Dilemma of Parodist with Surname Ending in '.witz': "I Feel Witless"

POST #42
PARODY-LYRICS:
ORIGINAL SONG: " I Feel Pretty" written by Leonard Bernstein and Steven Sondheim; performed by Carol Lawrence and cast of West-Side Story 
PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, March 2013.

Some 30 of the posts on this site were originally presented on AmIRight. The premier site for posting parody song-lyrics, AmIRight has an archive of some 90,000 songs. Included among the songsmiths using the site are several prolific authors who have posted over a thousand parodies. A prodigious repertoire, a wide spectrum of themes and outstanding wordplay characterize the more than 4000 works of John Barry; his posting of over a dozen parodies of this original song in one week prompted my parodic homage on that site, modified and re-posted here.  
  


I FEEL WITLESS

G+      C    
I read postings,
G+     C    
Royal roastings,
G+        C       G+ C                        Am7      
And so many on the same base-song,
G7              Am
   Cunning toastings,
               Dm7             G        G9      C     Bb G7  
And I'm tempted to spoof a-a-a-long.


G+     C  
West Side Story - 
G+        C  
So ear-wormy!
G+           C      G+  C                         Am7 
Lennie's melodies swarm in one's head ; 
G7              Am      
 A spoof-zombie  -  
                Dm7         G        G7  C     Bb  G7
I'd keep satirizing when I'm dead.


F                                                 C      F        C7
See that list of spoofs after searching there.
F                                  Dm C
Who's that prodigious J.B.?
Em                          B7          
  Pacing's sure to please,
                                     Em

Natalie Wood, in the well-loved movie version

Rhymes that exceed these,
                                    Cm 
Subjects sometimes sleaze,
                      G          Dm7  G7
Hyper-parodies !!!!


Do our habits not seem hebephrenic?
I refer you to my precious wife.
She'll inform you the minute you ask her:
                                                 Bb7         G7
She'll advise us to consider getting a life. 


G+       C  
I'll confess it;
G+              C  
You might guess it -
G+          C              G+ C                   Am7 
Novice, "Giorgio"'s a name I've assumed,
G7           Am
And "Coniglio" -
                Dm7             G      G7    C      Bb  G7 
He's my nominee for nom-de-plume.

G+      C 
I feel witless,
G+         C 
Feeble, shiftless,
G+       C                G+ C                 Am7
Facing wit-lords, as one of life's twits;
G7           Am      
Which is odd,
                Dm7         G  G7          C       G!  C!
With my surname ending in "..witz"

Shakespearean Innovation: The Modern Hamlet Monologue

POST #39
PARODY-LYRICS
ORIGINAL SONG: "The Major General's Song" from Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance". 
LYRICS: modified from W. Shakespeare "Hamlet (Prince of Denmark)".
PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, January 2013.  



THE MODERN HAMLET MONOLOGUE

(to the tune of "The Major-General's Song") 

Major General Stanley

Ken Branagh as Hamlet

(Major-General): 
        G
The bard named William Shakespeare, though we sometimes see him as a seer,
     D7
In this regard aped Chris, his pard, and other 'lizabethan peers;
          G
They backed the wrong verse-horse, which proved a musical calamiter:
           D                                                            A7               D
Their tragi-comic scripts were scribed in iambic pentameter.

      D7                                                                     Gm
To cite just one example from a spectacle eponymous;
       F7                                                                Bb  
Protagonizing recitation of his pond'rings ominous
           D7                                                                                     Gm
Gives Hamlet back-row status when upstaged by old Polonius,
            Eb7                                                                               D7
Who's scatting catchy melodies from Brubeck and Thelonious.

(Hamlet):
      G              
To be or not to be, that is the question; whether mentally
        D7  
'Tis nobler in the mind to suffer arrows incidentally
        G
And slings of fate outrageous; or take arms against a sea of woes,
        D                                                               A7                          D 
And with a drubbing end those troubling shocks we devoutly oppose.

      D7                                                                               Gm
To die or sleep might help us keep those achy-breaky hearts at bay;
      F7                                                                                              Bb
To sleep, perchance to dream; aye, there's the rubbish plain in what I say:                                                                                                                      D7                                                                                               Gm 
In sleep of death, what dreams, when we have shuffled off this mortal noose
          Eb7                                                                                     D7
Must give us pause to contemplate the square on the hypotenuse.

