Style Conversational Week 1312: A mess of fun from a messy year The Style Invitational Empress looks here and there back at 2018 The Style Invitational Ink of the Day, a Facebook page, features individual entries as graphics. Dailyish. Sign up at bit.ly/inkofday. The Style Invitational Ink of the Day, a Facebook page, features individual entries as graphics. Dailyish. Sign up at bit.ly/inkofday. 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 Dec. 27, 2018 at 3:19 p.m. EST The Style Invitational has made it to the end of yet another year, outlasting by now five editors of The Post’s Style section and two editors of The Post itself. And 2018 was a ripe a year for Invite zing as most any of the preceding 25. Though like so much current humor, ours has become quite a bit more political in the past couple of years, we’ve also been able to find irony and absurdity even outside the White House. (Today’s inking cartoon captions from Week 1308 are almost devoid of political allusions.) Here’s a brief, almost random sampling of prime 2018 ink. (By the way: If you like your Invitational humor one joke at a time, sign up for the Style Invitational Ink of the Day on Facebook and see an entry from the current or past Invite turned into a graphic. I’ve been making them for almost six years, and they’re all still available on that page. It’s at bit.ly/inkofday. ) *Week 1259, euphemisms: * 3rd place: For “starving”: In the faminy way. (Jesse Frankovich) 2nd place: Serial groper: Outreach engineer. (Ivars Kuskevics) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Excrement: Gross domestic product. (Melissa Balmain) With “holiday" updated to “post-post-holiday,” the art for the Evite to this year’s Loser party, Jan. 26. Need one? Write to the Empress to get on the list. With “holiday" updated to “post-post-holiday,” the art for the Evite to this year’s Loser party, Jan. 26. Need one? Write to the Empress to get on the list. *Week 1265, song parodies about education: * “D.C. schools increasingly graduating chronically absent students, report finds” (To “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”) I was raised in the D.C. public schools, Where the suits make their own achievement rules. But it’s all right now, this slacker’s morass. Yeah, it’s all right — I’m never in class, still I pass pass pass! Turn in junk, get the teachers’ dirty looks. Still don’t flunk, cause they’re cooking all the books. And it’s all right now — to college for me. Yeah, it’s all right . . . accepted I’ll be into UDC! (Nan Reiner) *Week 1266, words from ScrabbleGrams letter sets: *2nd place: ADEILRV —> LIARED: Hired a press secretary. “Trump immediately liared up after the election.” (Kevin Dopart) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: AAALWYY —> LAYAWAY: A payment plan that reportedly costs $130,000. (Jesse Frankovich) *Week 1269, bank heads for real headlines: * 4th place: Has someone hacked your webcam? Because you look pretty funny reading this in your underwear right now (Bill Dorner) 3rd place: Mueller evidence appears to contradict Prince statement Investigators found at least 1 thing that compares 2 U (Frank Mann) 2nd place: D.C.-area forecast: Some wet snowflakes possible today /Pipe bursts in Washington Post newsroom (David Kleinbard) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Luckily for world, Trump’s no Xi Miss Rome says he is “at most a VII” (Elden Carnahan) *Week 1275, write a question that a line from Shakespeare could answer: * 4th place: A. “Give not this rotten orange to your friend.” (“Much Ado About Nothing”) Q: “Shall I introduce Donald to my pal Melania?” (Thor Rudebeck) 3rd place: A. “Dog!” (“Troilus and Cressida”) Q: Mr. President, for your last question on your cognitive assessment: Is this a dog, or a dog? (Dave Prevar) 2nd place: A. “By my soul I swear, there is no power in the tongue of man to alter me.” (“The Merchant of Venice”) Q. What were the sadly inaccurate last words of the Tootsie Pop? (Danielle Nowlin) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: A. “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.” (“Romeo and Juliet”) Q, “Why does McCain care about my bone spurs, anyway?”(Brendan Beary) *Week 1280, “air quotes”: * 4th place: Pr“ogress”ive: Hillary. — D.T., Washington (Jeff Contompasis) 3rd place: Per“ha”ps: Yeah, we should definitely do lunch sometime! (Danielle Nowlin) 2nd place: “Colon”alism: Exploiting another country till you’ve rectum. (Kathy El-Assal) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: Be“lie”ve me: When a speech begins with this phrase, you know what to expect. (Brian Allgar) AD *Week 1287, fake trivia about animals: * 4th place: Despite their reputation, clams have a surprisingly high rate of depression. (Drew Bennett) 3rd place: The world’s most expensive bacon comes from the guinea pig. (Susanne Pierce Dyer) 2nd place: John Williams drew inspiration for the “Jaws” theme after hearing about a shark attack survivor who continued to play piano with his remaining two fingers. (Danielle Nowlin) And the winner of the Lose Cannon: When fully inflated, an adult Shar-Pei can reach up to seven feet in circumference. (David Schwartz) Bring it on in 2019! And regular contestants will know what our first contest of the New Year will be. (Irregular ones can figure it out by looking at recent