Having recently immersed myself in Arnold Lobel's gentle, funny Frog and Toad stories, I thought a little tribute to the long-suffering Frog was in order. Here it is, to the tune of Blowin' in the Wind.
A Friend Until the End
How much of Toad's foolishness can Frog take
Before he's had it with him?
Yes, and how many dumb inquiries must Toad make
Before Frog knows that he's dim?
Yes, and will they eventually stop being friends?
I'd say the chances are slim.
For Frog is a friend who's loyal to the end.
Yes, Frog is a friend until the end.
How many times will Frog drag Toad from bed
Before he just lets him sleep?
Yes, and how many times will he offer aid
When Toad gets himself in too deep?
Frog made a promise to stand by his friend,
And that is a vow he will keep.
For Frog is a friend who's loyal to the end.
Yes, Frog is a friend until the end.
How did Toad happen to stumble upon
A frog so faithful and true?
If unexpectedly Frog was gone,
I do not know what Toad would do.
I think that all of us could benefit
From such a great buddy, don't you?
For Frog is a friend who's loyal to the end.
Yes, Frog is a friend until the end.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Friday, July 14, 2006
The Life of a Pirate (Kokomo, John Phillips / Scott McKenzie / Mike Love / Terry Melcher)
In honor of the phenomenally popular Pirates of the Caribbean - of which I am a big fan - I wrote a parody of the Beach Boys' Kokomo, which is one of my favorite summery songs. Enjoy!
The Life of a Pirate
The life of a pirate, you know you desire it.
A free-wheeling bandit. You have got to hand it
To Captain Jack Sparrow, never straight and narrow,
A pirate.
The Caribbean Sea
Has an archipelago
Where pirates tend to go
To look for gold, but they find
Treasures with a curse
And situations that just get worse.
All the sudden they're stuck
Staring into an aquatic hearse.
Avast, me hearties, yo ho!
The life of a pirate, you know you desire it.
Be a free-wheeling bandit. You have got to hand it
To Captain Jack Sparrow; he's the king of narrow
And intense escapes.
I don't know how he gets into such scrapes
While William Turner gapes...
Avast, me hearties, yo ho!
Johnny Depp.
Is he a hottie? Yep!
They will hoist the sail,
Swab the deck and never fail
To excite and delight
The movie-goers with their tale.
On the choppy waves,
They'll make amazing saves.
Under Jack Sparrow's command,
Their misadventures will all be grand.
Avast, me hearties, yo ho!
The life of a pirate, you know you desire it.
Be a free-wheeling bandit. You have got to hand it
To Captain Jack Sparrow; he's the king of narrow
And intense escapes.
I don't know how he gets into such scrapes
While William Turner gapes...
Avast, me hearties, yo ho!
Orli Bloom.
He'd make the perfect groom.
Everybody knows
Of that archipelago,
So if you wanna go and sail in search of some gold,
Avast, me hearties, yo ho!
The life of a pirate, you know you desire it.
Be a free-wheeling bandit. You have got to hand it
To Captain Jack Sparrow; he's the king of narrow
And intense escapes.
I don't know how he gets into such scrapes
While William Turner gapes...
Avast, me hearties, yo ho!
The Life of a Pirate
The life of a pirate, you know you desire it.
A free-wheeling bandit. You have got to hand it
To Captain Jack Sparrow, never straight and narrow,
A pirate.
The Caribbean Sea
Has an archipelago
Where pirates tend to go
To look for gold, but they find
Treasures with a curse
And situations that just get worse.
All the sudden they're stuck
Staring into an aquatic hearse.
Avast, me hearties, yo ho!
The life of a pirate, you know you desire it.
Be a free-wheeling bandit. You have got to hand it
To Captain Jack Sparrow; he's the king of narrow
And intense escapes.
I don't know how he gets into such scrapes
While William Turner gapes...
Avast, me hearties, yo ho!
Johnny Depp.
Is he a hottie? Yep!
They will hoist the sail,
Swab the deck and never fail
To excite and delight
The movie-goers with their tale.
On the choppy waves,
They'll make amazing saves.
Under Jack Sparrow's command,
Their misadventures will all be grand.
Avast, me hearties, yo ho!
The life of a pirate, you know you desire it.
Be a free-wheeling bandit. You have got to hand it
To Captain Jack Sparrow; he's the king of narrow
And intense escapes.
I don't know how he gets into such scrapes
While William Turner gapes...
Avast, me hearties, yo ho!
Orli Bloom.
He'd make the perfect groom.
