Style Conversational Week 1287: Start singing the news ... The Invite has verse coming and going this week. Plus a note about last week’s tragedy. Triple Crown winner Justify declines a White House invitation: “If I want to see a horse’s arse, I would have come in second.” Nan Reiner turned the popular joke into a poem to place second in Week 1283. (Frank Franklin II/AP) 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 July 5, 2018 at 3:47 p.m. EDT Just yesterday afternoon, Invite Obsessive Jeff Contompasis emailed me with a contest idea: “I was listening to the Armed Forces medley during the Macy’s Fourth of July show and realized we need a new song for the United States Space Force. Could be set to a familiar tune.” Hold on for a few hours, I responded. If we’re going to do song parody contests — and why wouldn’t we, given the skill of our parodists? — it seems almost imperative these days that we focus on current events; the news just cries out to be sung about. And that’s what we’re after, once again, in Style Invitational Week 1287 . Those who enter Invite parody contests regularly recognize that our focus is on lyrics, that what often works great in a sung performance — almost-rhymes, repeated choruses — don’t tend to work well when it’s /read./ So I place a premium on strong meter and rhyming — sometimes it needs to be better than the original song’s — and on strong endings that serve as a “punchline” for the song, rather than one that fades out. I’ve included a longer than usual set of guidelines right at the top ofthis week’s entry form . Here they are again: “Write some song lyrics about something in the news these days, set to a familiar tune, as announced in this week’s Style Invitational contest at wapo.st/invite1287 . They should comprise at least one full verse. “The songs the Empress will run in the print paper (including the top four winners) are likely to be very well known, and short. Online, however, she’ll include links to video clips of the original tunes; that way we can include some deeper cuts so readers can follow along with the melodies (it’s helpful, though not required, to include a YouTube link to the version of the melody you are parodying). Also, feel free to make your own video of your parody (submit a link along with your lyrics), but it’s the quality of the lyrics, not video production, that gets the ink. Please don’t embed links in text; just copy and paste the URL above or below your song; otherwise the E ends up with garble. “Your parody may not have been already published elsewhere, with the exception of online sharing or posting for a small audience; if you’re not sure if your song qualifies, go ahead and submit it along with a note, and the Empress will make a ruling. “You get an extra week! Entry deadline is midnight Monday, July 23, 2018, wherever you are. Results will be posted online on Thursday, Aug. 2, and in The Post’s Arts & Style section on Sunday, Aug. 5.” This is a fabulous age for song parodies! Witness the rise of the brilliant and utterly adorable Randy Rainbow (his real given name), whose self-produced parodies — often accompanied with fake interviews — reach hundreds of thousands of YouTube viewers, and who’s selling out halls on a national tour. Randy probably doesn’t know us, but California-based Sandy Riccardi is a member of the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group. Sandy and her husband, Richard — she sings, he plays the piano — have shared dozens of videos on YouTube, like this “Stormy Weather” parody , and just last month performed at a Baltimore nightclub as part of an Eastern tour — unfortunately the same day as the Losers’ Flushies awards. (Next time, Sandy, I’m definitely coming to see you!) But don’t be intimidated: We’re not looking for big productions, just some clever lyrics. They do need to match the tune of the song well enough so that someone can easily figure out how to sing them. (How to know? Ask someone, someone who is not /you,/ to give it a try, without hints.) For inspiration, and to give you an idea of what we run, look at these two recent sets of results: Week 1202, November 2016, post-elections songs expressing “hope” Week 1177, mid-2016 political parodies Have fun over the next two weeks. And I have a great idea for a topic: How about an anthem for the new U.S. Space Force? *A SPELL OF HAR LUCK*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1283* /*Non-inking headline by Chris Doyle/ I’m absolutely floored-not that almost all the ink in Week 1283 went to our regular Loserbards: Sure, a casual reader might see a weird-looking cartoon in the paper and be inspired to caption it with a line of dialogue. Or scan a list of 100 horse names and match two of them up and name the “foal.” But writing a poem using a totally obscure word — correctly — and, on top of that, making it funny and clever: Well, that’s a challenge that your occasional throne-reader doesn’t tend to jump at (or at least succeed at). So the ink is a bit more concentrated than in most weeks, and it requires a little mental investment to read — which is fine for a contest that comes two weeks after one to paste googly