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
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Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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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)