New Filk: Santa Got Run Over By Our Grandma

[Joel Polowin]

I've had this sitting on my virtual desktop for more than a decade,
getting hauled out to be poked at most Decembers. I think I've finally
got it into decent shape, but wouldn't mind suggestions. There's one
bit in particular which... well, I'll bring it up later.

Santa Got Run Over By Our Grandma
TTO: "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" by Randy Brooks

Chorus:
Santa got run over by our Grandma
Dropping off his gifts on Christmas night
You can say there's no such thing as Santa
And after this past Christmas, you'd be right

She'd already lost her license:
Nearly blind in both her eyes
Her blood pressure kept on tanking
She was on parole for seven DUIs

We'd made sure the keys were hidden
The car was out of fuel, too
But she hot-wired the ignition
And she filled the tank with moonshine that she brewed

[Chorus]

Grandma had a reputation
Santa wasn't her first kill
It was awkward back in April
When we peeled the Easter Bunny off her grille

Grandma used to love tradition
Where did she go wrong, and why?
I remember those Octobers
When she always used to make Great Pumpkin pie

[Chorus]

Grandma tried to underplay it
Said that it was just a goof
But she clammed up when we asked her
How she got her big blue Chevy on the roof

And they told us at the inquest
That they still were mystified
Not so much that she had hit him
But she hit him sev'ral times before he died

[Chorus]

-----
What I'm not satisfied with is the couplet "The car was out of fuel,
too" / "And she filled the tank with moonshine that she brewed". The
rhyme is imperfect, and really, I'd prefer something a bit stronger in
terms of "normal precaution to prevent someone unauthorized from using a
vehicle" and "ridiculously implausible way for an enfeebled granny to
overcome that". What's been lurking and not jelling for me is something
like
"and we clamped the steering wheel" or
"and the steering wheel was clamped", with
"and she somehow steered it with the parking brake" or
"and she somehow used the parking brake to steer".

Some ludicrous method for removing the clamp might do. "She blew the
clamp away with gelignite" or "she burned the clamp off with a welding
torch". I still can't figure out how to get a couplet with this stuff,
and I'd be open to other precaution / solution ideas.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Joel

[Arthur T.]

In Message-ID:<3e71b4bd-7d6c-4642...@sympatico.ca>,

Joel Polowin <jpol...@sympatico.ca> wrote:

>Santa Got Run Over By Our Grandma
>TTO: "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" by Randy Brooks

Nice song.

>What I'm not satisfied with is the couplet "The car was out of fuel,
>too" / "And she filled the tank with moonshine that she brewed".

<snip>
>Any suggestions?

A couple of possibilities:

And a boot was on a wheel
The way she got it off was just surreal

Locked the car up with a chain
But she took an ax and cut it right in twain

--
Arthur T. - ar23hur "at" pobox "dot" com

[Arthur T.]

In Message-ID:<3e71b4bd-7d6c-4642...@sympatico.ca>,
Joel Polowin <jpol...@sympatico.ca> wrote:

>Santa Got Run Over By Our Grandma
>TTO: "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" by Randy Brooks
>
>Chorus:
> Santa got run over by our Grandma
> Dropping off his gifts on Christmas night
> You can say there's no such thing as Santa
> And after this past Christmas, you'd be right

BTW, a couple of decades ago, Joe Kesselman posted a chorus similar
to yours, without any indication he was going to do anything further,
so I did (see Xeno #104). Part of my enjoyment of yours is seeing how
you went in such a different direction.

[Gary McGath]

On 12/23/23 12:04 AM, Arthur T. wrote:
> BTW, a couple of decades ago, Joe Kesselman posted a chorus similar
> to yours, without any indication he was going to do anything further,
> so I did (see Xeno #104). Part of my enjoyment of yours is seeing how
> you went in such a different direction.
>

It sounded vaguely familiar. That explains why.

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com

[Joel Polowin]

On 2023-12-23 12:04 AM, Arthur T. wrote:
> In Message-ID:<3e71b4bd-7d6c-4642...@sympatico.ca>,
> Joel Polowin <jpol...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>>Santa Got Run Over By Our Grandma
>>TTO: "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" by Randy Brooks
>>
>>Chorus:
>> Santa got run over by our Grandma
>> Dropping off his gifts on Christmas night
>> You can say there's no such thing as Santa
>> And after this past Christmas, you'd be right
>

> BTW, a couple of decades ago, Joe Kesselman posted a chorus similar
> to yours, without any indication he was going to do anything further,
> so I did (see Xeno #104). Part of my enjoyment of yours is seeing how
> you went in such a different direction.

