"But he's also responsible for my single most-favorite one-panel cartoon ever."

102 years old, and still gone much too soon. RIP to one of my all-time heroes, the great Al Jaffee. pic.twitter.com/hJ4XhcoCGl

— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) April 10, 2023

"The more serious that an artist takes themselves, the easier it is to lampoon them, because it doesn’t take much to pop the bubble of pretentiousness."

"And thankfully [Nirvana had] a good sense of humor about it, too. But there are some songs that people are just, like, waiting for the Weird Al treatment: 'Oh, Al’s going to step in and, like, take this down a peg.'... [S]ometimes my parody didn’t work so well, because I was parodying something that was already perceived as not all that serious.... Most artists in pop culture are very serious.... But I always like to make sure that the artist and songwriters feel respected."

Said Weird Al, quoted in "How Weird Al Spoofed Himself/In a new bio-pic, the singer applies his talents to a surprising subject: his own rise to stardom" (The New Yorker).

Al reveals that the reason Daniel Radcliffe was chosen to play the lead in the bio-pic is that he'd done this...

 

We watched "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story."

Just watch the trailer and you'll easily see if this movie is for you:

We laughed a lot. I especially liked the big scene early on that had a lot of celebrities — including Andy Warhol (played by Conan O'Brien) and Salvador Dalí. Rainn Wilson plays Dr. Demento, and Jack Black plays Wolfman Jack. Madonna is an important character — played by Evan Rachel Wood. Al is played by Daniel Radcliffe, and Weird Al himself plays a stern record executive. 

We streamed it on the Roku Channel, and it was interrupted by commercials — as you might expect, a ton of political commercials. I don't know how I put up with it, because I normally watch zero commercials — other than in front of YouTube videos, like that embedded clip itself. I saw an absurd number of commercials related to Mandela Barnes... and don't remember a damned thing about them. Why would I vote based on commercials?

"As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I take a look at my life and realize there’s nothin’ left."

Coolio has died, at the age of 59.

 

From the NYT obituary:

He told The Independent in 1997 that as a child, he would play board games with his single mother, to whom he later dedicated his success. After a turbulent youth — the bookish, asthmatic child became a teenage gang member, juvenile offender and drug addict — Coolio worked as a volunteer firefighter.

In his 20s, he moved to San Jose to live with his father and fight fires with the California Department of Forestry.... There, he became more spiritual. He later credited Christianity for helping him overcome his addiction to crack....

“Gangsta’s Paradise” had a vast cultural imprint, even spawning a parody in Weird Al Yankovic’s “Amish Paradise” that replaced the streets with pastoral lyrics about churning butter and selling quilts.

Thanksgiving with Weird Al.

Just catching up on some emails this morning. pic.twitter.com/RPwp3EMmt6

— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) November 25, 2021

"I was 12 years old in the 9th grade - younger than my classmates, and (as you may possibly be able to imagine) pretty awkward, shy and nerdy.

"And I had a crush on Patrice Y., the girl who sat directly in front of me in math class (because the seats were all arranged in alphabetical order for some arbitrary reason)...."

A very cheerful story from Weird Al Yankovic (at Facebook). Go read it and be heartwarmed.

"The Murder Hornets Come Out at Midnight."

"Late night congress is great stuff! I'm switching between Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock and the impeachment hearings and it's all starting to make sense."

Said Mr. Forward in last night's "Are you watching the impeachment theater?/I walked out."

Me, I conked out early, got a full night's sleep, and am up at 3 a.m. to view the wreckage.

Headlines on the front page of the NYT:

Senate Adopts Framework After Acrimonious Debate

Republicans blocked Democrats’ efforts to subpoena documents and seek testimony, including from John Bolton. Witnesses could still be summoned later.

Chief Justice John Roberts admonished the House impeachment managers and President Trump’s lawyers to “remember where they are.”

At Davos, Trump Scoffs at Trial and ‘Prophets of Doom’/President Trump appeared at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on the day his trial began.

Impeachment Trial Begins in Acrimony/Republicans made last-minute changes to their proposed rules to placate moderates, but they held together to turn back Democratic proposals.

The headlines kept changing on me, and I don't think "Acrimonious" and "Acrimony" were up at the same time, but I infer that they wanted a negative word to describe the emotional atmosphere and they converged on "acrimony."

"Acrimony" is "anger and bitterness: harsh or biting sharpness especially of words, manner, or feelings." It's the same root as "acrid," which is used to describe a taste or smell.

Remember smellovision?



PLUS: "They'll have to have subtitles for the smelling impaired." Hey, thanks for thinking of me, Weird Al.

AND: The word "acrimony" also appears in the NYT headline, "‘Nobody Likes Him’: Hillary Clinton Risks a Party Split Over Bernie Sanders," which went up yesterday, and that's intraparty acrimony:

Since Mr. Sanders endorsed Mrs. Clinton in July 2016, the acrimony between the two camps has lingered. Mrs. Clinton and her former aides maintain that his endorsement came too late and was too lukewarm to truly unify the party. Some supporters of Mr. Sanders still argue that the Democratic National Committee “rigged” the rules to help her secure the nomination.

"Jeopardy!" genius James Holzhaeur — amusingly modest on Twitter — adopts a Weird Al "I Lost on Jeopardy" avatar.

