Style Conversational Week 1469: Death poetry jam
The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s obit poem contest and 2022 timeline.
Siegfried Fischbacher (1939-2021), left, outlasted his partner Roy Horn by a year.  But now the glittery animal trainer’s lion in wait for an obit poem in Style Invitational Week 1469.
Siegfried Fischbacher (1939-2021), left, outlasted his partner Roy Horn by a year. But now the glittery animal trainer’s lion in wait for an obit poem in Style Invitational Week 1469. (2001 photo by Al Behrman/AP)
By Pat Myers
December 30, 2021 at 5:01 p.m. EST



As we celebrate clawing our way to the end of the year, The Style Invitational traditionally looks back wryly on those whose mortal coil uncoiled. And so we’re at Week 1469, our annual obit poem contest, which I’ve been running since 2004 and which has produced some of the most memorable Invitiana.

I don’t have to spell out why joking about people’s deaths might seem a tad insensitive right now. But as we managed to do for 2020, an even more shocking one for our country, without complaint (results of last year’s contest, Week 1417), I’m confident that we’ll be able to commemorate the lives — and, often, the deaths — of a variety of notables with wit and good spirit.

Certainly one way to avoid taste issues is to write humorously about the person’s life, rather than the death. This was the tack taken by Gene Weingarten in today’s example, a double dactyl about the famously profane Tommy Lasorda. (Double dactyls, limericks and other smartly rhyming, clearly rhythmic forms tend to make the funniest light verse, in my experience; I’m not going to say your poem has to rhyme, but it’d have to be incredibly funny and clever in other ways if it didn’t.)


The whole archive of our elegies is, well, alive and well within the Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org; just search on “died” and click on the links on the far right to the results of each of at least 18 obit poem contests. They’re all great reads. And below I’ll share a few representative classics, including some “deep cuts” from the honorable mentions.

Poems that don’t mention the death:

Ed Teller, you fathered the hydrogen bomb,
The scope of your dream’s still unfurled.
We’ll think of your contribution to us
On the day that they blow up the world. (Scott Campisi, 2004)

Antisa Khvichava
She claimed to be one hundred thirty-two
(It’s hard to tell if that was really true).
But thanks to luck, good health and proper genes,
She’d pass for someone in her hundred-teens! (Brendan Beary, 2013)


But the large majority of Invite-odes mention the person’s earthly conclusion. Sometimes, the poem is about the death, especially in poems inspired by lists of Darwin Award winners — people who achieved their final hours in notably stupid ways.

Woman who accidentally killed herself while adjusting her bra holster (Why name the poor lady, I figured)
She got herself a push-up bra
That had a single fatal flaw.
It didn’t just support her charms;
This bra was meant for bearing arms.
But holster bras should not be trusted,
Since bras are always readjusted.
Sad to say, dear gun-nut crazies,
“Push up” now refers to daisies. (Kathy Hardis Fraeman, 2016)

Anastasia Tutik & Miguel Ramos
Two lovers loving on a balcony high.
Two lovers falling, unable to fly.
Their friends and neighbors now pay their respects.
A chilling reminder to practice safe sex. (David Friedman, 2016)


One warm and winning way to do an obit poem is to imagine the person in a happy and fitting afterlife:

Cal Worthington, king of the used car salesmen:
Jingling-kingling,
Calvin “Cal” Worthington
Tooled up to Heaven, went
Straight to the Lord.
Brimming with hucksterish
Conviviality,
Sold Him a peachy-keen
’63 Ford. (Nan Reiner, 2014)

Mike Wallace
He runs up to the Pearly Gates,
A microphone in hand.
He shoves it in Saint Peter’s face
While shouting, “I demand
An answer to my question, Saint!
Is Jesus on the take?
Did Moses rob the Israelites?
Was Solomon a fake?”
Peter cries, “Get out of here!
I won’t take this abuse!”
But Wallace barges past the gates,
And then all hell breaks loose. (Robert Schechter, 2013)

As always, there’s plenty of source material. Do make sure that the person died in 2021! I’ve had to toss some very nice poems about people who’d actually died the previous year — and at least once, I got a poem about someone who hadn’t died. Oh, please, don’t do that!

The Losers who hunch*: The 2022 predictions of Week 1465
(*Non-inking headline by Tom Witte)

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The an(n) als of modern history got their annual one-two punch in The Post this week with, first, Dave Barry’s annual Year in Review and, today, its annual wayward offspring, The Style Invitational’s Year in Preview. Last year at this time, we didn’t know who’d be president a few weeks later. But who knew that, 11-plus months after the fact, some people still wouldn’t have figured it out? On the other hand, for old times’ sake, we have two straight years of Trump shooting someone on Fifth Avenue.

