J'aime beaucoup cette parody-ci! Especially like Nice/nice, the unslow escargo, and Newton. Record this please! :-)

I will serve fives!

J 'adore cette parodie, tres Magnifique, Monsieur! ~Bon Chance~ . . . Fav lines: "shamRock wielding large cowboy" very cabo-Wabo, Sir, as I do love havoc ! !

(Amiright Idol) Ok Ethan, this paced well all over. However...I never have been so confused as to the topic being addressed in a parody as much as I have with this one. I had to google Petrograd and then read the parody twice to get any of it it...and I still don't understand why Lucky Leprechaun pops up at the end. I am a ball of confusion (de-dun-dun-dun!)

Would it be bad form/discouraged for me to explain what's going on here?

You are more than welcome to, but I've already made my vote. For my mind, this is about a modern-day Bolshevik anarchist who, rather than bombing people to make his policies heard, drops food off of the Eiffel Tower as a protest against the world. But that last stanza...I'm lost.

quite creative. i read it over to understand it.

(Idol) I too had to research a bit to understand this one fully. The pacing wasn't your strongest either. You are always good at picking songs that appeal to the general public, and admirable decision for recordings, but the topic to the general public would probably be lost--me and AmIRighters are willing to research to understand something, a person listening would be less inclined to do so. I like what you did with the rhyme scheme though.

But my target audience isn't the general public - the general public tends to want to hear a dirty pun or two and not care about the rest of the parody. And the general public generally won't listen to Dr. Demento or buy parody CDs or download recorded versions of amiright parodies. Devoted parody fans tend to do that, and they tend to be on the academic geeky side. I don't think that geekiness is even required to know that anything ending in grad without a dash is a Soviet city. Also, in my opinion when a parody isn't 100% straightforward or contains some obscurish references or made-up phrases then the resulting confusion is likely to result in discussion and thus spreading the parody to someone who might like it but otherwise would never have seen/heard it. I don't expect that making such arguments will affect whether I get kicked out this round or not - although it would be frustrating and ironic to get kicked out using "I will survive" and having decided to not write another parody based on the first comment including a request to record this - but I do think that the issues brought up in this comment thread about what makes a good parody for recording should be discussed and might as well be discussed here.

Well, not that my parodies are Weird Al, Dr. Demento or even up to Spaff.com level on overall internet popularity, Pps Dpndncy, Mix Two Chemicals, My Cell Phone Was Out of Minutes and Dance Dance Revolution have each been downloaded over 100 times by different people, I know there are a lot of AmIRighters, but there aren't that many. Sure Wind Beneath My Butt has 150 downloads, and South Park has about 200 on it's own--but a number of parodies I've done that don't contain a lot of bad puns or such, so from experience have to respectfully disagree. I mean Bowl It, which is among the cleanest parodies I've done has over 120 downloads, among my top ten all time. . .there are fans of parody who aren't immature believe it or not--and as I'm sure anyone can attest, my internet popularity is not really anything above anyone else on here. In fact, I doubt I'm even among the top 25 most well known parodists who have posted on AmIRight. I'm not saying parodies like this should not be recorded at all--any given parodist whose recorded enough of their works has personal ones that aren't as popular as others they've done. . .all I'm saying is that those who listen who aren't parody enthusiasts like you and I, and believe it or not-there are a lot of listeners who really aren't parody writers, probably would get confusion, sure it invites discussion among us. . .and you are right-it won't affect it positive or negative (as we have time and time again shown we will not vote against anyone for difference of opinion or out of spite) and you have every right to debate, but at this point I stand by my statement

I've been around the recording world, I've seen my stuff get air time on both real stations and lesser stations, and while sure most of the biggest hits are crude humor or brand names, there are hits that aren't like that too. Believe it or not, most of my traffic in downloads doesn't come from AmIRight, but from internet searches for original songs. etc

The dirty pun comment wasn't referring to your recordings but to the kind of thing that a morning show shock jock might put out, or parodies that are performed by "blue" guitar comics to blue collar crowds, stuff for the common people. There are plenty of intelligent & popular parodies that succeed apart from name brand recognition or scatological humor, but the people downloading those parodies are the parody fans I referred to in my last comment that tend to be more intelligent than the average person. I know that there are plenty of people who appreciate a clever spoof and rarely or never visit amiright and don't see where the argument is there. And while we're discussing parody stats, my "K-mart" recording got about 1000 downloads (downloads, not page views) in about a year before i took it down for sounding too amateurish, and I'm sure most of the reason for that was a combination of a huge hit OS and a very easy to relate to topic, but I digress. I read a book of essays by Scott Adams (Dilbert cartoonist/writer) a few months ago, and he put forth a theory of success that I think is very relevant here. The idea is that anything that is universally liked among a random focus group (in this case, the listener base that is mostly comprised of non-parody enthusiasts) is destined for massive commercial failure because nobody LOVES it. Something that offends and/or completely befuddles over half of a potential audience but is considered to be awesome by a fanbase of 10% of the potential audience will, given sufficient financial backing to introduce it to the general public, most likely become a massive hit. I'm not saying that as many as ten percent of potential listeners would love a parody like this to the extent that they would pay to download it and tell their friends to do the same thing, but even if it's less than one percent wouldn't that be a lot better than the 0% that would pay for something that is easy to understand but easier to forget about? Believe it or not, I don't think that this parody should be recorded and marketed as a recording. It would be much better suited as an animated video, and in that case a quick flash of a map should alleviate most pretrograd-related confusion. I've inquired about getting videos made in the past and that seems to be impossible with a budget of zero dollars, so I'm not saying that it would be a candidate for videohood anytime soon. Just that non-universally known references don't guarantee confused responses from a parody performance. Anyone who wants to jump into this discussion is encouraged (by me) to reply.

