Thursday, October 20, 2011

Mission Impossible, or It’s my parody and I’ll cry if I want to

Good evening, Mr. Phelps.

According to the dictionary I checked, a parody is a humorous or satirical imitation of a serious piece of literature or writing. Those pomes in the preceding post were all parodies.

Let me refresh your memory. The parodies began:

A. “In Kiwi-land did...”
B. “Alas, poor...”
C. “Nothing could be...”
D. “Whose drugs...”
E. “anyone lived...”

Here, all jumbled up, are the authors of the works I parodied:

1. Robert Frost
2. E. E. Cummings
3. John Gluck, Wally Gold, and Herb Weiner
4. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
5. Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson
6. William Shakespeare

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is twofold: First, tell me the titles of the works I parodied. Second, match the authors to the genuine articles.

The sharp-eyed among you will note that the preceding post contained five parodies but I listed six authors or author-groups. The extra one is not extraneous. It belongs with this post. Can you tell me why?

A final test: Name the people in the photo below.

This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.


9 comments:

  1. I don't know much but I took a stab at your impossible mission. Bravo to you for making this quite a challenge even with the internet at my fingertips.

    A. Work Without Hope by #4
    B. Hamlet by #6
    C. Carolina in the Morning by #5
    D. Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening by #1
    E. Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town by #2

    #3 is the extra one. They wrote the song, "It's My Party", which you parodied in your blogpost's title.

    In the photo: Leonard Nimoy, Greg Morris, Lesley Ann Warren, Don't Know, and Peter Graves.

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  2. Jeannelle! You got everything last thing right the name of the original poem for parody A, but I can see how you would choose it because of the bees and the slugs.
    The correct answer is "Kubla Khan, or A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment" -- perhaps I should have thrown in a damsel with a dulcimer as well. Oh, and the fellow in the picture is Peter Lupus.

    Very well done! Kudos to you and all Iowans everywhere!

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  3. how could anyone including jeannelle know so much or be so well read or so smart <>><to me this really was a mission impossible

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  4. All, I got every last thing right in my reply to Jeannelle except the word except, which I inexplicably left out of my sentence. It should have been after the word right.

    Your incurable editor,
    Rhymeswithplague

    P.S. - The verification word is unbou. My head is bloody, but unboud.

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  5. I do believe I recognize Mr. Spock and Barbara Bach? Is it her? Don't recognize the others. I will try to find the answers to the questions about your pomes this weekend. If I have time. Should be fun.

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  6. Oh, of course C. is Carolina in the morning. If that is the correct title of the song, made famous by whatshisname who played Data in the Science Fiction series that I forgot the name of. Was it Star Trek? Not a clue who wrote it though. Yet!

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  7. Carolina, I don't know who Barbara Bach is, but that's not her in the picture. "Carolina in the Morning" is correct, but I had no idea that Brent Spiner sang it in Star Trek: The Next Generation! Now I'm learning things! It is Mr. Spock in the picture, though (Leonard Nimoy).

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  8. Carolina, the woman is Lesley Ann Warren and according to Wikipedia was only on MI for one year.

    I thought if I left this comment on your blog, you wouldn't know what I was talking about. And maybe RWP would give you a heads up that I left a comment here or . . . My head is spinning with all this interconnectedness of the Intertubes.

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  9. Karen, welcome to me lit'l blog. You have some mighty fine photographs on your own blog.

    The woman is indeed Leslie Ann Warren. The people who seem to be missing from the picture of the cast of Mission Impossible are Martin Balsam and Barbara Bain (a husband-wife pair in real life).

    ReplyDelete

<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...