JAN 20, singable satire: The Four Lads sing "THUNDER BAY" (Ontario)

  PARODY LYRICS

MUSICAL UNDERPINNINGS:: "Istanbul (not Constantinople)" a jazz-band style concoction recorded by The Four Lads in 1953. 

PARODY COMPOSED: Dr.G.H. and Giorgio Coniglio, May 2023. 

PARODY-SONGLINK: To access ukulele chord-charts to help you accompany "Thunder Bay (not Constantinople)" on your favorite instrument, click HERE. Also, some additional photos and the song-lyrics alone (without chord indication) can be seen on the blog "Edifying Nonsense." 

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

In 1930, "Istanbul" was designated as the official name of the largest city in Türkiye (Turkey), known in earlier periods as Byzantion, Byzantium, Constantinople, and primarily as Istanbul since the fall of the Byzantine empire in 1453.

In 1949, Newfoundland joined Confederation as Canada's tenth and newest province; in 2001, the Canadian Constitution was amended to revise the province's name to "Newfoundland and Labrador" (the mainland area of Labrador included less than 5% of the province's population but the majority of its landmass). The island of Newfoundland (NEW-found-land) is known by its inhabitants as "the Rock". 

In 1953 (the 500th anniversary of the "fall of Constantinople"), the Four Lads, a Canadian singing quartet who had moved from Toronto to the United States, acquired their first gold record with the release of the jazz-band styled "Istanbul (not Constantinople)". Other hit recordings by this group include "Standing on the Corner" and "Moments to Remember". BTW, the original members of the Four Lads attended the St. Michael's Choir School in downtown Toronto, on a small street well known to the authors.  

In 1970, the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario (current population about 110,000), at the western end of Lake Superior was formed by the merger of the two smaller communities of Fort William and Port Arthur.  

THUNDER BAY (not CONSTANTINOPLE)

(Intro theme, mid-Eastern, on kazoo)

"The Lakehead" was Fort William and Port Arthur
Now it's Thunder Bay, not Willi-am and Arthur
It's a wondrous town with name that's far superior --
Like Turkish delight, on a stormy night.

Every dame today, 'round Lakehead way,
Stays in Thunder Bay, not with William or with Arthur
You've a rainy date in Fort William or Port Arthur?
She'll be waiting in Thunder Bay.

Even old Newfoundland hooked up with Labrador.

Ask a Newfie, he might say,

"They thought, on the Rock, we'd like that more, eh?"

"So, take me back: Fort William and Port Arthur."
No, you can't go back in time, it's so much farther;
Been a long while past, since Willi-am and Arthur.

Why the name-change? Here's the crux: 

It's no one's business but Ca-nucks.

Thunder Bay. 

(kazoo)

Thunder Bay.

JAN 19, defining opinion: hose

Our blogpost "Defining Opinion" on the topic-based blog "Edifying Nonsense" shows a selection of similar verses submitted to OEDILF (the online Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form). You can see all of these on one visit by clicking HERE.

JAN 18, reptiles: anoles going green

You can find a lot more pictures of these cute little tree-lizards by clicking to links to blogged photo-collages HERE (suburban neighbours), HERE (pole-dancer), and HERE (coloration), among others.

There are also other illustrated poems HERE (dewlaps), HERE ("skink-busting") and HERE ("patrolling").

Or, you could review photos and illustrated herpetologic verses in a wider context by proceeding to 'Verses about Reptiles' (ophidiophobics, don't worry!  no snake-photos)' on the full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'.

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE POETRY ON THIS SITE?

 Poetry appearing on this site was written (unless otherwise indicated) by Giorgio Coniglio (registered pseudonym), and for the most part contributed to the online humour dictionary-site...

OEDILF (Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form). In its 15 years of existence, OEDILF has worked its way alphabetically from Aa- to He-, with the goal of accumulating a verse defining every meaning of every word in the English language. This co-operative project has  accumulated over 110,000 carefully edited limericks, with completion date estimated to be around the year 2065. In the past five years, Giorgio has contributed over 500 poems to the project; the site's accession number for the verses is indicated at the bottom of the relevant slides in our presentations.

JAN 17, palinku (poetic novelty): family life

  In this post, we will continue with a novel form of poetic wordplay. Inspired by Japanese haiku poetry, this new form is used for a terse verse with a total of 17 syllables displayed on three lines. Unlike its classic Japanese analogue, this concoction does not mandate the precise distribution of the syllables among the three lines, but does stipulate that each word in the poem be included in a palindromic phrase or sentence in English (i.e. one that can be read either forwards or backwards). 

  To help the reader discern the origin of the lyrics, each palindrome (generally occupying one of the three lines of the poem) has been color-coded. 

