This week’s contest — Week 1456, comic insults roughly in the form of “Is that your ____, or _____?” — doesn’t need too much elaboration. It’s a redo of a contest that my predecessor Gene Weingarten, the then-anonymous Czar, did 20 years ago — the results ran on Sept. 9, 2001, when people were still, for less than two days, in the mood to laugh. The results are classic; I’ll share them below.
But that week was perhaps more remarkable for the little experiment that Gene conducted. The column explains:
“REPORT FROM WEEK LXXXI [Week 414; long story], in which we asked you to create new, nasty rhetorical questions in the form of the classic put-down “Is that your face, or did your neck just puke?”
“This week, a Style Invitational first: We have judged the contest, and selected four runners-up and a winner. But we aren’t telling you what they are. This was an idea submitted by James H. Cochrane of Falls Church, who contends that we always choose the wrong winners. James challenged us to withhold our choices, ask the readers’ opinions, and then do a statistical analysis afterward, using spreadsheets and standard deviations and such, to gauge the disparity between popular sentiment and the Czar’s autocratic rule.
“So that’s what we’re doing. We have hermetically sealed our choices in a capsule under the supervision of someone whose relative works for Pricewaterhouse. You have one week to fax [!!!] or e-mail us your choices for the four runners-up and the winner. (You cannot vote for your own entry.) … And in the end, we will publish the democratically chosen selections of our beloved readers, beside the selection of one individual, The Czar. The Czar’s choices, of course, will be the official ones.
Winners, Runners-Up and Honorable Mentions:
Is that your final answer, or are you still holding out hope that a brain will suddenly grow at the end of your spinal cord? (Mike Connaghan, Alexandria)
Is that your dog, or shall I call an exterminator? (Greg Pearson, Arlington)
Is that your cooking, or has the prison cafeteria started doing takeout? (Greg Pearson, Arlington)
Is that your president, or did the Supreme Court just puke? (Tom Campbell, Chicago) [Remember that we’re still in the wake of the 2000 election.]
Is that your taste in art, or was one of those sofa-size crying clowns just too darn expensive? (Russell Beland, Springfield)
Is that your waistline, or are you smuggling illegal immigrants in your pants? (Jessica Henig, Takoma Park)
Is that your nose, or are you just glad to smell me? (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.)
Is that your carefully considered position on the inconclusiveness of the scientific evidence of global warming and the dwindling supply of petroleum reserves, or your SUV? (John Muehl, Springfield)
Is that your real age, or have we abandoned the use of Earth years? (Russell Beland, Springfield)
Is that a snapshot of your wife at the beach, or has the Mars Polar Lander finally started sending back pictures? (Bruce W. Alter, Fairfax)
Is that your paycheck, or your share of the tip? (Cathy Shapleigh, Reston)
Is this your regular job, or did the judge give you community service? (Russell Beland, Springfield)
Is that your toupee, or did you just lose a Silly String battle? (Stephen Dudzik, Olney)
Is that your necktie, or did your girlfriend let go of your leash? (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)
Is that your boyfriend, or does your pimp drive a Geo? (Russell Beland, Springfield)
Is that your wife, or did you try your hand at ice sculpture? (Jean Sorensen, Herndon)
Is that your engagement ring, or did a chunk of glass get embedded in your fist during a Ladies Night brawl at the tractor pull? (Sandra Hull, Arlington)
Is that your actual weight, or did you fill out your driver’s license form while tethered to a blimp? (Russell Beland, Springfield)
Is that your column, or did the million chimps in the typing pool call in sick last week? (Sandra Hull, Arlington)
Is that your face or a Xerox of somebody else’s? (Christine Gerbode, Houston)
Is that your car, or is this the day you leave the recycling at the curb? (David Kleinbard, Jersey City, N.J.)
Is that really the color of your eyes, or did your snot back up on you? (Judith Cottrill, Bronx, N.Y.)
