Jesus Cheers for Notre Dame

Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

Now that I’ve put together a veritable manure pile of blog posts, it’s getting more and more difficult to remember what I’ve posted. I did a quick scan of my post titles. It’s infuriating how often my post title has little or nothing to do with what I put in the post. I’d divorce myself, but who would get custody of the Pop Tarts? Can’t take that chance.

So I’ve been working on a sports parody the last few weeks, and it brought to mind another sports parody I wrote 12 years ago. Almost immediately, my song was out of date. My second stanza of the first verse proclaimed that the Red Sox would never again win the World Series, I referred to the Tampa Bay baseball team as the Devil Rays, I mentioned Vandy – a team that’s gone to bowls the last two years – as a perennial sad sack, I reference Doherty as the North Carolina coach, and I mention Tommy Lasorda who everyone seems to have forgotten.

Thank goodness the Cubs have been consistent so far.

For a few years I tried to keep up – changing the song to reflect the changing nature of sports.

Boy did that get old.

So even if in my growing manure pile, I might have posted this song before – here, for the first time is the original 2002 lyrics (to be sung in a soft lyrical brogue.)

A Jig for Holy Sport’s Fans

(Chorus)

Don't ya know that Jesus

Cheers for Notre Dame?

The Spirit likes les Habitants

The Canadians the same

The heavenly host helped MJ

But the Lakers now they cheer

And the Father above’s a Yankees man

Though their fans drink too much beer

Oh heaven’s not a refuge

If you’re a Cubbie fan

Cheer all you like for the Red Sox

But they’ll never win again

Vandy and Northwestern

Are great with cap and gown

But don’t look to them for football

For they’ll always let you down

(repeat Chorus)

Oh, Mary’d like the Saints now

If she ever saw them play

Teresa was a Celtics fan

Till the poor got in the way

The martyrs don’t like Lions

They remember all the pains

And the Devil cheers the Raiders and

The Miami Hurricanes

The popes, they liked Lasorda

So the Dodgers had a run

The angels would help their namesake

But they don’t think baseball’s fun

The Oilers had a blessing

Till Gretsky left for Hollywood

And no-one likes a Devil Ray

‘Cause they’re just no damn good

(repeat Chorus)

Now Krzyzewski has the blessing

For Doherty is no Smith

The Demon Deacs want Duncan back

That heavenly monolith

And meanwhile all God’s children

From New York to Anaheim

Let mercy slow and evil grow

For on sports we waste our time

(last Chorus)

Don't ya know that Jesus

Cheers for Notre Dame?

The Spirit likes les Habitants

The Canadians the same

The heavenly host helped MJ

But the Lakers now they cheer

And the Father above’s a Yankees man

Though their fans drink too much beer

(spoken in brogue) Like a bunch of Lutherans, they are

(sung slowly) Their fans drink too much beer

Back in the 60s and 70s, My Mother the Car was often referred to as the worst TV show ever.  I wonder if people would still say that today.  There's a lot more really crappy competition out there now.

Bad Poetry???

April 22, 2013

Some years back, everybody decided that it was time to send business envelopes that opened at the bottom instead of the top. There was no grand announcement, no note of explanation – it just started happening. I remember the first time I got one from Scurrilous and Scummy, a temp agency I worked for. I thought – isn’t this like Scurrilous and Scummy to have their envelopes printed upside down.

But it wasn’t just S&S. I started getting them from everywhere. If everyone but you is in on it, does that still count as a conspiracy? Maybe it’s just an update of my getting picked for kickball experience. I knew when they picked everyone, including a sleeping cat, but me – and nobody said a word that I was the only person not in on it.

Sneaky cat – pretending to sleep and hiding his little feline snickers.

I feel that way about poetry. What is good poetry? Everybody else seems to know, but me. In grade school it was a mystery to everyone. We’d have a passage like:

Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou, go by.

All of us kids would scrunch our underdeveloped noses while the teacher would go on about how brilliant Mr. Pompous Dead Poet was. Then years later – my classmates stopped scrunching their noses and said – “yeah, cool.”

Heck! Even Robin Williams, a guy I usually understand, is in on this one. He did a whole movie about how great poetry is, and how it’s supposed to drive adolescent boys to suicide.

Did anyone else understand this? Really?

