Style Conversational Week 1260: OBVIOUSLY, the winner should be ...
Okay, you tell US which cartoon captions the Empress should have picked
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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December 28, 2017
I’m in a community chorus, the Maryland Choral Society, and one of my
fellow singers reads The Style Invitational religiously, in the print
Washington Post every weekend. I know this because every Monday night at
rehearsal, he takes me aside to say, “Funny column this week — but you
picked the wrong winner, /again./ How could you not have chosen the one
about the bris [toilet, hedgehog, etc.]?”
This doesn’t bother me in the least — believe me, I’m thrilled whenever
people tell me they read the contest at all. And while I think I’m a
good judge of humor and don’t think I’ve made many bad picks in the
700-something Invite contests I’ve judged over the past 14 years, I
totally accept the idea that some jokes/wordplay/observations /political
zingers will resonate more with one perfectly intelligent, funny person
than with another.
While in such contests as rhyming poetry, there are more objective
standards for rhyme and meter, in a contest like one for cartoon
captions, people just laugh at different things. Does it make you laugh
most when words are used in a double meaning, or do you get more of a
kick out of a caption that notes something you hadn’t even noticed in
the picture?
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So, for the first time ever, I used The Post’s poll-writing tool (no,
really, he’s a very nice guy) to let you vote for your favorite caption
for each of the four Bob Staake cartoons, among the 37 inking entries in
the results of Week 1256. Of course, you
might have chosen 37 different entries from among the more than 1,000 (a
conservative estimate; I can’t easily get an exact count) submitted for
Week 1256. But believe me, you wouldn’t want to read that many; you
might even think there are too many choices right here, with 7 to 15 for
each cartoon.
*Click here to access the poll.
*
If for some reason you can’t see the cartoons in the poll, please look
in the Invite itself . And of course read the
results both to see which wrong entries I picked — and to see which
clever devils in the Loser Community (32 of them, it turns out) got the
ink. And to see and enter our new “Year in Preview” contest, Week 1260
(see below).
I’ll review the poll results in next week’s column, though you can check
the results at any time by clicking on the link; readers can take the
poll through next Wednesday. And no doubt there’ll be lively discussion
in the Facebook group Style Invitational Devotees
— join up and the Devs will anagram your name in
so many ways you’ll wish your parents had called you something else.
I’ll link to this column from that page, and you can add your comments
in the thread under it, which you can find by clicking here,
once you join the group.
*PRE-CURRENT EVENTS: OUR ‘YEAR IN PREVIEW’ CONTEST*
I hope you’ve had the pleasure of reading years’ and years’ worth of
Dave Barry’s “Year in Review” pieces, which run at the top of the year
in The Washington Post Magazine and many other papers. (The new one
should be out any day now; here’s last year’s
.)
Years back, the timeline format and running jokes inspired San Jose
Mercury-News humor columnist (and longtime Loser) Malcolm Fleschner to
do a Year in Preview — why wait for actual events to happen before you
fictionalize them? Malcolm just yesterday put out his zingerful 2018
version;
we’re
using a couple of his items as examples. Our compilation in the Invite
can’t do one entrant’s running jokes, but on the other hand we’ll have
hundreds of writers feeding us material. We’ll be putting dates before
all the jokes, even if they’re totally arbitrary.
We stole Malcolm’s idea the first time back in 2011; here are the
results of Week 898, which of course are full of timely, perhaps
now-obscure references, but also ones you might have used for Week 1260:
*The Winner of the Inker:* April 11: President Obama begins a Rose
Garden news conference by saying he loves spring and April is his
favorite month. Bill O’Reilly fumes that Obama’s clear hatred of
December is part of the War on Christmas, while Glenn Beck ominously
reminds his viewers that Hitler was born in April. (Arthur C. Adams, Laurel)
*Second place: * March 15: WikiLeaks posts a classified document
revealing that House Speaker John Boehner hides diced onions in his
handkerchief. (Roy Ashley, Washington)
*Third place:* Feb. 6: At Super Bowl XLV, reporter Ines Sainz announces
that she just received Brett Favre’s colonoscopy pictures. (Kevin
Dopart, Washington)
*Fourth place: * Feb. 27: Julian Assange is avenged in Stockholm in
hand-to-hand combat with the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. (Jeff
Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.)