Huh. I found the relevant discussion in Google's archive:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.music.filk/c/T9bA0ypa654/m/436flL2htpkJ
It's certainly possible that that inspired my song; I don't know how far
back my incomplete version goes.

"My grandma" fits a bit more smoothly than "our grandma", since "my" is
a clean single syllable and "our" is more complex ("ow-er"). I'll have
to think about changing that.

Joel

[Arthur T.]

In Message-ID:<5582e402-e3d5-49cb...@sympatico.ca>,

Joel Polowin <jpol...@sympatico.ca> wrote:

>On 2023-12-23 12:04 AM, Arthur T. wrote:
>> In Message-ID:<3e71b4bd-7d6c-4642...@sympatico.ca>,
>> Joel Polowin <jpol...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>>
>>>Santa Got Run Over By Our Grandma
>>>TTO: "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" by Randy Brooks

<snip>

>> BTW, a couple of decades ago, Joe Kesselman posted a chorus similar
>> to yours, without any indication he was going to do anything further,
>> so I did (see Xeno #104). Part of my enjoyment of yours is seeing how
>> you went in such a different direction.
>
>Huh. I found the relevant discussion in Google's archive:
>https://groups.google.com/g/rec.music.filk/c/T9bA0ypa654/m/436flL2htpkJ
>It's certainly possible that that inspired my song; I don't know how far
>back my incomplete version goes.

Most filking is theft. Intentional theft. We all stole from the
original song. So I don't think you have to worry yourself about
whether you got the idea totally on your own or were influenced by
Joe's chorus. (But if you *want* to worry yourself, don't let me stop
you.)

>"My grandma" fits a bit more smoothly than "our grandma", since "my" is
>a clean single syllable and "our" is more complex ("ow-er"). I'll have
>to think about changing that.

I normally pronounce "our" as "ow-er". But when reading your lyric, I
had no problem slurring it as "are". I concede that some people might
have a problem, though. After all, a while back there was
considerable discussion as to how many syllables "vampire" has.

[Joel Polowin]

On 2023-12-23 2:22 PM, Arthur T. wrote:
> Most filking is theft. Intentional theft. We all stole from the
> original song. So I don't think you have to worry yourself about
> whether you got the idea totally on your own or were influenced by
> Joe's chorus. (But if you *want* to worry yourself, don't let me stop
> you.)

I'm a bit sensitive on the subject of credit and attribution. One of
the bigger advances in my M.Sc. work came about somewhat indirectly from
a suggestion from a colleague. In a simulation of atomic interactions,
there were big discontinuities when the model switched from one
coordinate system to another. My colleague suggested averaging the
forces in some way, which wouldn't have improved matters very much. But
later, when I was thinking about the problem, I realized that using the
derivative of the averages of the forces would... and, as it turned out,
it solved the problem very nicely. By the time I'd completed that work,
I'd almost completely forgotten about my colleague's original
suggestion. It was only when we had a paper accepted and about to be
published that I remembered it, and I mentioned it to my supervisor. He
was pretty upset with me over the matter, and made it clear that my
colleague should have been given some kind of credit in the paper.

The colleague, himself, thought it wasn't a big deal. He'd just made a
suggestion for a change which wouldn't have worked. He felt that since
I'd used that idea as a basis for a much more complex change, and done
all of the work to implement and test it, his contribution wasn't
noteworthy. But I've never forgotten the matter.

(As it turned out, all of my M.Sc. work was essentially made obsolete by
a paper that was published in a journal that arrived in my department
library two days before my thesis defense. My work was *valid* but now
almost entirely irrelevant to the field, though a couple of
computational techniques I'd developed along the way might still be
useful. I don't know if my supervisor or anyone on the defense
committee saw that paper before my defense, but I was sweating over the
issue until my thesis defense was successfully concluded.)

Joel

[Joe Kesselman]

Don't worry about it. If you decide I was part of the inspiration I
wouldn't object to being mentioned/blamed; if you decide you came up
with it independently (many of us Spoonerize[*] as one of the sources
for song ideas) I'd believe that too.

[*] "May I sew you to your sheets?"