The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest and results —
and the upcoming Planet Word Museum
In Week 303 (1999), Brian Broadus got an honorable mention with this
then-and-now for the baby boom generation. So what will we do for 2017?
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
Email //
Bio //
Follow //
August 24, 2017
I’m eternally grateful for the Style Invitational contest suggestions
that Losers and just-readers send me. (In fact, if I use your idea and
you don’t live too far away, I’ll buy you an ice cream cone. ) More
often than not, though, I don’t find the suggestion workable for any of
various reasons, one being We Did That One: I’ll show the suggester the
dozens of funny inking answers from the previous contest, concluding
that there wouldn’t be enough totally different entries to make the idea
succeed all over again.
But if anyone can outdo me in both Invite History and the seeing the
possibility of wringing more use from an old contest, it’s Chris Doyle,
57-time first-place winner and, before long (Chris, God and Bezos
willing), the first Loser to sop up 2,000 blots of ink. And Chris
suggested redoing Week 303, the 1999 contest to compare old and new
concerns for the baby boom generation — but updated for millennials.
And as several ice creamed Losers can attest, the way to persuade me to
run a contest is to show me some good examples — as Chris did for what
became this week’s contest, Week 1242. (He
had others as well, but I don’t want to rule them out as entries, so I
won’t share them here.) But I also didn’t want to rule out more gems
that the Loser Community might come up with about aging, given how much
experience some of us have had with it; for instance, Tom Witte and Dave
Zarrow, who both get ink this week, have aged 24 years since first
playing the Invite (though both of them look exactly the same as in 1993).
The results of Week 303 are classic — one of our best sets of results
ever. They’ll be hard to top. Feel free to try, but it may well be more
fruitful to work with more contemporary references. I hope to give ink
to both categories.
*REPORT FROM WEEK 303,* in which you were asked to come up with old and
new concerns for people of the baby boom generation.
/Fifth Runner-Up:/
Then: Paar.
Now: AARP. ([the late] Ralph Scott, Washington)
/Fourth Runner-Up:
/Then: Being caught with Hustler magazine.
Now:Being caught by Hustler magazine.
(Joseph Romm, Washington)
/Third Runner-Up: /
Then: Killer weed.
Now: Weed killer. (John B. McElhatton, Vienna)
/Second Runner-Up: /
Then: Hoping for a BMW.
Now: Hoping for a BM. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia)
/First Runner-Up: /
Then: The Grateful Dead.
Now: Dr. Kevorkian. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)
/And the winner of a fine plastic floral arrangement: [in the Czarist
era, the gag prize went to the winner; there was not yet a trophy] /
Then: Getting out to a new, hip joint.
Now: Getting a new hip joint. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel)
/Honorable Mentions:/
Then: Moving to California because it’s cool.
Now: Moving to California because it’s hot. (Larry Phillips, Falls Church)
Then: Being called to the principal’s office.
Now: Storming into the principal’s office. (Kelli Midgley-Biggs, Columbia)
Then: The peace symbol.
Now: The Benz symbol. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville)
Then: O.J., cutting and slashing.
Now: O.J., cutting and slashing. (Jim Thelen, W. Nyack, N.Y.) [This is
not a reference to Simpson’s assault on memorabilia dealers for which he
was convicted (that would be many years later); the first “cutting and
slashing” alludes to his earlier career as an amazingly agile running
back.].
Then: Getting your head stoned.
Now: Getting your headstone. (Bella Portillo, Silver Spring)
Then: “The Making of the President.”
Now: The making of the president. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) [Bill
Clinton’s presidency began two months before the Invitational did,
giving us prodigious joke fodder ever since.]
Then: “Going blind.”
Now: Really going blind. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)
Then: Long hair.
Now: Longing for hair. (Marianne Jemiano, Beltsville)
Then: Acid rock.
Now: Acid reflux. (Kathy and Brian Hollen, Leesburg; Bobbie Miller,
Laytonsville; Bill Hole, Silver Spring) [Here’s an example why I don’t
like to give out long credits to contestants.]
Then: Obsessing over your PSAT scores.
Now: Obsessing over your PSA scores. (Marcy Alvo, Annandale)
Then: Worrying about no one coming to your party.
Now: Worrying about no one coming to your funeral. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia)
Then: President Johnson.
Now: The president’s johnson. (J. Larry Schott, Gainesville) [“Johnson”
is one euphemism we’ve always been able to run in the Invitational.
We’ve also had subtle reference to printable. “Dick” still isn’t
printable. A couple of weeks ago we ran “dingus.”]
Then: Fighting to get rid of the lying president.
Now: Fighting to keep the lying president. (Jason Zweiback, Livermore,
Calif.) [You think it’s new that we go after the president?]
Then: The perfect high.
Now: The perfect high-yield mutual fund. (Steve Krauss, Danbury, Conn.)
Then: Elvis in the army.
Now: Elvis in a UFO. (Russ Beland, Springfield)
Then: Keg.
Now: EKG. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon)
Then: Swallowing acid.
Now: Swallowing antacid. (Ted Allen, Bethesda; Sandra Hull, Arlington;
Stuart McKinnon, Ellicott City)
Then: You’re growing pot.
Now: Your growing pot. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)
Then: Watching John Glenn’s historic flight with your folks.
Now: Watching John Glenn’s historic flight with your kids. (Sandra Hull,
Arlington)
Then: Trying to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor.
Now: Trying not to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor. (Douglas
Olson, Laurel)
Then: Passing the driving test.
Now: Passing the vision test. (Douglas Olson, Laurel)
Then: Seeds and stems.
