parody

Chris Knight's avatar

Things like this usually doesn’t go past my notice.  Guess I’ve been so occupied with other stuff lately.  But yesterday was the anniversary of something very special and I need to make a note of it…

May 25th, 2025 is the twentieth anniversary of my… or rather I should say our… first motion picture, Forcery.  An almost hour-long parody of Rob Reiner’s film adaption of the Stephen King novel Misery.  Forcery depicts Star Wars creator George Lucas, hot off of finishing the script for Episode III, being rescued from certain death by his “number one fan” Frannie Filks.  It’s not long before Lucas, who used to create Star Wars for a living, is now making it to stay alive.

This was an idea that hit me about a week and a half before 9/11.  Indeed, I started writing the screenplay (though I had no idea HOW ...

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There is a lot on my plate right now.  I’m having to figure some things out.  Time is not on my side.  But sometimes things percolate to the surface of my mind that I haven’t thought about in years, or even decades.  And that’s what happened today.

Waaaay back in 2001 and thereabouts  I was on the staff of TheForce.net, which at the time was the biggest website devoted to Star Wars on the whole heapin’ web.  It wasn’t long after I came onboard that I volunteered to take the vacant position of humor editor.  That was my main job for the next two and a half years, and it was a lot of fun!  I got to see quite a bit of reader-generated funny stuff that almost always left me smiling.

One of the things that I got to curate as humor editor was song parodies.  And they ...

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This is already the scariest thing I’ve seen all month… and it’s only October 2nd.  A terrible, terrible line has been crossed.  Advanced technology really is taking us to places that, not to put too fine a point on it, are unnatural to the extreme.

Andy Baio at Waxy.org has applied artificial intelligence to a lot of songs – which are mostly parodies of other artists – by “Weird Al” Yankovic.  Baio’s intent with this dubious exercise is to see what would happen if the original artists performed Al’s parodies themselves.

In other words, Baio has Michael Jackson’s voice singing Yankovic’s “Eat It”.  Among others.

Let Mr. Baio indict himse… I mean, explain himself:

In the parallel universe of last year’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,
Dr. Demento encourages a young Al Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe) to move
away from song parodies and start writing original songs of his

...
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Two and a half days later and Rush Limbaugh‘s absence from the airwaves continues to haunt.  I tried calculating how many hours I listened to him over the years, and couldn’t do it.  From summer of 1992 until I started college at Elon three years, I was listening to him at least nine hours a week.  In the past few years I sort-of rediscovered him and listened as much as possible.  There was none like him before, nobody compared when he was with us, and it is doubtful that anyone will ever really succeed him.

It wasn’t just his brilliant commentary, it was also the hysterically funny comedy that was a huge part of Limbaugh’s show.  Especially the song parodies.  Most of them came courtesy of a chap named Paul Shanklin.  There were a few others also.  I remember one guy who was in the Bay Area.  Another was ...

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It really does seem like just yesterday when we were slathering that fake blood all over Chad’s legs, and making a springtime drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway look like blizzard in the Colorado mountains.  And turning a cousin’s living room into Skywalker Ranch.  So much happened since then and yet, our cast and crew became a family that has endured.  More than endured even.  And for that, I’m thankful that this project got seen through to the end.

Yes, it has indeed been fifteen years since the release of Forcery: that Star Wars fanfilm parody of the Stephen King movie Misery.  I’d wanted it to be ready before Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith but it didn’t quite make it.  Still, it was late May of 2005 when it was first unloaded onto the Internet and about a year or so later it was “serialized” ...

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“One Shining Moment” is the song that CBS uses in the final moments of their annual coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, to recap the highlights of the road to the championship.  All well and good… except that there won’t be an NCAA men’s basketball tournament this year because of the coronavirus epidemic.

So I, foolish I, took it upon myself to address this curious situation…

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…according to Weird Al himself on the song’s YouTube page, this song will not be part of his forthcoming album! In Al’s own words:

This is my parody of Lady Gaga’s song “Born This Way” — which, I’m sorry to say, will NOT be included on my upcoming album. I will give the details of the whole Gaga saga (and offer free mp3 downloads of the song) on weirdal.com very soon.

If this is at Lady Gaga’s insistence, I hope she will come to realize that to be chosen by Al to be the subject of one of his parodies is an extremely high honor! I mean, when Weird Al marks you for spoofing, it proves that you’ve achieved musical immortality: more so than getting a Grammy, in my opinion.

Well anyhoo, here is “Perform This Way”:

UPDATE 1:29 p.m. EST: Al has posted his account of what happened ...

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First things first: Earlier this week somebody suggested that we should begin referring to local cult leader Johnny Robertson as “He Who Stalks Behind the Pews”.

It was too good an idea not to go into Photoshop with it…

(click to drastically embiggen)

Heh-heh. Haven’t done one of those in awhile 😛

Speaking of video cameras, a number of people have informed me that during his four hours of “Religious Review” this past week that Johnny Robertson put the word out to all(?) of his viewers that he wants them to begin covertly video recording all the churches in this area with video cameras, cellphones, iPhones etc. and to send the footage to him.

Between his obsession with Martinsville-based television station BTW, his constant scheming to destroy Baptists and Pentecostals and Methodists (especially Baptists), his harassing innocent people in their own homes and churches and store parking lots, his monitoring ...

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