Rhyme time’s prime time for limerick blogs
News consumers too busy for crusading columnists and talk-radio screeds might find the bite-size commentary they crave in a Spokane Valley blogger’s biting limericks.
Inspired by winning The Spokesman-Review’s annual Limerick Contest last month, Michael Andrews launched 29 Words or Less on April Fools’ Day to satirize current events in five rhymed lines.
“I didn’t know why the limerick couldn’t be used just like an editorial cartoon,” he said via phone last week. “I wanted to take a form with a good rhythm and reinvent it for a fast-paced world.”
A fast-rising readership and frequent mentions on the newspaper’s popular Huckleberries Online blog suggest he might just be onto something.
Andrews, 46, came to the limerick trade in the usual way: He co-patented an extendable backwater valve that was snapped up by a plumbing company.
In all seriousness, he started writing a limerick a day in February as “stress relief” while negotiating the sale. After the March contest win “gave me the credibility I needed around the house,” Andrews adopted the pen name Andy Michaels and kept going.
Since then 29 Words has taken on topics ranging from the Spokane Catholic Diocese bankruptcy and Adam Morrison’s NBA travails to global warming and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s Syria trip.
Here’s a sample, keyed to the Spokane Police Department’s proposed ombudsman:
There’s a new top cop in Spokane,
She’s a Kirkpatrick named Anne,
With a woman in charge,
Will house cleaning loom large,
Now that Anne is “the Man”?
But it was Andrews’ serious limerick about last week’s Virginia Tech shooting spree that sparked a local four-blog free-for-all.
When Dave Oliveria posted the heartfelt stanza at Huckleberries, commenters disagreed about whether the light and lively form was suited to carry such a heavy emotional burden.
After I took Andrews to task on my spokane7.com blog, limerick contest honcho (and film critic) Dan Webster defended his literary discovery on the Movies & More blog. Andrews then gave as good as he got in a series of response limericks.
Although he usually offers “humorous critiques of behaviors we’d like to stop” and counts Ben Franklin, Mark Twain and Will Rogers as his writing idols, Andrews said he’ll continue penning serious limericks to commemorate tragedies.
It takes him anywhere from three minutes to three hours to draft each daily ditty, and he doesn’t churn them out in advance.
“You wake up in the morning and you have no idea what you’re going to write about,” he said. “It’s better if you can catch the news while it’s still the news.”
I had only one more question: Does Andrews ever pray for a national scandal involving a man from Nantucket?
“That would make life easier,” he said.
Drilling Down
Surprisingly, Andrews isn’t the only blogger focusing on current-events limericks. For instance, Aparna Ray has been posting her “newsmericks” from India for nearly two years.
The Limerick Savant similarly has been “dedicated to no-nonsense nonsense” since 2004. Dr. Limerick’s Daily Limerick blog predated them all. Launched in 2000, the site morphed into a blog before folding, but its archives are still online.
By the way, Ray and the Limerick Savant joined 29 Words in posting serious limericks about the Virginia Tech massacre. I still find the form unsuitable for commemorating raw tragedy, but there seems to be an audience for it.
Column Update
The Blogspotter blog included the promised update of last week’s column about a possible crackdown on music blogs after several were shut down for alleged copyright violations. “There is no special, escalated effort” a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America said via e-mail.
Just a reminder to check the site for follow-up information on columns of interest.