       D7                                                                                   Gm  
For who would bear the whips and scorns of temporal adversity.
       F7                                                                                          Bb
Oppressor's wrong, the pangs of despised love, and such perversity?
          D7                                                                                         Gm
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and we sit idle - ly,
       Eb7                                                                      D7 
For none dare bare a bodkin, to employ it sui-cidally. 

(Major-General):
          G                                     
That undiscover'd country, singing Shakespeare, posed for centuries,
        D7 
Has puzzled wills, but why wait 'til we're long-in-tooth or dentury?
    G                            
I wrote this rhyming flyer and I now can post it on a blog,
       D                                               A7                       D
My sing-along soliloquy ... the Modern Hamlet Monologue.

(Chorus):
        G                  D7                                  G                            D7             
This tantalizing task he's flogged; his post can boast upon a blog -
       G                    C                      G            D7         G
His sing-along soliloquy's the Modern Hamlet Monologue.

(Major-General):
        G                
The Prince's many solos in this play when spoke sound tedious;
        D7
We now anticipate to hear them crooned - but hold off, greedy us;
   G                             D                     G                                D
I might insert some trios trilled by Gertrude, Ghost and Claudius,
         G                           D                          G              G7                D        With scoring, although borrowed, quite encoring and applaudious.
       G                         D7                             G               D7                            
For now, I'll post upon my blog, both digital and analogue,
       G                     C                     G            D7          G   
My Sing-Along Soliloquy's the Modern Hamlet Monologue.

(Chorus): 
        G                                 D7                               G                         D7  
This plugged up conduit he's unclogged, he now can post it on a blog,
       G                      C                     G            D7          G
His Sing-Along Soliloquy's the Modern Hamlet Monologue.


Enjoy chord-charts and lyrics at the Corktown Ukulele Jam songbook:
Corktunes: Modern Hamlet Monologue

PlayingNotes: Eb7 is easily fingered by using the barred version of D7, up the neck 1 position

Weird Al Yankovic - a Hamlet moment

.

A Ballad of Hospital Restructuring: "MERGERWOCKY"

POST #37
PASTICHE with PARODY-LYRICS, dedicated to JJH for his 39+th birthday
ORIGINAL SONG: "The House of the Rising Sun" as recorded by "The Animals" 1964, and covered by many others. The original song was a "traditional" folk-piece, first adapted by Roy Acuff, also recorded as a folksong by Woodie Guthrie, Lead Belly, the Weavers, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. 

POETIC PARODY LYRICS:  "Mergerwocky", G. Hurwitz, published in the Western News, 2000, with a more recent version reposted on our sister blog "EDIFYING NONSENSE" with the author's permission. This poetic parody draws inspiration from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.

ORIGINAL POEM: "Jabberwocky", Lewis Carroll, 1871; the poem was included in the children's novel "Through the Looking Glass" in 1871.    

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, 2014. Some changes in the lyrics from the published version of Mergerwocky were necessary to fit the target song.

MERGERWOCKY

(to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun")

Restructure! so the i.v. teams

Reclaimed recycled waste.

De-focused were the laser beams

And the closed wards outplaced.

"Beware the Mergertalks, my son!

St Joe's won't bite Council lunch!

Beware the Job-Job bird, and shun

The clawbacking Budgetcrunch.   

He shook his VPs' golden hands:

A business plan he maps,

Then spreadshot he by the Lap-Top key

And synchronized his apps.  

And  as in upsized thought stood he,

The Mergerwock, error-claimed

Came sniffling through the OPD,

De-listing as it came.

Old site! New Site! And deep in debt:

The shuttle-bus shuffled wards.

"Let's integrate, new Mission state!"

He e-mailed to the Board. 

"And hast thou done the Merger-deal?"

A mix of cheers and snarls;

"Come to Grand Rounds, my deanish boys

At the Princess-Di-and-Charles". 

'Twas Wednesday; at the clubhouse bar

Griped Rae-dayed Docs anew,

"Our Conjoint Foursomes shoot near par,

But the Brass still play through, 

But the Brass still play through !"

UKULELE-FRIENDLY FORMAT
(Click on any chord-chart slide to move to 'song-presentation mode'; then navigate through thumbnails at bottom of page.)

To play the original song, House of the Rising Sun, (Animals' version), check out Corktunes, the songbook of the Corktown Ukulele Jam here.

