to toss an inscribed roll of
toilet paper to someone who's reached a milestone, e.g., 100 blots of
ink. Loser Dave Prevar has taken off his chicken hat for the solemn
ceremony. (Catherine Hagman)
When Jesse visited Washington this past winter for a convention, he met
me and a few other Losers for a snack, so we got to meet him in person.
And we were talking about some of the legendary Losers -- like Brendan
Beary, who once got 179 inks in one year. Jesse said: “I’m going to try
to beat that.”
Jesse, as usual, has several blots of ink inthis week’s A-to-Z couplets.
Go for it, Jesse. If anyone can ….
The Jesse got to be further embarrassed-but-lovin’-it when the Losers
serenaded him via iPad with a song that Loser Mark Raffman wrote for the
occasion, “Jesse’s World,” a parody of Rick Springfield’s “Jesse’s
Girl.” Sample verses:
Jesse’s got a wit, Jesse is a one of a kind
He’s bringin’ home the Lincolns with his rapier-like mind
While I just sit here doin’ what’ll make me go blind
And he’s cookin’ up brand new words --
And he’s writin’ a haiku with a pun - I just know it
And he’s dissin’ Trump in the style of Edgar Allan Poe
I wish I lived in Jesse’s world , I wish I lived in Jesse’s world
Why can’t my rhymes be funny like that?
Each week I open up the link,
But there’s no doubt who’s blotting up all the ink,
You know we’re all big nerds who are destined to lose
But the odds are on Jesse for the Empress to choose. ...
Jesse didn’t get all the Flushies “honor.” Elden also presented a plaque
to Rookie of the Year John Hutchins, who‘d brought his wife, three kids
and mother to witness the historic event. We expect John to hang it next
to, or perhaps right on top of, his Harvard Law School diploma. And the
Cantinkerous award to Kyle Hendrickson — coincidentally the day’s emcee
and game designer — for having the most ink without ever winning first
prize in the Invite. Kyle has owned this title for several years now,
with 86 blots of ink, second place and lower.
And as always, there was the ceremonial Tossing of the Inscribed Rolls
of Toilet Paper to those who’ve reached ink milestones: 50, 100, etc. If
the Milestoner didn’t show up, a designated catcher with two name tags
got a roll of TP to take home. (The Royal Consort and I will be using
the Frank Mann Roll with pride.) In a new addition, some people who
/almost /reached a milestone — like 299-inking Dave Prevar — received
naked cardboard TP tubes.
And there were Kyle’s games — one the Basket Case games pictured above
will be the second prize forWeek 1231 — and of
course the bounty of potluck food and drink. And this year the weather
held out, and we were able to visit the remaining farm animals at RK
Acres (the Diallos are finding new homes for them before their
three-year sojourn in Port-au-Prince). True fact: A peacock sounds
exactly like a
child who’s suddenly had a fidget spinner taken away.
We all missed the presence of our usual song leader, Nan Reiner, who’d
moved to Florida but was going to come up anyway until she was sidelined
by some pesky health issues (we’re delighted to see her back and inking
all over the place in this week’s Invite results). But we were thrilled
that octagenarian Dean of the Losers Edmund Conti came all the way up
from Raleigh to the Diallos’ abode in Lothian, Md., and that
twentagenarian Matt Monitto came down from Connecticut.
You don’t have to wait till next summer to Hobnob With Loserdom; there’s
a brunch or other gathering almost every month. See the calendar (“Our
Social Engorgements”) on the Losers’ website at NRARS.org
.