Style Conversational Week 1261: Everyone’s a winner! To someone, anyway. The results of the readers’ poll of Style Invitational cartoon captions. Bob Staake’s cartoon for Robert Schechter’s winning obit poem about Ferdinand Porsche (2013). See the poem in the bottom section of today’s column. By Pat Myers close Image without a caption Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email Email Bio Bio Follow Follow Jan. 4, 2018 at 4:12 p.m. EST Last week I accompanied the Style Invitationalcaption contest results with a poll in which readers could vote on their favorite entry for each of the four Bob Staake cartoons, out of the 38 entries I'd printed — between 7 and 15 choices per cartoon. You couldn't choose a runner-up, or more than one winner. EVERY caption received at least two first-place votes. That didn't shock me, because years ago the Invitational did a similar survey, in which the Czar put up his 25 chosen entries, unranked, and asked people to email their choices. I can't remember which contest it was, but I do remember that I'd volunteered to tabulate the results — and that 24 of the entries received at least one first-place vote, and you couldn't vote for your own. And I do believe that humor is largely subjective — what strikes you as hilarious might be meh to the person next to you. And it depends on your own knowledge and experiences; if you go to the National Gallery a lot but never go grocery shopping with 5-year-olds, the caption referring to the weird object in Picture D as a moldy Henry Moore sculpture might appeal to you more than the one joke about riding in "the little seat." Here are the results. (If you voted already, the results should pop right up; if you haven't, scroll to the bottom and click on "View Results.") While each entry was the favorite of someone or other among the 400-some readers who checked out the poll, some favorites stood out, and /some/ were the same as my own winner and runners-up. I, of course, liked /all / the inking entries; I'd chosen them from more than 1,000 in Week 1256. My choices of winner and three runners-up encompassed all four cartoons. The voting for Picture A proved a very close call, with my choice of Jon Gearhart's "Today's death metal music goes right over Harvey's head" just edging Rob Huffman's "gramophone" pun, 22.4 to 21.7 percent. I'd received a number of "death metal" entries; it was the "right over his head" that did it for me. A healthy 15 percent liked Mark Raffman's "marijuana in the Stanley Cup"; it's always fun to have captions that note some odd detail of the picture that no else does. Another neck-and-neck vote for Picture B. My choice (for the winner of the whole contest), Mark Raffman's Roy Moore/Sabrina the Teenage Witch, wins by a nose — 26.0 to 25.4 percent — over Frank Osen's devilishly risque wordplay "look up my sister." The 13 other options were all far back in the voting. It was in Picture C that readers totally disagreed with me: I loved how Barbara Turner used "wafted" to describe a giant TV screen that had fallen on the guy's foot. But only 2 percent of the electorate was similarly moved; instead, there was a clear preference, 31 percent, for John O'Byrne's joke about the problem with driverless carpets. And finally, for the Weird Object of Picture D, another disagreement: I'd received several entries mentioning the sculptor Henry Moore, but I cracked up at Warren Tanabe's idea of buying a Moore at Kmart, where of course they'd let it get all moldy. Instead, the voters — who must have been quite familiar with the Invite (some people didn't get down to this last poll question) — opted for the joke about its being an Invite prize, sent similarly by Jesse Frankovich and Duncan Stevens; it was closely followed by John McCooey's "Fukushima avocados." My predecessor, the Czar (as well as his close friend Gene Weingarten), likes to maintain, only partly in jest, that the quality of humor /isn't / subjective, that some jokes are simply better than others — and that he happens to know, better than you do, which ones they are. I don't subscribe heavily to that philosophy, but I do think that I'm a useful judge in selecting skilled, interesting and funny writing from a long, long list that, believe me, you wouldn't want to read. *REVIVAL OF THE WITTEST: RETROSPECTIVE PART 1* I did have a lot of fun reading the entries to Week 1257, which invited readers to enter — including resubmitting entries — any of the contests from 1203 through 1229 (except last year's retrospectives, 1205 and 1206). Just as in earlier contests, a number of this week's inking entries — though not, I don't think, any of the "above-the-fold" winners — had been entered in the original contests, sometimes with a little revision. Why didn't they get ink but scored now? Some weeks I have simply more good material than I can use; or I might have used another, slightly preferred entry on the same subject. For whatever reason, I did think they were nifty this time around. Not surprisingly, there were almost no Invite novices among the Week 1257 entrants, given the research involved to look up old contests. But First Offender Kenny Moore of California — who told theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook group that he'd discovered the Invite only a week earlier by Googling "caption contest" — not only supplied a nice Trump dig to earn his FirStink for his first ink, but sent promising entries for TWELVE different contests. We're really hoping that Kenny has come down with a serious case of The Invite Bug. It's the second win but the first Lose Cannon trophy for Ivars Kuskevics, who scores with a poop allusion in a Mess With Our Heads contest. I'd love to present it to him in