Stop saying arrested development; I think it’s mass hypnosis. We knew better in third grade, now it’s, “Oh, poetry is so beautiful, meaningful, moving… except Headley’s”

Even at Go Figure Reads – a place you’d think would be on my side at least once, they talk about Stanley's poetry. “Stanley, I was so moved about how you went to church and talk about God and stuff.” Then they talk about Will's poetry. “Will, I love your little children’s story poems about ships and ducks and baseball.”

Church, God, ships, ducks, and baseball? C’mon, what’s so hard about that? It looks pretty easy to me. So I write a couple of poems and submit them to Go Figure Reads…

Nobody says a word, but I swear I heard a cat snickering.

Okay, I get it. Go Figure Reads is not going to publish my poems, but I have this blog, now. I sorted through my collection and found the one that’s not a lymric – maybe I’ll give you those later.

Sir Isaac Phishernife

Sir Isaac Phishernife

Had but one goal in life

Which was fine with his wife

She was not one for strife

Though a very small lad

 



He heard from his dad

There was much to be had

So he should be glad

Though he would prefer

To seek possion du jour

He put away line and lure

And to his duty made sure

As a young squire

He was urged by his sire

To seek and acquire

More knightly attire

While still a young knight

He was sent out to fight

Any monster or blight

That was fearsome of sight

When the peers did accord

To make him a lord

He gave out from his hoard

Gifts he could not afford

As an earl of the realm

Wearing buckler and helm

He did host the Duke Ghelm

Though the costs overwhelm

When a Duke he was made

To the king he was bade

And before him were laid

Tasks that made him afraid

And then he was prince

No more need to wear chintz

There were whispers and hints

He’d be king not long since

And then golden plate

They did lay on his pate

But he took hold of his fate

And said, “I abdicate!”

He declared with a jeer

“I’ll not be king, duke or peer

But by stream, lake or mere

I will set down my rear

And my tasks now shall be

To lean back on a tree

And with lure, worm or bee

Try to catch two or three”

So Sir Isaac and Ma’am

Live and fish by the dam

And if no fish nearby swam?

They just bake a nice ham

So, what do you think, huh? Send me an email: headleyh@hotmail.com

Basketball, BWG, but no Little Debbie Twinkie

It’s the NCAA tournament time and though I really don’t care, I’ll look for anything to exploit. Of course writing a blog is much easier if I have something already written that I can, “repurpose” here. I search through the archives to see if I’ve ever written something about the tournament.

I have!

I’m very excited – mostly because I’m lazy, and who wants to use up all those hard-earned junk-food fueled calories in coming up with something new. I prepare to cut and paste the article, A Spouse’s Guide to March Madness.

“Nope,” say the beneficent SOBs at Go Figure Reads dot com (gofigurereads.com)

“What-a-ya-mean, No?” I ask, both miffed and pleased that I got a chance to use that Brooklyn accent obligatory whenever you say the phrase ‘what-a-ya-mean’ but entirely inappropriate otherwise (except in Brooklyn by Brooklyners… Brooklynites?...Brooklyafers… dose guys.)

“It’s taken,” say the Go Figure Reads muckety-mucks (also an appropriate word to use a Brooklyn accent with… also appropriate with which to use a Brooklyn accent? Who made these stupid grammatical rules about prepositions, anyway?)

Was I saying something? Oh yeah, they tell me that A Spouse’s Guide to March Madness is taken. “You sold it?” I asked with my hand out in an expectant manner.

Instead of money, I get a smug, negative, and non-negotiable shake of the head. “It will appear in an anthology from BWG, Once Around the Sun.”

BWG – Bethlehem Writer’s Group.

http://bethlehemwritersgroup.com/

It’s a group of the most hateful type of people in the world – people who write better than I do. One of their leaders must have owed someone at Go Figure Reads a favor, and they included my essay, Christmas Single Holiday in their Christmas anthology, A Christmas Sampler, a few years ago.

“Sampler won an award, and it’s your best selling book,” the muckety-muck tells me. “Having A Spouse’s Guide to March Madness in Once Around will be great exposure.”

“You mean good exposure for Go Figure Reads!” I snap back in a far less clever or even biting way than I intended. I should have made some comment on what anatomically he liked exposing, and to who, but you never think of such comments until afterwards.

