Style Conversational Week 1380: Speaking Frankly The Empress of The Style Invitational on our newest Hall of Famer, (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) The Empress “knighting” Frank Osen — actually, presenting the alligator-head back scratcher that he'd just won as a Style Invitational prize — at the 2014 West Chester Poetry Conference, where I was part of a panel about song parodies. Frank was there as an actual poet. The Empress “knighting” Frank Osen — actually, presenting the alligator-head back scratcher that he'd just won as a Style Invitational prize — at the 2014 West Chester Poetry Conference, where I was part of a panel about song parodies. Frank was there as an actual poet. (Mark Holt) By Pat Myers April 16, 2020 at 4:46 p.m. EDT I didn’t realize until I’d posted the results of Style Invitational Week 1375 last week — and someone pointed it out in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group — that we had a new member of the Invite Hall of Fame: Frank Osen had blotted up his 500th ink, less than two months after Duncan Stevens loped across its threshold. Frank first made his mark on the Invite in 2011, immediately snaring a runner-up spot in a contest to replace the last three lines in a 1800s Edward Lear limerick with your own (note that that’s it’s Lear, not Frank, “rhyming” “casement” and “amazement”): There was an old man at a casement Who held up his hands in amazement: “My not wearing pants Explains all their rants, And, perhaps, what that one woman’s gaze meant.” Frank came for the poetry contests — his collection “Virtue Big as Sin” is the winner of the Able Muse Prize — but stayed for all the yuks: Within weeks, Frank’s name was a fixture the results of all manner (or unmanner) of contests, ending up in the Losers’ Circle seemingly more often than not — he’s now won the contest 22 times, and has been a runner-up 55 times. He was the 2013 Loser of the Year (he flew in from Pasadena just to pick up his plaque at the Flushies “banquet”). And four years ago this month, I featured Frank — who then had amassed half his 500 inks of today — in the Conversational’s occasional “Meet the Parentheses.” I’ll run it again here, along with an update from Frank, along with an “Osen’s Eleven” — a list of some of his favorite entries from over the years. AD ADVERTISING From Style Conversational Week 1172, April 2014: (Frank stuck closely to the Empress’s Q&A template.) Age: In two years I’ll be wandering around Loser brunches asking if you’ll still need me or feed me. Where you live: When I went back for the Flushies at Danielle Nowlin’s house [in 2013], Losers serenaded me with Nan Reiner and Mark Raffman’s “Little Old Loser From Pasadena,” which was very enjoyable until the room really got into the “Go, Loser, Go, Loser, Go” refrain. Your official Loser anagram: “Senna Fork,” which makes me wish I’d included my middle name; then I could have had something poetic like Noon’s Far Dark Fens. [Can you guess Frank’s middle name?] What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? Perhaps three people know I wrote some poems and a book that won stuff, so I summarize my career by reference to three favorite poets: (1) executive and corporate counsel (Wallace Stevens phase); (2) nervous, over-invested manager of real estate (Robert Frost period); and (3) cranky, misanthropic librarian (Philip Larkin years). I’m still enjoying the last of these at the Huntington Library, where I can walk to work. My wonderful wife and I have three perfect children, a well-mannered dog and a sociopathic cat. Both dog (Milo) and cat (Humphrey) insist on walking me around the block each evening, but only Milo helps me with SI entries. AD What brought you to Loserdom? I blame Robert Schechter, whom I knew from The Spectator, New Statesman and The Oldie, British publications that feature humor/poetry competitions where I used to win real money. At some point, he probably realized I could only handle one contest a week and mentioned the SI. So while he still regularly pulls in 25 quid per Brit-comp, I’m now enthralled by a tiny pile of refrigerator magnets. What are two entries you’d like to share? That would be whatever the Empress didn’t print last week. I brood about those and hoard them until the “Enter any contest” contest each year. Then I pull them out, reread each one and reluctantly conclude she really does know what she’s doing—until the next week. But among those that were published … The first one only made it to the Conversational; it was for Week 1046, where we were to offer a bogus explanation for the origin of a popular expression: A 19th-century courtesan was renowned for pleasuring clients, using only her