Week 117: GIVE 'EM HELOISE


Dear Heloise:

We have found a use for those plastic lampshade covers that come with a new lamp. We use them as coverups when we trim our 7- and 9-year-olds' hair. They pop over their heads with one elasticized end above the collar and the other pulled over their shoulders!

-- Karen Wranik, Buckland, Ohio

This Week's Contest, involving a homemaker theme, was proposed independently by Kitty Thuermer of Washington and Jean Sorensen of Herndon, who are both women but what's the big deal who's going to make something of it certainly not us. Kitty and Jean, who win tins of chewing tobacco, suggest coming up with a tribute to Heloise, that queen of inanely creative recycling. The item above is taken from a recent Heloise column. Can you do better? Write a letter to Heloise proposing some use for ordinary items that would otherwise be thrown away. First-prize winner gets a men's and women's pair of boingy shoes -- antique mini pogo sticks that strap onto your shoes and let you sproing around wildly until you get sick or possibly even die. They are worth $ 40. Runners-up, as always, get the coveted Style Invitational losers' T-shirts. Honorable mentions get the mildly sought-after Style Invitational bumper stickers. Winners will be selected on the basis of humor and originality. Mail your entries to the Style Invitational, Week 117, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, fax them to 202-334-4312, or submit them via the Internet to this address: losersaccess.digex.net. Internet users: Please indicate the appropriate Week Number in the 'subject' field. Entries must be received on or before Monday, June 19. Please include your address and phone number. Winners will be announced in three weeks. Editors reserve the right to alter entries for taste, appropriateness or humor. No purchase necessary. The Faerie of the Fine Print & The Ear No One Reads continues to solicit ideas for the Ear No One Reads. Employees of The Washington Post and their immediate families are not eligible for prizes.

Report from Week 114, which really bit the weenie. This was the week where we asked you to come up with jokes to terminate in any one of the six punch lines we provided.

You set modern Style Invitational records for fewest entries (182) and for fewest really good entries (0). Compared with the Himalayan heights of humor ordinarily achieved by this contest, your entries filled a porta-potty in a bathysphere at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Now we don't want the two published winners to feel slighted by this underwhelming report; there is some limited dignity in being the best of the worst. Sort of like being, um, Howard Stern.

Mercifully, this brings us to a digression. Some of you may recall that several weeks ago, New York talk radio personality Don Imus declared The Style Invitational and its readers "lame," flatly prohibiting anyone who participates in this contest from appearing on his show. In the spirit of goodwill, we asked you to enumerate the nicest things that can truthfully be said about Don Imus. (For coming up with this contest idea, Don wins "The Portable Scatalog," a completely humorless book chronicling pooping and peeing rituals from around the world, with a foreword by Sigmund Freud, originally published in 1891, and personally inscribed to Imus by the Czar. Since Imus is now an official participant in the Style Invitational, he can no longer appear on his own show.)

Without further ado, the 10 nicest things that can be truthfully said about Don "Imus in the Morning" Imus:

10. So far as we know, he doesn't spread Ebola. (Scott Vanatter, Fairfax)

9. He is probably preferable to a colostomy bag. (Jim Brockton, Fairfax)

8. He gave Engelbert Humperdinck's hairdresser a job. (Rick Hartman, Funkstown, Md.)

7. Howard Stern [click]. (Paul Styrene, Olney)

6. The shortness of his name prevents precious ink and newsprint from being wasted.

(J. Ponessa, Washington)

5. He hasn't yet broadcast the recipe for fertilizer bombs. (Scott Vanatter, Fairfax)

4. Three out of four dentists pipe "Imus in the Morning" into their reception area to make their patients look forward to drilling. (Joseph Romm, Washington)

3. He can make the lame talk. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon)

2. Once, he was somebody's beautiful bouncing baby jerk. (Cindi Rae Caron, Lenoir, N.C.)

-- And the winner of the five losers' T-shirts:

1. He is the 38th most famous Don, right after Trump, Rickles, Knotts, Johnson, Juan, that other Juan from the weird books, Ameche, DeFore, Everly, Corleone, Ho, Osmond, McLean, that guy from New Kids on the Block, Sutherland, Pardo, Adams, O'Connor, Quixote, King, Shula, Maynard, Cornelius, Meredith, Hot Lips' husband, Kirshner, that river in Russia, Pleasance, Mattingly, Geronimo, Giovanni, Meek, Regan, Rumsfeld, Hollinger, The Snake Prudhomme, and Duck.

(Russell Beland, Springfield, and Jerry Pannullo, Chevy Chase)

Okay, we can't delay any longer. Here are the results of Week 114.

-- First Runner-Up:

Punch line: "That's why they call it an ear."

There once was a farmer named Lear

Who loved sex if others could hear.

When the fields got corny

He would get horny,

Saying, 'That's why they call it an ear.' (Joseph Romm, Washington)

-- And the winner of the White House wooden Easter egg:

Punch line: "Only if Hitler goes first."

Reporter to Marcia Clark: "I understand the defense is considering putting O.J. on the witness stand. Do you think his testimony will be considered believable by the jury?

Marcia Clark: "Only if Hitler goes first." (Greg Arnold, Herndon)

Next Week: The Mnemonic Plague