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) 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 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.