Everybody knows
Of that archipelago,
So if you wanna go and sail in search of some gold,
Avast, me hearties, yo ho!
The life of a pirate, you know you desire it.
Be a free-wheeling bandit. You have got to hand it
To Captain Jack Sparrow; he's the king of narrow
And intense escapes.
I don't know how he gets into such scrapes
While William Turner gapes...
Avast, me hearties, yo ho!
The Perfect Confection (The Rainbow Connection, Paul Williams / Kenneth Ascher)
Here's a parody of The Rainbow Connection from the perspective of Willy Wonka.
The Perfect Confection
Why are there so many eaters of candy,
Of chocolate, jawbreakers and gum?
Candy is tasty but kind of a waste;
See, your dentist would say that it's dumb.
So I've been told many times by my father,
But he's not much fun, now is he?
Someday we'll find it, the perfect confection,
Those round Oompa-Loompas and me.
Who said that rotten teeth are to be avoided?
They make your mouth full of gold.
I say, the stickier and harder the candy,
The more likely it gets sold.
Kids don't mind holes in bicuspids and molars,
And I am inclined to agree.
Someday we'll find it, the perfect confection,
Those round Oompa-Loompas and me.
Keeping a kid from his sweets
Is nasty, cold-hearted and tragic...
Have you been forced to eat a gaggy green veggie?
I feel so sorry for you.
Have they insisted that candy is harmful?
I do not think that could be true.
I've eaten too many sweets to believe it;
A chocolatier's what I must be.
Someday we'll find it, the perfect confection,
Those round Oompa-Loompas and me.
The Perfect Confection
Why are there so many eaters of candy,
Of chocolate, jawbreakers and gum?
Candy is tasty but kind of a waste;
See, your dentist would say that it's dumb.
So I've been told many times by my father,
But he's not much fun, now is he?
Someday we'll find it, the perfect confection,
Those round Oompa-Loompas and me.
Who said that rotten teeth are to be avoided?
They make your mouth full of gold.
I say, the stickier and harder the candy,
The more likely it gets sold.
Kids don't mind holes in bicuspids and molars,
And I am inclined to agree.
Someday we'll find it, the perfect confection,
Those round Oompa-Loompas and me.
Keeping a kid from his sweets
Is nasty, cold-hearted and tragic...
Have you been forced to eat a gaggy green veggie?
I feel so sorry for you.
Have they insisted that candy is harmful?
I do not think that could be true.
I've eaten too many sweets to believe it;
A chocolatier's what I must be.
Someday we'll find it, the perfect confection,
Those round Oompa-Loompas and me.
Rasputin (Cecilia, Paul Simon)
A parody of Simon and Garfunkel's Cecilia from the perspective of Bartok, Rasputin's obligatory animal sidekick in the Don Bluth movie Anastasia.
Rasputin
Master, you're making a mess,
I'm getting depressed looking at you.
Oh, Rasputin, you're falling apart,
Oh when did you start to decay?
Master, you're making a mess,
I'm getting depressed looking at you.
Oh, Rasputin, you're falling apart,
Oh when did you start to decay, to decay?
Wreaking havoc on Romanovs with Rasputin,
My eccentric boss (wreaking hav-
oc all day).
We had almost wrecked the place;
When I caught up with him, he was losing his face.
Master, you're making a mess,
I'm getting depressed looking at you.
Oh, Rasputin, you're falling apart,
Oh when did you start to decay, to decay?
Putrefaction, it's making me sick.
My leader's incredibly icky.
Putrefaction, it's making me sick.
My leader's incredibly icky...
Rasputin
Master, you're making a mess,
I'm getting depressed looking at you.
Oh, Rasputin, you're falling apart,
Oh when did you start to decay?
Master, you're making a mess,
I'm getting depressed looking at you.
Oh, Rasputin, you're falling apart,
Oh when did you start to decay, to decay?
Wreaking havoc on Romanovs with Rasputin,
My eccentric boss (wreaking hav-
oc all day).
We had almost wrecked the place;
When I caught up with him, he was losing his face.
Master, you're making a mess,
I'm getting depressed looking at you.
Oh, Rasputin, you're falling apart,
Oh when did you start to decay, to decay?
Putrefaction, it's making me sick.
My leader's incredibly icky.
Putrefaction, it's making me sick.
My leader's incredibly icky...
The Wreck of a Bald Anti-Hero (The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Gordon Lightfoot)
Another Smallville song dealing with the fascinating Lex Luthor, to the tune of Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The Wreck of a Bald Anti-Hero
The legend lives on from Metropolis on down
To the little old town they call Smallville.
