Style Conversational Week 1275: What a piece of work
Forsooth, the Style Invitational Empress doth ruminate on this
week’s contest & results
Bob Staake's first draft for today's illustration. I asked him to draw
the players in Elizabethan uniforms to reinforce the contest's
Shakespearean angle; Bob, despite finding doublets and jerkins
“nauseating,” relented. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post)
By
Pat Myers
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Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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April 12, 2018 at 2:08 p.m. EDT
I welcome contest suggestions eagerly, all the time, I really do, even
if I reject most of them immediately, and am noncommittal on most of the
rest. But just last week, when Incorrigibly Recidivist Loser Duncan
Stevens suggested this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1275
— complete with a long list of examples — I
immediately deemed it “definitely great.” (Hey, if you know an English
teacher who might want to use this contest as a class project, or anyone
else who might enjoy doing this contest and might not yet know the
Invite, pass the word.) My only question: Really, we haven’t done this
one already? Nope, Duncan reassured me; he’d of course scrutinized the
1,274-item Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, nrars.org,
and there really wasn’t anything like it.
Of course, there’s /something/ like it — a number of somethings. Most
obviously there’s our recurring Questionable Journalism contest, in
which you find a sentence in the paper and write a question that it
could answer. And other variations on Q. Journalism, as when you use a
line in a movie title, in a song, in a comic strip — always leading to a
set of clever, funny results. It’s one reason I leaped at Duncan’s idea:
a proven format with a source that’s easy to access, even without a Post
subscription. (You’re not required to use the versions in
OpenSourceShakespeare.org, but
that’s where I’ll first check your entry.)
But also, true to our Haughty/Potty tradition, we’ve featured
Shakespeare in various contests over our 25 years. There’s just one, I
think, that was /about /Shakespeare: That was Week 683, a very
challenging, labor-intensive contest I did in 2006: You had to pluck
words out of one or two scenes in “Hamlet” — in order — and write
something new and funny. The results no longer seem to be online except
in this plain-text version
on
that indispensable Master Contest List; here are some highlights:
*Fourth place: * Act 4, Scene 7, and Act 5, Scene 1: “What a long
speech! (Dull ass! Has this fellow no feeling?) The tongue of a
politician is full of equivocation. (Every fool can tell!) How long will
a man lie, ere we have his hide? (Alas, a thousand times!) (Beverley Sharp)
*Third place: * Act 1, Scene 5:
Mark: Lend the secrets of thy young flesh!
Youth: His shameful lust holds a seat!
Touching my sword. Indeed, upon my sword, indeed. Ah, ha, boy! Come
hither, and lay your hands on. (Ira Allen) [Ira’s entry referenced Rep.
Mark Foley of
Florida, an anti-gay-rights conservative who, just weeks earlier, had
been caught sexting teenage boys who were congressional pages. Foley
resigned almost instantly.]
*Second place: *Act 5, Scenes 1 and 2:
My sweet lord.
Him, my lord.
My, my, my lord.
A really wanton ho, you. (Kevin Dopart) [Kevin, in his first year in the
Invite, /owned / this contest, with eight blots of ink. He went on to
become the year’s highest-scoring Loser, a feat he continued for the
next six years.]
*And the Winner of the Inker: *Act 2, Scenes 1 and 2:
He’s addicted to tennis and it hath made him mad. His service and
return, a set down, were nothing but waste, play’d like an old man on
his ass. Striking too wide, he has tears in his eyes and speech like a
whore a-cursing! (Dennis Lindsay)
*Finite Jest: The Minor Plays*
Act 1, Scenes 1-2: In our state, marriage of gentlemen to gentlemen
might not be tenable. (Elwood Fitzner, Valley City, N.D.) [And in fact,
North Dakota never sanctioned same-sex marriage until it was made
federal law in 2015.]
Act 1, Scenes 1-2: Get thee relief. Sit down in the privy upon the
throne. That duty done, leave not the flushing before it vanish’d from
our sight -- or your foul deeds will rise. (Kevin Dopart)
Act 2, Scene 1: Wanton, wild gaming! Drinking! Swearing! Scandal!
Incontinency! Savageness! A party! A brothel! Hell! Horrors! Fear!
Ecstasy! Love! Passion!
Sorry. Denied access. (Ron Stanley)
Act 2, Scene 2: O dear Ophelia, I love thee — but take this “Be-No,” I
do beseech you! For yet is the air a foul and pestilent congregation of
vapours from your wind. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills)
From Act 5, Scene 2: This election mess in the fall leaves both sides
damned unsatisfied and gives this sight to the world: unnatural acts,
accidental judgments, mischance, plots and errors. (Dennis Lindsay,
Seabrook)
Epilogue 1: Act 4, Scenes 5 and 6: If you desire to know the Loser, know
pelican brains! They bore on Sundays. They be slow and dumb. They bore
thee much. Knowest, I direct them.” -- The Empress, Washington (Kevin
Dopart)
--
But there are lots of references to the Bard in various contests over
the years. Here are a few:
/From Week 108, bad first drafts of famous lines: /Brevity is without
doubt considered by many to be the soul of that attribute commonly
considered `wit.’” (Elliot Greene)
/From Week 389, overkill solutions: /Problem: Not enough students
signing up for English 472: Shakespearean Themes and Motifs. Solution:
Call the course English 472: Lust, Greed and Stabbings. (Mike Genz)
/Example for Week 442, change a movie title by one letter: /All’s Well
That Ends Swell: The classic Shakespearean comedy about generational
collision and the nature of love. Mickey Rooney plays Bertram.