Where to start... I'm glad you did this to the radio edit/short version of "I Will Survive", because the full version clocks in at over 7 minutes. Technically good, though I got lost a bit in the "Ha ha, ho ho" verse. Lots of funny lines like "Has come from some United State" and the grunge and "Cheneyist" gags.

I agree with ya Ethan that this would be much better suited for a video than a recording-only.

As for the discussion here: the general public generally eats all the bland crap thrown its way, and catchy trumps everything else (how else can we explain the successes of songs like "Hollaback Girl", "I Kissed a Girl" and "You're Beatiful"?). They are mediocre songs for a mediocre audience. Scott Adams is probably onto something for comedy though... I think my best writes invoked a 'love it or leave it' type responses in the contests they were in. Lots of 4 or 5 point votes or zeroes.

Anyway, back to this: it was good. The right video could make it shine. Recording this would be harder than normal due to going from a high female voice to (presumably) a Russian accent male voice. I probably couldn't pull off either well.

Ethan, I am very sorry if I offended with my comment-please know it is only my opinion. Being a judge in this comp is actually taking a toll on me believe it or not, because I feel like I'm hurting friendships and I hate that. I know you aren't a huge fan of my work (I've seen your blogs;)) but you occasionally really like a piece I've done, and the same has been the other way around too. Particularly the one I originally recorded for you--Who Wrote This Your Girlfriend. I don't want this to be personal, and I hope that you know that my opinion is not meant to be personal any more than your opinion of "Tearin' Up My Heart" or my paraoke stuff is meant to be personal. . .I didn't realize volunteering to be a judge how difficult it is. We all love our babies, our art. Sorry buddy, I really am and to anyone who has ever felt I was harsh with my judging, I just try to be honest and from the heart on how I feel--that's all--I'm not trying to insult your general work or what you were going for. . .

Dave - First of all, there is no need to apologize for thinking that this is not particularly good compared to other things I've written or the other entries in this round of the competition and saying so. You're a judge, and as a judge it's your job to criticize contest participants whenever you see anything you perceive as a flaw. And as a contestant, I believe that it is my right to say so if I disagree strongly with criticism given to me. This is certainly not my baby - to call it such would be trivializing the effort involved in letting a zygote develop into a baby with the intent of raising the child - and the fact that it is deemed imperfect isn't a problem. Back to the Scott Adams idea - if nobody finds fault with a piece of written work it probably means that it's not worth talking about. What does upset me is the fact that issues that should only be a major factor for writers with a large but fickle audience is putting me in danger of elimination with an entry that I consider to be my strongest in the past four rounds. I did say that judges being exclusively amiright authors would be problematic, didn't I? Although I don't think I cited this particular reason. Anyway, no matter what happens the contest should go on without judges worrying about how judging might effect a contestant's perception of a judges personality. If a friendship is ruined due to honest critique when honest critique was asked for, then it wasn't much of a friendship to begin with.

I feel compelled to put my last 2 cents in--recordability is not something I usually consider in critiquing parodies...my only issue here is comprehending the storyline and/or humor of the work itself, which, I reiterate, I could not understand.

Hey Ethan. You asked me to check this one out. "Eiffel Surprise" is a fun sub for "I Will Survive"; I'm guessing you started with that and built the story around it. Fwiw, my take on the story matches Agrimorfee's second comment on Sept 9. I like Nice/nice and the subtle references that (I think) I caught, like comparing climbing the Eiffel tower to scaling a mountain (right?), the Freedom Fries thing, and the misunderstanding of the law of gravity.

Are parodies written for the intellectually curious or for Joe Public? Why, yes, they are. Two of my most-played songs on the FuMP are "Shakespearean Pie" (which hopefully appeals to the English-major crowd) and "99 Words for Boobs" (which probably doesn't). Different people like different humor. And we're all different. Especially those of us on this site. Heh.

Perhaps I''m misunderstanding the law of gravity - I thought that things fall at the same rate from the same distance regardless of size when wind resistance is ignored, but acceleration causes higher speeds when objects are dropped from greater heights. But I didn't do so well in physics class. The character was supposed to understand gravity, but I think it would work fine in context if he didn't.

Ah. "I know my food will fall faster than his" struck me as a misunderstanding, but I misunderstood. If I'm finding stuff that's not there, I'm probably missing stuff that *is* there. You asked if you should explain what's going on; I'm afraid you may have to.

For the most part, what everyone commenting in detail thought was going on was what was actually going on. Another major source of apparent confusion was also seeing something that wasn't there - lucky leprechaun. The person mistaken for an oversized leprechaun was supposed to be a belligerent and superstitious man who could be irish but didn't have to be who was on the tower for undisclosed reasons (possibly protecting rabbits) feet and shouted loudly enough to atttract a crowd and thus made it virtually impossible to drop food on unsuspecting American passersby. Ok, maybe that is a little confusing.

Great song about the french. 555 for you!