Style Conversational Week 1379: Zing, zing a song The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s column and results -- and the end of an amazing streak. The Queen — as opposed to Queen — looks out over Piccadilly Circus in London today. Briton Michelle Christophorou used both British icons in her winning entry for The Style Invitational's “Mess With Our Heads” contest. The Queen — as opposed to Queen — looks out over Piccadilly Circus in London today. Briton Michelle Christophorou used both British icons in her winning entry for The Style Invitational's “Mess With Our Heads” contest. (Peter Summers/AFP/Getty Images) By Pat Myers April 9, 2020 at 5:12 p.m. EDT Hi, everyone — happy Passover, Almost Easter, Almost Almost Ramadan … I hope you’re still finding things to laugh about through your multi-layer face masks, including today’s winning and Losing bank heads of Week 1375. The Mess With Our Heads contest is always one of my favorites to judge, both because there are always lots of funny entries and because they make fun of old-time newspaper headline writing, a craft I had used at least sometimes during my decades as a Style section copy editor (though Style heads were usually more like pun-heavy book titles). The usual approach of Mess With Our Heads is to read a different meaning into one more key words in a perfectly understandable headline, then write a funny bank head based on the misreading. While I allowed the Losers to use heads from any publication dated within the contest dates, lots of people used The Post, which resulted in several instances where a bunch of good entries canceled one another out: five entries about “remote lessons” (in using the remote), “Demands for midwives rises amid coronavirus crisis” (and even more in nine months). Other times I chose my favorite wording: Sam Mertens’s entry about Jazzercise topped 10 others about “thinning the jail population.” It’s the first Lose Cannon, and just the sixth blot of Loser Ink ever, for Michelle Christophorou of the U.K., who confused those British icons Queen and The Queen to perfect effect. In second place is brand-new phenom Alex Steelsmith of Hawaii, who has inked in four of his first five weeks, including three today; I never will think of Meals on Wheels again without the mental picture of a homebound diner trying to steady a spinning tray. John Hutchins nabs Ink No. 129 (and his 15th “above the fold”) with his play on Karla Miller’s “Work Advice” headline about a burpy, self-talking co-worker, and Jeff Shirley elevates a frequently used “Lab” joke with an especially endearing bank head. AD ADVERTISING I’m hoping that no one will be upset about the few headlines that played on serious subject matter; “Many who died had health problems/ Captain Obvious releases annual report” (Frank Mann) was the only one that mentioned deaths. I didn’t use headlines about specific cases, such as “At Wash. nursing home, missed opportunities to curb exposure / Inspectors find geezers streaking through facilities.” Um, 29 geezers died there. In general non-disease crudity, I almost dared to use Neal Starkman’s “Pork noodle soup/ Trump offers sex tips for quarantined men,” which did make me burst out laughing. (I especially fall for jokes that turn a noun phrase into a sentence, or similar changes in parts of speech.) What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood thought all four top winners were especially funny, and also singled out “What’s Still Open in D.C.” (presidential piehole, Lawrence McGuire), Frank Mann’s “Many who died,” Jon Ketzner’s fart joke in “Openings that just went poof,” Gary Crockett’s play on “model,” and Steve Honley’s “How to cook if cooped up with the kids” (advice from the “Hansel and Gretel” witch). Doug, who’s been working with me since, gosh, at least 25 years, adds about today’s groaner-pun example from Week 347: “I think snorted at 'Chattanooga Jews’ chews” 20 years ago and did again today." Why is this week not like all other weeks? Almost two years ago, May 10, 2018, the results of Week 1275 — a contest for pairing a line from Shakespeare with a question of your own — was, unsurprisingly, full of clever zingers: “A. “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.”