HERE I SIT, BROKEN-HEARTED, AND OTHER CLASSICS OF THE YORE

The classy iteration.

Here I sit, broken-hearted
Tried to shit, but only farted

No Matter how you shake and dance
The last drop falls into your pants

Goddamn motherfucking two-ball bitch
Every time I see you my two balls itch

If it smells like a fish, it’s a good dish
If it smells like cologne, leave it alone

-Authors unknown

You are no doubt familiar with the timeless classics above, what with them being standards found in restrooms in public schools and dump stations all over the nation for at least sixty years, including the now outdated second line, “Paid my dime, but only farted.” Sheer, universal poetry, rendered deathless thanks to lovers of sophomoric stupidity, such as yours truly. Most of such odes are first encountered during our early grade school years, when we are first truly old enough to understand dirty/ toilet humor and perhaps even pen our own offensive lyrics. Staples of the genre include such topics as farts, doo-doo, pee-pee, racial slurs/stereotypes, disrespect of religion, television theme song/pop music parodies, and of course preadolescent misconceptions about sex. You know, intellectual stuff.

My own first exposure to such erudite wit was the classic of body-function awareness, “Milk, milk, lemonade,” used to spectacular effect last season on “Will & Grace” in a puerile pas de deux between Megan Mullaly and Jack Black as a doctor who confirms the piece’s biological validity:

Milk, Milk (pointing to each nipple)
Lemonade (pointing to urethra)
Around the corner (turning around)
Fudge is made (pointing to ass)

To a five-year-old, that shit is a comedy goldmine.

Perhaps the granddaddy of the genre of poetic juvenilia is Benny Bell’s recording of “Shaving Cream,” a Dr. Demento show perennial that burned itself into the collective cerebral cortex of children everywhere. The basic gag has the singer recount a particular situation that would end in a rhyme leading the listener to expect the word “shit” to end the line, but the listener is consistently faked out when the naughty word is instead replaced with “shaving cream.” For example:

Way back when I was in the army
I reached down into my kit
Expecting to find me a sandwich
I pulled out a huge pile of
Shaving cream!
Be nice and clean!
Shave every day and you’ll always look keen!

As you would imagine, the variations to this are nearly infinite, and Bell recorded it several times to escalating idiotic effect. My own favorite versions are as follows:

Our baby fell out of the window
You’d think that her head would be split
But luck was with her that morning
‘Cause she fell in a truckload of
Shaving cream!
Be nice and clean!
Shave every day and you’ll always look keen!

Along with:

And now folks my story is over
I think that it’s time I should quit
If any of you feel offended
Stick your head in a bucket of
Shaving cream!
Be nice and clean!
Shave every day and you’ll always look keen!

Even the youngest verbal smut artist could come up with a cornucopia of words that could lead up to the “shit” fake out, ensuring that cross-country trips with the parents became interminable torture for the grownups. And you could totally get away with it because you weren’t guilty of cussing! God bless you, Benny Bell. God fucking bless you.

Proving that such dumbass endeavors transcend the generations, I remember first hearing this when I was six years old from my beloved grandfather, Ozane, who was a huge fan of Tarzan:

Tarzan the monkey man
Swinging on a rubber band
Lost his pants in a hula dance
Aaaah-Ah-AAAAA (imitation of the Tarzan yell, after which Ozane and I would laugh like a couple of morons)

Then I moved to Westport, Connecticunt (misspelling intended) and heard this one on the playground:

Under the cherry tree
That’s where she showed it to me
It was hairy and black
And it had a huge crack
But it looked like a jungle to me
So I took out my hairy banana
And stuck it in her crack
She let out a scream
And I gave her some cream
Then I took my banana back

Armed with such examples it was only a matter of nanoseconds before our filthy little minds advanced to more complex expression of smuttiness, and where better to start than with the corruption of familiar songs from our favorite babysitter, the television? The beginner’s corrupted TV song is unquestionably the following:

I’m Popeye the sailor man
I live in a garbage can
I eat all the worms and spit out the germs
I’m Popeye the sailor man

Sure, it was based on a theme song first heard in the movies during the 1930’s, but the majority of us were first introduced to the incomprehensible mariner via the glass teat, and as times changed and kids became naughtier, the Popeye song was altered into:

I’m Popeye the sailor man
I live in a garbage can
I like to go swimmin’ with bow-legged wimmen
I’m Popeye the sailor man

Then there was the Adam West “Batman” television series, a genuine phenomenon in its day (and the first time I remember my little pee-pee standing at attention thanks to Julie Newmar as Catwoman), with one of the all-time catchiest signature tunes in TV history, instantly dooming it to parody victimization. We all know the holiday classic “Jingle Bells, Batman smells,” but for the purposes of this article I’m sticking to riffs on the Neal Hefti theme, the best of which is easily:

Batman!
Took me to his house
Batman!
Laid me on the couch
Batman!
Stuck it in greasy
Batman!
Pulled it out easy
Batman!
Batman!
Batman!

