Style Invitational Week 1297: A different type o’ headline contest


Put a ‘typo’ in a headline, then write a bank head. Plus novel
guides to the Constitution.


The season debutt. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post)
By Pat Myers

Pat Myers


Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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September 13

(Click here to skip down <#report> to the winning interpretations of
parts of the Constitution)

/Post headline with fake typo:
/ **Redskins debut debutt, stay positive*
* /Bank head based on the typo:/
/*Linebackers, tackles strut slimmer derrieres from new diets, glute
exercises* /

*A path to diversity in U.S. parks porks*
/Eat no fat? Eat no lean? There’s a pig for every carnivore in new
breeding program/

*Family escapes home before gas gab explosion*
/Smiths on Elm St. flee from back door upon approach of terminally
boring neighbor/

Every year or so, we ask you to send in a real headline from that week’s
paper, then reinterpret its meaning in a bank head, or subtitle. But
it’s been three years since we last did this variation: *Change a
headline in an article or ad in The Post or another publication dated
Sept. 13-24 by adding or subtracting one letter; substituting a letter;
transposing two letters; or changing spacing or punctuation; and then
add a “bank head,”* or subtitle, as in the examples above, which the
Empress and the Royal Consort based on Post headlines from the past
week. You may shorten a more complex headline, and you may capi­tal­ize
each word of the headline if that will help your wordplay. You must tell
me where you found the original headline and what its real wording was.

Submit entries at the website *wapo.st/enter-invite-1297*
(all lowercase).

Winner gets the *Lose Cannon,

* our Style Invitational trophy. Second place receives a substantial yet
extraordinarily tacky glitter globe containing a sad-looking (perhaps
homemade?) little model of a John Deere tractor. This makes our earlier
prize of the motorcycle-riding-cow glitter globe
tantamount
to a Faberge egg. Donated by Loser and champion prize donor Cheryl
Davis, who also gave us the Cowasaki.

*Other runners-up *win our “You Gotta Play to Lose”
Loser
Mug or our Grossery Bag, “I Got a B in Punmanship.”
Honorable mentions get one of our
lusted-after Loser magnets, “We’ve Seen Better”
or
“IDiot Card.”

First Offenders receive only a smelly tree-shaped air “freshener”
(FirStink

for their first ink). *Deadline is Monday night, Sept. 24; *results
published Oct. 14 (online Oct. 11). See general contest rules and
guidelines at wapo.st/InvRules . The headline
for this week’s results is by Jon Gearhart; Kevin Dopart wrote the
honorable-mentions subhead. Join the Style Invitational Devotees group
on Facebook at on.fb.me/invdev . “Like” Style
Invitational Ink of the Day on Facebook at bit.ly/inkofday
; follow @StyleInvite on Twitter.

*The Style Conversational: * The Empress's weekly online column
discusses each new contest and set of results. Especially if you plan to
enter, check it out at wapo.st/styleconv .

And from The Style Invitational four weeks ago . . .

*THE FARCED AMENDMENT: EXPLAINING THE CONSTITUTION*
In*Week 1293 *we asked for novel ways to
explain parts of the U.S. Constitution, perhaps (but not necessarily) to
a president who might not read it.

4th place

*Article II, Section 1, Clause 3, and the 12th Amendment: the electoral
college:*

It’s kind of like letting baseball fans vote for players to go to the
All-Star Game, but then ignoring the votes and delegating the actual
selections to the Maryland Board of Cosmetology.
(Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

3rd place

If you win, you get a trophy; if you're 3rd or 4th, you get nice swag.
But 2nd place is stuck with this crummy tractor glitter globe. (Pat
Myers/The Washington Post)

*The First Amendment: Freedom of speech and religion:

*
Travolta and Cruise can have their e-meters
Jews can foreshorten their son’s peepee
Folks can meet and protest your stupid tweeters
And Maureen Dowd can call you a creepy.
(Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)**

2nd place

and the two-person underpants
:
*The Second Amendment


* ** /(to “Maria” from “West Side Story”; here’s Nan Reiner performing
her song )/

Militia! They say I can have a militia.
With muskets for my men,
Straight from the 18th cen . . . tury.
Militia! But I don’t see any indicia
That I can’t keep in stock
A Luger or a Glock, or three.

