Friday, May 18, 2012

A Night(mare) At The Opera


Hard to believe this is my first Fritzburgh An’at entry of 2012.

I’ve been pretty busy doing important things like working two jobs, catching stinkbugs, mowing grass and devoting several weeks to a two-minute horse race and having no profit to show for it. Still, I have not abandoned this blog. I do have the hope that people will read it for more things than finding out who Polly Archer is.

I haven’t written a song parody in a while, and I was inspired to do so last night by a post I made to Facebook. I was going down an early ‘80s punk/new wave rabbit hole on YouTube and played “My Sharona.” I thought that it must be the most parodied song in history—just off the top of my head I can recall “My Bologna,” “My Menorah,” and “Ayatollah,” and that doesn’t count all the unofficial ones that kids made up back when the original was a hit (the summer before I started high school). Just about any phrase that came close to scanning with the title became a parody of the song. If coronas were mentioned in science class, it was “Dah dah dah dah dah dah, my corona…” And even in the locker room, it was “Dah dah dah dah dah dah, my sca-rotum…” I guess you could say we all got The Knack that year.

So I asked if “My Sharona” was the most-parodied song of all time and was answered with a page that says it isn’t even close. I question the accuracy of the page, mainly because I doubt that “Sk8er Boi”—a song I’ve heard exactly once—is the second most-parodied song of all time, and because I haven’t heard that many parodies of the alleged champion, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”  It didn’t seem like the easiest song to write new words to—or so I thought.

That night, as I was doing dishes, inspiration struck me like a family of drunks caught smoking in PNC Park. So I submit to you:

FRITZBURGHIAN RHAPSODY

Is this the real song?
Is this just parody?
Is AmIRight’s list
Even based in reality?
What is this site?
Is it made for kids only?
I’m 46, now
Pop’s passed me by, you see
Because I don’t know Avril Lavigne
Beatles, yes, maybe Queen
Anything the kids like
Doesn’t really matter to me,
To me.

Facebook,
It sucks my time—
Frat bros recall getting high
High school classmates proselytize
Though the night has just begun
Before too long, I’ve thrown it all away
Facebook, ooh ooh ooh
Didn’t mean to stay so long
I just sat down to play some Words With Friends
Share some old videos
And click to say I like gay marriage

It’s too late,
The night is gone
Now it’s time to go to bed
Benadryl turns off my head
Good night, everybody
I’ve got to sleep
Got to get up in the morn and go to work
Facebook, ooh ooh ooh
(Where did all the time go?)
Where’d the hours go?
I sometimes wish I’d never signed up at all

I see a little silhouette-o in my sleep
It’s a dream, it’s a dream, is it people in Mensa?
Or is it a horse race
That takes all my snore space?
Go! (Number seven!)
Number seven! (Number seven!)
Number seven, give me fifty bucks to show
And there they go, oh, oh, oh
Now it’s the Mensans, I’m at an RG
Yes, it’s the Mensans, we’re playing Jeopardy
Barry, shut up—who is Dostoyevsky?

Now it’s 5:44
Can I sleep some more?
(Miss Lily!) No, you cannot sleep some more! (Sleep some more!)
(Miss Lily!) You cannot sleep some more! (Sleep some more!)
(Miss Lily!) You cannot sleep some more!
Cannot sleep some more!
Cannot sleep some more!
No, no, no, no, no, no, no!
But I’m still sleepy, I’m still sleepy
Please, I need to sleep some more
But can’t you tell that the dog has really got to pee?
To pee-e-ee,
To peeeeeeeeee?

So we walk through the front yard at break of the day
Then I watch Dennis Bowman on KDKA
Oh, Jamie,
Give a kiss to me, baby,
You’ve got to get out,
You’ve got to get right out of here.

Doesn’t really matter,
Frankstown Road or Penn,
Off to work each morning,
Then at five I come home again.

Pittsburgh traffic really blows….


Lyrics copyright 2012 Robert A. Fritz