Style Conversational Week 1386: Still in the running The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s winning foal names and grandfoal contest 1916 Kentucky Derby winner George Smith with the famed jockey Johnny Loftus aboard. George Smith got ink for Loser George Smith in this week's Style Invitational. More about this in today's column. 1916 Kentucky Derby winner George Smith with the famed jockey Johnny Loftus aboard. George Smith got ink for Loser George Smith in this week's Style Invitational. More about this in today's column. (Churchill Downs Inc. via Wikipedia) By Pat Myers May 28, 2020 at 4:48 p.m. EDT So did you submit a “foal” name — or 25 — in Week 1382 of The Style Invitational, to be cruelly snubbed by the Empress in favor for one of the 70 names given ink in this week’s results? Life is so unfair. Actually, most likely this week’s inking entries were more clever than at least most of yours. As I read through my giant list of all 3,889 names — from 355 submissions — I didn’t have too much trouble ruling out 90 percent of them. For one thing, even with 4,950 possible pairings among the 100 former Kentucky Derby horses listed, there were (as always) numerous occasions of Warped Minds Thinking Alike: Kauai King x Assault = Hawaiian Punch? Excellent, inkworthy entry … except that there were 10 of them. Breeding Omar Khayyam with Sea Hero or Spend a Buck or Foolish Pleasure to produce Ruby Yacht or something like it? Seventeen of you. Various combinations of Hindoo, Whiskery and Chant to sire Hairy Krishna? Nine times over. AD Not everything was clever, though. Some of the entries played it entirely straight, with no discernible joke, o or wordplay, such as Ben Brush x Joe Cotton = Brushed Cotton or Dark Star x Big Brown = Big Star. (Then again, that’s more like how racehorses’ parentage really tends to be acknowledged, if at all: Seattle Slew’s mating with Incantation, for example, produced Seattle Song.) Others made a connection with a point but without humor, like Forward Pass x Assault = Harvey Weinstein, or Swaps x Needles = AIDS. Our knees were not slapped. Names that might have had good jokes but were a struggle to read also didn’t make this cut, such as Assault x Affirmed = Sothatwasn’taYes? But lots and lots of good ideas were out there. Remember that I said I first scrapped 90 percent of the names? That means that I did mark as potentially inkworthy almost 400 names. And of course your horse was on that list! (I don’t really know; I didn’t look up the authors until I was down to my final cut.) From my initial cut of 384 I then cut to 94, then to the 70 that got ink today. A lot of clever horses never made it to the finish line. It might be illustrative to show you just some of the entries I received as offspring of the 1888 Derby winner Macbeth II (which, using what turned out to be an unreliable source, I’d written as “MacBeth II” in my initial list). In addition to the four Macbeth II entries that got ink today — including first and second place — I received 125 others, including these that allude to various aspects of the play: “Out, damn’d spot!,” “Double double, toil and trouble,” “sound and fury,” “eye of newt,” “Lay on, Macduff,” “Sleep no more,” “when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane,” the superstition of calling it “The Scottish Play” rather than its name, the noble titles like Thane, characters like King Duncan and Banquo and the Three Witches. AD Kingman x Macbeth II = Regally in Thane Apollo x Macbeth II = Chicken a la King Macbeth II x Lookout = Out Damned Spotter Macbeth II x Typhoon II = Gael Force IV Macbeth II x Old Rosebud = Citizen Thane Macbeth II x Regret = Birnam Wouldn’t Macbeth II x Johnstown = Bubble, Bubble Black Gold x Macbeth II = Oil and Trouble Macbeth II x Bubbling Over = Scotch & Soda Macbeth II x Bubbling Over = Shakesbeer Bubbling Over x Macbeth II = Witches III Macbeth II x Whiskery = Dramatic Paws Macbeth II x Whiskery / or Animal Kingdom = Sound and Furry Macbeth II x Whiskery = The Beard of Avon Macbeth II x Burgoo King = Lay On MacDonalds War Admiral x Macbeth II = Aye-Aye of Newt Macbeth II x Whirlaway = Duncan Yoyos Macbeth II x Hoop, Jr. = In, Damned Shot Macbeth II x Citation = WelcomeBackCawdor Forward Pass x Macbeth II = The Scottish Play AD Macbeth II x Northern