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THE STYLE INVITATIONAL

REPORT FROM WEEK 859

in which we asked you to tell us jokes in any of four given forms: “If they can ___, why can’t they ___?”; “You can ___, but you can’t ___”; “It’s not the ___, it’s the ___”; or “If you ___, they will ___.”

CAROLYN HAX

Sister-in-law’s myopia about miscarriage is hurtful

Adapted from a recent online discussion:

Dear Carolyn: It’s been a pretty crappy year in

general for my husband and me, one of the main crappy things being three consecutive miscarriages, which now have us going to embarrassing doctors and doing embarrassing things.

My sister-in-law (husband’s sis) just had a baby in January. Great, wonderful, we’re so happy to have a cute little niece. However, “Mary” also has some rather, um, particular views on the whole child-carrying/birthing process, thanks to her easy-shmeasy, problem-free pregnancy and delivery. Essentially, she thinks there’s no reason to ever see a doctor for anything related to pregnancy and babies, and that women should just pray, eat healthy and trust their bodies and all will work out. It’s a really condescending, high-and-mighty attitude that’s hard to explain. She knows about one of our losses, but not all three, and she likes to talk about pregnancy and childbirth. A lot. As does her husband (who now also fancies himself an expert). So this subject will come up a lot, and I need some help quelling my inner desire to throat-punch them when they go on and on about how nothing can go wrong in pregnancy that can’t be fixed with faith and extra broccoli; women who see doctors are only causing themselves more problems; etc. I know it’s unfair to expect them to know about something they don’t know about, but their general opinions toward this subject make me

want to scream.

Wanting to throat-punch SIL

Wait a minute — there’s nothing unfair about expecting them to have a clue that their one experience doesn’t apply categorically to the experience of every other person on Earth. We expect toddlers to be that egocentric, not adults. Next time they start blathering on, there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying, as calmly as you can manage, that it’s wonderful they had such a great childbirth experience — but that people with infertility, or who have lost a child or wife in childbirth might find their views offensive, since they’re suggesting these are the victims’ fault.

Since they’ll likely just reiterate

their prayer-and-broccoli views, prep yourself by reading “Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born,” by Tina Cassidy. Said history includes some shocking bits on how the tail of fashion has wagged the childbirth dog — not just back in the day but even now. (Be warned: The book describes many a birth gone wrong.) Suggest they read it, too, since they wouldn’t want to build a worldview on one pregnancy, right? I suggest this despite having little hope that calm reasoning will get you anywhere with these relatives. But it will give you a clear and concise precursor to your saying, next time, “I’d prefer we talk about something else. How about those Caps?” It sounds as if you’re predisposed to just staying quiet through their blather, and I can understand why. But what they’re saying is offensive, no different from other categories of offense where people don’t think twice about speaking up. So do speak up, please.

Read the whole transcript or join the discussion live at noon

Fridays on www.washingtonpost.com/

discussions.

Write to Tell Me About It, Style, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, or

tellme@washpost.com.

the winner of the Loser key chain custom-made in Thailand:

You can rest in a courtroom, but you can’t court in a

restroom. — L. Craig (John Glenn, Tyler, Tex.)

2 3

If they can train puppies to use the newspaper, why can’t they train yuppies to use the newspaper?

(Beverley Sharp, Washington)

cellphone, why can’t they create a cancel button in an elevator?

(Ari Unikoski, Tel Aviv)

4

IF THEY CAN put a man on the moon, WHY CAN’T THEY put a man on the moon? (Bruce Alter,

on vacation in Port St. Lucie, Fla.)

If they can make a microwave oven, why can’t they make a microwave chiller? (I want a cold one NOW!) (Jeff

Contompasis, Ashburn)

If they can reenact Civil War battles, why can’t they reenact witch dunkings? Oh, and the witches should wear

flimsy T-shirts. (Peter Metrinko, Gainesville)

If they can create plastics that won’t break down in a landfill for centuries, why can’t they use them to make a garden hose that lasts more than two summers?

(Russell Beland, Fairfax)

If they can have Winter Olympics curling, why can’t they have Summer Olympics

shuffleboard? (Jeff Contompasis)

If they can tell me I didn’t need to dial 1 for a call to a different area code, why can’t they just ignore the freaking 1 and put through the freaking call? (Elden

Carnahan, Laurel)

If they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they put a man on “The View”? (Barry

Koch, Catlett, Va.)

If they can make a phone that lets you look up movie times and buy tickets, why can’t they automatically silence the phone during the movie?

(Joe Neff, Warrington, Pa.)

If they can call the theory of

BUT THEY COULDN’T: HONORABLE MENTIONS

evolution a fallacy by finding a single unexplained fact, why can’t they do the same

for religion? (Kevin Dopart, Washington)

YOU CAN turn words like “calendar” and “friend” into verbs, BUT YOU CAN’T illiterate me into doing it.

(Russell Beland)

You can put your best foot forward, but you can’t get anywhere unless you also put your worst foot forward.

