Ways to Rhyme Los Angeles Meet With No Success
Recently I stated unequivocally that nothing rhymes with Los Angeles. I should have stood in bed. I have received so many verses with alleged rhymes for Los Angeles that if they were laid end to end, they would stretch across the Vincent Thomas Bridge.
Unfortunately, their attempts at rhyming Los Angeles have driven the authors into such literary contortions that the results are not as good as the terse verses I have been publishing here.
Several sought to rhyme Los Angeles by distorting its pronunciation, so that it comes out alternately Loss-ange-uh-lus (the way most of us say it), Los ange-uh- leez or Los ange-uh- liss . The old Los Ang-gul- us , which was favored by Mayor Sam Yorty, apparently is obsolete.
Edward C. Howatt sends verses by a friend, Max Levine, using all three pronunciations.
As you might guess,
The Spaniards bless
The lady of Los Angeles.
Rhyming the last syllable is not enough.
And they can find,
If so inclined,
A lovely miss
To hug and kiss
Somewhere in Los Angeles.
Same shortcoming.
And tourists please
To take their ease
By going to Los Angeles
Kit Monroe offers this:
I live in the city Los Angeles,
A place full of richies and wanna-bes.
A mad urban sprawl
Smog, freeways and all
Its lure is a matter of mysteries
Kit says she spent five minutes on that one. She should have spent 10.
Ken P. Johnson undertakes the impossible task of rhyming two words for which there are no rhymes.
Now Los Angeles
Is oran’ ge-less.
That verse has one virtue. It’s true.
A popular gambit was the attempt to rhyme evangelist , in the person of the late flamboyant Aimee Semple McPherson, with Los Angeles. This one is from Jack A. Dahlstrum of Palm Desert.
Mr. Smith declared,
In the Los Angeles Times
The name Los Angeles
Has no rhymes
But he forgot
Some L.A. history,
A prominent lady’s
Tijuana mystery.
Her name was Aimee,
A renowned evangelist,
And yes, my friend,
She was from Los Angeles.
Kathy and Tony Peyser were brief but no better.
Aimee Semple McPherson
A famous person,
Lived in Los Angeles,
Was an evangelis
Robert Brigham of Manhattan Beach admits he just came “close.”
Aimee Semple McPherson
Was a most significant person
A ‘20s and ‘30s evangelist
Known not just in Los Angeles
Brigham says he and his wife are hankering to move to Orange, and he throws in a verse just to show how difficult orange is to rhyme.
Hey, there, Orange:
You’d better oil that door hinge
So you can open wide for me and my mate
C. Dickinson Hill tries rhyming two pronunciations, with limited success.
To most of us, “Loss Angelus”
Is how the name is trounced;
But, if you please, Los Angeleez
Rhymes well when well-pronounced
Pat Rogers combines a bad rhyme with a dubious social comment.
Living in Los Angeles
A place to live and work,
Only they may hand you less,
And your boss will be a jerk
In a series of verses D. Cowan rhymes (if you can call it that) Los Angeles, spelled as required, with breeze, expertise, ambergris, abyss, amiss, ridiculous, incongruous, more or less, toxic stress, happiness and mess --none with great success.
Robert Hewitson Wells of Canoga Park says: “You jest, of course,” and submits this one, which shows how impossible it is:
Seattle’s where we tanned the less;
Smog chokes us in Los Angeles,
But I can tell you nonetheless
We’ll live here ‘til we’re gone, I guess
Dorothea Alpert of Rancho Palos Verdes seems to be commenting on our vivid life style, as well as demonstrating the impossibility of rhyming Los Angeles.
I once met a man in Los Angeles
Whose notions on sex were new-fangalous.
We went to the plaza
To try them hap-hazza
And a cop had to come and untangle us.
And that’s as close as you can get.