Girlbusters

As some of my faithful readers will already know, I enjoy a good parody tune.  From the moment I heard my first “Weird Al” Yankovic song, I was hooked on this idea that you could take someone else’s song and make it funnier.  I have done many parody songs and videos over the years, some of them opera themed, some board game themed, and others just very random.  But my first parody was in elementary school, and it was a collaborative effort with my best friends, because the Girlbusters needed a theme song.

Girlbusting wasn’t just a song; it was a way of life.  Our whole lives were predicated on the fact that girls were gross and yucky and if they touched you there was a good chance you would have to go to the cootie hospital and die.  Our mission was to keep all girls away from us and never allow them to touch us in any way, which we accomplished for more years than perhaps ended up being desirable, but at the time it was very important to us.

At recess we would patrol the playground, making sure that no stray females had slipped through our tight security perimeter, although we were very bad at this.  The play structure was always teeming with girls, many of whom wanted to chase us and hit us with things and poke us with their cooties.  That’s why we would always retreat to the swings (if you are swinging high enough, nobody can get near you) and sing our theme song at the top of our lungs.

“If there’s a girl – in your neighborhood,
Who ya gonna call?  GIRLBUSTERS!
If there’s a girl – and she don’t look good,
Who ya gonna call?  GIRLBUSTERS!
I AIN’T AFRAID OF NO GIRL!”

The rest of the song pretty much followed along those lines.  We basically inserted the word “girl” into every spot that mentioned a ghost, or some odd creature of evil, and left the rest of the brilliant lyrics alone.  Maybe not my best parody writing, but it had all of the elements of a good parody that I would later hone in such songs as “Least Favorite Things,” from the Sound of Music, and “U Can Touch This,” which I suppose was sort of the opposite of the “Girlbusters” theme song.

I still enjoy writing my parody lyrics, and I do think/hope that I continue to improve in my songwriting skills, whether they are original tunes about drinking too much Coke, or youth-led efforts to reduce world hunger and poverty.  But really it all goes back to a kid on the playground who was scared of girls and needed a way to express that to the world.

Because girls are scary.  Seriously.  One of them hit me with a dictionary.  A Dictionary!  And not a small one either…  rassumfrassumbiggumbangum