The Gold Standard (To A Modern Tune)
by Robert Wynne
Music: “MmmMmmMmmMmmM” by the Crash Test Dummies
(or, if you prefer, “Headline News” by Weird Al Yankovic)
© 1998

Once, there was this guy who
Wrote a bunch of filksongs and
thought that they were cool
But when he sent them in to
a fanzine, they were bounced back in his face
He didn’t understand it,
The tunes were so well known

MmmMmmMmmMmm (etc…)

Once there was an editor
who published filkdom’s very best
and most prestigeous journal
But when she got these filksongs
She found she didn’t know the right music
She asked all of her friends
and they didn’t know them either

MmmMmmMmmMmm (etc…)

It wasn’t that the songs were bad
But it sure made that poor guy mad

And so he went to USENET
And said that she had unfairly rejected his poor filk songs
But he found to his dismay
She was well loved by all of the folks there
They flamed him rather soundly
and put him in their killfiles

MmmMmmMmmMmm(etc…)

This is the other song i got out of the Cineviews flameware on rec.music.filk in 1998. (If you really want to know, see the notes at the bottom of The Flamewar Never Dies.

This one is more specifically addressing the topic of that flamewar, and as a result doesn’t hold up as well over time, but I’m fond of it for the reaction it provoked. While I tried to keep the tone neutral and reporting merely what actually happened without actually showing favour to either side, I got a vitrolic e-mail from Cineviews accusing me of being a “Lee Gold Apologist”. I related this to Lee, and suggested that perhaps we could form a “Lee Gold Apologist Society” and get little buttons to wear at cons and maybe a neat graphic for our webpages and stuff. One day I’ll actually get around to designing those…