Style Conversational Week 1372: The punliness of the long-distance runner Duncan Stevens sets a burning pace into the Style Invitational Hall of Fame. Earning almost al his 500 blots of ink in the past five years, Duncan Stevens becomes the 14th Loser to Hall. (Family photo) By Pat Myers Feb. 20, 2020 at 4:48 p.m. EST Four years ago last week, right here in this column, I introduced an emerging “Loser Phenom” who, after a handful of Style Invitational appearances over three years, was suddenly getting Style Invitational ink week after week — already up to a total of 30 blots. Fortunately for us all, Duncan Stevens’s torrid ink-snarf pace only picked up. And last week, with a typical single-contest haul of three honorable mentions plus the HM subhead, Duncan reached the 500-ink threshold of the Style Invitational Hall of Fame, to become its 14th member. (The first: Chuck Smith, June 2001.) Along that remarkably short route, Duncan won the whole Invite 13 times and scored 41 runners-up, in virtually every type of contest, most notably in a string of classic song parodies, and was Loser of the Year in 2018. And I’m more than thrilled to see that he’s still dashing along with full 25-entry submissions week after Loser week. Today, check out his interpretation of the dots in the window of Cartoon A — unique among the entries this week — as a collection of dog noses, intent on sniffing the woman’s T-Bone Perfume. AD ADVERTISING Since that “Meet the Parentheses” Q&A in the Conversational, Duncan’s become a fixture in the Loser Community as well, with a demeanor and vocal delivery so deadpan, so utterly without affect, that you’d think he was, oh, a federal lawyer dealing in banking regulation, rather than the person who penned a holiday ditty about Stormy Daniels called “Mistress Time Is Here.” Not to mention a member of an improv team called Breakup Wok. The Empress, who is 5-2 (I must be bending my knees), singing parodies with Duncan Stevens at this year’s Loser Post Holiday Party. (Screen image from video) The Empress, who is 5-2 (I must be bending my knees), singing parodies with Duncan Stevens at this year’s Loser Post Holiday Party. (Screen image from video) Here’s a bit from that earlier Convo with Duncan, along with some updates, including some of his own favorite ink from those first 500 blots. MEET THE PARENTHESES: (DUNCAN STEVENS, VIENNA, VA.) [from February 2016] Age: Evidently not old enough to know better. [Mid-forties.] Official Loser Anagram (aka Granola Smear): Unscented Vans. Though I’m also partial to Nuns Dent Caves and Nuns, Vets Dance. AD What brought me to the Invite: I had been enjoying the Invite ever since I moved to D.C. and started subscribing to the Post in 2000, but I would glance at the contest, think “hey, I should enter,” and almost never get around to it. But last summer I said to myself, “Self, this is lame. You like wordplay. There’s a lively wordplay contest in your paper every week. You have no excuse.” So I started sending in entries more or less every week, and I found that a lot of contests that I had never thought to try — like neologisms or snarky notes to “glassbowls” — were a lot of fun once I put some effort into them. What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? ... I also sometimes spoof hymns for my church choir: “Jesus Christ is risen today/Man, that guy won’t go away.” And now from 2020 ... So how do you get all that ink week after week? Do you write the maximum of 25 entries for each contest? I write more than 25 most weeks — sometimes a lot more — and then choose the ones I like best from there, with advice from my long-suffering wife. It’s usually painful to leave a bunch on the cutting room floor, but I’ve found that the first 25 entries I think of aren’t always going to be my best. If Entries 100 and 101 give me a chuckle, it was worth writing Entries 26-99. AD Then what do you do with the rest? I share them on Losernet (the online listserv for Invite entrants), mine them for leftover contests, and reread every so often to amuse myself. So how do you go about writing all those song parodies? I usually try to think of subjects (particularly subjects in the news) with sounds that are similar to titles or repeated phrases in well-known songs, and build around them. For a recent contest I wrote a “Hey Jude” parody about Greta Thunberg, ending each verse with “Greta” instead of “better.” That’s going to help a reader figure out how the parody matches the song, since there’s no audio. I also try hard to match the parody’s rhythm with the original; the reader shouldn’t have to think, “Now how does this line fit?” What do you do when not Inviting? Lots of things! As was the case in the last interview, I’m still a federal lawyer and still have two kids, now 10 and 7, and still play ultimate Frisbee, dabble in improv comedy, and keep busy in various roles at church. I’ve lately gotten more active in OEDILF, the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, which the Invite uses every August for a contest as it steadily progresses through the alphabet. I always submit my entries to OEDILF after the contest is over, and also offer suggestions to other writers in the website’s workshopping process. AD Any notable experiences with people who saw your name in the Invite? I recently wrote a parody about gerrymandering (see below) and got a nice note from the head of One Virginia, an anti-gerrymandering organization, thanking me for raising awareness of the issue! Other Invite hey-aren’t-yous have included federal lawyers at the FDIC and at other agencies, fellow churchgoers, elementary school friends I hadn’t heard from in 30-plus years, and at least one teacher at my daughter’s school. Do your kids think you’re famous? Don’t think so! If I could only start hanging around with Cookie Monster or Captain Underpants … Favorite past inks: Week 1163, spell a word backward and define the result: MUGELBBUB: A demon who tortures souls after sticking their shoes to the floor. Week 1166, Questionable Journalism: Sentence from the paper: Two days before Christmas, a trust called DE First Holdings was quietly formed in Delaware, where corporations are required