The Style Invitational;
Takes a Break (433)


Week C: No contests until mid-January. Instead, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the All-Time Stars of The Style Invitational in 100-Word Autobiographies That Contain One (and Only One) Falsehood. The revised title for next week's column is by Tom Witte of Gaithersburg.

* Jennifer Hart, a daughter of the South, was nurtured on Moon Pies, grits and inexplicable fritters, and has a drawl as thick as mole-asses. She graduated from the same Texas-prison-town university as Dan Rather. Her likes include romantic candlelit TV dinners, sock monkeys, robots, carnivorous plants and poopy jokes. Her dislikes are world hunger, misplaced commas and having one's eyes cauterized. Her hidden superpower is Ultra Gullibility. Currently, Hart is copy editor for an Arlington weekly newspaper that is expanding so rapidly, it will soon crush and consume The Washington Post. Don't say I didn't warn you.

(Jennifer Hart, Arlington)

* I can say "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch" well enough to ask directions, not that I did, which is why I missed the monster onion exhibition. My father once brought home a lemon the size of a rump roast -- assuming a rump roast was the size of a cabbage. He was born in a log cabin, where giant fruit would have provided festive counterpoint to the long Utah winters. I sing opera, read Proust and am married to the great-great- great-great-great-granddaughter of Tim Bobbin, author of "The Ecclesiastical and Lay-Miser's Speculum," as you suspected. She says I have inexpressive feet.

(Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)

* What do you get when you cross Waco, Tex., and Elizabeth, N.J.? A slow-talking urban schizophrenic. At 4, I spoke Portuguese so fluently that my parents were afraid I would become a Brazil nut. Then we moved to Greenwich, where I had a mean time growing up. The less said about my school career the gooder.

I found work as a police officer to be arresting. I courted my bride even before I became a lawyer. Our two boys luckily take after their beautiful and brilliant mother. I enjoy being a parsley farmer but am afraid my wages will be garnished.

(Mike Genz, La Plata)

* When I was growing up in Oregon, my instructors suggested that my nascent literary and creative talents were perhaps not yet worthy of the Pulitzer I would later achieve. As an artistic alternative to ecoterrorism, I developed instead some musical skills that led to my selection as the state's representative to an elite Disneyland marching band. However, discovering that Disney's mandatory uniform would consist of an ensemble not unlike that donned by author David Sedaris in his memorable role as a Macy's Christmas elf, I chose instead ample later opportunities while acquiring Harvard and law degrees, and, through Style entries, to attract well-deserved public humiliation and embarrassment.

(Robin Grove, Pasadena, Md.)