Style Conversational Week 1288: Smile! The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new column and results Alex Ovechkin’s smile. At first I was going to use a photo of a Roach Motel. You’re welcome. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post) 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 12, 2018 at 3:28 p.m. EDT I wish I knew who wrote the wickedly good wine bottle product disclaimer that I used as the example for Style Invitational Week 1288 . For one thing, I’d credit the person. For another, I’d invite the writer to send more of the same for this week’s contest for disclaimers or warnings. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be a Soggy Bottom Boys wine label, let alone an SBB sauvignon blanc. There’s a Soggy Bottom Boys musical group, but even that was originally fictional; it was the name given to the musicians featured, unseen, on the super-great Americana score of the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou”; one of them, Dan Tyminski, dubbed George Clooney’s singing voice. (Sixteen years later, a group of renowned roots musicians — at least several of whom performed in the movie — toured under this name .) Anyway, they can enter, too! You know the product warnings. You may have seen the Happy Fun Ball “commercial.” Your challenge is to be funny but not just like Happy Fun Ball, and not exactly like Soggy Bottom Boys Wine. I’m confident about this contest. My own product warning — not to say untrue bad things about specific people or businesses — is intended to keep people from saying that McDonald’s chicken actually contains rotting dog meat. If you actually found a way to make such a warning funny, you could always use a fictional name for a fast-food restaurant. And for the president of the United States and other publicly mockable figures, you’re free to wildly exaggerate but not just-a-little exaggerate; in other words, your joke has to be obviously a joke. I know, I know: in the former case, that means wildly wild. *Note that the deadline for this week’s contest — Monday night, July 23 — is the same as for last week’s song parodies;* I’ve already received parodies from 42 people, but there’s absolutely no advantage in sending them earlier; for one thing, you don’t want the lyrics to be eclipsed by later events. *One special case: *If you are that rare Loser who is making a video of your parody /and /including lyrics right on the video — a great way to do it , in my viewing experience — you might want to email me at pat.myers@washpost.com and let me know, so that I can look at it with enough time for you to tweak it, if necessary for taste or just a little improvement. (While I do judge the Invite blindly, when it comes to videos as well as complex entries that might benefit from consultation, I do sometimes end up finding out before publication who’s written some entry. Believe me, I’m just as cavalier and callous toward the big-time Losers as I am with the newbies.) *I’M LIKENING IT:* THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1284* /*Not anyone’s non-inking entry; we do this contest once a year or so, and so I don’t want to put any good ideas out of the running for next time/ After all these years of doing our contests to compare/contrast items on a list we supply — by my count in Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List , I have judged this contest /twenty / times — I’m still amazed by the clever and imaginative links the Loser Community draws between two randomly chosen items. Even considering the number of possible combinations of two (not to mention three) among 18 items, there’s always some duplication of ideas; this week’s 37 inking entries are either unique ideas (e.g., Frank Osen’s “cooked before breakfast” for scrapple and Florida Man) or my favorite wording among similar entries (like David Smith’s noting that the difference between Justify’s tail and Kim Jong Un’s Porta-Potty was that only one is /above/ the horse’s ass). This week’s three runners-up — Frank Osen, Rob Huffman and Danielle Nowlin — have a combined 122 trips to the Losers’ Circle, but it’s the first ink “above the fold” for this week’s Lose Cannon winner. In fact, it’s just the sixth blot of ink of any kind for Jerome Uher, whose Invite debut was back in the Czarist era, Week 481, in a neologism contest to create homophones of existing words and define them: “Suepersize: To expand the boundaries of your class action lawsuit. (Jerome Uher, New York).” But Jerome suddenly reappeared 15 years later, having evidently relocated to the D.C. area, surely just to be closer to the Style Invitational Headquarters and Newsroom on K Street. Last December, in Week 1254’s contest to change a business by one letter, Jerome scored twice: Capital Gone: What used to be in your wallet? Accidental Petroleum: “And then one day, Jed was shooting at some food, and up from the ground . . .” Then five months later, two more inks with foal names: Runaway Ghost x Yee Haw = PhantomOfTheOpry Big Brown Bear x Magnum Moon = Big Brown Bare This time around, Jerome sent a grand total of one entry: Looking back at it now, I see that he added a note at the bottom of the form: “If I only come up with a few, I generally don’t enter. This time I’ll bother to send you the one I have.” Good call, Jer. And if I were you, I’d reconsider that strategy. I was tickled this week to discover that some big-deal Losers of years past gave Week 1284 a shot — and got ink: Russell Beland was for many, many years the Invitational’s all-time top-scoring Loser, blotting up more than 1,500 inks before finally finding a life five or six years ago; still, he’s in second place,at least until Tom Witte overtakes him . (Russell has been known to be somewhat competitive, so, hmm, maybe he’ll want to keep that lead alive . . .) It was Russell, in fact, who first suggested the compare/contrast contest, in 1996. He got ink, too, inWeek 155: The difference between the Washington Wizards and a Ford Bronco? The Bronco has had a superstar athlete on board in the past decade. Also reappearing: Jon Reiser of Way Upstate New York, with 73 inks but not for many years; and also drive-by inkings by the previously more obsessive Mike Gips, Michelle Stupak and Cathy Lamaze. Nice to see you, all — don’t be a stranger. *What Doug Dug: * Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood particularly liked this week’s winner and Frank Osen’s “cooked before breakfast” runner-up; he also singled out Russell’s comparison of number of teeth between the peacock and Ovechkin’s smile; Dave Prevar’s joke about The Post being a more efficient roach dispatcher; Jesse Frankovich’s Messy/Messi/Methy; and Duncan Stevens’s comparison between Kim Jong Un’s Porta-John and armpit hair: No one has to pretend that armpit hair smells wonderful. Cut on grounds of taste and unfairness even to this administration: A Roach Motel and dust bunnies: What are the administration’s latest terms for its “tender age” immigrant prisons and their inmates? (Frank Osen) *GET YOUR NOSES READY!* My latest stack of postage stamps for prize letters is smellacious! I got a bunch of the Postal Service’s new (no-need-to-)scratch-and-sniff stamps celebrating popsicles . and started sending them out with last week’s magnets. Yet one more reason to dedicate all your nonworking hours to The Style Invitational. *EXCITING UPCOMING LOSER SIGHTINGS!* First, this Sunday. July 15, is the*Loser Brunch at the venerable Mrs. K’s Toll House *in Silver Spring, Md.; note that the time has been moved up to *10:30 a.m.* I’ll be there, especially because Loser Tag Team Dudley and Susan Thompson will be up from North Carolina. I’m told thatthe buffet is splurgey but memorable. If you’d like to attend but haven’t yet sent Elden Carnahan your RSVP, please do so soon at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”); seating might be problematic if you just show up. And on Saturday afternoon, July 21, the Royal Consort and I also plan to catch a Double-Loser Production: *Ward Kay is directing “Romantic Comradery,” a play by Chuck Smith,* in the NVTA One-Act Festival, from 1 to 3 at the James Lee Community Center, 2855 Annandale Rd, Falls Church, Va. We’ve seen several plays by both Ward and Chuck, and it’s especially fun to have a Loser contingent in the audience. Let’s coordinate that on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page. *LITTLE PRINCE/PRINCESS: NOT YET* The Empress and the rest of the royals — not the least, the Royal Scion and his fair bride — are eagerly awaiting The Next Generation, now a week past the due date. If I can’t make the brunch, I’ll have had something more pressing to attend to.