person at the *Jan. 13 Loser Post-Holiday Party, *since Ivars lives in the close-in D.C. suburbs but has never been to a Loser event. That's also true for this week's runners-up Dottie Gray and William Kennard — we'd love to meet all of you at the home of Steve Langer and Alison Fultz in Chevy Chase. On the other hand, runner-up Matt Monitto lives way up in Connecticut — but /he's / coming to the party! *Haven't sent your RSVP, or didn't get the Evite?Click right here. * We're currently at a cozy but lively 38 yeses and 14 maybes for the potluck. *What Doug dug: * While Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood tends to agree with my top picks, this week his faves were all honorable mentions: Jesse Frankovich's about Edison inventing the lightbulb joke; Chris Doyle's "Bonaparte's retweet"; Dave Prevar's use of the words from the inaugural address as an ode to bowel movements; and Dave Matuskey's horse breeding of Classic Rock x Sonneteer = Lynryd Cohyn. *BRING OUT YOUR DEAD-POEMS: THIS WEEK'S OBIT CONTEST* I know — just asking people to "write a humorous poem about someone who died last year" can seem tasteless. But look: In the /fourteen / times I've run this contest, I don't think I've gotten a single complaint from a reader — including anyone who personally knew the subject of the poem. And that, I think, is because we stick to a few basic guidelines: 1. Don't rejoice gleefully over the person's death, or predict a trip to Hell, unless the person is universally regarded as evil. Charles Manson? Have at him. Still, that rule doesn't prevent you from bringing up anything negative about someone else; Cardinal Law, I imagine, could invite some pointed humor. But it will be more of a challenge. 2. Don't joke about someone's grisly or painful death — especially of someone whose loved ones might end up reading your poem. 3. The safest — and often the most entertaining — way to avoid causing shock or pain is to pivot the humor away from the people themselves, or their deaths, and onto their claim to fame. This tack works especially well with more obscure people, like this one from 2005: *Answering machine inventor Joseph Zimmerman:* "Hi, this is Saint Peter. I'm out at the moment So leave me your name at the bell." "This is Zimmerman, Joseph. I made this machine, I'm so glad to reach you and not Hell." (Scott Campisi) A few logistical notes: — In last year's results, I preceded each poem with the*subject's name, and birth and death years,* so if you're sure of the birth year, please include it. Note that it means that the person's full name (or any part of his name) doesn't necessarily have to be in the poem itself. Also, I can include a brief identification to set up the poem, as for the answering machine inventor above; if the poem itself makes it clear, I won't add the ID. — As in all Invite poetry contests, I'll be *capitalizing the beginning of each line* unless a line needs to begin lowercase for the sake of the joke. This is because the print paper has very narrow columns, and the lines of a poem often break over a line. So capitals at the beginnings of the lines often clarify the structure. (There's no way in The Post's Methode system to format a "hang" indent of subsequent lines, except by manually inserting white spaces. We did have it in our pre-Methode system, and I hope we also will in the new system they're readying.) — Your poem *can be a short song parody,* but I'm not likely to run more than one or two. — Finally, please *make sure the person actually died last year. * I've gotten some very nice poems about people who'd met their Maker several years earlier. If you're new to Loserland, or just want to read more of the Dead Letters, check out the previous results at to Loser Elden Carnahan's Master Contest List and search on "died." Most of those hits (starting in 2004, after the Empress deposed the Czar) will be for a contest headlined "Dead Letters" or "Post Mortems." Check the week number, then scroll down four rows and click that week number on the right, to see the results of that contest. Meanwhile, here are a few of my favorite obit poems: /The winner of Week 1004, illustrated by Bob Staake at the top of the page: / *Ferdinand A. Porsche (1935-2012), designer of the Porsche 911:* When Porsche first designed his car, he cleverly employed The insights he had garnered from the works of Sigmund Freud. A car, as Porsche understood, was outwardly metallic, But in the heart of man it was organic flesh, and phallic. And so he built it long and strong, he built it fast and loud, To make the rich unmanly man feel powerfully endowed. Though Freud had said that now and then cigars are just cigars, Ferdinand, the businessman, knew cars are not just cars. (Robert Schechter, 2013) *Edward Archbold, who died after winning a roach-eating contest: * Hey, the next time that someone approaches With a contest to eat the most roaches, Though the prize may be nice, I suggest you think twice, 'Cause it might be your big /buenas noches. /(Nan Reiner, 2013, second place to Robert Schechter's Porsche poem above) *4-foot-3 actress Zelda Rubinstein * *and 7-foot-7 Manute Bol: * One can hardly compute that like Zelda, Manute Was seen just for his size at the start. Their success was their pride, but last year, well, they died Just six months and a yardstick apart. (Christopher Lamora, winner in 2011) *Jerry Falwell:* Not for being greatly good -- Not because he knew he would -- Jerry Falwell's gone above, Unto his Creator's love, Spending every night and day With angels black and angels gay. God our Father knows us all well; Knows what's Hell for Jerry Falwell. (David Smith, rather cunningly circumventing the no-Hell rule, in the 2008 contest)