Does Ted Cruz have a sense of humor?

Does Ted Cruz have a sense of humor?

by digby

Maybe. Or, at least, someone on his staff does:

In honor of my friend @realDonaldTrump and good-hearted #Maniacs everywhere:  https://t.co/KOPIi4XTVt

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 13, 2015

*In case you’re wondering, Trump called him a maniac this morning.

I’ll bet you didn’t know this, which makes the song a perfect choice:

Now it may strike you as odd that the lead single from a movie about a dancer should be called “Maniac” and not “Dancer” or something like that. That’s because songwriters Dennis Matkosky and Michael Sembello originally wrote the song about an actual maniac — as in, a person who murders other people for terifyingly little reason.

You see, Matkosky and Sembello had been hired to pen songs for Flashdance, but sat down to watch television instead, because it’s hard to write dance music when you just aren’t in the mood. Matkosky happened to catch a news report about a guy who had killed a bunch of people and buried them in his yard, and was suddenly struck with a lightning bolt of divine inspiration. He quickly whipped up some lyrics that would eventually become “Maniac,” although this early draft was noticeably different:

Flashdance Version:

She’s a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she’s dancing like she’s never danced before

Original Version:

He’s a maniac, maniac, he just moved next door
He’ll kill your cat and nail it to the floor

He showed his work to Sembello, and the two wrote the entire song right there as a goof, virtually identical to the version we all know, except of course for the lyrics about haunting madness and gleeful animal cruelty. Even the music was written with a crazy person in mind, with Sembello and Matkosky crafting the bridge to sound like “how an insane person would play ‘Chopsticks.'”

Unfortunately for all of us, they never recorded this version of the song, as record company honcho Phil Ramone declared he liked the song but wanted them to change the lyrics to be more Flashdancey so it could be used in the movie. So they rewrote the lyrics, because jokes are fine but money is money.