left foot. She wasn’t as dexterous with the right, so word would spread whenever bursitis forced her to switch feet. Thus, today, if an experience isn’t quite satisfactory, we often say we “got off on the wrong foot.” AD And this got ink in Week 1119 (connect two items on a list), but the Empress bowdlerized the last line for the print version. Here’s the original; the items were an Elizabethan sonnet and a three-cupped bra: The more I see of Man, the more I feel That Eve was never fashioned from his chest, But vice versa, in this sort of deal: God first made Woman with an extra breast And knew that she was fair, but Eve said, Nay! My crowded bosom is a needless strain. God saw her point and threw the middle breast away, Forgetting it until He came again. Then Eve declared: Each creature hath a mate But me, and, Deity, I’m getting bored! So God replied, You’re right, I shall create A Man from you, and Eve cried, Thank you, Lord! Then God said: Hold off thanking Me, a bit. Let’s see, where did I put that useless tit? What’s an example of something you’ve done that confirms your Loserosity? When I was in the first grade, I was on Art Linkletter’s TV show, in which he’d regularly bring kids on and ask them questions, hoping for guilelessly funny answers. AD Asked how my parents met, I said that when my father was in the Marines, he went to see my mother and “the next thing you know, they were lovers.” Art then asked what my mother did (she was a university professor). I said, “She irons, makes peanut butter sandwiches and watches TV all day.” He looked out at the audience and asked, “Is that your mother over there, trying to crawl under the chair?” So, you see, I honestly come by my proclivity for leaden and tasteless humor. What’s your favorite color? Off. And now, Frank checked in with us yesterday with this update: Still enjoying my job at the Huntington Library, though I no longer walk to work, since we’ve downsized to a tiny house in far west Pasadena, where we have a 1/19 interest in an adjacent lake that’s so small, no one knows whether its name is Johnson or Johnston. We welcomed our first grandchild, Sofia, in November, and professional doting has since been curtailing my SI-time. AD I was recently asked to give advice to a writing seminar at my children’s old school and realized this is the sum total of my useful advice: Regular participation in contests like the SI is a great way to hone an ability to shape words to a desired effect, spark creativity and keep writing when you may need inspiration. I’m really grateful for the SI’s many collateral benefits, not the least of which is the Loser community, which is so important at times like these — stay healthy, Losers! Osen’s Eleven: Some of Frank’s favorite entries of the past 500 Week 1047 (Write a bank head to an actual news headline): Arkansas offers tourists a much-needed escape/ Thousands accept, flee back to home states Week 1076 (Double Dactyl poems) from 2014, but oddly topical: Slimmery-flimmery, Mehmet C. Oz, MD, AD Flogs coffee extract as fat-burning fuel, Senators recommend, Hyper-emphatically, That he be labeled a Great Weight Loss Tool. Week 1080 (as a tribute to the legendary bad poet William McGonagall, write an overwrought poem): Stolen Tillamook Minivans ‘Twas a muensterous crime, when some curd made a-whey With three Tillamook Cheese vans around Monterey. Cops were soon on the queso, and right on his heels, They ricotta all of the hijacked cheese wheels. The thief smelled a trappe, said “Cheese it!” and bleu, Leaving one stolen van, burned when fondue. But police still Maytag him, now that they’re tracking Al “Mas” Carpone, for the Monterey-jacking. Week 1087 (Write a comical course description): PSYC 207: Welcome to Your College Nightmare. Participants will not be notified of their enrollment in this class until the morning of the final exam. Note: Class location is subject to weekly change without notice; each student will attend at least one class session in the nude. AD Week 1091 (A good idea that, with a small change, is a bad idea): Good idea: Give a bowl of irises to your wife. Bad idea: Give Ebola viruses to your wife. Week 1217 (Combine two businesses and name the hybrid): Home protection service/celebrity hairstylist: A Mighty Fortress/Scissor God. Week 1272 (Updated curses in the Yiddish tradition): May your dog develop commitment issues. Week 1328 (Retell a classic tale, as written by another): Chapter 10 of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” as told by Lou Reed: Huckleberry came from St. Petersburg, M-O, Him and Jim just drifted with the flow, Wore a dress on the down-low, Jim said, honey, go, go, go, Said, hey, Huck, take a raft to