Far more people than usual sent full 25-item lists of events, resulting in a total chronicle of about 1,500 entries — many of them awfully similar — of which 40 got ink today. The literally dozens of jokes about the names for variants ended up canceling one another out.

What does it mean that our top three winners this week are all educators? I guess it means they’re all educators. Still, it’s nice to know that Style Invitational agents are infiltrating the minds of our youth.


A former Capitol Hill reporter who decided to become an elementary school teacher after volunteering in his son’s class — he’s been teaching fourth grade in Silver Spring for many years now — Dave Airozo scores his first Invite win with his 40th blot of ink, though he’s been inside the Losers’ Circle three times with runners-up. Let’s hope that Dave’s predicted Great Exhale of January 7 actually gets its chance.

Biden’s appointment of Donald Trump as “ambassador to Elba” was the idea of Tim “Milo” Sauer, a beloved math professor at George Mason University. Milo actually has 100 more blots of ink than the 108 he’s credited with in the Loser Stats. That’s because — as I just found out when he fessed up in the past year — after Milo ran up an even 100 inks and suddenly stopped Inviting in 2004, an Elwood Fitzner of Valley City, N.D., started inking up the joint, running up, yup, exactly 100 more (2005-2011). Anyway, now that’s a full decade behind us, and Milo is back and clever as ever, I’m hoping that he’ll snarf up another 100 blots of ink in short order — and that he enjoys wearing his prize “I Never Fart” socks with dandelions on them. Nobody else use a fake name, please. My generosity is now used up.

Ryan Martinez, who teaches French at Walter Johnson High in Bethesda, is relatively new to the Invite; his runner-up today — “Nov. 8: Millions of Americans drive across newly renovated roads and bridges to vote out the Democrats” — is his 17th blot of ink since his debut in Week 1340. But he’s been swinging a hot bat of late (or, I guess I should say, striking out the opposition); he was a runner-up in our spoonerism contest just two weeks ago, and won the Clowning Achievement a couple of months back with his good idea/bad idea.


And in fourth place, predicting a big win for Xi Jinping in the men’s downhill, is Jeff Shirley, who sops up is 285th blot of ink. Jeff isn’t a teacher, but he has an indirect school connection to me: He used to be the dentist of my college roommate. (Suzanne: “Dr. Shirley is so nice!” Jeff: “She has a great smile.” Both emphatically true.)

What Doug Dug: The faves this week for Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood were Milo’s “ambassador to Elba,” Frank Osen’s Boris Johnson dig; Jesse Frankovich’s $10 trillion inflation relief bill from the Democrats; Mark Raffman’s “150,000 armed ambassadors” from Putin on the Ukraine border; David Young’s appointment of Britney’s father as conservator for Rudy Giuliani; and Wendy Shang’s Pantone Color of the Year: “a greenish brown-gray called Meh.”

Unpredictable: the unprintables: Our remaining shreds of propriety prevented us from including these events in the Invite:


First, a mild one, arguably just fine, even: April 1: Facing widespread staff shortages, the American Dyslexia Association offers $10,000 singing bonuses, forcing the organization to turn away dozens of confused and angry sopranos. (Dave Airozo) Using “dyslexia” for switched-letter wordplay jokes was a common Invite practice for many years. But a reader’s heartfelt letter to me after one of them was persuasive.

Oct. 2022: Mississippi Department of Commerce reports dramatic Q3 increase in sales of coat hangers. (Mark Raffman) Just too graphic for a joke. I instead went with a sharp enough one by Bird Waring: “Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he is ‘dumbfounded’ about the huge increase in number of infants entering the state’s welfare system over the past year.

But the Scarlet Letter for very good but very no goes to Stephen Dudzik: “Feb. 4: The Beijing Olympic cauldron is lit by a flaming Uyghur peasant.”

Sanely staying home on New Year's Eve? Here's the best way!
The Royal Consort and I are, too. But for the second straight NYE, we’ll be spending it (virtually) with Loser Sandy Riccardi and her husband, Richard, who’ll once again perform their whole fabulous and hilarious cabaret show of Sandy’s parodies (and more) from the stage of the White Horse Black Mountain theater in Asheville, N.C. Last year Sandy gave a big shout-out to the Invitational! (Order tickets here.) If you’re not familiar with the Riccardis — who’ve now graced several Invite parody contests — here’s “The Boy From Mar-a-Lago” (“Tall and orange and rich and tubby ...”).

Whatever you do, have a happy and safe New Year’s — see you in 2022. Please!

The headline “Death Poetry Jam,” by Tom Witte, was used for obit poem results in 2001. So good.