  And, just in case you have forgotten what palindromes are about, your blogsite hosts have arranged a serial set of brief lessons on the topic ('Political Palindromes'); click HERE. 

  You can readily view all our "palinku" verses if you proceed with a single click to our more encyclopedic blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE. (Or if you prefer, you can stay on this particular blogsite and look for the offerings for the 17th day of each month -- there are now more than 60 of these.)

 

JAN 16, classic palindromes, 'no left felon'

Authors' Note: Apparently a few felons are politicians, and vice versa.

You can review a collection of such illustrated verses in a wider context by proceeding to 'Reversing Verse: Limericks About Classic Palindromes' on the full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. 

JAN 15, lexicon of word-pairs: alliterative binomials E to G

Giorgio's lexicon of binomials (alliterative)

Quite a few alliterative binomials have been highlighted in short verses by the authors:  Matching the selection on the above slide, these include "flora and fauna".

And, for those with a musical bent, we have a song-cycle of 9 songs displaying the spectrum of these binomial expressions. They have lyrics stuffed with word-pairs, arranged to familiar tunes. You can readily access this singable treasure trove of binomial expressions of various types by clicking on the link for the first song, "WORD PAIRS", HERE. 

You can proceed to the next blogpost in the lexicon series (alliteratives H to K) by clicking HERE.

JAN 14, birdlore: turkey on the roof (Berkeley)

 

TURKEY ON THE ROOF -- Berkeley, California

TURKEY FLIGHT

SUNSET, SHORTLY THEREAFTER

You can view an encyclopedic collection of illustrated poems on this topic by proceeding to the post 'Poems about BIRDLIFE' on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE.

JAN 13, Carolina lowcountry: photo-study #1 of the Cooper River (Arthur Ravenel) bridge

This photogenic bridge, a part of US highway 17, links the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, with the suburban town of Mt. Pleasant across the Cooper River. 

Photos were taken with the camera function on Giorgio Coniglio's i-phone 7, later upgraded to an i-phone 13. A few other pictures can be found in a pre-pandemic blogpost HERE. 

t-shirt motif

You can see this marvellous feat of engineering as rendered in fabric art by using the search bar at the top of the post.

TO SEE MORE STUFF (poems, pics, peculiarities): To see older or newer material  (posted daily, or at least on most 'good' days), CLICK below the Comments Section, on 'Older Post' or 'Newer Post'.

JAN 12, folio-entry, couples: horses

You can view all of our folio-photos from the collection of 'Couples' portraits in a wider context on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE.

JAN 11, bar-fauna: the monster-bar

Authors' Note:  The golem, an entity from Jewish folklore, is likely the least well-known of the supernatural beings participating in this story. Made entirely of inanimate matter, e.g. mud or clay, this sizable being can classically be either a victim or villain, and connote hope or despair. In more recent popular culture, it refers to any crude automaton devised by a sorcerer.

Although she apparently has few close friends, “Nessie” is a nickname for Scotland’s famed Loch Ness monster.

If you liked this offering, you might want to refer to our entire collection of verses about human and animal denizens of bars, pubs and other watering-holes. Click HERE.

A NOTE from the EDITORS: 

 As readers may have gathered, this blogsite highlights several types of light, wistful and humorous reflections on current life, chief among them being short verses using the limerick format, more or less (see the blogpost "Limerick Variations"). But on occasion, we feel the urge to continue important themes through several stanzas worth of poetic ideas. So in this post, we highlight the previous years' offerings of 'lengthier' poems of at least 15 lines or 3 stanzas. We have been publishing these at the rate of once a month on this blog ("Daily Illustrated Nonsense"), but as they are found mixed with shorter verses of five lines, i.e. standard limericks, or even three lines, (palinku --palindromic haiku), you might have failed to notice and review them in their entirety. 

  This summary gives you a second chance to explore these lengthier creations that contain as many as 6 stanzas -- hardly lengthy enough to be considered a genuine saga, but we hope that they reflect the authors' sagacity.  

  The compressed mode in which our 'sagas' are displayed may enhance your appreciation of the range of topics covered; if you prefer to enjoy the details in a larger and more readable font, you can quickly access the posts on this blog devoted uniquely to their stanza-by-stanza display (as well as notes, related photos and videos), by entering their title into the search lines provided. And from there, you can, of course, explore further to enjoy the multitude of shorter verses.  

For the curious reader's convenience, we have sorted our treasury of 'brief sagas' by the year of publication on this blog. Altogether, you will find more than 40 whimsical poems that cover about 700 lines of verse. 

Click below, and enjoy!
2020
2021
2022
2023.

a flap at the Ibis Hotel