(Mae Scanlan, Washington)

You can win the Nobel Peace Prize without doing anything, but you can’t win the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes without

entering. (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.)

You can live by the Bible, but you can’t die by the Bible, unless it’s maybe it’s one of those big Gutenberg Bibles with the metal clasps. (Chuck

Smith, Woodbridge)

You can pet your mate, but you can’t mate your pet. (Tom

Witte, Montgomery Village)

You can call it a tea party, but you can’t drink anything

but Kool-Aid. (Larry Yungk)

You can avoid contradictions, but you can’t avoid contradictions. (Jay

Shuck, Minneapolis)

You can take my committee chair, videotape me smoking a crack pipe, give me a field sobriety test after a traffic stop and censure me for awarding a city contract to my girlfriend, but you can’t

take my dignity. — M.B.,

Washington (Stephen Dudzik, Olney)

IT’S NOT the subtle feeling of rejection, IT’S the mace. (Barry

Koch)

It’s not the heat, it’s the high water content in the atmosphere that elevates the vapor pressure to the extent that evaporative cooling is ineffective. Also, you should take your hand out of the

toaster oven. (Tim Livengood, Columbia, whose only previous ink was another geeky entry in 2003)

It’s not the view of Russia from Alaska, it’s the . . . well,

everything else. (Rick Haynes, Potomac)

IF YOU leave me now, and take away the biggest part of me, THEY WILL probably ask you what you’re going to do

with my butt. (Randy Lee, Burke)

If you walk out of a bathroom with Nutella all over your fingers, they will not get the joke. Even when you lick it off. Trust me on this. (Kevin

Dopart)

If you text your entry while trying to drive, th (Kevin Dopart)

And Last: It’s not the number of entries you submit to the Empress, it’s the submission to the Empress in your

entries. (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo., who includes an embarrassingly bad suck-up poem to the Empress with his entries every freaking week)

Next Week: Ten, anyone? or The X Games

Online discussion Have a question for the Empress or want to talk to some real Losers? Join the Style Conversational at washingtonpost.com/styleconversational.

A Little Warm Ace of Aces Alcindor Ashore Aspire Awesome Act Backtalk Beethoven Biloxi

Black Snowflake Blind Luck Boisterous Bravo Whiskey Bulls and Bears Call Shot Canthavehim Catch Twenty Two Chief Counsel Clear Alternative Close to the Edge Colonel Mustard Conveyance Crisp D’ Funnybone Deep Darkness Delong Road Discreetly Mine Down With Dixie Drive Home Dryfly Dublin

Enclosure Endorsement Excessive Passion

You can love your fellow man in Virginia, but you can’t send

out invitations. (Larry Yungk, Arlington)

If they can create a thin, pocket-size, touch-screen-enabled e-mailer/Internet browser/game machine/organizer/

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

Week 863: It’s Post time

Tiny Woods x Pleasant Prince = Tiger’s Cub Scout Dublin x Odysseus = Bloomsday Alcindor x Bravo Whiskey = Abdul-TheBar

Your personal stable of entries cannot exceed 25. As in real life, the names cannot be longer than 18 characters, including spaces and symbols.

O

Winner gets the Inker, the official Style

Invitational trophy. Second place gets a pretty little build-your-own Stonehenge kit that produces a monument way smaller than Spinal Tap size. If you have a large hand, you could set it up in your palm. Donated by Russell Beland as a sacrifice to the Gods of The Style Invitational.

Extraextraordinary Fenway Faithful First Dude Get a Grip Guys Reward Hear Ye Hear Ye Homeboykris Ice Box In the Paint Interactif Johore Kollege Launch N Relaunch Leaving New York Lethal Combination Liquidity Event Lookin at Lucky Make History Make Music for Me Marble Arch Marching Tune Moojab Mr. Saturdaynight Nacho Friend Nextdoorneighbor No Shenanigans Noah’s Dream Odysseus One Nation Overcommunication Party at My Place Pleasant Prince Preamble Privilaged

Prizefighting Psychic Income Radiohead Raging Wit Rule Saw Perfection Scuba Diver She Be Wild Shrimp Dancer Silenced So Elite

Spangled Star Spicer Stay Put Super Saver Switch

The Director The Program Thousand Excuses

Tiny Woods Toboggan Slide Trackman Twirling Candy Utopian Walking the Beach

Who’s Up Winaholic Winslow Homer Worldly Worth a Buck Wow Wow Wow Ziggy’s Stardust

losers@washpost.com or by fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday, April 12. Put “Week 863” in the subject line of your e-mail, or it risks being ignored as spam. Include your name, postal address and phone number with your entry. Contests are judged on the basis of humor and originality. All entries become the property of The Washington Post. Entries may be edited for taste or content. Results to be published Derby Day, May 1. No purchase required for entry. Employees of The Washington Post, and their immediate relatives, are not eligible for prizes. Pseudonymous entries will be disqualified. The revised title for next week’s results is by Tom Witte; this week’s honorable-mentions subhead is by Kevin Dopart. The list of horses is taken from the full one at BloodHorse.com.

ne of our oldest and most ridiculously popular contests: Below is a list of 100 of the almost 400 horses eligible for this year’s Triple Crown races. This week: “Breed” any two of them and name the “foal,” as in the examples above.

