Tweaking

OK, how about this?

Why'm I full of glee,
Mirth and joy—
Gladdest employee
You employ?
Wherefore my elation?
What's the explanation?
Why does Work, for me,
Never cloy?

Sometimes, I'm busy
(Let's just say I'm busy)—
You interfere,
Doughnut Boy.

You interrupt me.
Why you interrupt me?
Don't—there's a dear
Doughnut Boy.

You're quite the cut-up
When folks want to work.
Sit down and shut up
And don't be such a jerk.

(O GOD!! I wish I was lonely—
Really, truly lonely.)
But—whom have we here?
Doughnut Boy!!

Lyric © 2007 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov

Why does Work, for me still needs work.

To the Boss from Hell

Well, after an all-nighter at the office (mission not accomplished), I toddled 'round to the GPO to mail a letter. While standing in line (yep, at 6:17 a.m. on Sunday morning, there's a line; there's always a line at the GPO), the Song About Work completed itself, more or less. To the tune of Jolson-and-DeSylva-and-Brown-and-Henderson's Sonny Boy, one verse and chorus. If you're singing this out loud, pour on the schmaltz and take the alternate high notes, as you head into those last eight measures:

Why'm I full of glee,
Mirth and joy?
Gladdest employee
You employ?
Wherefore my elation?
What's the explanation?
Why does Life, for me,
Never cloy?

Sometimes, I'm busy
(Let's just say I'm busy)—
You interfere,
Doughnut Boy.

You interrupt me.
Why you interrupt me?
'Cause it's not clear,
Doughnut Boy.

You're quite the cut-up
When folks want to work.
Sit down and shut up
And don't be such a jerk.

(O GOD!! I wish I was lonely—
Really, truly lonely.)
But—whom have we here?
Doughnut Boy!!

Lyric © 2007 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov

The hard part's trying to find a natural way of repeating the end words of the first lines of the three A sections. 'Cause it's not clear is filler. But I like the way jerk lands on the leading tone: they were meant for each other.

Drivel

My hypnotherapist (don't ask) has commanded that I write a song parody about my job by Monday. I've picked the song and done a verse, but the chorus ain't budgin' just yet. When the thing's finally written, I guarantee to my faithful public that the thing will be incomprehensible and, even worse, No Fun. Still, I'll post it here, just for the record.

Meanwhile, I wrote an off-the-cuff parody of Frank Loesser's Wonderful Copenhagen, which I posted as the 64th comment to the entry for July 19, 2007, at Harry Hutton's excellent blog, Chase me, ladies, I'm in the cavalry. Check, as the streetfolk so cogently put it, it out. The subject is cynosodomy, and as you know, too few songs celebrate that arcane pastime.

I've been taking lessons in cabaret performance, just for the fun of it. I don't think I'm getting much out of it, except further proof, if any were needed, of my shortcomings as a performer. While the teacher and his resident pianist are excellent, mine is a noggin ill-suited to absorbing new ideas. A couple of the other students have made great strides. Still, I soldier on. The whole thing ends with two performances at Don't Tell Mama, 343 West 46th Street, August 25 at 6:00 p.m. and August 27 at 9:00 p.m. I suppose they'll make me wear clothes.

And Another Thing . . .

. . . the bleeding-heart liberal Press can't count, either:

The results come four days after Amazon.com delivered 2.2 million copies of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the final installment in the blockbuster fantasy trilogy.

Bleeding-Heart Liberal Media!

Today's New York Times Magazine contains the following extraordinary observation:

Any parent would be very upset if her elementary-school daughter was asked to perform oral sex — much less if she did it — by an adolescent boy; . . .

Now, I'm as fond of the First Amendment as the next fellow, but we simply must do something about the Press! The whole thing is getting quite out of hand.

Harry Potter Day

I drove my daughter to Flavortown today, and the tedium of driving the New York Thruway was alleviated by the advent of a parody in honor of the Occasion. The Occasion being the day on which J.K. Rowling (whom I intend to marry, now that she is a gentlewoman of leisure) published the seventh installment of the Harry Potter saga. The tune, as any damned fool can see, is James Hubert Blake's I'm Just Wild About Harry:

Took my child to see Harry,
And Harry terrified me:
But not the Centaurs,
Nor Dementors--
That stuff is just C.G.

On Ron, there's five-o'clock shadow,
And hips on young Hermio-ne;
And dig the pecs on that Harry--!
They're un-believable,
In-conceivable:
That's what terrifies me!

Lyric © 2007 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov

My daughter, the prude, made me change tits to hips. And she may be right; tits is a cheap laugh that distracts from the general theme. Still, I miss 'em, and wish I had 'em back.

