(a stunned Coach Madden tries to explain to Country’s Newest Hitmaker that Tinactic is only to be used topically)

The New York Times’ Neil Genzlinger on Rick Moranis’ new country CD.

His album, “The Agoraphobic Cowboy,” 13 sly songs delivered in deadpan style atop some intricate string-playing, went on sale this month. Those who know Mr. Moranis as the bespectacled father of the “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” movies, or as Dark Helmet in Mel Brooks’s “Spaceballs,” or as Bob McKenzie of the dim-bulb Canadian comedy team the McKenzie Brothers, may have a hard time picturing it, and they should: Mr. Moranis is a long way from the rugged, shaggy country look of Alan Jackson or Toby Keith.

“For some reason I just started writing these songs,” said Mr. Moranis, 52, who is from Toronto but has lived in New York for 20 years. “And I was singing them to a couple of friends on the phone. After I had three or four, they started saying to me that I should do something with them.”

So he did, and the result is an album of original songs that might strike some as mere novelties, others as sublime comic gems. Sure, there are lyrics about booze and babes, but there’s an opening track, “Nine More Gallons,” whose chorus drops references to Truffaut and Nicholson:

“Two more times a lady,

Three more hundred blows,

Four more easy pieces,

Five more days on the road.

Seven more days a week, now,

Eight more lives, a cat,

Nine more gallons and I’ll have me a hat.”