I would rather eat a cicada than eat a Peep anyway.
They’re just waiting for the soil temperature to warm up to about 64 degrees and then we’ll be in full screech mode. The Washington area is Ground Zero for Brood X, but they should make appearances in 15 states. I hope one of them is yours.
And so we might as well take advantage of them while they’re here, with The Style Invitational’s Week 1435 cicada diorama (or other art) contest. You might not think they’re quite as cute as Peeps -- the ghastly chick- and bunny-shaped marshmallow “candy” that The Washington Post and eventually a host of other publications invited people to incorporate into dioramas -- but you know, The Style Invitational isn’t so much about cute.
The Post ran the Peeps diorama contest for 10 years, through 2016, publishing photos of the winning entries (voted on by newsroom staffers) in The Washington Post Magazine and displaying the actual dioramas in The Post’s lobby and at least once in a gallery. The contests drew hundreds of entries, some of them reflecting enormous amounts of craftsmanship and time -- like the 2010 winner, a depiction of the balloon-hoisted house in the animated movie “Up” -- and some not so much.
One diorama that was more in line with Invite sensibilities was crafted by two Style Invitational Losers: Craig Dykstra and Lois Douthitt’s “Demon Barber of Peep Street” (2009) featured murderous Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett dispatching their human-Peep victims from barber chair down a chute to the basement slaughterhouse -- where marshmallow “meat” was extruded from a grinder. Craig did the construction, Lois the costumes, Craig’s daughters the set decoration. They eventually donated the diorama as a Style Invitational prize.
I’m hoping that some of the people who miss doing the Peeps dioramas will try this week’s more organic contest. It’s pretty much the same drill -- make your artwork and send a picture or two -- with a few differences:
-- The Peeps contest required that all characters in the diorama be Peeps. I’m asking only that it include at least one real cicada or exoskeleton, the shell the newly formed adult bursts out of -- you’ll see them in piles, if past swarms are an indication. If you find yourself short on bugs and you want to make a crowd scene, for instance, you might use photo editing. (Though someone’s all-bug crowd scene might be more effective.)
-- The Peeps contests featured the top five finalists in a live display, and so required those contestants to live within driving distance. We’re doing it all with photos.
-- It doesn’t even have to be a diorama. It could be a sculpture, or perhaps a painting to which the cicada is attached. Or, hey, a really ugly sweater. (Don’t, say, grind the shell into powder and then say you painted with it; we want to see THE BUGZZZ.)
-- If you have text with your entry -- a title, a caption, dialogue between the characters -- you may include it in the entry form. You can also put it right on your photo or the diorama itself, but in that case, please be able to revise it if necessary; the type might need to be bigger or smaller to fit its reproduction in the paper, for example.
The deadline is a week later than a usual Invitational contest: You have till a moment before midnight on Monday, May 24, so there should be plenty of time to find some cicadas (hopefully you won’t have to kill any of the bugs, since there should be a lot of ex-ones lying around) before you make your artwork.
Inevitably, questions will arise as you think about the project. Feel free to contact me at pat.myers@washpost.com; put something in the subject line to catch my attention, like “Question about dioramas,” and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
The Sub Platform, the software that handles reader submissions to The Post (letters to the editor, contests, surveys, etc.), has been known not to cooperate fully with people who send photos on it. If your photo seems not to be going through, feel free to send it to me by email -- say something to that effect in the subject line -- and I’ll handle it, and will even try to keep it anonymous until after I choose the winners. (In contests where I sometimes have to be in touch with the entrants, this isn’t always possible -- but honestly, I don’t think it affects my judging anyway. I really do not care who gets a Loser Mug.)
The Style Invitational is a humor contest, and so even the most gorgeously executed artwork might not be right for the Invite if it’s not funny or at least clever. A beautiful handmade tree on which a cicada is attached? Unless there’s something in the text that makes it witty, that’s not likely to get ink.
What DOES get ink in Style Invitational visual contests?
Glad you asked. We’ve run very, very few art contests -- not more than half a dozen -- over the past 28 years, but each has produced gems. Here are a few.
From Week 657 in 2006, a contest to use fruit in a picture, one of several inking works by Jeff Brechlin:
The winner from a similar contest that same year:
From yet another food contest, this one was an uncannily realistic tabletop-size portrait -- entirely made of several types of dried beans -- of the founder of The Style Invitational, Gene Weingarten. It’s by Craig Dykstra, the 300-time Loser who did the “Sweeney Todd” diorama above. (I’m hoping like crazy that Craig likes cicadas.)
Most recently, in 2018 (gawrsh, it feels like yesterday) we did a contest to put googly eyes on something and take a photo. This one by wordsmith extraordinaire Chris Doyle is one of the Invitiest things ever.
So let’s hope that the ground warms to 64 degrees and sounds the starting gun for the cicada larvae to get moving. I’ve been told that we might have two color pages in the Arts & Style section on June 6 to show off the best stuff -- so send me the best stuff.
Road to Demask Us*: The post-pandemic predictions of Week 1431
*Non-inking headline submitted by both Jon Gearhart and Jeff Shirley
Last weekend the Royal Consort and I found ourselves stuck in a Good Ol’ Capital Beltway Traffic Jam -- it almost felt exciting. We’re on the way back to normal, maybe!
In Week 1431, the Loser Community produced lots of musings on what life would be like Once This Is All Behind Us, from the possible -- new homes with “Zoom rooms” pre-decorated for teleconferencing (Sam Mertens), now that many employers are thinking, “Why pay for this real estate if my employees will pay for their own?” -- to the the thoroughly im-: Use excess toilet paper to sop up rising sea levels near coastal cities (Gary Crockett).
It’s the sixth Invite win, but first Clowning Achievement, for 106-time Loser Ben Aronin: Now it will be less awkward when Grandpa tells everyone how Pfizer saved his social life. And just last week, Ben’s spouse, Rivka Liss-Levinson, galloped off with some foal-name ink for her 14th. Chronic ink-snarfer Jesse Frankovich wins the hand-shaped cookie cutter by one-upping the several entries about how men might even keep washing their hands after using the toilet: Finally! I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I licked a doorknob! Daniel Galef scores his astonishing fourth “above the fold” winner in just 14 inking entries: Dr. Fauci stars in three Marvel movies; and Frank Mann gets his also dang impressive 21st trip to the Losers’ circle as his ink total climbs past 170: Cardboard-cutout sports fans are repurposed into fake HOV passengers.
While we’re still on the way to Post-Pandemic, I’m finally feeling optimistic, not just hopeful, that we’re a lot closer. Meanwhile, have fun with Brood X and I’ll see you next week, and most every day in the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook. Join!