// /From Week 460, the beginning of a pretentious book review:/ Having
penned a few plays myself, I understand how difficult it is to be both
original and entertaining. Nonetheless, the extent of Mr. Shakespeare’s
plagiarism is shocking . . . (Joseph Romm)
/From Week 484, if a company ran a different business: /If Larry David’s
production company published Shakespeare, his plays would be renamed
“Much Ado About Nothing” and “Much More Ado About Nothing” and “Nothing
— What’s That All About, Anyway?” (Jonathan Paul)
/From Week 537, misleadingly lurid headlines: /
IV BRINGS DEAD ROYAL BACK TO LIFE! (Several exciting new productions of
Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” have been staged.) (Bill Spencer)
/From Week 648, stupid questions to consumer product hotlines: /
Riverside Press: “About your big book with the Shakespeare plays? Well,
in that ‘Julius Caesar’ one, some guy says, “The clock struck three,”
and that’s stupid because they didn’t have striking clocks back then.
And so I was wondering if you could fix that.” (Ken Rosenau, Washington)
/Runner-up from Week 702, our first fictoid contest:/ The plays of
Shakespeare were actually written by a different person with the same
name. (Ronald Semone)
/From Week 772, adapting literature so it could be “understood by L.A.
residents under 40,” as a letter-writer asked the Los Angeles Times:/
/Shakespeare:/
Who is Silvia? what is she,
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;
The heaven such grace did lend her,
That she might admirèd be.
/Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.:/
Who is Sylvia? What is she,
That all the dudes now dig her?
Holy cow, she’s hot! I see
The doctor’s made her bigger,
And she’s about a double-D.
Holy cow, I have to stop — but anyway, I’m sure this week’s ink will be
worthy of inclusion in the Riverside Invite.
*THE DOYLE-IT BOWL*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1271*
/Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich/
Our contest in honor of Chris Doyle’s 2,000th blot of Invite ink — for
new terms containing a D, an O, a Y, an L and an E — seemed to pose more
of a challenge than some of our neologism challenges; maybe it was the
Y. But we still ended up with 36 nice additions to the Loser Lexicon, by
20 people.
While this week’s three runners-up are longtime, inkin’-up-the-joint
Losers, the Lose Cannon goes to a rare visitor.
Brian Collins has only three previous blots of Invite ink, but they’re
rich ones: The first was an honorable mention from way back in Week 668,
a one-off contest that played off the justice-is-done wrap-ups by
ex-sheriff John Bunnell on “World’s Wildest Police Videos”:
They disregarded the zoning laws when they tried to put up that
10,000-square-foot mansion in Chevy Chase -- now they’ll finally get
their wish for the Big House.
A full decade later, Brian found himself “above the fold” with second
place in Week 1115, a variation on our bank headline contest in which
you first put a “typo” in the headline: *
*Netanyahu: No Go Palestinian State
Surprising upset pick in Bibi’s NCAA bracket
And most recent was the ink in Week 1195, in which you had to alter a
movie title without changing or moving any of the letters: “Fat Al
Attraction”: Being a weatherman on national TV has its perks, even if
you’re not quite studly.
Brian’s “doodeyful” — such a fitting word for certain press flunkies —
demands wide and constant use, don’t you think?
Frank Osen’s “condoylences” represented the many entries that referenced
Chris himself. Here are a few more:
Doyled: Won the Lose Cannon, as in: “Hey, look at that! She finally
Doyled!” (Beverley Sharp)
Gardoyle: A legendary creature that swoops down to grab Invite prizes
with its razor-sharp talents. (Melissa Balmain)
Doyledrums: Listless despondency suffered by Losers when comparing their
efforts to the “gold standard.” (Brad Alexander) .
Doylate: To expand a trophy room to accommodate the results of wordplay
brilliance. (Steve Honley)
Doyley-Carte: Troupe performing Gilbert & Sullivan operettas rewritten
entirely in limerick form. (Nan Reiner)
Le Doyen /and / Ye Olde Loser: Chris Doyle (Michael Rolfe)
*What Doug Dug: * The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood all came
this week from the HMs: Duncan Stevens’s “Beige Floyd” and “lay-bored,”
Gary Crockett’s “formaldejekyll,” and Jesse Frankovich’s
“Supercalifragilisticexpialidociously.”
*My weekend plans: getting cursed at. * More than 200 Losers entered the
Week 1272 contest for creative and funny curses, and many of them wished
ill will 25 times over. So I’m looking at easily a couple thousand
nasties. The ones about the Bluebird of Happiness might all cancel one
another out, unless I see one that’s clearly better than the rest, but
there’s sure to be /lots/ of great ink next week.
And welcome to the new Losers who’ve entered the Week 1274
horse name “breeding” contest; I’ve seen at
least 39 new email addresses in the past week (usually I get about a
half-dozen), and we have four more days left to enter. Saddle up those
ponies!