you know that talk is cheap

It's another trip to the well of unfunny humor otherwise known as Marvel's Crazy Magazine. From the June 1980 issue of the magazine comes a selection of parodies of contemporary hit songs. The bar for successful song parodies isn't that high. Few can reach the level of a Spike Jones or a Weird Al, but several meticulous studies have shown than even taking the low road of scatalogical-themed puns and word substitution can be counted to generate some cheap chuckles. ("The owner of a lonely farrrrrrrrt!" HA HA HA HA!) It's a process that innumerable boys aged from 8 to 14 are intimately familiar with, yet it was apparently beyond the Crazy Magazine staff's ability to grasp, as the following bitter nuggets of joylessness illustrate.

Here's the Village People "Pillage People" performing "In the Navy" "Join the Navy":

Readers: How many clichéd and/or stale gags can you spot in the above panel? (Answer: Too many by far.) The amalgam of service-related gripes and anti-military slogans had me wondering if my WWII vet grandfather and an a community college-grade campus radical had collaborated in writing it: "No blood for oil!" "Pipe down, pinko! I wasn't done tellin' ya about the shit they used to call food back in The Big One."

I'm having difficulty parsing the "You'll be safe from guys like us" line. What do they mean by that? That the Navy doesn't recruit flamboyant disco performers who starred alongside Steve Guttenberg and Bruce Jenner in a Nancy Walker film? I'm sure there are more than a few seamen who fit that criteria.

Pink Lady - Pink Typhoon (from Best, 2005) - In which j-pop's original idorus, Mie and Kei, transform the Village People's ode to hijinx on the high seas into their own personal anthem. Puh-rin-ku rei-di!

Thank you, internet, Cheap Trick Truck says, "Goodnight!" Watch out for the "Dream Scream Police!"

ANDREW TO CRAZY MAGAZINE: DROP DEAD

See the odd-looking creature in the insert boxes up there? While it would be completely understandable to think that it's Barney the Dinosaur channeling Hunter S. Thompson, it's actually "Behemoth Jack," the host of this feature. That is the level of humor we're operating on here: one that features a nonsensical dinocentric caricature of Wolfman Jack. Sheol help us.

I would also like to point out that the cartoon version of Rick Nielsen possesses a degree of sophisticated dignity lacking in the real-life model.

Lambretta - Dream Police (from Breakfast, 1999) - These Swedish pop-rockers are more sweater vests than Cardigans, if you catch my drift. Sartorial humor rocks, and so does this cover -- to a certain mild degree.

The Knack Knock...and how to get rid of it:

Why does this seem so familiar to me? To be fair, the serendipitous Sharona/bologna rhyme connection was a pretty obvious avenue of satiric attack, but that doesn't excuse it's dismal execution in the above panel. Additional points were also deducted for the use of "BARF," the red-headed stepchild of the scatological reference family.

Moderatto - Chaperona (from Greatest Hits, 2007) - I had considered going with the Dead Kennedys' "Pull My Strings" (which features a send-up of the song redone as "My Payola"). However, I ended up keeping with the unintentional and unofficial international theme for today's musical selections and went with this reworking of "My Sharona" by a Mexican glam metal band which initially began as a parody act and ended up becoming superstars.