Most kids thought this was from the point of view of some hot Batman groupie, but I prefer to think of it as being Robin’s recounting of really goes on at Stately Wayne Manor. But where the hell was Alfred?

And of course you know this parody of another 1960’s cult fave:

The Addams Family started
When Uncle Fester farted
They all became retarded
The Addams Family

But the undisputed champion of TV parodies goes to this horrifying version of “The Beverly Hillbillies, “ which transforms the inspiring tale of a poor mountaineer’s discovery of a rich vein of oil and subsequent Croesus-like wealth into a humorous tale of incestuous rape and the inevitable inbred progeny:

Let me tell you a story ‘bout a man named Jed
He grabbed Ellie-Mae and he threw her on the bed
Down came the zipper and out came the Worm
And out of the Worm come the bubblin’ sperm

Well the next thing you know
Ol’ Ellie-Mae’s knocked up
The kinfolk said, “Jed, you’re such a horny pup!”
Nine months later, she began to scream
And out of her twat slid Jethro Beaudine!

What makes this song a classic is the blunting of the incest/rape angle by presenting the visually ludicrous image of Ellie-Mae giving birth to her hulking, L’il Abner-lookalike cousin as played by the huge Max Baer, Jr., complete with overalls and shitkicker boots.

Largely forgotten nowadays is the Fess Parker vehicle “Daniel Boone,” a much less successful follow-up to the monster hit from the 1950’s, “Davy Crockett.” This TV parody may be unique because it blends the forms of playground lyrics and outright, out-of-nowhere racism:

Daniel Boone was a man
He was a big man
But the bear was bigger
So he ran like a nigger
Up a tree

Which seamlessly segues us into the realm of ethnically offensive rhymes and songs!

My earliest exposure to this subgenre surprisingly happened before I moved to the ultra-racist Westport, occurring during my very early days in California, featuring an utterly weak slam at the two major Asian groups in the States at the time:

Chinese, Japanese (while pulling eyes to simulate epicanthic folds)
Dirty knees (miming appraising dirty laundry)
Look at these! (miming lifting of titties)

Now from what has been explained to me, that one can be seen as helping the ignorant to differentiate between the Chinese and the Japanese, namely one group is fit only to do your laundry and the other has awesome prossies who know exactly how to display the dairy goods.

Another slam against the Chinese that I never quite got was the following:

Ching chong Chinaman
Sitting on a fence
Trying to make a dollar
Out of fifteen cents

Exactly what the fuck does that mean?

And let us not forget the classic of American black/white confrontation:

A fight! A Fight! A Nigger and a white!
If the nigger/white guy doesn’t win
Then we all jump in!

Or the more offensive version:

A fight! A Fight! A Nigger and a white!
The White guy had a gun
The nigger had none
The white guy pulled the trigger
And then there was no nigger
Hooray!

Then there was the classic necrophile poem from when the infamous Ed Gein murder case was current in the late 1950’s (google Ed Gein and be ready to be chilled to the soul):

I fucked an old gal in a graveyard
God damn her old soul, she was dead
The maggots crawled out of her asshole
And the hair slipped off of her head
When I finished my job there
I seen I’d committed a sin
So I reached in my pocket and drew me a straw
And I sucked out the load I shot in

And two from the Catholics I knew back in the days:

Hail Mary, full of grace
Won’t you sit upon my face?

And this British gem that contemplates the duality of Christ as both man and God:

Two in one, one in two
Flush ‘em both down the loo

So with that I invite all of you to write in with your own rhymes and such, and always remember that the more juvenile, the better!

And as a final note, here’s a great Beatles parody:

Hey, Jude
I saw you nude
Don’t try to fake it
I saw you naked

"Don't try to fake it..."