Life is so unfair.

The muckety-muck just smiles, and I get nothing – as in, no money in my hand, and no article to flesh out this blog post.

That’s when I decided to go commercial. The blog’s too new to sell any advertising, but I figured I could seed the… (what do you seed, anyway – the field? the waters? What is that supposed to mean? ) with a little promotional promotion – a demo for all those deep pocket types that will happily fill my hand with cash, and my cupboards with junk food.

Today’s post is brought to you by:

Little Debbie makes great snack cakes that taste consistently good because in addition to the unpronounceable stuff, they are made out of mostly sugar and fat – mmmmmm – good! There’s nothing like that teeth-stinging feeling of sugar crystals bonding to your enamel when you bite into a Little Debbie cake. You can eat three, or sometimes even four before you start to feel sick to your stomach!

Try this trick – eat a box of Little Debbie oatmeal cakes right before you go in to have your blood tested. It’s a great way to con a health clinic out of free insulin, or maybe even a heart bypass!

And you’re supporting America when you buy Little Debbie. I don’t know where they’re made, but even if they’re made North Korea, Iran, or… France, you can be sure that Little Debbie is sending campaign money to senators and congress-people in order to keep their darling baked and processed sugary fat balls on the market.

Surely, at this point in my presentation, the fine folks at McKee Foods are pricking up their collective ears. “This is REAL marketing!” says Little Debbie, now 62. (She’s looking svelte after losing 125 pounds thanks largely to a leg amputation due to gangrene during her last diabetic coma.)

That’s right, Little Debbie, and I’m just getting started! Send me your sweet and fat advertising money and I’ll do a little work (or get others to do work if they’re cheap) to help you produce your own webcast, much like Headley and the Rug (and Cral) that had such a wonderful run on public access TV in the summer of 2002. I’ll even ask the stars of Headley and the Rug (that I haven’t borrowed money from) to be celebrity guests on your show - The Little Deb Web!

Look – I’ve even written you a theme song! (with apologies to Leslie Bricusse, Anthony Newley, Willie Wonka, and the ghost of Sammy Davis Jr.)

The Little Deb Web

 

Who can make your fat rise?
Like Winnie of the Poo
As if you swallowed Tigger, long with Kanga and her Roo?

The Little Deb – In her Little Deb Web
In the Little Deb Web your triglycerides go wild
And then your brain becomes goo


Who can make your glucose
Replace most of your blood
Till your red cells and your white cells form a candy cane flood?
The Little Deb – In her Little Deb Web
In the Little Deb Web you won’t find no fruits and veggies
She don’t believe in that crud.


The Little Deb makes all those tiny cakes

From ingredients obscurious
Reading them you would be curious
(If they) hadn’t rendered you delirious.

(rinse and repeat)

On the first show, Little Debbie could talk about her acquisition of Drake’s Cakes, the makers of Devil Dogs – my FAVORITE snack food! (after Pop Tarts, and Doritos… and whatever those free mints are they leave on the counter at the Lighthouse Diner… and maybe some other stuff I can’t remember right now.)

But why just the Drakes brand? Why not all Hostess snack cakes?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/30/twinkies-deal-hostess-bidder_n_2586715.html

I did some research and it seems like the leading suitor for Twinkies et al is the same company that makes Pabst Beer. PBR and Twinkies – sounds like a recipe for a coma right there. Do we want our fellow junk-food obsessed Americans pre-mortally embalmed by this dangerous combination?

I say NO! (largely because I’m hoping for money from McKee Foods, but if anyone else offers to pay me, I’m flexible on this point.) Little Debbie is the obvious lair from which to raise the Twinkie Frankenstein from the depths of bankrupt oblivion.

Rise! Rise!

How can Little Deb Bake

All those cakes from Drake

A feat that’s hardly rinky-dinky?

She barely even lifts her pinky

(spoken) Hey Hostess!

She’s the girl to bring back Twinkie!

That oughta bring the money rolling in. I sure hope Little Debbie doesn’t pay me in Cosmic Brownies – I don’t need the flashbacks.

Oh, and my pick for the tournament? Go with the Great Danes. They have a high number next to their name (15) which must mean they are really strong, and they’re facing some team named Duke in the first round.

Duke kind of sounds like a name for a Great Dane.