Thought for Today

Many forms of conduct permissible in a workaday world for those acting at arm's length, are forbidden to those bound by fiduciary ties. A trustee is held to something stricter than the morals of the market place. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior. As to this there has developed a tradition that is unbending and inveterate. Uncompromising rigidity has been the attitude of courts of equity when petitioned to undermine the rule of undivided loyalty by the 'disintegrating erosion' of particular exceptions. Wendt v. Fischer, 243 N. Y. 439, 444, 154 N. E. 303. Only thus has the level of conduct for fiduciaries been kept at a level higher than that trodden by the crowd. It will not consciously be lowered by any judgment of this court.

—Chief Judge Benjamin Cardozo, writing in Meinhard v. Salmon, 249 N.Y. 458, 164 N.E. 545, 62 A.L.R. 1 (1928).

I wonder whether Cap'n Queeg has ever perused this bit of purple prose. If he has, it's dollars to doughnuts that he sprained his brain on the fifty-dollar vocab and went on his merry way no whit the wiser.

And what, in particular, has prompted this musing? Never mind; it would bore you stiff.

Bits and Pieces

In the course of trying to get the second-third-of-a-CD going, I had occasion to revise a lyric, I hope for the better. Certainly, it's a bit easier for me now to remember the Order of Expletives. The tune is from 1930; Harry Warren's Would You Like to Take a Walk?, a midi file of which may be heard, as ever, at http://www.harrywarren.org/:

Omigod! It's election time again!
Holy crap! The Republicans are back.
Geez Louise! Have you noticed who they're running?
Someone must be funning—
Nothin' good 'll come of that.

Oh, good grief! Must the Democrats debate?
Freakin' A! This is ab-solutely wack.
Hokey smokes! Would you listen to 'em drivel?
No one's even civil—
Heaven knows, we don't want that.

At the National Convention,
We seek conviction—because we care.
But no, there's no conviction; there's just convection—
Hot air.

Oh, good Lord! Have you seen 'em meet the press?
Golly gee! Do ya think they need a flack?
By the way—did I mention that it's squalid?
Do your pal a solid—
Take a gun and shoot me, stat!

Lyric © 2007 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov

Meanwhile, a fresh parody of Arthur Schwartz's That's Entertainment has been knocking around in my head, though it's still very sketchy, owing to my lack of familiarity with the subject. I had to pump my teen-age daughter on some recent history to get anywhere with it.

The Stones
Speak in moderate tones;
In the Doors,
Hardly anyone roars;
Every band
Is incredibly bland:
That's understatement.

The bass
Is so not-in-your-face,
And the drums
Make inaudible hums;
Someone croons
Pianissimo tunes:
That's understatement.

[OH,
BUGGER
ALL
THIS!]
. . . .
Not a hand's creeping crotch-ward,
'Cause subtlety is their watchword.

The Strokes
Are conservative folks,
And the Clash
Won't do anything rash;
R.E.M.
Is a delicate gem—
A gem is a rock,
And Rock is a gem
Of understatement.

Lyric © 2007 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov

My older readers know that I scavenged the crotch-ward/watchword rhyme, but it's put to apter use here, I think.

Ave Atque Vale

Charles Lane has died.

May he rest in peace.

Dropping the Other (Unshined) Shoe

This morning, a release and close to A Shine on Your Shoes sketched itself out in the Petrikov wetware:

There are bills (two or three);
And your bank accounts don't agree;
Folks at the IRS want to see
You.

So if there's gum on your shoe,
It's the pleasantest thing you'll get;
It's the least of the things you'll sweat
Today.

Lyric © 2007 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov

The release is pretty much a placeholder. But I fancy the way in which get lands on that clunky submediant.

Half a Song, Half a Song, Half a Song Onward!

Last Saturday afternoon, I did a bit of furniture-shopping in SoHo with a Not Impossible She and a couple of her cronies. We had stopped to rest and recuperate at a local watering hole, featuring a chandelier composed of unwashed paint brushes and a crazy space-age karzy.

As the Campari and iced coffee flowed, one of the cronies (and the excuse for the expedition) happened to speak of getting gum on one's shoe, whereupon a song from 1932, A Shine on Your Shoes, by Dietz and Schwartz, popped into my head. And, believe you me, that took some popping, for I don't know the song from Adam's off ox.

When I got home that night, I pulled the sheet music down from the shelf, and managed to commit the first half of it to memory; but I still draw a blank on the release and the truncated ending. (O! Mnemosyne, thou bitch!) But to return to the res:

This morning, on the way to the office, the first sixteen bars wrote themselves; and, while I prefer not to post half-efforts here, the output has been so slim of late that anything's better than nothing:

When you get gum on your shoe,
It's a harbinger of your day,
And you get the uneasy feeling
That nothing 'll go your way;

So you arrive at your job
In a bit of a browned-off mood,
Take a look at your bulging inbox—
And suddenly know you're screwed.

Lyric © 2007 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov

Watch this space for further developments.