The Laffman
There’s a lot more to new Style Invitational Hall of Famer Mark
Raffman than ‘Be Our Guest’ parodies
Not all of Mark Raffman's 500 blots of ink have been "Be Our Guest"
parodies. Just eight of them. (Claudia Raffman)
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Pat Myers
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Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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May 31, 2018 at 3:27 p.m. EDT
This week it’s time to celebrate the astonishingly zippy trip of Loser
Mark Raffman from his first ink in 2012 to become the 12th member of the
Style Invitational Hall of Fame, sprinting past the 500-ink mark with
his five “grandfoals” today in Week 1278
.
Mark, who in his well-it-pays-the-bills rest of his life is a big-shot
corporate attorney in Washington — and often gets ink with lawyer jokes
— has won the whole contest 14 times and has been a runner-up 43 times
over.
In another of Mark’s after-hours pursuits, he plays harmonica with a
recently formed outfit called the Bristow Blues Band. When the Royal
Consort and I went to hear them at a local gig recently, we found out
that Mark had an idolatrous superfan who raved about him like a
star-struck teen. Fortunately for all concerned, that fan was Mark’s
wife, Claudia, a five-time Loser herself. As the band tuned up, Claudia
whispered to me (or maybe yelled; it was a noisy room), “Did you know
that Mark. . .” — followed by some amazing Raffmanic achievement, and
another and another.
And so, after I share with you a few of Mark’s 500 hilarious blots of
ink — including a couple of examples of what became a stock in trade,
/eight/ brilliant parodies of the “Beauty and the Beast” song “Be Our
Guest” — I’m going to turn the column over to Claudia Raffman, who
eagerly wrote up an adoring tribute to her favorite Loser.
/Mark’s first ink, Week 979: Ways to tick people off (Aug. 5, 2012): /
When you’re on jury duty, bring a daisy into the deliberation room and
start to pull out each petal while saying “Guilty . . . not guilty . .
.” (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va., a First Offender)
/Week 989: Two jobs one person could do:
/.A lawyer/prostitute: Get people off for money. Repeat.
/Week 1029, use a song from a musical to write about a different show or
movie: /
The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:
/”Porky’s”to “Be Our Guest”/
See a chest! See a chest!
Tops are coming off with zest!
We’re awaiting an R-rating
When we show another breast!
Lots of girls! Lots of pranks!
We’ll accept your humble thanks,
We are loading up the sleaze
Because we only aim to please!
There’s not much plot to enjoy
But for every teenage boy
We deliver what you need to be impressed,
So bring your fake ID,
You’ll holler out with glee
And see a chest! See a chest! See a chest! /
/Week 1041, answer a question that’s part of a song lyric: /
Q. Why don’t we do it in the road?
A. I would not do it in the road,
Nor would I within your abode,
I would not do it in your car,
Nor with you out behind a bar,
I’m not a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am,
So let me be, please, Sam-I-Am!
/Week 1059: Add something in parentheses to a song title: /
The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:
(Ad)just the Way You Are
/Song parody from Week 1139, 2015, to “Be Our Guest”: /
He’s obsessed! He’s obsessed!
“Build a wall,” he says. “No jest!
There’s disorder at the border
And I know what’s for the best!”
“They do rapes! They do crimes!
They drink beer with sliced-up limes!
And their culture’s undesired!
Don’t believe me? Then you’re fired!”
“It’s a sport to deport
The burrito-eating sort;
If they’re born here, send them back with all the rest!”
Do people think he’s vile?
(Dems cast a knowing smile)
‘Cause he’s obsessed! He’s obsessed! He’s obsessed!
/Week 1114, postive-spin headlines: /
Milk Cartons Are Beautified With Youthful Portraits
/Week 1146, lines from obituaries: /
The conjoined triplets led a long and cheerful life, but now they are
six feet under.
/Week 1181, poems using words from the National Spelling Bee (in this
case, “strepitous,” or noisy):
/ //It was placid on my street in Boise,
Till new neighbors moved in — wow, they’re noisy!
With this strepitous crew,
There’s not much I can do — Who would shush “the Sopranos, from Joisey”?
/Week 1187, make a new word by dropping the last letter of an existing
word: /
Ketchu: A sneeze with a bloody nose.
/And this week’s five grandfoals, from Week 1278: /
GhoulsOutForSummer x Invisible Ink = The Ghost Is Clear
David Cop a Feel x Penn and Yeller = Lecherdemain
Rex x Fiddle DD = Rax
Village Person x Jacob’s Bladder = Peon
401 Que? x Kodiak Moment = Dunno, Alaska
I’ll share some more Raffmanalia on Saturday afternoon, June 9, at the
Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual awards and potluck, this year at
the Old Firehouse community center in McLean, Va. (Did you RSVP to the
Evite? If you didn’t get one, you are hereby invited anyway by virtue of
reading this page. Fill it out at wapo.st/flushies2018
.)
*AND HEEEERE’S CLAUDIA*!
This week, my favorite Loser reached 500 inks, and I’d like to share a
few things that even the regular Losers might not know about Mark.
● *He’s one of the smartest guys you will ever meet*, and one of the
most unassuming. He was co-valedictorian of his class at Williams
College, then also worked on the Harvard Law Review along with the
future Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. They bonded over cigarettes.
(He has since quit.)
● *He clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy *when he was a 9th Circuit
appellate judge in California. This was before cellphones. One weekend I
called Mark at the judge’s chambers. I thought he was alone. As the
phone was picked up, I cheerfully said, “Hi Sweetie! The Justice
answered, “I think you have the wrong Sweetie!” Mark also helped Justice
Kennedy with his confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill while he was a
first-year associate at his law firm — what a “Welcome to Washington”
experience.
