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
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Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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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.