Style Conversational Week 1117: A song for every occasion — and for none
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The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s parodies

Nan Reiner shows a Florida “souvenir snowman” globe — featuring a melted snowman — at last weekend’s Loser brunch. With Bruce and Marsha Alter and Marty McCullen; in back, Rob Huffman. (Photo courtesy of Nan Reiner)
By Pat MyersMarch 26, 2015
As usual, I was marveling at many of the hundreds of song parodies submitted for Week 1113, of The Style Invitational, which asked for “a song celebrating someone’s birthday or other personal occasion (rather than, say, a holiday).” In fact, I was so deeply into Marvel Mode that at first I didn’t notice that a number of the parodies didn’t meet that requirement even by a yogic stretch. Some were about recent news items; others summed up a dead person’s life story. And, yup, others celebrated a particular holiday.

But, as the contents of her closets, cabinets and dressers here at Mount Vermin can testify, the Empress hates to throw away perfectly fine, usable things. Especially when they can work as a perfectly fine, usable contest. So while not all of those non-occasion parodies will be eligible for Week 1117, at least some will. I still have the marked-up, blindly judged printout from Week 1113, so I can just look back at where I wrote “NO OCCASION” in the margin, and reconsider them as “a topic or person lately in the news.” You won’t have to send those parodies again.

The encore contest will, for example, be good news for the parody about an anti-vaxxer whose kid ends up sick, though still not for the “Stairway to Heaven” parody about a woman ashamed of “buying from 7-Eleven”).


I also received a number of well-written parodies — they were in sets, from what I’m sure were two different submitters — that were obviously written for the birthdays, retirements, weddings, etc., of actual people they knew. It’s not that I forbid such songs to be used as Invitational entries — I used the “Bare Necessities” parody that Jeff Contompasis and his brother Stephen wrote to celebrate Stephen’s 50th birthday (and now can soon be used for Jeff’s). But these others were full of specific references about people we don’t know, and were also very laudatory — great big musical hugs, much like the parody paeans that the Losers write to laud the Loser of the Year at each year’s Flushies awards. I’m sure they were deservedly huge hits at the events they were performed at, but for an outside reader, it’s kind of like showing up at someone else’s party.

I had a bit of trouble figuring out which parodies to use on this week’s print page, in addition to the top four “above-the fold” songs: For one thing, they had to add up to fit exactly in a certain space; for another, I wanted songs that readers were likely to know the melodies to. After trying out various combinations, I ended up using JeffCon’s “Downsized,” Chris Doyle’s “Amazing Grades,” Mark Raffman’s “Hey Dude,” George-Ann Rosenberg’s “You Can’t Come Home, Ed Snowden,” Matt Monitto’s “Feeding Vladi­mir Down by the Gulag” (sorry, Matt, for deleting the first verse), and Chris’s “And Last” about the Invite. I got very few parodies set to tunes written after 1980.


Cannibal soup is m-m-good: The Empress models the squid-hat prize while finding a kindred spirit at last Sunday’s Loser brunch. (Photo by Nan Reiner)
Obviously, Nan’s “Bloody Menses” wasn’t going to be greeting people’s Sunday morning coffee; it’s only online. (By the way, Bob Staake’s cartoon is depicting psychiatrist Ethel Merman, not psychiatrist Nan Reiner.)

All four of the “above the fold” parodists today — actually, all who got ink — are Invite veterans. This is Nan’s 11th Inkin’ Memorial, a phenomenal number when you consider that she didn’t get her first ink until less than five years ago. Jon Gearhart is either a rookie or close to it; he’s most famous in Loser circles for his amazing facility for the anagrams with which he welcomes each new member of the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, but obviously he’s far more versatile than that. It’s just the eighth blot of ink for Ivars Kuskevics, but it’s his second trip to the Losers’ circle and he’s becoming more and more frequent a visitor to inkdom; I can now spell his name. And Frank Osen continues to bring it.


What Doug dug: Features copy editor (or now, officially, “multiplatform editor”) Doug Norwood also chose Nan’s winner as his favorite, and shared her video clip; he also especially liked Mark Raffman’s “Hey Dude.”

