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Song Parodies -> "Trivia Gets Me Tired"
Original Song Title:
"We Didn't Start The Fire"
(MP3)Original Performer:
Billy Joel
Parody Song Title:
"Trivia Gets Me Tired"
Parody Written by:
Brain_Dead
The Lyrics
Maybe it's just me, but i always find that i remember the most useless trivia (usually from Jeopardy or whatnot) instead of stuff i actually NEED to know. Combined with the fact that I spend more time with Jeopardy than studies, I thought it might make for a nice parody. I was wrong. I wrote this parody in maybe 15 minutes and it stinks. but i didn't want to delete my work that i spent TIME on, so i'm posting it anyway.... apologies beforehand for the rather poor quality!
What’s this on TV? Oh my gosh, Jeopardy,
turn it on immediately, find out what I know.
Category: presidents, Virginia resident,
Can it be, let me see, who is James Monroe?
TV shows, foreign flicks, crazy politician chicks,
Facts and I just don’t mix, but I can’t move my gaze
Country names, history, synonyms tongue-twistery,
Make my brain cells blistery, bother me for days
CHORUS
Trivia gets me tired
Now my brain is churning
with this useless learning
Trivia gets me tired
I don’t want to know it,
But I can’t forgo it
And when I study for my class, try to learn enough to pass,
Calculus, molar mass—none of it will stay.
While my mind’s like a sieve learning the derivative,
I retain all that I learned on Jeopardy that day:
Harold Pinter writes plays, Nureyev, he did ballet,
Nineteen-twenty-three: that’s when Disney came to be,
The meaning of factorial, the length of El Escorial,
The color of some actor’s eye—Alex Trebek needs to die!
Trivia gets me tired
Now my brain is churning
with this useless learning
Trivia gets me tired
I don’t want to know it,
But I can’t forgo it
Why do I even care who was born in Delaware,
Or who wrote “Native Son”, or the inventor of the gun?
Useless information, mental enervation,
But I can’t stand being wrong, so I watch and play along.
Though I hate trivia so, still I have to, need to know
The writer of that one song, the native country of the Hmong,
Brain can’t override all the facts that are inside, but
MUST STAY---MUST PLAY---what else do I have to say!!
Trivia gets me tired
Now my brain is churning
with this useless learning
Trivia gets me tired
I don’t want to know it,
But I can’t forgo it
Was it Jim Carrey that starred in “Cat in the Hat?”
I was wrong, what a fright! Must play till I get it right!
I don’t care who began the role of Hemingway’s Old Man
Yet I’ve just got to win—“Who is Anthony Quinn?”
Yes! I am on a roll, best keep going, lose control!
Remember this, but forget the answers to that problem set…
Only now I realize, concepts I must memorize!
Now my brain is really sore, I can't take it anymore
Trivia gets me tired
Now my brain is churning
with this useless learning
Trivia gets me tired,
And with every yawn
All those facts go on, and on, and on, and on...
turn it on immediately, find out what I know.
Category: presidents, Virginia resident,
Can it be, let me see, who is James Monroe?
TV shows, foreign flicks, crazy politician chicks,
Facts and I just don’t mix, but I can’t move my gaze
Country names, history, synonyms tongue-twistery,
Make my brain cells blistery, bother me for days
CHORUS
Trivia gets me tired
Now my brain is churning
with this useless learning
Trivia gets me tired
I don’t want to know it,
But I can’t forgo it
And when I study for my class, try to learn enough to pass,
Calculus, molar mass—none of it will stay.
While my mind’s like a sieve learning the derivative,
I retain all that I learned on Jeopardy that day:
Harold Pinter writes plays, Nureyev, he did ballet,
Nineteen-twenty-three: that’s when Disney came to be,
The meaning of factorial, the length of El Escorial,
The color of some actor’s eye—Alex Trebek needs to die!
Trivia gets me tired
Now my brain is churning
with this useless learning
Trivia gets me tired
I don’t want to know it,
But I can’t forgo it
Why do I even care who was born in Delaware,
Or who wrote “Native Son”, or the inventor of the gun?
Useless information, mental enervation,
But I can’t stand being wrong, so I watch and play along.
Though I hate trivia so, still I have to, need to know
The writer of that one song, the native country of the Hmong,
Brain can’t override all the facts that are inside, but
MUST STAY---MUST PLAY---what else do I have to say!!
