The Problem

My DAMP has been urging me to change the following lines to a lyric I wrote two years ago, parodying You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby:

You were treated by a quack,
So demand your money back,
And, next time, buy direct from Voit!

According to him, the reference to Voit is obscure. Now, my feeling is, if a brand-name for sports equipment has managed to trickle its way through the collective conscious mind into the Petrikov wetware, it's pretty commonly known; but the DAMP doesn't see it that way. So I undertook to change it.

The snag is that (a) the -oit rhyme is a bitch, but (b) the line, And "Touche" is not as large as "Deloitte," elicited a belly-laugh from a Scotsman to whom I sang it, and I can't jettison lines that get reactions like that. So what to do? The DAMP suggested mispronouncing shirt or skirt in the time-honored tradition of Brooklyn in stereotype; but that option lacked artistic integrity, and we all know what I stickler I am about that. I mean to say, why would the singer suddenly slip into Brooklynese? One searches in vain for a motive.

Finally, today, while standing around waiting in a client's office, it hit me:

So I think that you'll agree
That your surgeon's gotta be
A mammillary maladroit;
'Cause I've never, etc.

Lyric © 2007 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov

Which (a) continues the trend of the song in using fancy phrases to describe a bad boob-job, and (b) fits the music better--at least, to my ear, which is the only ear available at moment of going to press.

Something attempted, something done.