Is that your engagement ring, or one of them fancy Band-Aids? (Jean Sorensen, Herndon)
Is that your wedding dress, or did you decide to wear the garment bag instead? (Sandra Hull, Arlington)
Is that your biological clock ticking, or at your age does one’s pacemaker get noisy? (Russell Beland, Springfield)
Is that your PMS talking, or are you always a shrew? (The late Russell Beland, Springfield)
Then, four weeks later — after I personally, as just an Obliging Friend and Colleague of the Czar at this point, had tallied the votes:
“The results: You agree that The Czar is wrong. Unfortunately, you haven’t figured out precisely what he is wrong about. Of the 25 possibilities, our hundreds of respondents declared that the single best entry was obviously … 24 of them! Every finalist but one was chosen by at least one person as the winner of the entire contest. (And no, you couldn’t vote for yourself.) You were all over the map, with nearly insignificant point spreads separating the winners from most of the Honorable Mentions. Possibly this judging thing isn’t as easy as you think.
“The readers’ choices:
Fourth Runner-Up: Is that your boyfriend, or does your pimp drive a Geo? (Russell Beland, Springfield)
Third Runner-Up: Is that your nose, or are you just glad to smell me? (Paul Kocak, Syracuse)
Second Runner-Up: Is that your car, or is this the day you leave your recycling at the curb? (David Kleinbard, Jersey City)
First Runner-Up: Is that your president, or did the Supreme Court just puke? (Tom Campbell, Chicago).
And the winner: Is that your carefully considered position on the inconclusiveness of the scientific evidence of global warming and the dwindling supply of petroleum reserves, or your SUV? (John Muehl, Springfield)
And now The Czar’s choices, made before the contest was published. These are the ones that count:
Fourth Runner-Up: The president — puke.
Third Runner-Up: Carefully considered position — SUV.
Second Runner-Up: Is that your final answer, or are you still holding out hope that a brain will suddenly grow at the end of your spinal cord? (Mike Connaghan, Alexandria)
First Runner-Up: Is that your actual weight or did you fill out your driver’s license form while tethered to a blimp? (Russell Beland, Springfield)
And the Winner of the 1954 George Washington University Medical School yearbook, the Speculum: Is that your nose, or are you just glad to smell me? (Paul Kocak, Syracuse)
-----
I don’t dispute it at all: Different things make different people laugh, just as different foods taste best to different people. And when it comes to a joke like a one-liner or observational humor — as opposed to, say, a limerick, which has certain objective standards in rhyme and meter — certain lines simply resonate more inside one person’s laugh-organ than another.
For The Style Invitational, the laugh-organ in question is mine. There’s no committee, though I’ll sometimes ask others for opinions. And the people who’ve entered the contest regularly for the past almost 18 years have made their peace with that subjectivity (and often Gene’s before me) and tend to either be roughly on my wavelength or just do a good job pretending to be.
One thing you can be sure of, though: If I choose your entry, it’s not because I like you, or because want to reward you for entering so much; and if I don’t, it’s not because I don’t like you, or that I prefer the opposite gender, or didn’t bother to read it. I have met and have even become friends with many of the Losers, and there are a few who’ve put me off for various reasons. And even though we’re talking about giving out magnets and even more useless gewgaws, rather than a diamond necklace or even a few bucks, I’ve put a system in place that makes sure my personal feelings stay out of the picture.
Earlier this week I got this email from an obviously frustrated contestant who, I found out on later research, had gotten no ink that week for the five entries he’d submitted.
The subject line was “I surrender.”
“I always enjoy reading the Style Invitational. I have sent in numerous entries but have never gotten a mention. I wonder if we simply have different senses of humor. I fail to see outstanding humor in some of the entries each week. For example, I find [a certain highly successful Loser] unfunny. You think he kills. So be it.
