Style Invitational: As we primp for our 20th anniversary, we bring out the dead (poems)

There’s no new contest this week, because four weeks from now — on March 3 (Feb. 28 online), when the results would have run — the Empress will devote this entire space (and more!) to a celebration of the Style Invitational’s 20th anniversary. We’ll look back at the Invite’s greatest hits, especially from the past 10 years: the best of the song parodies, neologisms, horse names, limericks, “joint legislation,” cartoon captions and dozens of other classic contests. We’ll also tell you about the Losers, the unlikely community of contestants that’s been active since Year 1 with a calendar of social events, a vigorous competition for most ink, a set of meticulous online standings, and a Facebook page that numbers almost 500 members. And there just might be a few peeps from the Czar, the E’s predecessor and the originator of this contest, whom she mercifully sent into retirement nine years ago.

(Note to readers of the print edition: The Web address given on this week’s Sunday Style page to The Style Conversation, my weekly online column about the new contest and results, doesn’t work this week, while the page is undergoing some improvements. (It goes to last week’s column instead.) Instead, access it here.

The Style Invitational

The Style Invitational is The Post’s weekly humor/wordplay contest, serving up since 1993 an irreverent mix of highbrow and lowbrow -- haughty and potty -- in genres ranging from neologisms to cartoon captions to elaborate song parodies. A new contest appears at washingtonpost.com/styleinvitational every Friday.

Archive

• Style Conversational
• E-mail

Report from Week 1004

Our annual contest for poems about those who died in the previous year: Frequently noted was that Dave Brubeck is taking five and much longer; that Sherman Hemsley moved on up; that Robin Gibb’s no longer stayin’ alive; that Vidal Sassoon and Phyllis Diller were hair today, gone tomorrow; and that go-go pioneer Chuck Brown was, of course, gone-gone.

In a rare but not unprecedented move, we present two Inkin’ Memorials today; the second one, a song parody, appears only online so we could include a link to a YouTube clip of the 85-year-old original song.

The winners of the Inkin’ Memorials

Ferdinand A. Porsche (1935-2012), designer of the Porsche 911
When Porsche first designed his car, he cleverly employed
The insights he had garnered from the works of Sigmund Freud.
A car, as Porsche understood, was outwardly metallic,
But in the heart of man it was organic flesh, and phallic.

And so he built it long and strong, he built it fast and loud,
To make the rich unmanly man feel powerfully endowed.
Though Freud had said that now and then cigars are just cigars,
Ferdinand, the businessman, knew cars are not just cars.
(Robert Schechter, Dix Hills, N.Y.)

Jean Harris, convicted of the murder of Scarsdale Diet doctor Herman Tarnower

(To “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”)
Fish gotta sink, birds gotta fall;
You gotta love me or no one at all.
Can’t help pluggin’ that man of mine.

Life is a banquet; that’s what they say.
How could you take my sugar away?
Can’t help pluggin’ that man of mine.

Hungry, weak, and sad
Makes a girl go mad.
Haven’t had one taste! But you’ve been free – to cheat on me.

Herman, you might have avoided my barbs
If you had just let me snack on some carbs.
Can’t help pluggin’ that man of mine.
(Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.)

2. Winner of the toilet-shaped coffee cup:
Edward Archbold, who died after winning a roach-eating contest
Hey, the next time that someone approaches
With a contest to eat the most roaches,
Though the prize may be nice,
I suggest you think twice,
’Cause it might be your big buenas noches.
(Nan Reiner)