Laughed out of Courtney: From copy chief Courtney Rukan: “The Brian Williams one (by made me laugh out loud, as did the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial. This is a particularly clever line: ‘You’ve got trauma that could constipate Freud.’” She noted that the “Downtown” parody about an “involuntary employment transition” was “hilarious but hits too close to home, so it made me laugh and sent shivers down my spine!” And she loved Matt Monitto’s line “We’ll be feeding Vladimir down in the gulag.”

Everything’s coming up ‘Everything’s Coming Up Moses’!
Madame Rose’s psychotically upbeat show-stopper in “Gypsy” — she sings it desperately to her bewildered daughter as their lives have fallen apart around them — proves to be valuable parody fodder. Not only was it the source of Nan’s Inkin’ Memorial winner today (the link above the parody is to Nan herself singing it;) but also to two Passover-themed parodies by masterly Loserbards. This week there was Beverley Sharp’s excellent “Everything’s Coming Up Moses” — the same title as Barbara Sarshik’s parody from 2001. Here they both are: My daughter and I have been drafted to lead both my family’s seder and my synagogue’s community seder on April 3 and 4, and we very well might have room for both of these after dinner.


First, Beverley’s:
Who’s the mensch? Who’s the guy
Who could part the Red Sea and stay dry?
Who’s the prince? Who’s da man?
Funny, everything’s coming up Moses!
Burning bush — such a fuss!
(Why does God speak to him, not to us?)
Golden calves, bite the dust!
Funny, everything’s coming up Moses...

No more leaven —
Now our bread will be flat;
Laws from heaven —
(Couldn’t we scrap six or seven?)

Forty years — what a trek!
(Sure, the manna got stale--what the heck!)
Jordan’s here — time to cross;
But (oh dear!) — where’s the boss?
Now Joshua will have to see us through;
Finally everything’s coming up rainbows and Promised Land,
Everything’s coming up Joshua and Jericho;
Everything’s coming up dreidels and Hanukkah;
Everything’s coming up, Moses, for us — thanks to you!

And Barbara’s, from her excellent collection of “Seder Songs” that I once again encourage everyone to download and savor — Barbara welcomes anyone to use them for free:

Bang a drum! Spread the news!
Things are looking real good for the Jews!
We’ve escaped! We’re alive!
And now everything’s coming up Moses!

We were slaves. Now we’re free.
’Cause we made it across the Red Sea.
No more whips! No more bricks!
And now everything’s coming up Moses!

We’ll eat matzo.
We’ll drink wine till we burst!
Pure de-lir-ium,
Led by the singing of Mir-iam.

Play a harp! Ring a bell!
’Cause we’re traveling to Yis-ra-el!
Pack your bags! Grab a map!
’Cause now everything’s coming up Moses!

Frogs, lice, locusts,
Slaying of the firstborn.
Say a prayer, “Oh,
Thanks, God, for vanquishing Pharaoh!”

Not by luck or the sword.
No, we all owe our lives to the Lord.
Say a prayer! Sing a song!
Make it loud! Make it long!
A-do-noy yeem-loch l’o-lam va-ed!
’Cause now everything’s coming up Moses
Just like God has said!

Squids! What’s the matter with squids today?
Nothing, for sure, at Paradiso restaurant in Alexandria, Va., this past Sunday as close to three dozen Losers and their auxiliaries gathered for the monthly Loser brunch. Because we had several people joining us for the first time, I felt obliged to wear an identifying garment. And since my usual tiara was in the wash, I wore my beach tiara instead. The squid hat, you might remember, will be the second prize for Week 1115, the headline “typo” contest. And several Losers showed up with a bagful of future prizes, including the “Souvenir Snowman” globe that Nan is holding in the photo above: When you shake it, you get not “snow,” but some grayish threads of yuck. And also ceramic grass and, floating around, a little ceramic hat, scarf, buttons and carrot. It’s a Florida souvenir snowman, see. Nan found it in a thrift shop in Key Largo; it was so weird that the guy gave it to her.

Thanks again to everyone who came out. It was fun to meet Wisconsinite Kathy El-Assal and her friends; as well as six-time Inkin’ Memorial winner Rob Huffman with his whole family in tow. (Kids clearly thinking: At least my mother doesn’t go out in public with a pink velveteen squid on her head.)

The next Loser Brunch will be at Grevey’s, just off the Beltway in Falls Church, Va., at noon on Sunday, April 19. See “Our Social Engorgements” at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, to sign up.