Michael Craig's Journal

Jay Greenspan, a friend and author of Hunting Fish, e-mailed me today. We saw each other every day at the Series and haven’t spoken or written since. In addition to covering some routine business - he owes me 1/4 of a steak quesadilla and reminded me, unsolicited, that he intends to pay up - he said, referring to my blog the other day that meantioned The Pina Colada Song, “The Pina Colada song is genius.”

He picked the wrong guy, either to attack or defend.

This was my response, in its entirety:

“The Pina Colada song is genius”? You picked the wrong guy to tangle with on that, Mister. I was going to do a separate journal entry about that song, and now I’m going to have to go off on you and reprint it in the blog.

A. 

Now this is a bad and not-much-used tactic for a songwriter: to make himself a character WHO ISN’T A GOOD WRITER. (Of course, it’s completely believable, because Rupert Holmes IS nobody’s poet.) But then, after the songwriter says he’s nobody’s poet, he declares the result not half bad. 

B. 

The character’s ad actually IS bad. The first half of it just rips off the language from the ad he is responding to. I’m not saying that’s necessarily bad for the song, but for the character to say he’s PROUD of what he wrote when all he did was repeat the ad he read is stupid. 

C. 

Then there is the matter of Rupert Holmes writing the song without understanding how personal ads work. You don’t RESPOND to an ad by WRITING YOUR OWN AD. You respond by responding. You send it to a P.O. box designated by the paper and wait to hear from the person who placed the ad. He could have easily written virtually the same song, with not-half-bad response being sent to the writer of the ad. There could have either been a reply about meeting at the bar, or his reply to her could have presumed that she would just show up, which would be a typical lovestruck thing to presume. 

But putting HIS OWN AD creates several problems: (1) Why would the person who wrote an ad read other ads? They would focus on people responding to their specific ad rather than just the random ads of other people. If you are going to look for peoples’ ads to respond to, why would you write your own ad to begin with, as she did? (2) He is inviting everyone who reads that newspaper to meet him at O’Malley’s. So not only will his lady show up, but a bunch of other ladies and, for that matter, dudes. (Nothing in his ad indicates that he is a male. In fact, by aping the ad he is responding to, he sounds like either a woman or a gay guy.)

D. 

The instant he seesher, she goes from being “my old lady” to being “my lovely lady.” I can buy that, upon realizing all these adventurous things they like (including running off with random strangers), he looks at her differently and she’s now “lovely.” But that’s not how it happens. It’s at the moment of disappointment, “ah, it’s you,” that she gets the battlefield promotion from “old” to “lovely.”

Mind you, Jay, I’m not even getting into the implausibility of cheating on your “lady,” getting caught, and having it turn out to be not just okay but a relationship enhancer. I assure you, these criticisms are just the low-hanging fruit. 

Michael 

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 7th, 2006 at 1:16 am and is filed under My favourites:.