Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Today’s Zippy, doing damage to Rodgers and Hart’s “My funny Valentine”:

These burlesques tend to superimpose themselves on the originals, making them hard to recall accurately, as I noted last year when Zippy featured “Somewhere, over my poncho”. So here, as a service to my readers, are the original words:

My funny Valentine
Sweet comic Valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable
Yet you’re my favorite work of art

Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak, are you smart?

But don’t change a hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little Valentine, stay
Each day is Valentine’s Day

Oh my: “When it opens, does it reek of Swiss chard?”

Zippy strips also burlesque poetry — for instance, an assortment of poets slammed here (“I calibrate my elf”!) and Ginsberg’s Howl riffed on here.

This entry was posted on September 23, 2011 at 6:58 am and is filed under Language play, Linguistics in the comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.