Style Conversational Week 1357: We have another sing coming
The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s parody contest
and “opposite movie” results.
Bob Staake's pencil sketch for this week's Style Invitational cartoon.
Recent surgery to replace a heart valve resulted in nerve damage that
reached Bob's fingers (it's likely to be temporary). But he's clearly
still able to kick the competition. More about Bob below. (Bob Staake
for the Washington Post)
Bob Staake's pencil sketch for this week's Style Invitational cartoon.
Recent surgery to replace a heart valve resulted in nerve damage that
reached Bob's fingers (it's likely to be temporary). But he's clearly
still able to kick the competition. More about Bob below. (Bob Staake
for 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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November 7, 2019 at 4:06 PM EST
Before we talk about this week’s contest and results, I want to give one
last reminder about this Sunday’s Loser brunch, at noon at Paradiso
Italian Restaurant, 6124 Franconia Rd., Alexandria — close outside the
Beltway between the Van Dorn Street and Springfield exits. Not only will
some up-and-coming rookie Losers be there, at their first Invite event,
but we’ll also have a reporter and videographer from The Lily, an online
division of The Post that’s targeted toward women; they’re working on a
video story about the Invitational, and especially our Loser Community.
So it would be a shame if we didn’t show up and Commune, you know?
It’s not too late to RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org
, the Losers’ website; click on “Our Social
Engorgements.” You’ll also see a roughed-in calendar for the next 12
months. And if you’re coming, flip me an email as well at
pat.myers@washpost.com.
Play it again … Tips for the Week 1357 parody contest
They take a long time, but song parody contests are my favorite of all
the Invitationals to judge — primarily because I’m /always /blown away
by the wit and craft and humor of the best entries. And so I’m eagerly
awaiting what the Loser Community sends me for Week 1357
.
I had considered limiting the contest, as I sometimes do, to a certain
genre of music (e.g., Beatles songs, holiday songs) or to particular
subject matter (food, school, animals, advice). But this time I’m giving
you free rein — just keep the subject matter to current events. And it’s
fun to share a variety of musical genres and time periods.
We had our last parody contest just four months ago, in Week 1339
′s contest for songs about “modern woes,” but
I like to run two a year, and the remaining weeks of 2019 are spoken
for. And Lord knows there should be enough inspiration in the daily
headlines. What follows are the same Handy-Dandy Guidelines I posted in
the Week 1339 Conversational — which in turn were lifted from the
previous parody contest.
● As with all Style Invitational song parody contests, *we value
flawless rhyming,* even if the original rhymes loosely. And we’re a
humor contest; witty wordplay (including, but not requiring, clever
playing off the words of the original), a zingy ending and the avoidance
of bitter anger — our word for this is “screediness” — are the paths to
Invite ink.
● Because the Invitational is a contest that is read rather than
listened to — especially, duh, in the print version — *a reader has to
easily figure out how your lyrics match the tune*. The best way to know
this is to show someone the lyrics and see if the person — without your
help or cues — can figure out how to sing them.
For the print page (which includes the four top winners), I’ll be
choosing what I hope are very well known songs among at least a couple
of generations. Online, I’ll include links to video or audio versions to
the originals, and so less well known songs are welcome there. In either
case, feel free to include the URL of a clip on YouTube or elsewhere
whose music matches your lyrics. (Handy hint: To make a YouTube clip
start playing at a certain point: Play it, pause it at your starting
point, then add to the end of the URL, with no spaces: #T=0m25s, or how
many minutes and seconds it really is. If this task proves confusing,
don’t worry about it.)
● In our Golden Era of Political Parody Videos,*I’d love it if I could
share your fabulously inkworthy parody as a performance,* particularly
if the lyrics are right there on the video — like this one by Sandy
Riccardi in our Week 1287
parody contest (results here
).
But it’s your lyrics, not the performance, that I’m judging. If you send
a link to a video, please also send the text of the lyrics.
● Our general rule with the Invitational is to run *humor that hasn’t
been published elsewhere.* But I’ve made exceptions in cases where it
hasn’t yet been distributed widely, or by another publication. Write me
at pat.myers@washpost.com . about
specific cases and I’ll make a ruling.
● Also, while I normally consider the Invite not to be a team sport, *I
don’t mind crediting two people for a single parody.*
● Note that once again,*I’m extending the usual deadline by a week* — so
you’ll have till Nov. 25 to submit your parodies. If you’ve done a video
and it’s ready for me to see earlier, drop me a line and I’ll have a
look at it, in case I’d like you to tweak your lyrics. (My normally
strict blind judging, in which I don’t see the writers’ names until I’ve
chosen the winners, has to involve a little peeking in cases like this;
don’t worry — even if I know and adore you personally, I won’t have any
trouble at all denying you ink.)
Opposite attractions: The movies of Week 1353
Contests that play on movie titles have been very good to The Style
Invitational over the years — there’s an enormous pool of titles to work
with, and it’s usually not necessary for the reader to know the movie
well to appreciate the joke. And the results of Week 1353 — a contest to
change a word in a title to its “opposite” — hold their own.