Militia! Some grenades strapped around my forehead,
And an AR-15 for my sorehead.
Militia . . . and maybe a warhead . . . Militia! (Nan Reiner, Boca
Raton, Fla.)


Third Amendment: "No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any
house ..." (Honorable Mention by Bruce Alter, Fairfax Station, Va.)
And the winner of the Lose Cannon:

*The Preamble, explained more clearly by rearranging ALL its letters
into this anagram:
*Everyone deserves equal chance for peace, harmony, protection from
nuts, enemies and the freedom to attain the best life for their
families. So here are the districts' rules, jotted down so idiotic
dummies in future generations — predisposed to spastic bullying or truth
distortion — won't be able to pull a fast one on the rest of us.
(Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)

Foundering farther: Honorable mentions

*The electoral college* is the institution where you learn that
62,979,879 > 65,844,954. (Zachary Levine, Rockville, Md., a First Offender)

*First Amendment: Freedom of speech:*
The Congress shall not make a law
That stops us from flapping our jaw. (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)
*First Amendment: Freedom of the press: *Abridging freedom of the press
does not count as an infrastructure project. (Zachary Levine)

** *25th Amendment: Presidential disability and succession:

* /A High Coup /
The vice president
Plus half of your Cabinet
Can get rid of you. (Kevin Dopart, Washington)

*Article IV, Section 4:*
“The United States
shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of
Government”: See, the Democrats are ILLEGAL! — D.J.T., Washington
(Duncan Stevens)

*Articles I, II and III, the three branches of government: *Think of
them as three interlocked gears arranged in a triangle, so they all work
together — or not move at all. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

*Article 1, Section 9: *

Emoluments are not something that lubricates your skin
—
well, perhaps the palms.
(Cliff Feldwick, Columbia, Md., a First Offender)

*Article VI, Section 6, Clause 3
, forbidding
religious tests for federal “office or public trust”: *
/To “Be Our Guest” /
There’s no test! There’s no test! No religion’s second-guessed,
So no zealot can insist his faith surpasses all the rest.
Muslim, Jew, skeptic, “none,” each has got the right to run:
Clause 6-3 is here to witness that you can’t dispute their fitness.

In their posts they can serve, and you’ve got a lot of nerve
If you’d bar them for the creed that they’ve professed.
So, pluralism? Love it. And your dogma? Shove it.
Never blessed? Don’t get stressed — there’s no test! (Duncan Stevens)

*Fourth Amendment: Unreasonable searches and seizures:
*Michael Cohen’s office
can be searched by the FBI only if a real judge agrees that he’s a
sleazy lowlife with incriminating evidence on even sleazier lowlifes.
(Jon Ketzner)

** *Article II, Section 1*:
The President shall,
at stated Times, receive for his Services a Compensation, which shall be
no less than two Scoops. (Jesse Frankovich, Grand Ledge, Mich.)

*Fifth Amendment: Double jeopardy:
*You cannot be
prosecuted twice for paying Stormy once. (Jon Ketzner)

*The whole Constitution: * /
To the “Major-General’s Song” (Nan sings it here
): /
It is the very model of a Charter Constitutional,
Which for the 18th century was wholly revolutional.
An equal vote in choosing how to govern our society
Was granted to the peasant and the wealthy high-and-mighety.

Each law demands Bicameral consensus after forth-and-backs
(Though some defy all reason, like the convoluted income tax).
It has its own procedure when we realize we need redos,
Like getting rid of slavery and acknowledging we crave the booze.

Despite authoritarian political expedience,
The Prez is not a king, and to the law he owes obedience.
On 6 November comes the wave, electoral, ablutional,
Wherein we shall begin to save our Charter Constitutional.
(Nan Reiner)

*/And last/: One more anagram of the Preamble: *
We the People of the Style Invitational, in Order to form a more eased
sense of deft Wit, establish Jests, insure erudite Hilarity, provide for
the common quip, promote the general Banter, and secure the desired
Blessings of numerous Blots upon us, do enter to clarify and correct
this Constitution of the United States of America. (Jesse Frankovich)

*Still running — deadline Monday night, Sept. 17: our contest for poems
featuring new words added to the dictionary. See wapo.st/invite1296.
*