I have been to two law schools’ parody shows (ours and BU’s, which my friend Karen was in) in the past two weeks. It seems the recipe for this sort of thing is standard, although there may be different flavors at different schools. Make fun of law school students. Make fun of law professors. Include jokes and corny puns only legal people understand. Make them embarrassed that they are laughing at those nerdy jokes, which just makes them laugh harder. Classic.
The two shows are different in that the Boston University Law Follies is a sketch comedy show (titled Moral Kombat this year) of skits and videos unrelated to each other except that they all have to do with law school, whereas the HLS Parody is one “play” of sorts (titled Ocean’s Replevin this year) with a plotline unifying the whole thing. Both shows include songs, which rewrite the lyrics to existing songs and relate it all to law school, with elaborate harmonies and dance choreography. I can’t duplicate the whole sight and sound extravaganza in a blog, but here’s a quick example from the HLS show, one of the re-written verses to “Prince Ali” from Aladdin. To follow, just sing it in your head at the part that goes “Prince Ali! Fabulous he! Ali Ababwa. . .”
HLS! Really the best! If you’re a layman. . .
After years, blood sweat and tears, college degree.
You won those service awards,
You bested all your law boards,
Sent logic games to their lords, be a JD. . .
It’s hard to come up with examples that are short enough to include in this blog and that would be understandable to 0Ls. My favorite song was making fun of the ridiculous rivalry between Westlaw and Lexis Nexis, with two Sharks-versus-Jets-like dueling camps, one full of Westlaw ladies singing to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” and the other full of Lexis ladies singing to Britney Spears’s “Womanizer.” Instead of “Roma roma-ma,” it was “Westlaw, Westlaw-ah-ah!” and it was musically blended, amazingly skillfully, back and forth with the Lexis crew singing about “Shepardizer” in place of “womanizer.” If I had my druthers I’d reprint all the songs’ lyrics—heck, I’d put the whole parody script up—but instead I will just make a plug: if and when you become a student here, audition for parody, help with parody, or at the very least go to parody. It is hi-lar-ious! Plus everybody goes, and you want to be just like everyone else, right?
I’d like to give a shout out to my friend Nick Perros, who arranged the music (and I didn’t know it was him until after I had deemed this medley super-genius, so there’s no friend-bias here). And kudos to Joshua Gruenspecht the other parody writers—I can’t imagine how long this show must have taken to write. I was thoroughly entertained. And of course, to everyone involved in the parody, bravo!
Interesting anthropological note: what we call a gunner (a student who talks too much in class) the BU kids apparently call a classhole. Their word is funnier; ours is probably easier to use in polite conversation. BU people say gunner, too, but I’ve never heard classhole at HLS. There’s always next year. . .
– Erin
