Monday CONTEST: Holiday song parodies!
Hanukkah Harry help us all, the radio stations are already playing Christmas carols, and it's not even Thanksgiving yet! If you can't beat 'em, join 'em -- with Miss Conduct's First Annual Holiday Song Parody Contest.
The prize will be two tickets to the interfaith holiday play Tru Grace at Central Square Theater, which runs November 19 through December 27. (You can redeem the tickets for whatever date you like; and they're season tickets, which means you get a complimentary glass of wine, too. Cha cha!)
Here's the rules:
1. Write a parody of at least one stanza, and the title, of a holiday song. (You can write more if you want, but that's the minimum.)
2. You can choose any Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, "Auld Lang Syne," or even Halloween song. (Here's an entertaining one about the financial collapse based on "Monster Mash.")
3. The parody can be about anything -- etiquette, holiday pet peeves, current events, sports, pop culture, as long as it is reasonably clean (double entendres permitted if they're clever) and reasonably non-political (hoping for world peace is fine; detailed plans as to how we get there are above the pay grade of this blog) and generally non-hateful and not excessively tasteless.
4. You can enter as many parodies as you like.
Fire up the online rhyming dictionary and let's get started! I can't wait to hear what you all have in mind. The contest will end this Friday at 5pm -- depending on how many entries we have, I'll either announce the winner myself next Monday, or we'll put the top contenders up for voting, as we've done in the clerihew contest.
Get creative, and good luck! Tickets to Tru Grace await you!
NOTE: This post will run at the top of the blog for the rest of the week. New content will appear below.
NOTE: Hey gang, you know what? We're not going to play "war on Christmas" here. Everyone in the United States customizes the holidays: hand-cutout turkeys on our refrigerators, Santa hats on our dogs, dreidl earrings. It's the American way. And that's all we're doing. We're taking our seasonal songs, and having some fun customizing 'em. So if you want to play, play. If you don't, that's fine, too. The only further comments that will be approved on this post are song parodies. Debate time is over.
Who is Miss Conduct?
Robin Abrahams writes the weekly "Miss Conduct" column for The Boston Globe Magazine. Robin, who has a PhD in psychology from Boston University, has worked as a theater publicist, organizational-change communications manager, editor, stand-up comedian, and professor of psychology and English. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, Marc Abrahams, founder of the Ig Nobel Prizes, which are given annually for achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.