Lex Luthor, it's told, was worth mountains of gold,
But he hungered for truth somethin' awful.
With a gorgeous castle and dozens of acres of land,
You would reckon that Lex would be cozy.
But he'd trade his wealth for a little more stealth,
For above all else, that guy is nosy.
He was in the dark about his good buddy Clark,
But he slowly became more suspicious.
Each time Clark acted strange, their relationship changed
Until Lex's intentions grew vicious.
Concluding their friendship, he had to pretend
That their brotherhood meant very little.
He wanted to fight, to square off against
The enigma wrapped up in a riddle.
Green Kryptonite carried a palpable threat
To the man called "super" by masses.
As soon as Lex knew, he concocted a few
Nasty plans while he wooed luscious lasses.
His dad was distant and his mother was missed,
For she died when he was a teenager.
He suffered abuse, but that's no excuse
To become an unruly rampager.
When slumber time came, the old dreams would begin,
Bringing with them strange visions and phantoms.
His father would hover - in loathing, not love;
His revulsion made Lex fear the sandman.
"I'm captain," he said, as he shivered in his bed,
"Of my destiny. Nothing to fear."
Oh, he should have abandoned his fanatical plans,
That poor wreck of a bald anti-hero.
Does anyone know where man's decency goes
When the years turn a friend to a rival?
How much must he pay at the end of the day
For his desperate quest for survival?
It might've been fate or it might've been choice -
It might've been both things together -
That caused him to turn. Is there still time yet to learn?
Is he doomed to be evil forever?
Superman soars; his purpose is clear
In the midst of his unending zoomin'.
His alien heart has been from the start
Just as wholesome as though he were human.
And on the Kent farm lives a country marm
Whose soul is so perfectly saintly,
She can still see some good in Lex where no one else could,
Be it ever so terribly faintly.
In the musty old barn where Clark used to reside
With the folks he called father and mother,
One long-gone day, he heard Lex earnestly say,
"Clark, you're better than any blood brother."
The legend lives on from Metropolis on down
To the little old town they call Smallville.
Lex Luthor, it is told, had a heart made of gold,
But his hunger for truth made him awful...
The Wreck of a Bald Anti-Hero
The legend lives on from Metropolis on down
To the little old town they call Smallville.
Lex Luthor, it's told, was worth mountains of gold,
But he hungered for truth somethin' awful.
With a gorgeous castle and dozens of acres of land,
You would reckon that Lex would be cozy.
But he'd trade his wealth for a little more stealth,
For above all else, that guy is nosy.
He was in the dark about his good buddy Clark,
But he slowly became more suspicious.
Each time Clark acted strange, their relationship changed
Until Lex's intentions grew vicious.
Concluding their friendship, he had to pretend
That their brotherhood meant very little.
He wanted to fight, to square off against
The enigma wrapped up in a riddle.
Green Kryptonite carried a palpable threat
To the man called "super" by masses.
As soon as Lex knew, he concocted a few
Nasty plans while he wooed luscious lasses.
His dad was distant and his mother was missed,
For she died when he was a teenager.
He suffered abuse, but that's no excuse
To become an unruly rampager.
When slumber time came, the old dreams would begin,
Bringing with them strange visions and phantoms.
His father would hover - in loathing, not love;
His revulsion made Lex fear the sandman.
"I'm captain," he said, as he shivered in his bed,
"Of my destiny. Nothing to fear."
Oh, he should have abandoned his fanatical plans,
That poor wreck of a bald anti-hero.
Does anyone know where man's decency goes
When the years turn a friend to a rival?
How much must he pay at the end of the day
For his desperate quest for survival?
It might've been fate or it might've been choice -
It might've been both things together -
That caused him to turn. Is there still time yet to learn?
Is he doomed to be evil forever?
Superman soars; his purpose is clear
In the midst of his unending zoomin'.
His alien heart has been from the start
Just as wholesome as though he were human.
And on the Kent farm lives a country marm
Whose soul is so perfectly saintly,
She can still see some good in Lex where no one else could,
Be it ever so terribly faintly.
In the musty old barn where Clark used to reside
With the folks he called father and mother,
One long-gone day, he heard Lex earnestly say,
"Clark, you're better than any blood brother."
The legend lives on from Metropolis on down
To the little old town they call Smallville.
Lex Luthor, it is told, had a heart made of gold,
But his hunger for truth made him awful...
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Rosenbaum (Kodachrome, Paul Simon)
A second birthday tribute to Michael Rosenbaum on his 34th birthday.
