Those are just a few of the topics lifted from the 130 entries that flooded our e-mailboxes in the first-ever "Elevate'R Music" song parody contest. Ten finalists were chosen by Tribune and KUER staff and were submitted to the Capitol Steps, the former congressional staffers turned satirical singing group. A grand prize winner and two runners-up will be announced in Thursday's Tribune and on KUER's RadioWest, where the top three songs will be performed by Salt Lake City's best-named comedic singers, the Saliva Sisters.

Both the contest - and the radio show devoted to exploring the distinct nature of local humor - were prompted by Salt Lake Acting Company's 28th annual production of "Saturday's Voyeur," one of the country's oldest regional musical satires. Penned by Nancy Borgenicht and Allen Nevins, this year's version is set in the divided town of Wendover and runs through Aug. 20.

Of course, writing one funny song is different from creating a song for a character in a bigger story, such as in "Voyeur." And the contest sparked plenty of what you might expect - songs devoted to Utah's love affair with green Jell-O, funeral potatoes and pioneer history.

But the top "Elevate'R Music" songs stand out for their quirky mash-up of original song to rewrite. Carina Dillon transformed Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" into "Big Yellow Taxes," a vehicle to complain about state lawmakers' decision to fund a $15 million parking garage over dental care for the poor. Gerald McDonough's clever list-making morphed Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" to "We Didn't Start the Choir." (Sample lyrics: "Nu Skin, Barney Clark and the artificial heart / Dell Schanze, he's our man! Hot Postum, Valley Tan.")

Eric Mangum even found a way to make polygamy seem fresh in his rip-off of Garth Brooks' "Friends in Low Places," which offers the right lowbrow, everyday notes for "Moms in Four Houses," ("Dad's not a perv or sacrilegious / but the last thing he needs are any more spouses").

Several "Elevate'R Music" finalists revealed themselves to be, well, experienced - hobbyists? semi-professionals? life-long practitioners? - when it comes to parody. McDonough writes histories and biographies, but for pleasure he pens musicals, often parodies, while Dillon is a stay-at-home mom to three boys, and an actress who has sung parodies in local theater productions.

Lois Collins, a reporter for the Deseret Morning News who co-wrote "Bummer in the City" with colleague Elaine Jarvik (apologies to the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City"), grew up in a family who played with words, which they referred to as "Anguish," because they caused the English language so much pain. "I've spent most of my life screwing up songs and poems," Collins says.

Then there's M. Spaff Sumsion, who takes his longtime hobby pretty seriously. "It's an obsession," says the writer who landed two songs on the Top 10 - the Jamaican-flavored tale of the mysterious Bear Lake monster, "Under the Lake" (a take-off of "Under the Sea" from "The Little Mermaid"), and "A Few of the Testimonies" (a tweak of "My Favorite Things").

As a kid, Sumsion's life goal was to land a song on the Dr. Demento radio show, a mark he now hits most weeks with his partner, local parodist Robert Lund.

"It's just silly stuff," Sumsion says, and when you consider his lyrics detailing an unscripted Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints testimony meeting, you might think he's being modest. (All together now. Try humming this to "My Favorite Things": "Madison cries that her mom flushed her turtle / Then she announces her daddy's infertile / Tyler loves Jesus and recess and peas / These are a few of the testimo-nies.")

"Every once in a while, you find the perfect song to fit the subject you want to ridicule," Sumsion says. "If I can make myself laugh with my own writing, I feel like I've accomplished something."

Dillon, another two-song finalist, claimed writing parodies proved cathartic. "I get so upset with some of the things that are happening in the world and locally," she says, such as the idea of politicos matching lawmakers to lobbyists through a speed-dating fundraiser. "I think using humor is a good way to both cope with frustrations and bring some of those concerns to light."

But this is a woman who used Barry Manilow's nightclub ditty "Copacabana" to make this audacious comparison: "At the Plaza, Temple Square Plaza / The hottest strip west of the Gaza." "Hey," she says, "there are only so many words that rhyme with 'plaza.' "

Even people who make a living writing parodies can't definitively explain what sells a joke song. Sure, the original song has to be popular, so an audience will quickly get the twist or the tweak, says Mark Eaton, a writer and performer for the Washington D.C.-based Capitol Steps, who helped judge the Utah contest.

But there's a clever, inexplicable magic to the fit of popular song to its lyrical takeoff. And trying it is about the only foolproof way of finding out whether the humor works. "You hurl it in front of an unsuspecting audience and you see what happens," says Eaton, making the science of parody sound as random as, well, art.

Contact Ellen Fagg at ellenf@sltrib.com or 801-257-8621. Send comments about this story to livingeditor@sltrib .com.

Sing this, baby!

A grand-prize winner and two finalists of the "Elevate'R Music" song parody contest will be announced in The Tribune on Thursday, and performed by the Saliva Sisters at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. on KUER's RadioWest, FM 90. For lyrics to all the finalists' songs, visit http://www.sltrib.com . For tickets to Salt Lake Acting Company's long-running local musical satire, "Saturday's Voyeur," call 801-363-SLAC, or visit http://www.saltlakeactingcompany.org.