Style Conversational Week 1295: Just the bad and the ugly The Style Invitational Empress ruminates blubberingly on this week’s contest and results Bob Staake's alternative sketch for this week's sample joke. This one: Sign you're oversexed: Your wife pretends to be asleep when you enter the bedroom. Sign you're really oversexed: Your wife pretends to be asleep when you enter the delivery room. (Chuck Smith from Week 401) (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) Bob Staake's alternative sketch for this week's sample joke. This one: Sign you're oversexed: Your wife pretends to be asleep when you enter the bedroom. Sign you're really oversexed: Your wife pretends to be asleep when you enter the delivery room. (Chuck Smith from Week 401) (Bob Staake for 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 August 30, 2018 at 3:01 p.m. EDT “We did that” has been my abrupt response to many a reader’s suggestion for a future Style Invitational contest. But more and more lately, I’ve looked back atthe archive of our almost 1,300 contests since 1993 and said, “Hah, those were good results. Let’s do it again.” Which brings us to Week 401 Revisited, or Week 1295. The “bad”/”really bad” joke format, suggested by Loser Russell Beland to the Czar in 2001, is basically two-thirds of the “good/bad/ugly” format, which the Czar had done just a year earlier (results from 2000 here ) and I repeated in 2014 (results here ). So you should try not to tread on the ground of those contests this week as well as the very funny results below. Given that Russell has gotten ink in the past few weeks after years of absence, maybe he’ll want to contribute once again to the contest he came up with. *Report from Week 401 [June 2001], *in which you were asked to come up with a sign of a dire condition, and then a sign of further deterioration thereof. *Fourth runner-up:* Sign your career might be in jeopardy: You fracture a leg while running in the Super Bowl. Sign your career might be in real jeopardy: You fracture a leg while running in the Kentucky Derby. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) *Third runner-up:* Sign it might be time to stop breast-feeding: Your son is starting to talk. Sign it really might be time to stop breast-feeding: Your son is starting to talk about your “bodacious bazooms.” (Russell Beland, Springfield) *Second runner-up: * Sign a horse trainer might not know what he is doing: The jockeys on his horses are too big. Sign a horse trainer really might not know what he is doing: . . . and they’re made by Fruit of the Loom. (Niels Hoven, Camperdown, Australia) *First runner-up: * Sign you are getting old: You forget to zip. Sign you are really getting old: You forget to unzip. (Chris Doyle, Burke; Alan Rubin, Delaplane, Va.) *And the winner of the cloven-hoofed wine bottle holder: * Sign you’re oversexed: Your wife pretends to be asleep when you enter the bedroom. Sign you’re really oversexed: Your wife pretends to be asleep when you enter the delivery room. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) *Honorable Mentions:* Sign your finances are in trouble: Your stocks are plummeting off the charts. Sign your finances are really in trouble: Your stockbroker is plummeting off his building. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington; Niels Hoven, Camperdown, Australia) Sign the California energy crisis is getting serious: L.A. residents can only cool their houses to 75 degrees. Sign the California energy crisis is really getting serious: L.A. residents can only cool their wine to 75 degrees. (Ervin Stembol, Alexandria) Sign your marriage is in trouble: You have to get advice from a marriage counselor. Sign your marriage is really in trouble: You have to get advice from O.J. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) Sign you are overweight: You cause floorboards to bend. Sign you are really overweight: You cause light rays to bend. (Bob Sorensen, Herndon) Sign you’ve lost your sense of humor: You no longer get in the Style Invitational. Sign you’ve really lost your sense of humor: You no longer get the Style Invitational. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) Sign you’re dating a loser: He pulls up in a clunker car. Sign you’re really dating a loser: He pulls up in a clunker car that is being towed. (Kenny Burrow, Great Mills, Md.) Sign you may need therapy: You talk to yourself. Sign you may really need therapy: You talk to yourselves. (Cindi Rae Caron, Lenoir, N.C.) Sign you’re getting forgetful: You forget to send in your entry. Sign you’re really getting forgetful: You send in your entry twice. (Diane Graft, Centreville) Sign you’re poor: You fantasize about tax cuts. Sign you’re really poor: You fantasize about cold cuts. (Howard Walderman, Columbia) Sign you are a jerk: You are sleeping with your girlfriend’s mother. Sign you are really a jerk: . . . and your girlfriend’s mother is Mia Farrow. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Sign you might be in trouble: Your mother uses your middle name when she calls for you. Sign you might really be in trouble: The newspaper uses your middle name when it writes about you. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Sign your dot-com employer isn’t doing well: Stock options are provided in lieu of salary. Sign your dot-com employer really isn’t doing well: Stock options are provided in lieu of toilet paper. (Mike Berman, South Riding, Va.) Sign your stockbroker is incompetent: Last year, he recommended Pets.com. Sign your stockbroker is really incompetent: Last week, he recommended Pets.com. (Bruce W. Alter, Fairfax Station) [Pets.com had failed spectacularly six months earlier] Sign your political future may be in trouble: You are caught having lied under oath about your affair with one of your interns. Sign your political future might really be in trouble: You are caught not having filled out all the required paperwork for the nanny you once employed. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Sign it is hot out: You see a dog chasing a cat, and they’re both walking. Sign it is really hot out: You see a dog e-mailing a threat to a cat. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Sign you’re a loser: You’re reading this. Sign you’re really a loser: You wrote this. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Sign you’re getting forgetful: You forget to send in your entry. Sign you’re really getting forgetful: You send in your entry twice. (Diane Graft, Centreville) *CINEMIX: THE MOVIE TITLE ANAGRAMS OF WEEK 1291* Aw, this was a fun contest to judge — there were literally hundreds of hilarious permutations of movie titles among the more than 1,500 entries in Week 1291, from about 200 Losers. Fewer of them carried the joke through to a funny/clever description of the resulting film, but my short list still ran quite a bit longer than the 42 entries that get ink this week . Thanks, y’all, by the way, for checking your anagrams; I ran each of the inking entries through an online validator and every last one panned out. I like to show how a single source can generate a wide variety of results. The five inking anagrams of “Gone With the Wind” were only a few of those entered — others among the 17 entries, some of which used the same anagrams, included Woe, the Night Wind; Wet Hog in the Wind; Whiter, God! Whiter!’ I Wed the Thing Now (something with zombies); Thin Town Weighed; Owning the Whited; and the whaaa Dow Hit Nigh Tween, along with the inking White-Owned Thing; Done With the Wing; Nothing but Weed; I Won the Dew Thing; and Tonight We Whined. (Dow Hit Nigh Tween was just one of many anagrams that were hard to read; if I really had to struggle to make sense of a title, I didn’t even bother reading the description in that entry.) It’s the first win — indeed, the first “above the fold” ink — for Chuck Helwig, a Style Invitational rookie. His anagram of “All the President’s Men” to “The Ill-Mannered Pests” — along with its metaphorical description — out-inked the honorably mentioned All the Dern Inept Mess (Chris Doyle) and Tend the Smaller Penis (Kevin Dopart), as well as the also-ran “Press Lamented NHL Tie.” Chuck’s Lose Cannon winner is just fifth ink overall, but I’m sure that his name — complete with his name anagram Hug, Chew, Lick — will be soon skipping up the Loser Stats chart. Meanwhile, it’s all Recidivists in the rest of the Losers’ Circle: Tom Witte and Beverley Sharp are Hall of Famers, while the runner-up this week give Rick Haynes Ink No. 150. And Rick’s description of “Forrest Gump” turned “Trumpers’ Fog” nailed the analogy so well that his entry was *What Doug Dug *— the hands-down fave this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood. Doug also singled out the first four honorable mentions: Jon Gearhart’s On Can: Barbarian; Danielle Nowlin’s and Duncan Stevens’s twists on “Les Miserables” to Less Miserable and Aimless Rebels; and Matt Monitto’s tour de force anagram of that long-titled Hillary Clinton documentary. *BAREST NIL PUN: Unprintables from Week 1291* Kevin Dopart’s “Tend the Small Penis” got ink online, if not in print, but these wouldn’t make the Invite in any format: Aladdin --> Did Anal: An adult film of a lad in a lad. (Jeff Contompasis, up to no good on an ocean cruise) Sleeping Beauty --> Bent, I Please Guy: A fulfilled fantasy all comes to a head with one little prick. (Jeff Contompasis — see what I mean) Boogie Nights -> Biggest! Ooh! In! An aspiring screenwriter is asked to write dialogue for adult films. (Duncan Stevens) Actually, this one was arguably printable, especially since it’s what the movie’s /about. /But Duncan, the father of two reading-age children, had marked it as “Conversational only.” *Happy Labor Day! * ** Note that you get an extra day to enter the Week 1294 word search neologism contest; deadline is Tuesday night, Sept. 4. Meanwhile, I’d never call it labor to be judging all those limericks from Week 1292.