What's Amore? (Part 4)

For many years now, there has been circulating a continuously
expanding poem. Its leaping-off place is the first verse of That's
Amore, the song by Harry Warren and Jack Brooks made famous by crooner
Dean Martin:

When the moon hits your eye
Like a big pizza pie,
That's amore.

Around the turn of the century, Frank Rubin, of Wappinger Falls, New
York, came up with the idea of writing some additional verses and
inviting others to contribute theirs to his Web site. Soon, the
science-fiction writer Spider Robinson picked up the idea on his site.
Sure enough, something about the rhythm of the lines and the sounds of
that last line inspired punsters to soar hilariously from the launch
pad of the original. Sing along with the best of the take-offs:

When Ms. Stewart tops weeds
With gold sesame seeds,
That’s potpourri.

When the top-ranking Whig
Calls the P.M. a prig,
That’s a Tory.

Bush, G.W., won
A hard-fought election
From one Gore, A.

When rangers in hoods
Lead treks through the woods,
That’s a foray.

When an area stocks
A great number of rocks,
That’s a quarry.

When you get in a fight
With a guy of great height,
You’ll be sore, eh?

When a sting ray is all
That they sell at a mall,
That’s a mall ray.

When doc scans your head
On a magnetic bed,
That’s M-R-I.

Our serial pun
Its course it has run.
So no more play.

Verses 28-36/36 from "The Ants Are My Friends" by Richard Lederer &
Stan Kegel (©2007 Marion Street Press) Various verses by Jim Davis,
Jeff Fisher, Alan Freeman, Joseph Hagsmann, Dennis Hammes, Suzie
Lemcke, Cynthia MacGregor, Keith Martin, Spider Robinson, Frank Rubin,
and Robert Taxon.