It’s
“the 1995 Earl Change Special” — check out
the setup for this pun by the late Doug Frank in this week’s Style
Invitational. (Cartoon by by Bob Staake for
The Washington Post)
—If
you’re not yet getting this free newsletter by email (or if you got
dropped because you didn’t expressly opt in since we moved over to
Substack): By all means …
This
week’s Style Invitational is dedicated to longtime Loser Doug Frank, who
died unexpectedly last week at 62. It’s one of Doug’s favorite genres: the
feghoot, shaggy-dog story, or whatever you’d like to call it. For
Week 1493: Tell a feghoot — a
mini-story (a ridiculous one is fine) that ends in a groaner pun on a
familiar expression, title, line from a song, etc.
Keep it under 75 words or so; much shorter is fine,
too! Deadline is Monday, June 27.
And
we have 36 hilarious winners in our contest to rearrange the words in a
movie title, then describe the new movie. Among them:
Thou Art Where? O Brother! Once again,
an Elizabethan cobbler has to bail out his ne’er-do-well sibling from the
village stocks.
First, 50 Dates: The
hot-dog-eating competition begins with the Dried-Fruit Preliminary
Round.
We’ve
done feghoot contests at least twice before, and in my supplementary
column The Style Conversational, I share
some of the winners from 2000 and 2014 and link to the rest; they’ll give
you a good idea of what I’m looking for. (And put on your groan-guards!)
And I also offer a sampling of some of Doug Frank’s prime Invite ink from
over the years.
——
LINKS
TO …
This week's Invitational column, Week 1493,
and results of Week 1489
The same column for non-subscribers (but do
sign up — there are always great promotions going on!)
No-paywall entry form for Week
1493
This week’s Style Conversational
column
Still
running -- deadline Monday night, June
20: For Week 1492, send us
conservative-leaning humor in a Q&A joke format or a knock-knock joke.
It goes without saying that it doesn’t mean hateful or
racist, but we’ll say it anyway. See the paywall-free entry form here.
More
ways to enjoy The Style Invitational and be part of the Loser
Community:
Join the Style Invitational
Devotees group on Facebook and the
Devs will anagram your name every which way.
Also
on Facebook, the Style Invitational Ink of the
Day page presents one classic entry as a colorful
graphic that's easy to share. "Like" the page to get it regularly on your
news feed, or to scroll through the archives. bit.ly/inkofday.
And
we have two seasons’ worth of the You're Invited
podcast, half-hour episodes with host Mike Gips and
various Invite luminaries. Catch all 18 episodes at bit.ly/invite-podcast or
wherever you get your podcasts.
— Pat Myers,
Empress of The Style Invitational, pat.myers@... (or
just reply to this email)
*That's Loser with a capital L;
named for the runner-up prizes emblazoned "LOSER," the community of
regular Style Invitational entrants now proudly calls itself the Losers.
If you enter the Invite, you're a Genuine Loser. But not (necessarily) a
loser.