More than 250 people entered this contest, with at least 2,000 entries
in all. At first I was troubled because a lot of the entries were too
obvious — lots of stuff like “The Slow and the Furious: Rush hour on the
Beltway” — but once I threshed out the wheat of the shortlist from the
chaff of “The Worst Years of Our Lives: The Trump administration,” I had
more than enough clever ideas, including imaginative interpretations of
“opposite.”
It’s the first Lose Cannon for Jesse Rifkin, who was still inkless when
he performed a song parody at the Loser party in January, but in recent
months has been blotting more weeks than not. This week his “Lion Queen”
gets him Ink No. 13, and he also gets an honorable mention for my pick
among numerous “Mission: Possible” entries.
Frank Osen, who doesn’t have a cat but has a boatload of Loser prizes,
has already passed on his Twinkle Tush “jewel”; perhaps I’ll offer it up
once again in a future contest, or perhaps it’ll be a door prize at a
future Loser event.
After a period of appearing only in the Unprintables section of the
Conversational, current Rookie of the Year Jon Ketzner has figured out
how to be inkably edgy — as in his runner-up “Moby Niceguy.”
After I posted this week’s results this morning, 256-time Loser Mike
Gips wrote me with this note: “My entries for the movie contest were in
honor of my father. He designed the poster for each of my entries.”
Which meant that Philip Gips, who died last month, was the creator of
the famous posters for: “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “Altered States,”
“Catch-22,” “Rosemary’s Baby” — perhaps his most famous image —
“Downhill Racer,” “No Way Out” and “Fatal Attraction.” Not to mention
“Alien” and the ESPN logo, which has never been changed. There’s a great
obit in the New York Times.
*What Doug Dug: *The numerous faves this week of Ace Copy Editor Doug
Norwood all came from the honorable mentions: “White Hawk Down” as the
John Bolton story (Tom Witte and David Kleinbard); “Hygienic Harry” — Go
ahead, make my bed (Lee Graham); “Death of Pi” (rookie Stuart Anderson);
“The Dropout” — with the “plastics” guy telling cashier Ben his
preference in grocery bags (great debut by First Offender Marco Di
Pietro, who also wrote the headline, “Box Office Flips”); “Small,” a dig
at Trump by Deb Stewart; “The Godmother,” Cinderella ordering a hit on
her stepsisters; and the best of many for “One Flew Into the Cuckoo’s
Nest,” another White House dig by Howard Walderman. *And a Laura Laurel:
*Laura Michalski, who gave the Invite yet another pair of eyes last
night, most enjoyed Jeff Shirley’s “20,000 Leagues Over the Sea,” a
large program of starting bowling teams on Navy ships.
Bob-Bob-Bobbin’ along: A Staake update
Last week I was delighted to welcome back Bob Staake as our Forever
Illustrator just two weeks after he underwent emergency surgery to
replace a heart valve. Since the operation, Bob developed a problem in
the nerves leading to his drawing hand — but as you can see in both his
pencil sketch above and the final cartoon in this week’s Invitational,
he’s coping with it magnificently. Here’s an excerpt of what Bob has
posted on Facebook in the past days about his condition:
/Just two days ago: /
“It’ll take 12 to 18 months for your drawing hand to fully recover.”
“That’s what the neurologist told me yesterday. Seems that one of the
surprisingly common side effects of open heart surgery is brachial
plexopathy. … When the patient undergoes anesthesia and their arms are
opened wide … this causes the nerves extending from the neck to the
fingers to be stretched to the point that they can become damaged.
During my rehabilitation in the hospital I noticed that both the pinkie
and ring finger on my right hand were numb. …
“ I thought this was something that would go away, but when I returned
to the studio and tried to draw with either a pencil or pen, it was
almost impossible. With those two fingers on the drawing board, my line
was shaky, tentative, and lacked any spontaneous confidence whatsoever.
Sometimes I would lose a grip on the pencil, sometimes it completely
slipped out of my grasp. Yesterday I went through a number of nerve
stimulation tests and was diagnosed with brachial plexopathy. It will
heal, I was told — in 12 to 18 months — and worse yet, the healing
begins at the neck and ENDS at the fingers.
“I discussed with my neurologist ways to compensate for what will
clearly be a (temporary) decline in the quality of my line drawings, but
I’ve always been pretty good at faking it with graphic “smoke and
mirrors” (it helps that I ultimately digitize my hand drawings). So,
while I now have a new aortic heart valve, I also have a new challenge —
one that for most people would be nothing more than an annoying numbness
in a couple for rarely used fingers, but for an artist who makes his
living with his hands, the stakes are a little more complicated …”
/Today: /“Today’s illustration for The Washington Post [is] my first
after being diagnosed with brachial plexopathy in my drawing hand. … My
pinkie and ring finger continue to remain numb (amazing how important
those two stupid fingers are when drawing) but I’m doing my best to
compensate for my lack of tactile control, a less than ideal pen line
and a decidedly shaky stroke. Neurologist projects a 12-18 month
recovery, but I’m committed to cutting that time in half.”
So those gracefully zany pencil lines in the sketch above of You Know
Who and the ambassador to Ukraine? Those were done with a half-numb
hand. Ditto the pen work in the final. And so while of course we’re
wishing Bob the speediest of recoveries, it’s abundantly clear that his
artwork will continue to be of world-class quality — even if he still
draws cartoon horses with their leg joints backward. We’re so freaking
lucky to have him.