“Speaking of [same person],” the letter continued, "in Japanese baseball there is something called a “prestige strike.” The home plate umpire expands the strike zone a bit for Japan’s best pitchers. I wonder if [he] gets “prestige ink.” Ditto for a few others, such as Tom Witte, Stephen Dudzik, Craig Dykstra, Chris Doyle. I see their names again and again. Do you set their entries aside to be sure to give them ink? I am not impugning your integrity. I’m simply speaking about force of habit. I concede that I may be just imagining this.
At any rate, it is fruitless for me to continue sending in entries. I'm through, though it has been fun to participate.
Best wishes, [signed with the entrant’s real name]”
This is why it’s worth taking the time to do the blind judging and then hunt down the name of each writer later. Because I know it can’t be true; I don’t need to even doubt myself. (Not sure how wondering to me whether I “set their entries aside to be sure to give them ink” does not impugn my integrity, but so be that.)
This is what I wrote back to him:
“[Name of person], when I judge the entries, there are no names attached to them. And now, of late, when it’s feasible I don’t even see the entries of any (anonymous) person as a group of up to 25; I line them all up and hit Sort, and shuffle them all in alphabetical order. It’s only after I choose the winners that I look up each entry to find who wrote them. I am always delighted to discover that an entry is by a brand-new entrant or by someone who doesn’t (yet) have much ink; last week the whole contest was won by a Scott Richards; it was his second blot. But you’re right, some entrants are consistently successful in the Invitational; Tom Witte has been appearing regularly since Week 7 in 1993.
I do think these people are funny and clever; I’m sorry that you don’t. Obviously humor is subjective, and people who enter week after week have a strong feel for what I like; in fact they might be more conscious of my preferences than I am myself. (Jesse Frankovich recently informed me that he’d won the contest three different times over the past decade with parodies of “The Raven”; I had no idea. On the other hand, I am certain that those “Raven” parodies were terrific.) Also, they do enter every single week, often with 25 entries. Often their 25 best entries after they’ve narrowed their list.
It happens rarely, but I do occasionally receive emails like yours from contestants who are frustrated that they haven’t gotten ink; that frustration often prompts them to accuse me of pathetic incompetence and/or a lack of integrity. I’d like to put your mind to rest on the second count. Some of those people did keep entering, and I was pleased to see that they eventually got multiple blots of ink.
Your call, of course. It’s supposed to be a fun activity, not one to cause you pain.
Best,”
---
I do hope that the guy is continuing to “always enjoy reading the Style Invitational” this week, even though several of the names he cited did get ink. (He didn’t enter the Week 1452 contest, whose results run today.)
I wasn’t just being encouraging when I told him that previous gripers had kept entering and eventually gotten ink; I can think of several occasions in recent years. But to be honest, if I, personally, repeatedly entered a contest and never got ink, I most likely would give up, too.
But I hope I wouldn’t say goodbye by writing an accusatory email to the contest judge.
Still! If he does continue to enter, and I happen to finally choose one of his entries, I’d never let on that he was the guy who …
(He never replied to my email. Understandably.)
New podcast episode: The Flushies and beyond!
Yet another fun half-hour of “You’re Invited” has dropped! This time, host Mike Gips features songs and more from the Flushies, the Losers’ own award “ceremony”/songfest/picnic, which we finally got to enjoy earlier this month after a skipped year. And Mike compares his picks — never the same as the Empress’s — for the week’s top Invite ink with Year 27 Loser of the Year Sam Mertens and Year 28 LOTY Jonathan Jensen. It’s Episode 17 — Season 2, Episode 4. Check it out at bit.ly/invite-podcast or your usual podcast app.
The LOL and winding road*: The word-search neologisms of Week 1452
*Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich
Okay, next year, when I feed words into the handy word-search constructor at puzzle-maker.com, rather than using a list of words from a “words with many vowels” Web page (why, of course there are many such pages to choose from), my strategy will be to use lots and lots of very short words until the software returns a 20-by-20-letter grid. This way, there will be minimal “fill,” which this program, we’ve found, likes to supply with an inordinate number or Q’s, Z’s and X’s. The grid for Week 1452 contains 39 words I submitted; next year, zillions.
