Weird Al Yankovic is having the best week ever. He’s releasing a new parody video every day this week and so far he’s spot on. For all you writers out there, here’s “Word Crimes,” Weird Al’s parody of “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke:
Bookshelf Battle
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Category Archives: Comedy
On Writing – Or “I Wish These Were My First Words”
A few posts ago, I went on a tangent – asking why do I bother to work so hard on my writing when America is easily satisfied by a song that goes, and I quote, “You know what to do with that big fat butt! Wiggle wiggle!”
Well, I suppose this next song is not as bad, but J. Lo’s “First Love” also makes me wonder if music writers are trying as hard as they could be.
Check out these lyrics:
I wish you were my first love
‘Cause if you were first
Baby there would have been no second, third or fourth love
Woah oh oh oh
I wish you were my first love
‘Cause if you were first
Baby there would have been no second, third or fourth love
– First Love, Jennifer Lopez
So, what was left on the cutting room floor? How about:
I wish you were my first love
‘Cause if you were first
Baby there would have been no second third or fourth love
Furthermore a fifth love would have been unlikely!
A sixth love would have been improbable!
A seventh, eighth, or ninth love would have been out of the question
And a tenth love would have been right out!
Don’t even get me started on the eleventh love
Yes, I can certainly count!
Yes, I even imagined how the sales pitch for this song went:
MUSIC EXECUTIVE: OK J Lo, pitch us your new song.
J LO: Ok, so this song, is essentially about time travel.
MUSIC EXECUTIVE: Whoa.
J LO: I’m singing to a guy who is currently my love.
MUSIC EXECUTIVE: Uh huh
J LO: And I’m explaining to him that had I met him first, I would not have dated three previous men.
MUSIC EXECUTIVE: So, wait, what are you saying?
J LO: That if things happen differently then other things also happen differently
MUSIC EXECUTIVE: Oh my God. Mind totally blown.
Seriously, all she does is count her loves. That’s it. All she does. I half-expect the Count from Sesame Street to come in on back up vocals. “One! One love! Ah ah ah!”
Book Review – Redshirts
BASIC BOOKTOMETRICS
TITLE: Redshirts
AUTHOR: John Scalzi
PUBLISHER: Tom Doherty Associates
YEAR PUBLISHED: 2012
FORMAT REVIEWED: Hardcover
GENRE: Sci-Fi; Comedy
NUMBER OF PAGES: 317
Beam me up, Bookshelf Battlers.
On the old Star Trek TV show, there was no worse fate than being – a redshirt. You see, back in the 1960’s, the writers wanted to add a dose of realism, or at least as much realism as possible to a show about a massive Star Ship exploring the universe and getting into altercations with a different alien species every week. When engaged in constant battle with alien marauders, it is a very real possibility that some crew members aboard a “real” Starship would kick the bucket. Sorry, but you can’t go up against that many alien bad guys without someone buying the intergalactic farm.
The problem? Certainly the main characters – Capt. Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Scotty, Lt. Uhura etc. could not be the ones to cosmically croak because then there would not be a show anymore. Obviously, George RR Martin wasn’t a consultant for this show.
Sorry, I didn’t have any Star Trek toys. Yes, as a grown man I think that’s a perfectly normal thing to say. Here’s the Master Chief instead. Yes nerds, I understand that one space character is not the same as another. Take a chill pill.
The solution to this conundrum? Enter the redshirts – the extras, the grunts aboard the Starship Enterprise who did the busy work – fetch the Captain’s coffee, stand at a cheesy 1960’s hunk of cardboard with Christmas lights on it attempting to pass as a computer and punch buttons in the background, etc. The writers used these space traveling lackeys as fodder to take the beatings, leaving the fan favorite heroes unscathed.
Watch an old episode of Star Trek. If there’s an away team being beamed down to a planet consisting of Capt. Kirk, Mr. Spock, Bones, and Fred the Extraneous Redshirt from the Enterprise Payroll Department being introduced to the audience for the first time, chances are that Fred would be the one chomped on by a monster, tossed into a volcano, blasted by a lazer, and so on.
In Redshirts, author John Scalzi hilariously lampoons the undesirable plight of the redshirt. Set in a Star Trek-esque universe of Scalzi’s creation, the book follows a group of freshly minted redshirts as they begin service aboard the Universal Union’s flagship, The Intrepid. The newbies quickly discover that strange shenanigans are afoot – namely, that there is a statistically and ridiculously high chance of a low ranking crew member being killed on an away mission, whereas senior officers appear to have almost absurd levels of luck as they avoid death even after being thrust into one dangerous situation after another.
I don’t want to spoil the ending or the various twists and turns but needlessly to say, this is the first book I’ve read in awhile that had me laughing and reading at the same time.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy
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