Style Conversational Week 1235: Music in a Geek mode
The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and
results
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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July 6, 2017
Well, of the 26 TankaWanka current-events poems that get ink today in
Week 1235 of The Style Invitational, a full
dozen of them do /not / mock or despair about the current federal
government (though two of them are about/trying/ to think about
something other than the federal government). But that 14:12 ratio
doesn’t come close to reflecting the many hundreds of verses I received
for Week 1231 : I didn’t do an actual count,
but I’m guessing that easily 80 percent of the entries were political
(and not exactly celebratory). Believe it or not, I went out of my way
to make today’s results be /not / // so much trumptrumpgoptrumpaaaah.
In the same vein, I leapt at the suggestion by Destined for the Hall of
Fame Loser Mark Raffman that our next song parody contest be not “about
something in the news lately,” as so many of our contests are, but on
science and technology. Of course, science and technology are tied up in
today’s politics in a million ways, and there’s no way I’d reject great
political parodies. But I do aim to mix them up with less issue-oriented
ditties.
Because the Invite is a written contest, designed to be read, and
because it also prizes the light-verse ideal of “perfect rhyme,” not all
of the fabulous parodies being written today — and we’re in a golden age
right now — would necessarily get work in The Style Invitational. (But
almost everything by the fabulous Randy Rainbow
,Bald Piano
Guy , Sandy and
Richard Riccardi , and Roy
Zimmerman would surely ink
up the joint.)
If you’re not intimately familiar with the Invite’s many previous parody
contests, give a read to the top of my Style Conversational for our last
one, bit.ly/conv-1202 . And that one links in
turn to my advice in the Week 1113 contest, and to the winning parodies
of several previous contests. (The winners of Week 1202 — parodies
expressing hope, or “hope,” are here .) .
Note that I’ve once again invited people to make their own videos; I
always enjoy linking to good videos, though — especially for parodies
that will run in the print paper — it’s the lyrics, not the video, that
will earn the ink. You need, of course, to give me the link so that I
(and others) can see it, but it doesn’t have to be searchable by the
public. You know, I guess that, were you to make your own video, you
could compose your own tune as well! (But of course that removes the
humor potential of playing on an existing work.)
Meanwhile, I’m glad that we happened to run the nonpolitical and mostly
wholesome creation-dialogue results last
week, because we’re certainly back to the prez-bashing of a string of
previous contests. But this week’s winning TankaWanka poems show
typically Loserly (well, to me it’s a compliment) wit and flair.
And the wittiest and flairiest of all this week was one of our greatest
Loserbards ever, Nan Reiner, in her 16th Invite win since she started
Inviting well into our history, in 2010. Nan’s “deep covfefe” TankaWanka
plus /five /honorable mentions hurtle her past the 350-ink mark. Nan has
had some health issues in the past year, and it’s great to see her back
on her formidable game. In fact, I’ve just checked who wrote the
non-inking entries that made my shortlist this week, and a bunch of
them are Nan’s as well.
Meanwhile, Duncan Stevens, who’s being a Shop-Vac of Ink lately, with
multiple blots almost every week, get s the second-place Basket Case
game — which, coincidentally, he got to try out on his personal
stratospherically located noggin
last month at the Flushies, the Losers’ award shindig. And how about two
runners-up for Perry Beider? They double Perry’s all-time “above the
fold” count, for a total of 24 blots of ink. I especially liked his
”great ‘S’ cape” line in his poem about superhero movies in a time of
despair; though Superman of course wears his monogram on his chest,
Perry was totally justified in pulling his poetic license out of his
pocket for what be this week’s single best line. Perry gets only one
runner-up prize, however, because we’re cheap.
*What Doug Dug: * The faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood
were the first- and second-place entries, plus Nan’s “red tie” wordplay,
Barry Koch’s lament about the Nationals’ bullpen, and Bill Dorner’s
musing on “covfefe” as a well-timed neologism. Meanwhile, Fellow Ace
Copy Editor Vince Rinehart singled out Nan’s “multi-porpoise room”
TankaWanka. Vince, who was my first hire as Style section copy desk
chief back in the mid-’80s (not long before Doug), said Nan’s joke “made
me laugh for reasons you probably remember well from what I gave you
when I was applying to work for you”: Along with his résumé from the
no-nonsense trade newspaper Oil Daily, Vince had demonstrated his
potential for Style’s wordplay-laden headlines by including a cover
letter salted top to bottom with fish puns. It worked.
I’ll be here for one more Conversational next Thursday before I go on
vacation (as Empress, I’m planning to have a beach shut down for my
exclusive use). After that, I’ll skip doing the Conversational for Weeks
1237 and 1238, but I’m working up those Invitationals now. Along with
the new contest, Week 1237 (which I’ve finished) will include more
honorable mentions from our Week 1222 and 1226 “foal” and “grandfoal”
name contests. And then Week 1238 will have extra inkworthies from three
or four other recent contests.
Yay! I made it through a rainstorm at home today without losing the
Internet once! (On the other hand, I just paid a very wet guy $$$$.$$ to
replace my conked-out, outdated heat pump. Maybe I should have offered
him a tiara . . .)
Oh, and thanks to Brady Holt, the Empress and Royal Consort’s Thing One,
for modeling this week’s second prize.
It is perhaps not the most dignified photo ever taken of him.