Still, our intrepid Loser Community submitted some 1,200 words to be found by snaking around the graphic, of which 41 (35 in print) get ink in this week’s results, many of them creatively exploiting those pesky Scrabble gold nuggets (e.g., XGRQX: Elon Musk’s next baby — Leif Picoult). Almost everyone submitted the entries in the format I’d implored you for, with the starting coordinates followed by the word followed by the definition on a single line. And at least among the hundred or so shortlisted entries that Loser Todd DeLap ran through his custom-made entry validator — which I hereby dub The DeLapidator — almost everyone was careful to proceed from letter to adjacent letter without using the same spot twice. The only violators repeated letters: MAWPAW as a teen’s parental unit (“Mawpaw’s away this weekend — let’s partay!”); and the “And Last” candidate DON’T SIT ON INK (the Empress’s admonition not to procrastinate).
And contrary to the protestations of Mr. Gripe, it’s a pair of rookies who top the list of this week’s ink: It’s the first Invite win, and just the 16th (and 17th) ink for Leif (pronounced Layf) Picoult, who debuted last October and has kept sending us the funny ever since; and in second is the even more meteoric Coleman Glenn, the Swedenborgian minister from Philadelphia who’s now blotted up 22 inks — including six runners-up — starting with Week 1439 four months ago. The rest of the Losers’ Circle is filled by veterans Ken Gallant and Dan Helming, who’ve both been entering, now and again, since the Czarist era.
Leif stole the week for me with his example of an “om-zap” — an epiphany during mediation: the idea for a dog fitness program called Labs of Steel. Coleman’s portmanteau “adoremat” — someone who’s all too accommodating to a dreamy jerk — ought to find use in the real world; it certainly struck a chord with me. So should Ken’s “Mr. Tellma,” a bratty brother. And Dan gets in a deft double meaning with “No-Dope,” the person who has the sense to wait till the system clears before taking the drug test.
We have three First Offenders this week! I had to make an exception to my (poorly enforced) “enough of him” guideline for Mary Ellen McGlone’s “egoputz”; Long Islander Glen Matheson perhaps speaks the native language with his “technical mathematical term” “gozinter,” describing division; and Brian Krupp delivered my favorite definition of several “Exman” entries: Marvel’s first trans superhero. Mary Ellen, Glen and Brian each receive a FirStink air “freshener” for their first inks, but I’m confident that future Loser Magnets are exerting little bits of force on them as we speak.
Speaking of magnets: The several dozen people who got honorable mentions last week, for Week 1451′s “first drafts” of famous quotes, all got the new “Small Jester of Our Appreciation” magnet, because the second of the pair hadn’t arrived yet. Now I’ll send this week’s HMs the other of the pair, pictured at the top of this page. I’ll continue to send new magnets even to the people who told me I could just send them an email with the “prize” letter, until they tell me they have enough of both models (or I decide that for them. I mean!).
What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me once again on the winners, and also singled out all three of the First Inks as well as Sam Mertens’s “Revoter,” a boogeyman GOP’ers use to scare their kids; Lee Graham’s “Voldemelt,” the least popular sandwich at the Hogwarts cafeteria; Duncan Stevens’s “Wooker,” an attractive relative of Chewbacca; and Steve Fahey’s “Quaalog,” Bill Cosby’s dating diary.
And a couple of unprintables: I haven’t been sharing many of these lately in the Convo, perhaps because I’ve been discreetly placing some of the edgier ones near the bottom of the list of the Invite itself. But here are two I would not run: O-5: Fapbit: straps onto your wrist so you get credit for all those “steps” you took while visiting porn sites (Jamie Martindale); and P-14: Peen-X: special tissues for … uh. (Frank Mann)