● *He can be completely oblivious*. During the Clinton years, Justice
Kagan worked at the White House as U.S. solicitor general, and once
invited Mark for lunch. Walking from the Old Executive Office Building
to the White House Mess, Mark opened the door for a gentleman. Elena
nudged him and said, “Did you see who that was?!” Mark said no — not
noticing that he’d just opened the door for Vice President Gore. Mark
just opens doors for people, whether it’s a president or a plumber.
● *He has had dirtier work than corporate law.* During college, Mark and
a friend came up with a plan to travel out West, live in a pup tent, and
work at a sewage plant to make lots of money. Not only did Mark fail for
weeks to get a good night’s sleep — his roommate in the cramped little
tent turned out to be a noisy snorer — but there was also his job
working in the plant’s methane digester, where the raw sewage is
processed. It was of course disgusting, but Mark stuck it out — until
the day when Mark realized that his heavy rubber hip waders had sprung a
leak: He was literally flooded with crap. (What better preparation for
The Style Invitational?) As the sludge flowed into his pants legs, Mark
beat it to the showers and out the plant’s door for good.
● *He works really hard on his Style Invitational entries. *The Invite
is one of his great passions — and a way to let his humor and wit shine
in ways he can’t exactly do at work.
When I first met Mark, I told my mom, “I like him, he makes me laugh.”
And more than 30 years later ... well, I like him. He makes me laugh. I
bet he makes you laugh, too.
*TOONING UP FOR WEEK 1282*
There’s not a lot to say about Week 1282,
one of semiannual-ish caption contests featuring cartoons by Bob Staake.
If you’re new to The Style Invitational and want a feel for what I tend
to give ink to, there’s plenty of material to research. Go to the Master
Contest List at NRARS.org and search “Picture This.”
You’ll see dozens of old Invite contests. To see the results, scroll
down four weeks from the week the contest was announced, and click on
the “WP” icon , which will show you a PDF of the Invitational’s print
edition. You can do this for untold hours; do remember to take regular
potty breaks.
As funny as the individual captions often are, I especially like to show
several captions that interpret the picture vastly differently. And to
that end, I encourage Bob to make the cartoons as ambiguous as possible.
The skin tones are often a neutral tan (or even green), so that the
person in the picture could be some famous white person or some famous
PoC. Sometimes readers will see a boy rather than a girl, or a bear
rather than a dog. But it has to be remotely plausible; I don’t think
you can interpret the bald guy in Picture A, being lectured to by a
bird, as Donald Trump, given that Donald Trump is famous for his big
head of stubbornness and refusal to listen to anyone.
*PUNNING MATES*: THE GRANDFOALS OF WEEK 1278*
/*Non-inking headline by Chris Doyle/
Our annual “grandfoals” contest, a spinoff from our most popular contest
of the year — to “breed” any two names from a list of the year’s Triple
Crown nominees — usually draws about half the entries that the first one
does four weeks earlier, and this year that was almost right on the
money, with 2,003 names (I once again thank Loser Jonathan Hardis, whose
program not only sorted them alphabetically, but also flagged those that
exceeded the 18-character limit).
Most of the inking “foals” in Week 1278 were puns. And puns are more
problematic to use for the grandfoals because there are usually two or
more elements alluded to in a single name, including the word or
expression that was being punned on in the first place; breed that to
another pun name and you just /can’t /take note of all those elements in
your entry; you have to ignore something, preferably not the most
conspicuous or accented part of the name.
So it wasn’t surprising that some non-pun names turned out to be
especially fertile parents this time around: Worst.Musical.Ever
(Gronkowski x Exclamation Point) ended up siring (or damming) eight of
this week’s 52 grandfoals — a result that also comes from my desire to
show several takes on a single name. But in many other instances, the
grandfoal doesn’t reflect one or more parts of the parent name; “Absorba
the Greek” brought many fun references to sponges (or the
QuickerPickerUpper in Gary Crockett’s cross with How I Met Yo Mama), as
well as to things Greek, but not to Greek sponges. Fortunately.
All 54 of this week’s inking entries fit on the print page, even with
Bob’s four cartoons. And they were topped by an almost total newbie: Six
weeks ago, David Young scored his first two blots of ink, in our contest
for modern curses: May you be coming out of the strip club just as the
Google Street View car goes by. And: On that special first date, may the
waiter return and ask if you have a different credit card. And now he
wins the Lose Cannon — with a horse pair that could be read as a
dialogue: Ruckus in the Sack x Nope, Bone Spurs = Not Funny, Melania .
Funny, David — keep entering!
Our three runners-up — Gary Crockett, Hildy Zampella and Kathy El-Assal
— are well-known Invite names. And it just happens to be Kathy’s
birthday today.
I ran out of time and space to provide explanations to the entries. If
you go to theStyle Invitational Devotees group
on Facebook — this week’s column will be “pinned” to the top of the page
— and ask about an entry, someone will explain it to you without
mockery. The Losers can be zingy, but they’re not mean to one another;
it’s a very friendly and supportive group.
*What Doug Dug:* Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood found a lot to like this
week. More than he could single out:
“Loved 2nd place [Gary Crockett’s “QuickerPickerUpper’] and winner. plus
Amtwack [Marilyn Pifer], She Took PayPal [Steve Honley] and Ali Bubba
[Kathy El-Assal], Lecherdemain [Mark Raffman], The Book of Moron [Jon
Gearhart], Reex [Tom Witte], No Intermission. [Matt Monitto] There are
so many good ones, i’m just gonna stop.”
And yes, there were plenty of clever and funny entries that didn’t get
ink this week. They no doubt included yours.
Whoa, speaking of too much stuff — congratulations on reaching this far
down the page. Now go out and get some fresh air. See you in McLean, maybe.