Trivia gets me tired
Now my brain is churning
with this useless learning
Trivia gets me tired
I don’t want to know it,
But I can’t forgo it
Was it Jim Carrey that starred in “Cat in the Hat?”
I was wrong, what a fright! Must play till I get it right!
I don’t care who began the role of Hemingway’s Old Man
Yet I’ve just got to win—“Who is Anthony Quinn?”
Yes! I am on a roll, best keep going, lose control!
Remember this, but forget the answers to that problem set…
Only now I realize, concepts I must memorize!
Now my brain is really sore, I can't take it anymore
Trivia gets me tired
Now my brain is churning
with this useless learning
Trivia gets me tired,
And with every yawn
All those facts go on, and on, and on, and on...
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Voting Results
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Voting Breakdown
The following represent how many people voted for each category.
| Pacing | How Funny | Overall Rating | |||||||||
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||
| 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||
| 4 | 2 | 2 | 3 | ||||||||
| 5 | 8 | 9 | 8 |
User Comments
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Hi, B_D, I love seeing new folks tackle on a difficult song, and WDSTF is a big one. Don't sell yourself short...this was a very well-done parody, up until the final verse at least. You also garner congrats for not making a "list song" out of it (which I am guilty of), you put some real thought into it. Welcome to the monkey house, I would love to see what else you can do.
I'm with Aggy on this one. Frankly, the original song (what we call OS here) annoys me, but this parody does not stink.
The internal rhymes were clever (sieve/derivative, history/twistery/blistery) and the pacing was good. And this might be the first example I've seen of taking a "list song" and making a non-list parody.
I'll be awaiting your next entry. 544
The internal rhymes were clever (sieve/derivative, history/twistery/blistery) and the pacing was good. And this might be the first example I've seen of taking a "list song" and making a non-list parody.
I'll be awaiting your next entry. 544
Didn't stink at all. I've never had the energy to tackle this one, so I can appreciate your effort.
Nureyev did ballet - you hit a nerve. As Homer Simpson would say, "Ahhhhhh!". Great effort.
Must agree with most of the foregoing. I'd say a few pacing glitches (vis-à-vis the OS as sung by the OA, and they'd be fudgeable in a sung rather than written presentation) are all that really betray the kind of hasty composition and/or premature submission one occasionally sees from amiright's best as well as from hackers like myself. Bravo!
Taking a list song and making into a story is perhaps the second hardest writing feat, right behind making a parody of an instrumental. The pacing might be off on a read, but as Stan wrote this could work great as a performance. 15 minutes to write this??? If that's true then I eagerly await your next parody - I couldn't retype this parody in 15 minutes. 5s
I agree with many of the positive comments here.
First, you started with a really good idea, which IMHO is more than half the battle.
Your references are clever and intelligent.
Varied choruses are something that I didn't know about at first, but am starting to figure out.
All in all, a great effort.
First, you started with a really good idea, which IMHO is more than half the battle.
Your references are clever and intelligent.
Varied choruses are something that I didn't know about at first, but am starting to figure out.
All in all, a great effort.
thanks everyone! yes, i need to work on pacing..... anyway, nice to know i haven't lost my touch at parody. i do a lot of parodies of musical theatre numbers in my spare time, but i won't post many of them, because a lot of them have to do with certain characters in the stories i write and the comic strips i draw and only my family and a couple of friends would actually understand them, lol.... but i'll post more someday when i'm less pressed for time.... :-)
this is random, but can you imagine the counterpoint between the theme of Jeopardy and the OS? lol.... (yes, i love hearing music in my head...it makes it easier for me to write parodies, cuz i'm a human iPod!)
Well Brain Dead, as an anti-We Didn't Start the Fire kinda guy, it's always nice to see this song get ripped, and Trivia Shows at the same time. . .very nice, switching up choruses isn't always necessary--I am primarily a recording parodist, and sometimes a varied chorus can actually hurt a song if it is fast or the chorus plays certain roles, it's a style and comedy end. A wise ant once told me this advice "Repeating a chorus over and over also repeats the jokes over and over. The joke will lose it's humor if it keeps getting repeated". . .that said, 555, for what is the first piece I've read by you--and hopefully not the last.
Agreed with the above comments. Great job with a difficult OS!
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