Ackroyd uses typical postmodern techniques, such as playfulness, intertextuality, pastiche, metafiction and temporal distortion. It is a musical pastiche (or "style parody") of the band Devo. Intertextual figures include&colon; allusion, quotation, calque, plagiarism, translation, "pastiche" and parody. Hypertexts may take a variety of forms including imitation, parody, and pastiche. Both allusion and pastiche are mechanisms of intertextuality. The style of the musical is comic pastiche. Cullen called the story "amusing Sherlock Holmes pastiche". The novel is a pastiche of interwoven stories. Gregory occasionally performs with the jazz band Pastiche. It is an experimental novel which takes the form of a pastiche of travel writing. Some critics dismiss this painting as a fake or crude pastiche. David H. Lewis calls it "a bizarre pastiche of limping mediocracy". An alternate Donovan appears in the Elseworlds story "The Superman Monster", a "Frankenstein" pastiche. Yankovic later affirmed that Oswalt was referring to his Pixies pastiche. For this reason, Adler is the frequent subject of pastiche writing.