eyes on something and take its picture. But we have all kinds of clever in this week’s results, from couplets to elaborate song parodies, with political humor, bathroom humor, and of course wordplay on wordplay. Mark Raffman, our latest Loser of the Year, scores yet another Lose Cannon with his “one-knight stand” limerick. And Nan Reiner parlays a joke that’s been all over Facebook into a complex, perfectly scanning funny poem: While it’s better to make up your own joke, using an existing joke can sometimes work, as it does here, as long as there’s significant craft involved that adds its own humor — just make it clear that the joke’s not your own. And Chris Doyle and Frank Osen stake out their familiar places in the Losers’ Circle. True Stat: Those four people have had ink “above the fold” — wins and runners-up — a total of /four hundred seven /times. Or thereabouts. *What Doug Dug: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood especially enjoyed Nan’s “amadelphous” poem on Justify, and also singled out Rob Cohen’s play on “comes before” for “fourrier” (precursor) as well as the And Last, Duncan Stevens’s “Empress With a Halo” example of bondieuserie, or schlocky religious art. (Honestly, how would I balance a halo on a tiara?) *A FINAL NOTE* ** Seven days ago, at 3:32 p.m., I was at my laptop here at home, working at the picnic table on my back deck, in a rush as usual, hurrying past my deadline to write up the weekly email that notifies readers of the just-posted Style Invitational and Conversational. And an email bulletin came over from The Post: “Local Alert: Active shooter reported at Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis,” the subject line said. I don’t remember, but I must have stopped immediately to click on it and read this: “Federal officials said they are responding to a shooting at the newsroom of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland’s capital city. The Baltimore Sun reports that Gazette reporter Phil Davis said multiple people had been shot. There are reports of heavy police activity in the area.” I managed to get the email out a few minutes later, then began to search, in vain, for more specific news, for I had gone to school with someone who worked at the Capital. And as I often do when I’m troubled and feeling powerless, I went outside and started walking around my neighborhood, up and down each street, walking and walking. Every few minutes I’d check my phone for news. Around 5:30, still on the street, I got a text from my longtime colleague Vince Rinehart: “Pat, I am hearing that Gerald Fischman may be among the Capital Gazette victims.” Gerald had worked with both Vince and me, in different years, at The Diamondback, the independent student newspaper at the University of Maryland. We were not close friends, but Gerald was unforgettable: a 20-year-old who looked 40, with dress clothes, shirt buttoned at the top, horn-rimmed glasses, hair cropped close amid the newsroom of late-’70s long hair and T-shirts and jeans — and toting an old-fashioned leather briefcase, which would weigh down one shoulder of his slight frame as he walked along the edge of the hallway. “Hey, Gerald,” someone asked, “what’s in that briefcase?” And although it perfectly sums up Gerald’s ultra-dry wit, I didn’t tell this anecdote to the reporters asking for reminiscences: He answered, totally deadpan: “The severed head of my mother.” Of course, the shootings hit close to home in other ways as well: Journalists work in a profession in which, inevitably, some people will be angry at what is printed about them. And when very angry people bear personal grudges and have easy access to guns, well. Until recently, my own son had for years been a reporter and editor at a community newspaper. The tragedy turned out to have a Style Invitational connection as well: Our hearts go out to seven-time Style Invitational Loser Mary McNamara, whose brother John, a news and sports reporter, was also among the five victims. John McNamara also worked for the Diamondback, but he was there a few years after I was, and I didn’t know him. But late that night, past midnight, Mary posted this on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page: “All I ask is that you call the siblings you have, tell them that you love them, and go to the nearest minor league baseball game. It’s the purest thing there is, and we all need a little purity right now.” At 2:33 this afternoon — exactly one week after the shootings — everyone at The Post, as well as at many other newspapers across the country, observed a moment of silence in memory of the Annapolis journalists. I did the same here at home. *SUNDAY, JULY 15: LOSER BRUNCH AT MRS. K’s* We’re going a bit upscale for the July Loser brunch: It’s the rich buffet at the venerable Mrs. K’s Toll House in close-in Silver Spring, Md. I’m not sure if I can make it myself, but do RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” But I definitely plan on heading up to Frederick, Md., for at least one day of Loserfest, a weekend of activities and fooood Aug. 11-12. See Loserfest.org and click to see Kyle Hendrickson’s tentative “Fungenda.”