Dancer = The Scottish Plié Macbeth II x Kauai King = The Scottish Lei Unbridled x Macbeth II = The Skittish Play Smarty Jones x Macbeth II = The Snottish Play I’ll Have Another x Macbeth II = TheScottishReplay Kauai King x Macbeth II = BeachBlanketBanquo Dust Commander x Macbeth II = Sweep No More! Macbeth II x Foolish Pleasure = Dunce Inane Affirmed x Macbeth II = Aye of Newt Macbeth II x Unbridled = Scot Free Macbeth II x Big Brown = Damned Spot Macbeth II x Orb = Shakesphere Macbeth II x California Chrome = Out, Spam Dot! Always Dreaming x Macbeth II = Fantasy Highland … and many more. The inking entries: Kauai King x Macbeth II = Aloha, Damn’d Spot (Neal Starkman, second place) Black Gold x Macbeth II = MeTarSand, YouThane (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif., first place) Macbeth II x Whiskery = Stubble Stubble (Tom Witte; Jesse Frankovich) AD Macbeth II x Bubbling Over = Toilet Trouble (Jonathan Jensen; Jesse Frankovich) Frank Osen’s winner — his 23rd first-place Invite finish — was an easy pick for me, one of the few entries that made me laugh out loud and read it to the Royal Consort, teleworking next to me out on the deck. But I also found it funny that Neal Starkman replaced the “Out!” of the insanely raging Lady Macbeth with the mellow “Aloha, Damn’d Spot” for that indelible 102nd blot of ink. And I just enjoyed the elegance of “Fred Austere” and “Play NYSE” of Mary McNamara and Chris Doyle of their runners-up. While Everyone Knows Chris, this is just the 13th (and 14th) ink for Mary, though it’s already her third runner-up. I’ll be sending out a LOT of magnets — and three FirStinks — this week, not only to the Usual Suspects but also to several Losers who tend to show up these days only for the horses, including Jonathan Paul, who got three excellent inks; Mia Wyatt; John Winant; Harvey Smith; Malcolm Fleschner; Laurie Brink; Beth Morgan; riding-manual author Steve Price; and equine vet Sarah Jay. It was fun, after choosing the horses, to look up the entrants’ names and discover that they were back, and on their game, yet again. (Famed Horse Names Entrant of Yore Mary Lee Fox Roe, who back in the day before the 25-entry limit once sent 600 entries for one contest, submitted only three entries this year and, alas, came up empty.) AD What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me on Frank’s winning entry, and also especially liked Steve Smith’s “Madam C. Jaywalker,” Mia Wyatt’s “Will & Grace,” John Winant’s “Victor Kiam” as a play on Omar Khayyam and Whiskery, Jesse Rifkin’s “Purple Drain,” Jonathan Paul’s “IMHOtep,” “George Smith Jr.” by the actual George Smith Jr. (see item below) and the final “No Ink Again” from Steve Offutt and Frank Mann, who won’t have Sunday Silence after all. And this just in: The deposed Czar of The Style Invitational, who in two separate instances in the last few months thought the whole list of winners was so awful that I shouldn’t have run any of them (he was so wrong), called this week’s results “a joy from top to bottom.” He is so right. A Horse With His Name: George Smith I admit that when I was choosing the 100 Derby winners for this contest, from all 145, I chose 1916′s George Smith in the hope that (George Smith, Frederick, Md.), 22-time Loser, might want to send in an entry. AD And sure enough, my list of entries included these: “George Smith X Silver Charm = George Smith Jr. (me)” “Aristides X George Smith = Anatomy Lab Partners (true)” “George Smith X Stone Street = College Roommates (true)” These were the only three entries in my entire sorted list of 4,000 whose authorship I could be sure of. And so I sent George an email, asking: “What? You had a college roommate named Stone Street?” And he wrote back the next day to explain: Dear Pat, My anatomy lab partner was Aristides (Ted) Alevizatos (University of Maryland med class of 1960) and my college roommate for 2 years was Harrison Stone. (Washington & Lee class of 1956). Amazing coincidence, right. Thank you, George Smith (not the horse) I — and the rest of the Loser Community — haven’t yet had the opportunity to meet Dr. Smith, an internist for more than 50 years in the historic town of Frederick, 50 miles north of Washington, even though we’ve had our Loserfest weekend there twice. I hope we’ll be able to Once This