Now: Roughage. (Ellen Hill, Kensington)
Then: Popping pills, smoking joints.
Now: Popping joints. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)
Then: Whatever ...
Now: Depends. (Rebecca Plunkett, San Antonio)
Then: “Off the pig.”
Now: “No bacon, please, I am watching my cholesterol.” (Rebecca
Plunkett, San Antonio)
Then: Ommmm.
Now: Um ... (Ralph Scott, Washington)
Then: Our president’s struggle with Fidel.
Now: Our president’s struggle with fidelity. (Ralph Scott, Washington)
Then: Catching rays.
Now: Raising cats. (Paul Whittemore, Gaithersburg)
Then: Getting shot down in a U2.
Now: Getting shot down on F2. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) [That’s the
Sunday Style section page where the Invite ran in its first years; after
several intermediate address changes, it’s now almost always on the
second-to-last page of the Arts & Style section, however big the section
is each week. Which does diminish its joke potential.]
/And Last:/
Then: Changing the world.
Now: Nailing the “And Last” in the Style Invitational. (David Salzman,
Chevy Chase)
*MOS’ DEF INDEED: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1238*
I don’t know if we’ll get to X-Y-Z, but here’s Part 2 of the series we
began last year for phrases incorporating three successive letters of
the alphabet. When he suggested the A-B-C contest last year, Loser Jeff
Shirley was inspired by our contests that asked you to look at Wikipedia
lists of the many things that are referred to by the same three-letter
abbreviation, then explain how any two were alike or different. (Winner
of Week 1104, by Larry Gray: HDP: The law firm Harness, Dickey & Pierce
vs. high-density polyethylene: “High-Density Polyethylene” would make a
lousy title for a porn flick.)
For Week 1238, I didn’t require that the DEF, FED, EFD etc. -phrase
could conceivably be referred to by its three-letter abbreviation, but
most of this week’s inking entries
do work that way, and often draw their humor from the idea — Tom Witte’s
first runner-up “Don’t Even” Face, for example — “I got the DEF.”
The two most frequently used words in the phrases: “Donald” and various
forms of the f-word, including E for Effing.
Hooray, finally I get to give away one of our final Inkin’ Memorials:
It’s the first win — in fact, the first ink “above the fold” and the
fifth blot of ink ever — for Peter Shawhan. (One of his earlier inks, in
a contest for homophone jokes: “Westboro Baptist Church’s
funeral-crashing strategy? ‘If we stand shoulder to shoulder, we will be
a fence of people.’ ” ) For a couple of months now, most of the
first-place winners have been many-time winners, and so I’ve started to
award them our new Lose Cannons while saving the last few Inkin’
Memorials for the newbies.
And note the Shawhan triple! In addition to Peter’s win, wife Julia gets
two honorable mentions, her seventh and eighth ever. Since Elden
Carnahan’s Loser standings are based only on the /number/ of ink blots
rather than their placement, that’s going to put Julia way ahead of
Peter on theall-time stats list at
nrars.org.
And it’s a sorta double among runners-up Jeff Contompasis and Ellen Ryan
— Ellen is Jeff’s wife’s sister!
*WHAT WOULD BE FUN TO HAVE IN A WORD MUSEUM? *
Next Tuesday I’m going to meet with Ann Friedman, one of the founders of
a fascinating new venture scheduled to open in downtown Washington in
2019: It’s called Planet Word , which
describes itself as “a museum with a mission: to inspire a love of
language in all its forms. . . . At Planet Word we inspire and renew a
love of words and language through unique, immersive learning experiences.”
Ann wrote to me recently to ask for ideas about how humor and wordplay
might be incorporated into the center, which will be in the gorgeous big
old Franklin School building
at
13th and K streets, catercorner to The Post; the building was designed
in 1869 by the famed architect Adolf Cluss (who also did the similar
Arts and Industries building on the Mall) and has been vacant for years.
Ann wrote me: “Word play, of which you are certainly the local empress,
will be an important ingredient – ensuring that our exhibits and
experiences leave visitors smiling, surprised, and excited about words.
We hope that word play will be “on the menu” of the museum restaurant,
on the restroom walls (bathroom humor, anyone?), and displayed in
exhibits or on the auditorium stage. . . . Although the museum will be
about language in general and not just English, I do want to highlight
the characteristics of English that make it ripe for word play, jokes,
riddles, and puns.”
So before next Tuesday, feel free to suggest to me (and so to Ann) not
just some specific ways to put humor into the museum (though that would
be great), but also what you’d enjoy having at such a venue. I was
thinking, for example, that it would be a great place to stage a
light-verse reading like the one hosted by Loser Melissa Balmain at
Catholic University a few years ago, and a great base for crossword
events, like the one produced by Washington Post constructor Evan
Birnholz in D.C. Write me at pat.myers@washpost.com.
*SWALLOWING MY T *
I got an email this week from Robert Croog of Washington, who complained
about the example I used for our Week 1240 Limerixicon contest:
/Most election reformers believe
Contributions are bad. (How naive!)
But my Bible instructs
What to do with my bucks:
Says it’s better to give, then receive. /(Chris Doyle)
The limerick has a flawed rhyme, Mr. Croog charged: “Instructs,” he
insisted, does not rhyme with “bucks.”
Obviously, they do in my book. Unless I were speaking in exaggerated
slow motion, I would barely form the final T. In any case, “ucks” and
“ucts” are spoken interchangeably often enough to be fine for limericks.
I now officially close this debate with a big strip of Duck® tape.