to reveal little about their workings. Q. What does “The Night Before Christmas” sound like when retold by Bernie Sanders? AD Week 1195, change spacing or punctuation in a movie title: “Snow: White”: From the “First Things First” series of nature documentaries. Week 1196, combine two halves of hyphenated words into a new word: Evangelifunctory: Paying lip service to conservative Christian principles. “Before introducing Mr. Trump, Mr. Falwell made some evangelifunctory remarks about upholding strong family values.” Week 1223, sensationalized headlines for mundane stories: MANY D.C. RESIDENTS ARE WEDDED TO COUSINS! Redskins fans want star quarterback Kirk Cousins to stay with the team Week 1247, lines from reimagined movies: “The Cider House Rules”: “Man oh man, this is one awesome cider house.” Week 1248, “confessions”: I sometimes sneak up behind my co-workers and scare them by popping a paper bag. Look, you’ve got to find ways to pass the time when you’re in the Secret Service. AD Week 1262, crossword clues: BARR: Second item on a pirate’s daily to-do list, after “A. Get up” Week 1278, grandfoals: The Ego Has Landed x Jirque du Soleil = I Am My Sunshine Week 1339, song parodies about the news: To “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”: Have yourself a gerrymandered district, draw some artful lines; Make it look like 12 exploding porcupines. Have yourself a gerrymandered district, slice and dice the votes: Safe seat, even if they catch you screwing goats. Once we’d choose folks who stood for us; “Go do good for us,” we said — Threw out those who were abusing us. Now they’re choosing us instead. Draw it up so you can’t be defeated, be you saint or heel, ’Cause John Roberts says that this is no big deal, So have yourself a seat no one can ever steal. Week 1306, holiday song parodies about the news: To “Frosty the Snowman”: Toss me the dough, man, there’s a mistress with a tale, She’ll describe your groin — better give some coin, Keep the tabloids off her trail. AD Toss me the dough, man, there’s a chick we need to pay, Says she spanked your bum, dude, but she’ll keep mum, We’ll just need an NDA. There surely is some magic when we spread around the bucks, We squelch the stories from the broads that the Donald goes and makes love to. Toss me the dough, man; we’ll make sure these seeds don’t sprout. Pay a trifling fee, and you’ll be home free, ’cause we’ll never get found out. ---- And another milestone in Loserdom! Last week, as Duncan reached his 500th blot of ink, Jesse Frankovich broke a record I thought would never fall: He got 180 blots of ink in a single “Loser year” (roughly March to March), finally passing Brendan Beary’s mark in the mid-2000s, back before there was an entry limit and before I could judge the entries without knowing who’d written them. And this week, Jesse’s at 181; and according to Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan, there’s one more week to go in Year 27. AD And we’d better order a Hall of Fame key card for ... Frank Osen has 490 blots as of last week, according to the standings. Plus another one today. Oy! Next week: A Meet the Parentheses with Longtime Loser Steve Honley as he passes the 100-ink mark. If you’re a regular Loser and would like to introduce yourself to Greater Loserdom, drop me a line. The Staake deck: Results of Week 1368 I’m certain that most of this week’s interpretations of the four Bob Staake cartoons from Week 1368 would never have been thought of by Bob himself. The spots outside the window in Cartoon A? King Kong’s boxers, a Purple-People Eater, the Dalmatian of hell, a pack of dog noses, and big blots of non-Invite ink. Not to mention fodder for a nice pun on “periods.” That last one worked perfectly for Sam Mertens, who, still in his superb rookie year, gets his third Invite win and his 47th (and 48th) ink. And a previous Rookie of the Year, Danielle Nowlin, is a runner-up this week, along with Jeff Contompasis’s congressional pun, “High on the Hill was the Lonely Voteherd” — the favorite of my Style Invitational Devotees co-admin Alex Blackwood, and similar jokes about “the Last Pillar of Democracy” by Stephen Dudzik and Ellen Ryan. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choice of Sam’s Picture A entry. He also singled out Jack McCombs’s King Kong boxers, Kevin Dopart’s “Invisible Man” allusion for the empty basket in Picture B, Bruce Niedt’s “lostling,” Jonathan Jensen’s HOV lane, and Steve Smith’s allusion to the recent cowardly censorship by the National Archives. We lucked out on the print page this week! The cartoon captions will appear on a page with color in this Sunday’s Arts & Style section. Otherwise, First Offender Kathleen Delano’s joke about the Purple-People Eater wouldn’t have made much sense to a reader looking at a gray-faced woman in Cartoon A. Pithy please: This week's Balliol rhymes I expect all you Loserbards to be conducting all your conversations, yelling at your kids, etc., in the meter ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM, once you start working on the Week 1372 “Balliol rhymes.” And iamb quite optimistic that you’ll come up with a variety of zingy verses, especially because you get to double the length if you like. The original Oxford undergraduates who published their “Masque of Balliol” — is that where “sophomoric” comes from? — replaced the vowels in their targets’ names with hyphens in mock-disguise; I’d consider the same joke except that perhaps not all of the names would be clear enough, and also just that, eh, not all that funny. It’s easy enough for me to go one way or the other at the last minute. The newsletter's working — finally! Be sure to sign up. As I’ve noted in past weeks, I’m now using a new service to send the once-a-week email notification containing a link to the Invitational and Conversational. So even if you’d been getting the email every Thursday for years and years, please take a moment to sign up at tinyletter.com/TheEmpress. It won’t ask you for any personal data, not even your name. (If it tells you that you’re already signed up, that’s because I added you myself — I couldn’t bear to let you forget the Invite for even a week.)