/ Q. “Why does McCain care about my bone spurs, anyway?” (Brendan Beary) AD What was surprising was something missing: the name of Jesse Frankovich, who had roared into the Invite about 2 1/2 years earlier, scoring well over 100 blots of ink per year, almost always multiple inks in a week. Jesse had gotten ink 8 weeks out of the previous 10. But for Jesse, 8 of 10 clearly wasn’t squat. He resumed his ink blotting the next week with three inking limericks — and after that, his name never failed to appear, week after week. He demolished the 59-week record held by Brendan Beary for more than a decade, and kept going … Until: Today — exactly 100 weeks later — Jesse Frankovich failed to get ink in The Style Invitational. I wasn’t aware of this when I winnowed my short list of bank heads for this week’s results, since I don’t see the entrants’ names until I’m ready to put them on the page, at which point I look them up. But as I filled in the names, I did notice the omission. And then I checked Jesse’s list of entries, which unusually for him were well short of the “full dance card” of the maximum 25. They were good, though, and a couple of them were on my shortlist. But I didn’t see any that I felt were more deserving than my choices. AD Franko-Bros’ opinions may differ. So in honor of Jesse’s streak-break, I present all his “noinks” — his non-inking entries — for Week 1375. Real head: Plastic surgeon donates spare equipment for Metro Detroit hospitals to fight coronavirus / Bank head: Squeezing silicone breast implants may help relieve stress caused by pandemic This is not a holiday period — it’s a national emergency / Husbands across the country brace for spending that time of the month in isolation with their wives Experts explain what it means to ‘flatten the curve’/ Fitness gurus highlight the benefits of losing that belly Why Toilet Paper?/ It’s cheap, easy to throw, and just plain funny, pranksters say The 5 Best Smart Scales [as in bathroom scales]/ President boasts he tops them all What History Says About Investing in Bear Markets/ Consider these lessons before adding honey and pic-a-nic baskets to your portfolio AD What does love do to our brains?/ Cooking a romantic meal for that special zombie in your life Another milestone that we’ll note more next week: With his honorable mention this week, Frank Osen scores Ink No. 500, becoming the 15th member of the Style Invitational Hall of Fame, just a few weeks after Duncan Stevens sprinted to the threshold. We’ll look at some of Frank’s Greatest Hits next week. (I hope I find that picture of him and his prize alligator-foot back scratcher.) Pun Is the Loserest: This Week’s Contest, Week 1379 I was working on a neologism contest for this week when I got an email from Duncan Stevens suggesting a contest that combined two mainstays of the Invite oeuvre: puns and song titles/lyrics. And his example — How is Trump like Elvis’s “Hound Dog”? ‘Quine all the time” — was so timely, perhaps ephemeral, that I catapulted it straight into production for Week 1379. (And I’m not sure that example would have worked without the cartoon spelling out what “’quine” meant.) AD I (and the format of the print Invite) tend to prefer pithy jokes to the discursive storytelling type, but this time I think it’d be fun to include both types. For inspiration and guidance on the latter, here are some of the winners of two contests for “feghoots,” stories whose punchline is an elaborate pun. The Czar’s introduction of the results of Week 347 (2000) rags on about all the creaky old jokes that people had put their own names to. That was pre-Google, folks. I don’t want to make the same speech about the Steal Invitational. Here are the complete results of Week 347 (plain text file; scroll down past the new contest) and Week 1100 (2014) . And here are a few excerpts: Report FROM WEEK XIV (347), in which you were asked to contrive elaborate scenarios that end in painful puns. As usual for a contest such as this, the Steal Invitationalists were out in force, submitting anciently unoriginal jokes as their own: You can’t heat your kayak and have it, too; with fronds like that, who needs anemones; I can see Claire Lee now, Lorraine has gone; transporting gulls over a staid lion for immortal porpoises; only Hugh can prevent florist friars; picking bunions on a Sesame Street bus; repaint and thin no more; making an obscene clone fall; and of course, the creakiest, rheumiest granddaddy of them all: No pun in ten did. We are pretty sure those below are original. AD Second Runner-Up: Maggie Thatcher went to see the doctor about a painful boil. The doctor told his nurse to administer a local anesthetic and let him know when she was ready for treatment. When the nurse returned, the doctor