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010

‘Master Class,’ making the most of a different diva

theater reviewfrom C1

Where Caldwell made for a dizzyingly

ravenous Callas — in her delivery of the pair of autobiographical monologues wo- ven into the play, you could feel an almost diseased need for attention — Daly’s por- trayal is less tightly wound, a bit more turned inward. Caldwell took Callas’s fury over her ravaged voice and her insecuri- ties about her appearance and used it to assert her primacy over the eager next generation parading before her. As each young opera singer marched onto the stage to sing and to bear her withering verdict, Caldwell seemed to be rendering an even harsher judgment on herself. It was if, at some level, Callas were waiting all evening to have her darkest shames exposed: the shambles of her per- sonal life, her shortsighted exploitation of her gifts. Daly’s Callas is just as much the price- less put-down artist. You can tell how much McNally loved her, because all the best moments of “Master Class” belong to the opera star’s fiendish tongue. An audi- ence hangs on the skillful pauses Daly and her capable director, Stephen Wadsworth, build in, as Callas prepares to castigate a student or recall the inferior work of a ri- val soprano. (She even attacks members of the audience.) Mentioning Joan Suther- land, for instance, Daly resignedly holds a beat, as if to ponder how gingerly to char- acterize a person with an insurmountable handicap. “She did her best,” she says, fi- nally. The twist in Daly’s Callas is that she’s a

NICK GALIFIANAKIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

little less the monster, a little more fragile — her bluster more easily challenged. When the last student, Sharon (Laquita Mitchell) finally stands up to her, the ta- ble-turning doesn’t come across quite as explosively as in the past. That isn’t a defi- ciency, just a difference: Daly’s Callas ex- presses a vulnerability compatible with a softer outer shell. If “Master Class” is little more than a ve- hicle for Callas to unleash her ego for a healthy run around the stage, what’s wrong with that? It’s an ego trip well worth the ride. The play, inspired by a se- ries of master classes that the always- controversial Callas, who died in 1977 at age 53, conducted at Juilliard, is struc- tured as one. Three young singers, played by the accomplished Mitchell, Ta’u Pupu’a and Alexandra Silber, take their turns be- fore Callas and the accompanist at the pi- ano (a winningly deferential Jeremy Co- hen), ostensibly to learn. If they listen closely, they will get valuable advice, par- ticularly as it addresses Callas’s concerns about the Achilles’ heel of so many opera

Dressed by Martin Pakledinaz in what seems a tribute to Chanel, and wear- ing dark hair pulled back — in a wig by the superb Paul Huntley, Daly’s got the look. (And as Callas instructs us, one absolutely must have a “look” — or as the “Gypsy” strippers sing, “You gotta have a gimmick.”) Wadsworth, an experienced opera

director who’s staged Molière at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, has come up with an effective way to the- atricalize Callas’s memory-driven monologues: the platform on which designer Thomas Lynch places the pi- ano divides and recedes for Daly’s spo- ken arias. Even if they are probably important to an understanding of Cal- las’s life, these interludes remain less dramatically vigorous than when the star mixes it up with the singers — and us.

EVY MAGES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

WITHER FORECAST: Laquita Mitchell and Tyne Daly in “Master Class.”

singers: an inability to act. Or as she might put it, a failure to beNorma or Lady Macbeth or Tosca.

But the audience is here for another

sort of immersion. “This isn’t about me,” Daly declares disingenuously, early in the play. Some people earn the right to be nar- cissistic holy terrors, and perhaps what’s so watchable about Callas cutting a singer to ribbons is knowing that over a turbu- lent career, she’s given and given to the

point of psychic exhaustion — that she asks far less of these singers than what she demanded of herself. The visage of the versatile Daly, who, among other things, starred in TV’s trail- blazing female cop drama “Cagney & Lac- ey” and played Momma Rose in a cel- ebrated Broadway revival of “Gypsy,” does not, in the abstract, invite immediate comparisons with the glamorous soprano. The transformation, then, is impressive.

DOONESBURY by Garry Trudeau

A fringe benefit of experiencing the three McNally plays, which continue in repertory, could be inadvertent: All the opera talk stimulates an appetite for the real thing. After three nights of rapturous characterizations of “La Sonnambula” and “Norma,” those more partial to theater than opera will be persuaded to cross the border more often.

marksp@washpost.com

Master Class

by Terrence McNally. Directed by Stephen

Wadsworth. Lighting, David Lander; sound, Jon Gottlieb. With Clinton Brandhagen. About two hours. Through April 18 at the Kennedy Center. Visit www.kennedy-center.org or call 202-467-4600.

WINNER OF THE INKER

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