the wild side … “Oedipus Rex,” by Allan Sherman: Goodbye Faddah, Hello Muddah, I slew one and wed the uddah, When my judgment got less hazy, AD I gouged out both my eyeballs and went crazy. Week 1284 (Compare two items from the list supplied): Oscar Wilde vs. Kim Jong Un’s Porta-John: While Oscar was renowned for shafts of wit .... And from this year, Week 1372 (Balliol rhymes): My name is Mitt, or Willard Romney; Though, once I was my party’s nom’nee, Last month I flexed my spinal bone And now I eat my lunch alone. Sidelong glances: This Week’s Contest, Week 1380 This week’s contest, Week 1380, was suggested to me a while back as a much harder one: The example that my friend Kenji Thielstrom supplied was “PAN [DEM] IC: If you remove Democrats from a pandemic, you get panic.” Not only was that particular epigram overly partisan for Invite purposes, but its concept requires you to find a term in which you reveal not just a word in the center, but another word in the halves flanking it. If you do happen to find such nifty examples, certainly feel free to include them (and note it) as entries for Week 1380. But I’ll be perfectly satisfied if the extracted block of letters doesn’t mean anything in itself, as long as the remaining word — formed by the letters on the left and right (or possibly one side or the other) — relates to the full original. This is the inversion of our perennial “air quotes” contest, in which you put quotes around a word that relates to the whole (e.g., Nin"com"poop: CEO of a failed Internet company — Chuck Smith). My concern with this week’s contest is getting the reader to easily see the word and disregard the middle. Please — I spelled this out on this week’s entry form (wapo.st/enter-invite-1380; no paywall) but not in the contest text itself: The Post’s entry-form system doesn’t allow for any special formatting: no boldface, italics, strike-throughs, different-size fonts. So please don’t do it, or I might see garble all over your entries. I’ll do the boldface, perhaps strike-throughs, when I post the results. You can use capitals vs. lowercase, and you could put spaces between the middle and sides of the words. Or just tell me what word you’re extracting. It doesn’t matter to me because I’ll need to format each entry manually regardless. If your entry uses the left or right side of the word rather than the middle, it’d be good if you check the results of previous air-quotes contests, since many of the inking entries are one-side. Here are plain-text links to at least most of them. (Alternatively, go to NRARS.org and click on “All Invitational Text” — one giant text file — and search on “air quotes.”) Week 336, Part 1 / Part 2 Week 405 Week 826 Week 1280 Week 1355 Week 1359 Mush up your Shakespeare*: The results of Week 1376 *Non-inking (too long) headline by Chris Doyle Our Week 1376 contest to add a character, with an appropriate line of dialogue, to a Shakespeare play, ended up much like our results of Week 1275 (2018) and Week 1329 (2019) — but with all different quotes and, alas, with brand-new topical subject matter. I found plenty of entries to laugh over, far more than I could reasonably share this week. It’s the eighth Invite win for Mike Gips, and his 27th ink “above the fold” among his 264 total blots, but it’s his first Lose Cannon trophy; Mike hasn’t Invited much in the past few years. Not so with the rest of this week’s Losers’ Circle: Mark Raffman, Jeff Contompasis and, to a saner degree, Frank Mann rack up even more Loser Crappe for their runner-up finishes. Notable among this week’s honorable mentions: TWO big-deal genuine Shakespearean actors. It’s the 32nd ink for Longtime Loser Marni Penning Coleman, founder of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival and a frequent cast member on many area stages; and the second blot for Newish Loser Rick Foucheux, a D.C. theater legend who wrapped up his 35-year career in 2017 by playing King Lear. What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood chose his faves this week from among the honorable mentions: Duncan Stevens’s “urg’d conference” Zoom joke; Sam Mertens’s “No” as Mitch McConnell’s reply to “But, notwithstanding, haste; make no delay: We may effect this business yet ere day”; Duncan’s turning “I will turn diseases to commodity” into a dig at stock-selling Sen. Richard Burr; Nan Reiner’s retort to overconfident Macbeth by scrappy Coronavirus; and Bill Dorner’s rhyming regret about “the Empress’ love.” Parodies are streaming in! And from so many new names. I’m going to start looking at the earlier submissions — I’ve already received entries 117 songwriters (some with multiple songs) — but you have till next Monday, April 20.