Stuck In This House Here With You - A Parody

The other day, I posted a picture to social media of Liz doing something silly.

A friend commented that it was probably a side effect of being stuck in self-isolation with me for so long.

The song "Stuck in the Middle With You" by Stealers Wheel came up. And the suggestion for doing a spoof version of it.

It bounced around in my head for a bit. The way things do.

Long enough for me to quickly pen some parody lyrics to that original 1972 song.

 

I read the lyrics to Liz. She thought they were funny.

She rolled her eyes, appropriately when the song mentions poo.

I said we should try to record a duet version of the song.

She looked at me like I had just suggested we create a video tape of an intimate moment between us and upload it to Pornhub. That's because I'm the one in our relationship who is "all out there." Humiliating myself publicly is par for the course. Liz prefers to be the creative force "behind the camera."

But less than twelve hours later, she mentioned that she had some ideas for visuals that could go with the song.

You see, for years, she has been producing these amazing videos. Mostly in relation to her work. And the majority of the time she stays out of view of the camera.

Lately, however, she has had a bit more exposure, collaborating with a co-worker on producing a "morning show" style live show as a way of doing a combination of team-building, information sharing, and humorous distraction for her staff. It's a private show, meant for this specific team. But I've watched a number of episodes and, like so many of the things Liz does, I think it's fantastic.

So we started talking about how the video might look.

After relaxing one evening after watching a few episodes of the first season of Cheers, we did a dry run-through of a revised version of the parody lyrics to a karaoke version of the song.

Then yesterday morning, we went into our studio (okay, my home office where I record my podcast and do other video/audio related things as an author and book industry guy), and we did a number of takes, collaboratively revising the lyrics, then laying down the track.

We used the Ameritz Karaoke version of the song for the background track. Then we shot the video using an iPad, which Liz edited and produced right on the iPad using iMovie. After she finished, I imported the video into Camtasia 2019 to add the titles and annotations.

I'm proud of the short, cute story this parody version tells.

 

It was an awesome collaborative project. Yes, it was work, but for the first time in days, neither of us was spinning and spending the whole day either working or thinking and worrying about work stuff.

And perhaps also, more importantly, for the first time in days, we finally got a song stuck in our heads that has replaced the hilarious parody created by Brock Tyler of our Prime Minister using the words "speaking moistly."  (Fun fact, BTW, the original lyrics of the song included a nod to that:)

"...and outside, the germs are crawling so moistly in the air - we say.....Please....."

It's enriching to collaborate on something creative and fun with the person you love. When you realize that there's nobody you'd rather be stuck in isolation with.

Here's hoping that the song inspires at least one much needed smile or laugh for you.

A Recipe for Author Collaboration

Because I do so much writing for the Kobo Writing Life blog as well as Spirits Untapped, I haven't been updating this blog as often. (I know, I know, there's always SOME excuse, isn't there?)

But I wanted to share an excerpt from a recent guest blog post that I wrote for Dundurn, the publisher of the newly released Haunted Hospitals, a book that I co-authored with Rhonda Parrish.

The article is entitled A Recipe for Author Collaboration and talks about the origin of this book project and how the proper "ingredients" need to all be lined up for a collaboration to happen.

In much the same way that fire is created from the combination of the three elements of oxygen, a fuel source and heat, the ingredients necessary for a writing project are Inspiration and Commitment and Timing.  - From "A Recipe for Author Collaboration" on Dundurn's Blog

At When Words Collide, the Calgary conference where we met and decided to collaborate, we recorded a quick Facebook Live video that was originally posted to the Haunted Hospitals Facebook page.

If you're a fan of video over text, there are a few other videos on the Facebook page as well that I recorded at two of the locations from our book (The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia and Century Manor in Hamilton, Ontario)