said: “Is Thatcher Fine? I’ll Lance Her.” (Chris Doyle, Burke) First Runner-Up: Lithuania’s King Lothar loved golf. Competing in a tournament at the famed Pair of Dice golf course in Las Vegas, Lothar and his partner finished the 18th hole leading the field at one stroke over par. Waiting nervously in the clubhouse, however, he received bad news about his rivals’ results: “They played Pair of Dice and put up a par, King Lot.” (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) And the winner of the huge men’s underpants: Two park rangers are making their rounds in the Rockies when they discover a guy named Nathan erecting an oil rig on the side of a mountain. He explains that he has been inspired by those ads on the radio, and has decided to drill for beer. The rangers are going to issue a citation, but decide to do something crueler: let him try. Winking to his partner, one ranger observes that since the mountain won’t really be injured, “Why don’t we just let Nate here take its Coors?” (Bill Strider, Gaithersburg) AD GAME OF GROANS: STORY PUNS FROM WEEK 1100 In Week 1100 we asked for feghoots — little stories that end in a pun on some well-known line or expression. The format of the Invitational demands very little stories; perhaps we’ll call them fhts. Warning: These puns are outrageous groaners. It’s part of the genre. The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: Despite trying and trying and trying and not getting any early action on WMDs, Operation Iraqi Freedom did ultimately nab Hussein and many of his henchmen. But after the former Iraqi president was hanged, Dubya nixed the plan to transfer the rest of the inner circle to Guantánamo. “Political opposition is too great,” he said. “I can’t Gitmo Saddam’s faction.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) 2nd place and the tiny rubbery brain and plastic nose: The famed businessman Victor Kiam told a story about his service in World War II: “At the Battle of the Bulge, a colonel kept ordering waves of grunts like me out of the trench we were in, only to see them cut down by cannon fire. So I shouted, “Hey, why are you doing that?” He replied, “Look, Kiam, you’re fodder.” (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) AD 3rd place: Yet another reason for Americans’ expanding waistlines — this time it’s the recent craze of adding fatty fish to your diet. They may be getting lots of omega-3 and all that, but still, their butts for the grease of cod go wide. (Marc Shapiro, Alexandria, Va.) 4th place: The place: Heaven. The event: the annual cook-off. This year, Chinese. The team: the inventor of the sewing machine, the grande dame of the Grand Ole Opry, the founder of what is now Zimbabwe, and Charles Gulden of condiment fame. The group was just about to complete its pièce de résistance when in flew the Angel in Charge to announce that time was up: “Howe, Minnie, Rhodes, Mustard Man – wok down!” (Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.) Dispatch from our Dublin Bureau I got an email this morning from Longtime Loser John O’Byrne of Dublin, whom we took out to an Irish pub in Washington years ago on one of his visits to the States. Hi Pat — What a lovely surprise to receive your letter this morning - the first one (of any kind) for over a week! We have been in lockdown for the past fortnight. The over-70s (our demographic) are not being allowed to step outside the door, regardless of their state of health. The under-70s can walk once a day to shop for essentials but not beyond 2kms from home. We’ve been told today that these restrictions will last another 2/3 weeks, at least. My wife and I are slowly turning into vegetables! We have our son staying with us who is great at shopping and negotiating the police checkpoints. Amidst all this, we are in the midst of new government formation - a coalition of some sort. Your letter is a great tonic - we’re not even receiving bills or flyers anymore! We really appreciate the efforts put into getting out the Post each day. The quality of the journalism is exceptional. I particularly enjoy reading the e-Replica edition. So there’s a lot of electoral excitement heading your way - let’s hope Joe can carry the day. Trump’s daily clown act comes across as sicker and sicker. Anyway, enjoy your freedom walks, and keep safe. Best wishes John Happy Springtime Holiday of Choice, everyone — I can’t wait to see all your song parodies. (I’ve already heard from almost 70 entrants, many of them brand new!)