Even intending to be funny can't explain why lyrics sometimes strain | MARK HUGHES COBB

Today's topic: Ridonkulous Lyrics.

It's tempting to blanket with "Anything by that homunculus who judders airwaves with vibes unpleasant enough to render a Saturn V rocket impotent." When I googled "ginger (jerk) musician" I got Ginger Baker first, but then the thing I meant, Sheeran.

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But other ungainly picks stick in my craw (Craw refers to the stomach, especially of a lower animal):

"I'm never gonna dance again/Guilty feet have got no rhythm."

Prolly gonna drop down daid/Cheatin' hearts suffer AFibrillation!

But this did inspire my never-fully-realized dance-pop band name, Wham! Was Taken.

"Sucking on chili dogs/outside the Tastee Freeze."

I grok the desire to thesaurus your verbiage, but golly-gee, Cougar. Even "chokin' on" would be better. Might develop sympathy. Or a direct route to Rule 34.

To prove scornful impartiality, here's one from my buddy Bruce Springsteen, engaging my other compatriot William Shakespeare, with everyone's favorite wacky uncle, Albert Einstein. Bruce used Romeo and Juliet before, in "Fire," but that's forgiveable, given that it's about pain and passion. Fire can warm, even heal, but a flame 5 feet, 4 inches and 118 pounds will burn your butt.

"Frankie Fell in Love" reads like one of my sketches, the kind I scratched through so hard the Bic drove through the page, then carved grooves into 37 more beyond.

The horror: "Good morning/good morning/The church mouse is snoring ...." It somehow goes worse in the second verse: "Our Juliet says her Romeo has been found."

So a 13-year-old girl has been hooking up with a fickle 19-year-old boy/man whose stupidity-cupidity will lead, within 2 1/2 acts, to six horrific deaths?

And still it falls:

"Einstein and Shakespeare/Sitting having a beer/Einstein trying to figure out the number that adds up to this/Shakespeare said, 'Man it all starts with a kiss.'/Einstein is scratching/Numbers on his napkin/Shakespeare said, 'Man, it's just one and one make three/That's why it's poetry.' "

Aside from the fact Willy's comedies start with fussin' and a-feudin', or embarrassed hemming and hawing, and only lead to a kiss in Act V, one and one makes two, or one, if striving for metaphor, as a pair of enamored folks merge into a single smokin' love rocket.

So a No. 3 would be what? The holy goat? Shemp? Chance? Four half-steps? Ginger Baker?

Now that I've slagged one magnificent, and a handful of mediocre — but successful ― musicians, I'll fair-shake out a sampler of my most awkward, from recall, as I can't touch old yellow legal pads without suffering ER-visit winces.

"Glasses full of raindrops." That's an allusion to Chuck Berry's "Memphis," a song that actually IS poetry: "Last time I saw Marie/she was waving me goodbye/with hurry-home drops on her cheek/that trickled from her eye."

Another abandoned lyric of mine: "Pardon me ma'am/but from behind/you sure look like a friend of mine." In my weak and only defense, that was intended to be silly. Ditto: "Just checked in/to see what condition my conditioner's in," an homage (French for "attempted theft") from the Kenny Rogers and the First Edition song that ran prominently in "The Big Lebowski." That aborted attempt was titled, like the 10-minute (actually about 18) musical I wrote, "Bad Heir Day," speaking of intentionally risible.

We performed my musical a few times at the Kentuck Festival of the Arts, and once at the University of Alabama's Guerrilla Theatre. It kinda-sorta worked, thanks to elevating actors such as Aren Chaisson, Melanie "Porkchop" Williams, Russ Frost, and our brilliant director, Gaye Jeffers.

I played Whimsical Musical Narrator, ala Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole in "Cat Ballou," crooning about this idjit train-robber, the Kmart Jesse James, Rube Burrow: Rube, an awkward and unsophisticated person; Burrow, a dirty hole in the ground. He killed my ancestor, a rock-stubborn postmaster named Moses Graves: Moses for law-bearer, Graves for foreshadowing.

Sample lyric: "Well he come from Alabammer/He was dumb as a bag of hammers/Rube Burrow .... He made it up in gumption/what he lacked in imagination/Rube Burrow .... Bit of a country bumpkin/head like an overripe pumpkin/Rube Burrow .... "

Case you couldn't tell, it's a revenge-fantasy musical.

In real life, Burrow, wanted by law, hiding out in hills near Jewel ― don't bother; it never grew enough for a map dot ― ordered a fake wig and beard through the mail. The package fell into the hands of Moses, who refused to hand it over, addressed as it was to a faux-name.

My people: We care about words, right up to the last drop.

Rube stormed out, but came back, wearing a fake beard.

Pause here for "Wait what?"

Why'd he order head-pelts? Why not just grow fuzz out while hiding? And why, if he already owned a disguise.... Don't bother asking. I have, for years, to zero satisfaction.

I pictured Rube stomping off in a minute and a huff, rebounding wearing increasingly elaborate get-ups, and bless your loving heart, Aren, for piling on hats, dresses, glasses and mustaches, while muttering my Looney Tunes-style dialogue, syllable for syllable:

RUBE

(Enters wearing a Groucho-style nose/glasses)

Hey there, partner! Howdy! Fine weather we're package for Abe Andrews?

MOSES

It's still you.

RUBE

No it ain't.

MOSES

You just put on a stupid disguise. Like I can't see past that plastic nose. You must think I'm dumb as an Alabama train robber.

RUBE

Why you I oughta … (going off again) zap fadderap rammit fickle fackle peter piper picked a pecker ….

After a bitter diatribe from Moses, bemoaning the fact folks remember a villain's name, but not the victim's, Fate (Melanie) intervenes, passes the gun to the good guy Moses, who shoots the bad guy.

"It probably didn't happen that way/Though who can really say?/Rube Burrow ....Folks say that crime don't pay/Tell that to the ones who get away/Rube Burrow."

Really, who better to name the pluck out the thorns than one neck-deep in the thicket?

Mark Hughes Cobb is the editor of Tusk. Reach him at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: To truly know the worst song lyrics, one must try to write them, too.