A Multilingual Song: DOFigOFa Ooday

POST #34
CLASSIC SONG LYRICS, modified by partial translation
ORIGINAL SONG: "Diga Diga Doo", written by McHugh and Fields for the Broadway production "Blackbirds of 1928", recorded by Mills Brothers (with Duke Ellington orchestra), Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy etc. The song has achieved popularity as it has a very catchy tune and is suitable for scatting. 

View the earwormy You-Tube video by the BBVD band here, and the delightful animated version by John Colosetti here.

PARODY COMPOSED: translations added by Giorgio Coniglio, April 2014. You can view Giorgio's lyrics, without chords or images, on a parody-lyric website AmIRight.com here.

Notes on the OF (pron. 'oaf') Language: A large family of secret or minority languages is found in the linguistic group Gibberish, spoken most often among children and teenagers in North America, frequently in settings such as private schools and summer camps. Among these are instances in which an invariant sound (e.g. OF) is added to each syllable of the standard mother-language word, usually after the initial consonant (e.g. bad = bOFad). The language 'OF', apparently found only in parts of Ontario, seems under threat of extinction, as it has no recorded literature, and elderly speakers are reaching their senescence. The current posting is an effort to honor the history of OF, and possibly aid in its preservation. 

Notes on Pig Latin:  This is likely the most widely known children's language or language game. Although constructed language games know as hog-Latin and dog-Latin may have been know as early as Shakespeare's time, references to Pig Latin as we know it date from the 19th century. It is often stated but not confirmed that Thomas Jefferson wrote letters to friends in Pig Latin. However, ixnay and amscray as borrowed words are found in some English dictionaries, and PL has been credited by Google, which has a PL-translator tool, and in some partial translations of the Bible.  

PlayingNotes: To play the original song- Diga Diga Doo, check out my post of Dec 2, 2013, "Three Silly Songs for the Winter Doldrums" here.

DOFigOFa Ooday

(Updated Song Versions with Words in the OF Language, and in Pig Latin)

OF 
Intro: 
Am

OFoo-OFah, OFoo-OFah  x2

Am

ZOFulOFu mOFan, fOFeelOFing blOFue

..

Hear his heart go pit-a-pat too, singing

E7                                  Am

DOFigOFa, dOFigOFa, dOFoo 

E7                                    Am

DOFigOFa, dOFigOFa, doo

Am

YOFou lOFove mOFe, OFi lOFove yOFou

..

OF-speakers are often of an advanced age

And when you love it is natural to

E7                                   Am

DOFigOFa, dOFigOFa, dOFoo 
E7                                   Am

 DOFigOFa, dOFigOFa, doo

G7                                              C6

I'm so very dOFigOFa doo by nature
A7                                                       Dm

If you don't say dOFigOFa to your mate
              E7

You're losing yOFour pOFop.

       Am

So, let fOFunnOFy people smile

..
How can there be a virgin isle with

E7                                   Am
DOFigOFa, dOFigOFa, dOFoo 
E7                                   Am

 DOFigOFa, dOFigOFa, doo.

E7                                                                                    Am      Am!

 DOFigOFa, dOFigOFa, dOFigOFa, Big Bad Dad Voodoo-ooooooo!

Pig Latin 
Intro:
Am

ooAY-ahAY, ooAY-ahAY  x2

Am

Uluzay anmay, eelingfay ueblay

..

Hear his heart go tapping away, singing

E7                        Am

Igaday, igaday, ooday 

E7                         Am

Ooday ooday, igaday

Am

Ouyay ovelay emay, Iay -  ouyay
.. ..

And when you love it's natural to say

E7                        Am

Igaday, igaday, ooday 

E7                         Am

Ooday ooday, igaday

G7                                              C6

I'm so very ooday igaday by nature
A7                                                       Dm

If you don't say ooday ooday to your mate
              E7

You're losing ouryay oppay.

       Am

So, let those unnyfay people smile

..
How can there be a virgin isle with

E7                        Am

Igaday, igaday, ooday 

E7                         Am

Ooday ooday, igaday

E7                                                             Am      Am!

 Igaday, igaday, igaday, igaday, HOORRAY !

You Can Help!

Your funds can help in an important cultural maintenance project. All donations contributed to this blog-site will be forwarded to SPOOF - the Society for Preservation Of OF.