Parody

Guy wakes up in a hotel room with no memory of who he is, or why there's a dead body next to him, or where the suitcase full of money came from. Code Name: The Cleaner sounds like a parody of The Bourne Identity, and it's clearly envisioned as a star vehicle for Cedric the Entertainer. But it's not funny enough to work as parody, and Cedric has yet to show he has the chops to carry a film. Code Name: The Cleaner (New Line Cinema) Starring Cedric the Entertainer, Lucy Liu, Nicollette Sheridan.

The three-minute parody video features Connie Chung as a lounge singer in pink lace atop a piano, bungling a melody about the recently canceled MSNBC show she co-anchored with husband Maury Povich. It's intentionally silly and insipid. Yet unlike Weekends with Maury & Connie, the video has drawn a steady audience. In fact, it's one of the most viewed clips on You Tube.com - a popular free video screening site on the Internet that gives new meaning to short-attention-span theater. YouTube appears to have picked up where Web logging, cell phone cameras and MySpace have left off - satisfying an all but insatiable need for individual expression.

Andy Baio isn't trying to pick a fight with Bill Cosby. Rather, he says, his recent legal tangle with the comedian is a matter of principle. Several months ago, Baio, the operator of Waxy.org, came across a set of animated videos online called House of Cosbys. The goofy and sometimes vulgar parodies revolve around the adventures that ensue from a house full of Bill Cosby clones. (Think South Park-style humor here.) The freely distributed cartoons from animator Justin Roiland were an instant hit with thousands of people.

Take this news with a grain of Old Bay "Disappointed with Local Newspaper's Material, Area Man Makes Stuff Up." So a headline might go in Baltimore's freshest news media outlet, The Baltimore Crab. Except that it's true -- and truth is verboten at what's billed as Baltimore's premier source for "fake news." The Crab aspires to the proud comic tradition of The Onion, the newspaper parody whose sharp insights and pitch-perfect zingers have earned it cultlike status worldwide. Together with Jon Stewart's increasingly popular Daily Show, these faux news pros have inspired imitators across the county.

John Tayman sits at a desk in his Maryland home, dragging a black-and-white picture of Norv Turner's head across the screen on his desktop computer. He settles the Oakland Raiders coach's noggin on top of a large overcoat, so that Turner looks like one of the scientists from the poplar Guinness television ad campaign. Then Tayman, the former owner of a Glen Burnie comic book store, gives Guinness Norv a voice. He leans forward toward a microphone mounted on his desk, mimicking the voice of one of the Guinness characters: "Brilliant!"

Aaron Peckham is, by his own definition, an "enginerd." But this is one software engineer who loves earthly argot as much as cyber-coding. Peckham, 24, compiles the cultish compendium of old-school and fresh-from-the-street slang known as Urbandictionary .com. Last month, the best of the site was published in the real world - or meatspace, as the cyber-dudes call it. Although the 300,000 Web entries are pared to 2,000 for Urban Dictionary: Fularious Street Slang Defined (Andrews McMeel, $12.95)

Writer Aaron Sorkin knows something about fighting with TV executives. Now he has decided to make a show about them - and has persuaded NBC to fork over big money for the idea. Two years after leaving The West Wing, the long-running White House drama he created for NBC, Sorkin clinched a deal with the network for Studio 7, a behind-the-scenes sendup of a late-night comedy series very much like NBC's Saturday Night Live. NBC, which beat out CBS for Studio 7 after a lively bidding war, will pay at least $1.6 million per one-hour episode and is aiming for the fall 2006 schedule, according to an executive familiar with the deal.

Has the Flying Spaghetti Monster touched you with His Noodly Appendage? Bobby Henderson hopes so. Henderson was honked off, to put it mildly, by those urging the teaching of Intelligent Design in high-school science courses (as is being considered in Kansas), a position recently supported by President Bush. After a 4 a.m. stroke of inspiration, the 25-year-old, who has a degree in physics from Oregon State University, conceived the Flying Spaghetti Monster as the fount of a new religion.

Several months ago, Jeff Poirier witnessed firsthand the power of the magnetic ribbon bumper sticker. Poirier and his friends, who now run the Boston-based Web site SupportOurRibbons.com, decided the stick-on ribbon-with-a-message fad was widespread enough to start a business mocking it. So earlier this year, they thought up four parody slogans - "Support Our Ribbons," "I Support More Troops Than You," "One Nation Under Ribbons" and "My Ribbon is Better Than Your Ribbon" - ordered a wholesale shipment and put them up for sale online.

First came Paul vs. John, which begat Dirk vs. Nasty, which begat Eric vs. Neil. Monty Python member Eric Idle and comedic songwriter Neil Innes were the close friends and collaborators who created the Rutles three decades ago as a parody of the Beatles -- a very popular band, you may recall, whose bitter breakup left close friends/collaborators Paul McCartney and John Lennon at each others' throats. In the wake of the recently released straight-to-DVD The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch, Idle, who plays McCartney stand-in Dirk McQuickly, and Innes, who plays Lennon stand-in Ron Nasty and wrote the Rutles' dead-on parody songs, are still going at it. "Neil is a clever and gifted singer and songwriter who's determined to be a failure, and his determination succeeds," volleyed Idle, who wrote and co-directed the 1978 NBC special All You Need Is Cash and made a virtual solo project out of the new sequel.