Style Invitational Week 1475: Hail to the Commanders (New: No-paywall link!)
Write a song or cheer for D.C.'s newly renamed NFL team (or another local institution -- how about that for an alternative?). Plus winning neologisms.
Illustration by Bob Staake for The Washington Post
Hail the Commanders,
Come fill the stands!
Don’t mind the owner,
Or where he puts his hands!
If you’re not yet getting this newsletter by email (or if you got dropped because you didn’t expressly opt in since we moved over to Substack): By all means …
Washington’s football team, formerly known as the Washington Football Team, and before that the Washington Racial Slurs, is now the Commanders. And since we’ll no longer be singing “Hail to the Racial Slurs,” we need a new song, yes? This week for Style Invitational Week 1475: Write a song (set to any familiar tune) or shouted cheer for the Washington Commanders. OR, for those who don’t do football: Write one for any other D.C. institution, e.g., the Metro, the Senate, the National Zoo, The Washington Post — heck, we’re institutionalized up the wazoo. Deadline is Monday, Feb. 28, a week later than usual.
And we have dozens of winning neologisms from our annual Tour de Fours contest: All the new terms had to contain the letter block BIDE, but in any order. Like:
APPLIED BIOLOGY: Sex. “Hey, baby, did you know I have a master’s degree in applied biology?”
BIDENTAL: Having teeth way too white for an old guy.
NEW!! If you can’t access the Invite from the link above, use this one instead — but I do hope you’ll subscribe to The Post. Tell them I sent you.
In my weekly supplementary column, The Style Conversational, I share the pathetic original lyrics to the Washington team’s original fight song — whose tune the team plans to keep! And I bring news of the Feb. 20 Loser Brunch in Bethesda, Md. Come on out and complain to the Empress! (And way down at the bottom, a few neologism entries from Week 1471 that were too tasteless even for the Invite.)
LINKS TO …
This week's Invitational column, Week 1475, and results of Week 1471
No-paywall entry form for Week 1475
This week’s Style Conversational column (corrected link)
Still running -- Deadline Monday night, Feb. 14: It’s our Hyphen the Terrible neologism contest, in which you make a new word from two hyphenated ones you find in a newspaper article or ad. See Week 1474 here; see the no-paywall 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're now on Season 2 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@washpost.com (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.