*Gross prophets: Honorable mentions*
Jan. 24: Rep. Michele Bachmann is removed from the Intelligence
Committee when a vacancy occurs on the Stupidly Offensive Committee.
(Ira Allen, Bethesda)
Jan. 25: In his State of the Union address, Obama pledges that by the
end of the decade there will be a State of the Union pledge that we will
put an American on Mars by the end of the decade. (Danny Bravman, Chicago)
Feb. 15: On a visit to New York to meet with Wall Street moguls, House
Speaker John Boehner embarrasses House Majority Leader Eric Cantor by
ordering corned beef on white with mayonnaise at the Carnegie Deli.
(Elliott B. Jaffa, Arlington)
March 31: On the Nationals’ opening day, Jayson Werth tears a hamstring
in the fifth inning, is out for the season. (Mike Gips, Bethesda)
April 1: Despite a slight breeze for most of the afternoon, not a single
Pepco customer loses power. (Marty McCullen, Gettysburg, Pa.)
May 2: Albert Haynesworth buys a $2 lottery ticket and wins another $30
million. (Craig Dykstra, Centreville)
May 27: The Postal Service says it will deliver on Saturdays. Only.
(Russell Beland, Fairfax)
June 19: Tornado strikes Delaware; house falls on former Senate
candidate. (Bob Dalton, Arlington)
June 28: The summit of Mount Everest is closed for three days because of
a bedbug infestation. (Joel Knanishu, Rock Island, Ill.)
July 17: Congress is outraged after learning that the headquarters of
the Society for Learned Debate is to be built within sight of Capitol
Hill. (Larry Yungk, Arlington)
Aug. 7: The refrigeration unit in Lady Gaga’s closet breaks down,
spoiling thousands of dollars’ worth of USDA Prime clothing. (Dixon
Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.)
Aug. 15: Veteran Style Invitational Loser Chris Doyle accidentally
employs amphibrachic meter in a limerick that clearly calls for
anapestic trimeter. (Jeff Brechlin)
Aug. 28: Facebook rolls out a feature that allows you to spy on your
“friend” who always answers everything with “LOL,” so you can see if
he’s really L-ing OL. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills)
Sept. 9: Marine biologists express outrage after Michael Vick says he
wants to own sea monkeys. (Trevor Kerr, Chesapeake, Va.)
Sept. 24: A court decrees that Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc., may no
longer be associated with the religiously derived word “holiday”; each
will now be called a Federal Happy Day. (Mae Scanlan, Washington)
Oct. 13: Blackwater is awarded the Somalis’ piracy contract. (Kevin Dopart)
Oct. 30: Seeing no restoration of sanity since last year’s event, Jon
Stewart sets a more realistic goal with his Rally to Encourage Good Oral
Hygiene. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase)
Nov. 12: Victoria’s Secret introduces the Leslie Johnson signature
series bra, available in sizes 32¢ to 38€€. (Craig Dykstra)
Dec. 24: With the Mayan-forecast end of the world (12-21-2012) now less
than a year away, sales of extended warranties at Best Buy drop to zero.
(Gary Crockett)
Dec. 31: The Style Invitational once again avoids being a subject for
its annual obit-poem contest. (Kevin Dopart)
*DID YOU GET YOUR LOSER PARTY INVITATION? *
If you didn’t get the Evite and you’re interested in coming to the Loser
Post-Holiday Party potluck dinner/schmoozefest on Jan. 13, write me at
pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll give you the information. You don’t have
to be a Loser to attend, but if we haven’t met before, we’ll chat first
so that I can verbally, you know, check the cleanliness of your
fingernails.
Happy New Year to all, and best wishes for an inky 2018.