Is Over. He sounds delightful and fascinating in this interview with Frederick Magazine in 2018, at age 83. My favorite part was his recalling how his Loserly knack for wordplay came in handy as a first-year medical student: AD “During my first semester in school we were given a cadaver to dissect. I was one of four students on a team. Some in our group were very good at dissecting. Me? Not so much. I was put in charge of making up the mnemonics that would allow us to recall the names of bones and other organs for use during classroom exams.” And now, another time around the track: The Grandfoals So now you get to play with these 70 names for some pun-on-pun action in Week 1386. As promised, below is an alphabetical list of the names that you can copy out. The grandfoal contest is a bit different from the first round in a few ways: First, there are always fewer entrants and entries (usually about half the first round), so you have a better chance of ink. But because so many of them already contain puns, it’s virtually impossible to incorporate every element of both names into your foal name, especially if it’s going to be funny. AD For further inspiration and guidance, not to mention a big time-suck, you can peruse the results of all the previous winners of the grandfoal (and foal) contests — in plain text or PDF, but paywall-free — on the “Horses” page of Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. But let’s look at a few of last year’s inking grandfoals right here, the top four winners. WillYouDivorceMe? x Mack the Spatula = Ex Over Easy (Jonathan Paul) uses “divorce” and “spatula” while ignoring “Mack” and its obvious antecedent, “Mack the Knife.” No problem there, still totally clever. Pence on Fire x Brazen Overtures = Let’s Have Lunch (Diane Lucitt). This one arguably incorporates all the elements: While it doesn’t use the antecedent of “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” it reworks “Pence on fire” to mean arousal, to mock the vice president once again about his reported fearful refusal to have an unchaperoned business lunch with a woman. Cruella de Villa x Pretentious Op-Ed = 101 Dull Mentions (John Hutchins). This one goes back to the initial reference, the “101 Dalmatians” villain Cruella De Vil, while ignoring the “villa” in the grandfoal name; while in general that’s not the best idea for grandfoals, it works here, perhaps because the “-la” is so small in the name. Then of course there’s the hilarious use of the movie pun as a wicked description of a pretentious op-ed essay. El Choppo x Can’t, Miss = El Floppo (Jeff Hazle). This entry, which won the Lose Cannon, is in what I call the “operational” form: Parent 1 is altered into Grandfoal by Parent 2. (For some reason, we have few inking entries in this form this year, though it’s often a great idea.) And except for not acknowledging the reference of El Chapo, the drug lord, it uses all the elements. Some of this week’s foal names just might not work for the grandfoals contest. That’s why I’m giving you 70 of them (well, that and because I couldn’t bring myself to rob this week’s inking entries). And no, even after judging 15 grandfoal contests, I never give a thought to whether a foal name will be useful as a parent. So get back up on the horse and try again with these ponies, and I’ll see you next week. Aloha, Damn’d Spot Au! Au! Au! Avast! Waistland Bro Bye Bye Blackbird Cairopractor Cat’s MeOW Citizen Kanye Coupon Quipper Courtier Pounder Dacha-cha Discount Mohel Doink! Dollar General Dolor Store Ex-prez Checkout Extremely Average Eye for an Eye Fakir News Flatley Denied Fred Austere GandhiWithTheWind George Smith Jr. Get a Quarter Back Give It Arrest Gonedhi Hawaii 5-0 Henry Thinkler Henry Twinkler Hindon’t Hold My Hair If Only I Had TP! IMHOtep Joe Maimeth Killer Ap Killer Apse Liberate [state]! Madam C. Jaywalker Make Up Your Mind! Man of La Mantra MeTarSand, YouThane “Mr. Prez” Is Fine No Ink Again No Mask for Me No Runs No Eros O.K. Bloomer O.K. Boomer One Hit Wonder Oprah Wind-Free Play NYSE Pokés Purple Drain Roomba With a View Sack Second-Worst Ever See No Weevil Shaq in the Woods SilenceOf-TheLEMs Single Ply Stubble Stubble Tank Array The Holly & the IV Toilet Trouble Top Gum Uh, Houston … Victor Kiam Water Mitty Welles Far Go Will & Grace Wolf Blitzer