years of the Master Contest List, kept up by Loser Elden Carnahan. I’m sure you’re dying to find out.) *DID YOU GET THE EVITE? AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS SUNDAY? * I sent out an Evite on Wednesday morning to the Losers’ Post-Post-Holiday Party/Potluck/Songfest, Saturday evening, Jan. 26, at Le Chateau Langerfultz (as I’ve just decided to call it), the home of Losers Steve Langer and Allison Fultz in Chevy Chase, Md. It’s mostly standing around and eating and drinking all the good stuff and getting to Meet the Parentheses, but we’ll also have a parody singalong, featuring, among a few others, some of the songs that got ink two weeks ago in our Week 1306 contest for songs about the news, set to holiday tunes . Note: Those songs are mostly political, and not very complimentary to the current president. In our January 2017 party, in the wake of the election, I was concerned that any Trump voters we had among us would feel uncomfortable, and we kept away from the political parodies. By 2018, I didn’t care. By 2019, I really don’t care. The parodies aren’t calling for harm to befall him, and they don’t disparage him with inaccuracy. Of course, you don’t have to sing along. I sent out invitations to regular Losers, people who’ve been on the list for earlier Loser parties, plus a lot of local people who’ve entered the Invitational in the last three months or so. But if you’re reading this, you and your handler are hereby invited even if you’re just a weird fan who reads The Style Conversational. Write to me at pat.myers@washpost.com to get the invitation and to be notified with any updates. This is one of my favorite nights of the year. Last year I walked around wrapped in a string of purple lights (and also in clothing) but my neck started to burn. *And this coming Sunday at 11 a.m.: * If you like to do your eating while sitting at a table: Loser Edward Gordon is in town from Austin for the week, and just as he did last year, he’s made a reservation at an Alexandria restaurant — this year, Theismann’s , near the King Street Metro station — and would like any interested Losers etc. to join him before he leaves for the airport that afternoon. I’ll try to make it over there; if you haven’t already given an RSVP to Ed, you can write to me and I’ll pass it on to him. The the restaurant will validate parking: “Enter garage driveway to right of restaurant and to left of Embassy Hotel on Diagonal Road and go to left to park near restaurant. Parking team can help you to park close to restaurant.” *DORKS OF ART*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1308* /An old honorable-mentions subhead by Kevin Dopart; why waste fresh material you can use in the next caption contest? / I’m very glad I decided not to make Week 1308 merely a contest for “what’s wrong with this picture”; while I did allow for that approach, and we got some very funny explanations (mostly noting some tiny detail in a scene of chaos), the large majority of the funniest entries were conventional captions . Um, I mean that they were in our usual format — interpreting a big red ball as a “heavy period” (as did Hildy Zampella) or as Paul Manafort’s Pinocchio-style ankle monitor (Jesse Frankovich) shouldn’t accompany the word “conventional.” Many of today’s inking entries were unique ideas among the other entries — including Jesse’s winning four-way anagram, Susanne Pierce Dyer’s “glass ceiling,” Gary Crockett’s fake sunset, John Hutchins’s dig at United Airlines, and First Offender Dave Conger comparing the red ball with the red circle designating Picture B. But a number of others were my choice among several with the same approach, including some with quite similar (but not the same) wording. Elon Musk jokes, Target jokes, bunion jokes, jokes about the magician’s saw-trick assistant being the person in the levitating box. And more. It’s clearly Jesse Frankovich Day at The Style Invitational. Well, that’s practically every Thursday for the past couple of years, but this time it’s really out of control: the suggestion (with examples) for this week’s Tour de Fours neologism contest, plus five inking entries — including, for the second straight week, this week’s winner., which earns Jesse his seventh Lose Cannon, to join his earlier Invite trophies of three Inkin’ Memorials and an Inker. He’s going to have to get a telescoping mantel. Second-place finisher Mike Gips is also a familiar name in Loserdom, though not so much lately; this is his 244th blot of Invite ink and 24th "above the fold." But the Losers' Circle is almost — but not quite — new territory for third- and fourth-placers this week: it's the sixth (and seventh) blot of ink for newbie Susanne Pierce Dyer, and the 13th for Nancy Della Rovere, but each already won a Loser Mug or Grossery bag with an earlier runner-up. Susanne and Nancy, let me know what you'd like me to send you this time. *Picture X: The Unprintable:* I only marked one unprintable entry for Week 1306 to save for this section, but it’s a doozy; I’m editing it even to run it here. It’s for the cartoon of the granny sitting on a seesaw while lifting an anvil: “Picture A: Myrtle enjoys the feeling of hard wood between her legs as something big hovers above her.” Yeah, it’s by Tom Witte. Sigh. Happy New Year, everyone, and I hope to hear from you soon.