Funny Story in the News Indianapolis

A bizarre rivalry between two middle-aged men is raging on the pages of the Indianapolis Star.

At stake is dominance in the daily feature called "Let it Out," with each man vying to be the top contributor of one-liners to the popular reader-engagement column.

There's no money in it, and (except for this story) no fame either because readers' "Let it Out" comments are anonymous. The public doesn't know whose comment is whose.

But they know, Jeff Ayers and Jim Kelly do. They keep score.

Since 2015 the two have had a combined total of 110 comments published in "Let it Out."

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Ayers is a waiter at a local pizza restaurant and the lead singer and percussionist for the Turnipseeds, a rock band. He is 60. Kelly, 58, is an artist who specializes in portraiture. Ayers lives near Broad Ripple, Kelly in Garfield Park. Both are divorced.

Getting a comment published in "Let it Out" is not so simple as just sending one in. For every 60 or 70 submissions received by the Star, for space reasons and for reasons of decency, only about 10 make it into the newspaper and onto IndyStar.com. Ayers' and Kelly's success rates are about average. What distinguishes them is the volume of their submissions. They've each sent in hundreds of comments.

The Star launched "Let it Out" in 1996. "Got a comment about life, love, politics, whatever?" the newspaper asked in a promotional ad. "Send it to us — your quick and pithy one-liners, your wry observations, your exuberant exclamations."

Twenty-two wry observations were published that first day, including: "I am a native of Indiana, and it diminishes the lustre of this fine state when people say 'git' instead of 'get.'"

For a decade Ayers and Kelly ignored "Let It Out." But with the death of Dick Wilson, the actor who played Mr. Whipple on the TV commercials for Charmin toilet paper in the 1960s and 1970s, Ayers felt the need to speak out: "Mr. Whipple is up in heaven now, squeezing clouds like he used to squeeze his beloved Charmin," he emailed to "Let it Out."

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His wry observation was published in the newspaper in November 2007. Ayers said the experience was "quite a thrill," but with him it's not clear if he's being serious or if he's monkeying around. In any case, it would be eight years before Ayers returned to "Let it Out."

Kelly waded in, in 2015, with a wry observation about the First Church of Cannabis, an organization just then formed to test Indiana's controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act: "Before I join the First Church of Cannabis I want to make sure it's not seedy." Of course that wry observation got published.

"I felt accomplished," said Kelly, who like Ayers walks a fine line between earnestness and irony. "I feel anybody who gets a 'Let it Out' feels honored, to some degree."

Ayers, who considers Kelly's wry observation about cannabis to be his finest, felt obliged to try to match it. Over the next month or so he got his second observation published (he can't recall what it was about). Kelly quickly landed three more, and the rivalry was on, Ayers scoring in June 2015 with: "My friend Jim has had four comments printed in Let it Out. I've had three. I hate Jim."

Ayers and Kelly are actually long time friends who socialize frequently, engaging in games of bocce and ping pong and making absurd videos that they post on Facebook. The two work side by side as course marshals at the linear bocce tournaments held bi-annually in Indianapolis.

So far this year, Ayers leads Kelly, 14 wry observations to 7. But Kelly's lifetime stats outpace Ayers' by a wide margin, 72-39. Ayers is feverishly trying to make up ground. "I'll go with juvenile and immature," he said, "and some of mine aren't even original.

"I've stolen a few from Jim himself. We'll be playing bocce and Jim will be ruminating about his 'Let it Outs,' thinking of a comment, working it out out loud. And I'll quietly be paying attention, and by next morning, bam!, I'll send it in. Why not?"

The tone of Kelly's and Ayers' comments ranges widely.

Ayers can be political, as in: "Only in America would people think that the solution to gun violence is more guns"; or goofy: "People who throw away their little teeth-flossing tools in parking lots are the grossest people on the planet"; or both: "Trump's nuclear button isn't really bigger than anyone else's, it just looks bigger because his hands are so tiny."

Kelly specializes in grouchy, as in: "It's really hard to follow the golden rule, 'Love Your Neighbor,' when their cigarette smoke permeates your house"; and "I'm sick of hearing vehicles running in idle!" But he can be goofy as well, as in: "The moon doesn't shave, it just waxes," and "Who put the cob in cobwebs?" And occasionally he manages to merge goofy and grouchy: "In my day, if a fella's shoes were untied or his pants were falling down you'd let him know. Not anymore."

Kelly has a Twitter account but has just 40 followers and rarely posts. Ayers, who still has a flip phone, isn't on Twitter at all. "Let it Out" is clearly old-fashioned — you could safely call it Amish Twitter — but Ayers puts it on a higher plane than social media because, he said, "while anyone can post something on social media, on 'Let It Out' you have to get through a filter."

And if you do get through, you reach several hundred thousand Star readers, an audience that's hard to match on social media unless you're Lebron James, who has 41.4 million Twitter followers, or President Donald J. Trump (50.8 million), or Justin Bieber (106.2 million).

Daniel Bradley, the Star staffer who curates "Let it Out," said Ayers and Kelly are far and away the feature's most prolific published contributors. "There are others who send in a lot," Bradley said, "but they don't get published as much because their comments tend to be profane or otherwise not appropriate for publication."

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Contact Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins.

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Source: https://www.indystar.com/story/entertainment/2018/04/23/these-two-men-compete-get-one-liners-indystars-let-out-section/488947002/

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