Rosenbaum
When I think back on all the channels I have surfed through,
It's a wonder I can think at all.
Still, my lack of classy TV hasn't hurt me none
Just as long as Smallville's back this fall.
Rosenbaum,
His head is so nice and shiny,
His acting skills are divine,
He makes us think Lex just might turn out okay, oh yeah.
I've got a television,
I love to watch an episode,
So Warner, don't take Mike Rosenbaum away.
If you took all the guys who ever played a villain
And brought them all together for one night,
I know that Mike's performance would be most fulfillin'.
Enemies are worse when black and white.
Rosenbaum,
His head is so nice and shiny,
His acting skills are divine,
He makes us think Lex just might turn out okay, oh yeah.
I've got a television,
I love to watch an episode,
So Warner, don't take Mike Rosenbaum away.
Rosenbaum
When I think back on all the channels I have surfed through,
It's a wonder I can think at all.
Still, my lack of classy TV hasn't hurt me none
Just as long as Smallville's back this fall.
Rosenbaum,
His head is so nice and shiny,
His acting skills are divine,
He makes us think Lex just might turn out okay, oh yeah.
I've got a television,
I love to watch an episode,
So Warner, don't take Mike Rosenbaum away.
If you took all the guys who ever played a villain
And brought them all together for one night,
I know that Mike's performance would be most fulfillin'.
Enemies are worse when black and white.
Rosenbaum,
His head is so nice and shiny,
His acting skills are divine,
He makes us think Lex just might turn out okay, oh yeah.
I've got a television,
I love to watch an episode,
So Warner, don't take Mike Rosenbaum away.
Mr. Rosenbaum (Mrs. Robinson, Paul Simon)
A little ditty I wrote in honor of Michael Rosenbaum's 34th birthday.
Mr. Rosenbaum
And here's to you, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Your fans love you more than you may know, whoa whoa whoa!
God bless you please, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Lex will be redeemed by you someday, hey hey hey, hey hey, hey!
I'd like to know a little bit about you for my files.
I'd like to play Miss Sullivan herself.
Do you have a Luthor-like life, full of doubt and lies?
Somehow I suspect you have a happy home.
And here's to you, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Your fans love you more than you may know, whoa whoa whoa!
God bless you please, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Lex will be redeemed by you someday, hey hey hey, hey hey, hey!
Hope you have a birthday that is stunning, Mr. Rose.
If I could, I'd smuggle you some cupcakes.
Blow your candles out; you'll get your wish if life is fair.
You have granted them for so many sick kids.
Koo-koo-ka-choo, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Your fans love you more than you may know, whoa whoa whoa!
God bless you please, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Lex will be redeemed by you someday, hey hey hey, hey hey, hey!
Standing in a stadium on Sunday afternoon,
Looking mighty manly in those skates,
Laugh about it, shout about it,
How could you refuse?
When your heart is in it, you can't lose.
If you should go, Michael Rosenbaum,
The show would owe its swift demise to you, woo woo woo!
What's that you say, Mr. Rosenbaum?
You have no intent to go away? Hey hey hey, hey hey hey...
Mrs. Robinson
Mr. Rosenbaum
And here's to you, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Your fans love you more than you may know, whoa whoa whoa!
God bless you please, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Lex will be redeemed by you someday, hey hey hey, hey hey, hey!
I'd like to know a little bit about you for my files.
I'd like to play Miss Sullivan herself.
Do you have a Luthor-like life, full of doubt and lies?
Somehow I suspect you have a happy home.
And here's to you, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Your fans love you more than you may know, whoa whoa whoa!
God bless you please, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Lex will be redeemed by you someday, hey hey hey, hey hey, hey!
Hope you have a birthday that is stunning, Mr. Rose.
If I could, I'd smuggle you some cupcakes.
Blow your candles out; you'll get your wish if life is fair.
You have granted them for so many sick kids.
Koo-koo-ka-choo, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Your fans love you more than you may know, whoa whoa whoa!
God bless you please, Mr. Rosenbaum.
Lex will be redeemed by you someday, hey hey hey, hey hey, hey!
Standing in a stadium on Sunday afternoon,
Looking mighty manly in those skates,
Laugh about it, shout about it,
How could you refuse?
When your heart is in it, you can't lose.
If you should go, Michael Rosenbaum,
The show would owe its swift demise to you, woo woo woo!
What's that you say, Mr. Rosenbaum?
You have no intent to go away? Hey hey hey, hey hey hey...
Mrs. Robinson
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)