I just noticed this:



I went to his feed to look for this (also amusingly modest):

I respect how great the @warriors are, but it’s boring seeing the same team win every ti...ohhh, I get it now

— James Holzhauer (@James_Holzhauer) June 8, 2019

And here's the great Weird Al parody of a song no one would remember without the parody (but is actually cheesily enjoyable):



The Weird Al song predates the Alex Trebek version of the ancient game show. And:

The song has been referenced several times on the game show itself, including once as a category on the current Alex Trebek-hosted version, and later when Yankovic appeared on Rock & Roll Jeopardy!....

The video takes place on a re-creation of the original set from the 1964-75 version of the quiz show Jeopardy! (for some reason, the exclamation point used in the show's original logo was missing). The video also depicted a "behind-the-scenes" look at the show, and featured cameo appearances by original Jeopardy! host Art Fleming and announcer Don Pardo, Yankovic's mentor, Dr. Demento, members of Yankovic's band, his real-life parents and a brief cameo by Greg Kihn [writer of the original song, "(Our Love's in) Jeopardy"] at the end....

Yankovic lands in the back seat of an Alfa Romeo Spyder convertible driven by Kihn himself, with the license plate reading "LOSER". In the original ["(Our Love's in) Jeopardy" video, Kihn drives away with a female bride in an MG MGB convertible, with the license plate reading "LIPS"...

"A Jackson, Miss., neighborhood has been perplexed by the discovery of bowls of mashed potatoes that turned up in mailboxes, on door steps and on top of cars this week."

The Washington Post reports.

“What does it mean?” local television station WLBT wondered. “And will they strike again?”

The inscrutable tubers appear to have first been discovered by residents of the historic Belhaven neighborhood on Tuesday morning.....

“Mississippi’s most creative individuals have found their way to Greater Belhaven,” notes the American Planning Association. “Among the residents are celebrated writers, artists, and musicians.”...

The most likely explanation, and the least interesting one, is that someone came up with a weird idea for a practical joke....

Of course, it means something. And it's important....



It means... aliens...

"As a 19-year-old, her former professor concludes, Melania clearly had ambition to match her intelligence."

"If not she could have chosen a much easier academic path instead of one that demanded proficiency in engineering, statics and dynamics. 'She passed exams on construction engineering and statics; she managed to complete an experiment and defend her paper at the faculty,' Vogelnik told us. To write her paper, Melania had to understand the effects of pressure, visualize a structure, build a wooden model, take photographs of it, describe the experiment in a way that showed knowledge of urban architecture and put it all together in a book... But then, 'at the end of the first year she did not show up at the exam,' the professor recalls. 'She must have realized that it would take her six to seven more years of studies before she could start making good money as an architect.' Melania had decided to become a model, which is also a fiercely competitive field....."

From "Young Melania: From Model Student to Cover Girl/The first lady might have been a talented architect or designer, but modeling took her in a different direction" (The Daily Beast).

Also from the article, this quote from her old professor: "If only she visited us in Slovenia, people would treat her like a queen. It also says she's "the world’s most famous living Slovene," which made me wonder who are the famous dead Slovenes? There's a list, of course, at Wikipedia. Wikipedia is fantastic at lists like this — "List of Slovenes." The only ones I know are Peter Handke and (hmmm) Mickey Dolenz. And the Senators Tom Harkin and Amy Klobuchar. But none of them was dead at the time The Daily Beast proclaimed Melania the world’s most famous living Slovene.

Among the dead Slovenians is Frankie Yankovic:



Not more famous than Melania, I think. "Known as 'America's Polka King,' Yankovic was considered the premier artist to play in the Slovenian style during his long career. He is not related to fellow accordionist Weird Al Yankovic...."

Apparently, Weird Al is not of Slovenian descent. But Weird Al's parents decided that he should play the accordion because he had the same last name as Frankie Yankovic. I learned that from a list of 20 things about Weird Al (at Mental Floss), where I also learned that Michael Jackson was a big fan but Prince not only rejected getting parodied, he even tried to require Al not to look at him.

ADDED: Mickey Dolenz was born in Los Angeles, but his father George, an actor (the one on the right)...



... was born in the Slovene sector of Trieste, which was at the time in Austria-Hungary and is now in Italy.

"Earlier today, Lin-Manuel Miranda fulfilled his ultimate childhood fantasy by releasing 'Weird Al' Yankovic's 'The Hamilton Polka.'"

"The hysterical tune, which manages to cram all of Hamilton into a frenetic five-minute polka, is the latest installment in Miranda's ongoing Hamildrop series, where artists like the Decemberists, Nas, Dave East and Aloe Blacc put their own spin on songs from his Broadway musical," Rolling Stone reports, with an interview of Al and Miranda:

Let's go through the history here. Lin, tell me your first memory of hearing "Weird Al" music when you were younger.

Miranda: Oh, God. My first memory was hearing "Fat," which is a spoof of "Bad," and like most "Weird Al" fans you discover that there is a catalog and this isn't a one-off. "Oh, my God. There's tons of these." I remember asking my parents for "Weird Al" albums for Christmas and I remember the Christmas morning. There were all these cassettes, Dare to Be Stupid, Polka Party, In 3-D. I kinda got the mother lode all at once. And that's the rest of my childhood right here.

At that point, did you know the songs he was spoofing?

Miranda: To this day, I've never heard "Lola" by the Kinks. To this day I've never heard it!

Yankovic: Wow!

Yeah, wow. I agree with Al. How can you never have heard "Lola"? Never listened to the radio? Anyway, here's "The Hamilton Polka":

Weird Al-evator.

Yesterday, after reading the Washington Post article about Weird Al, I watched his video "Tacky," which — the article explains — was made in a single unedited shot that includes a ride down an elevator:



Here's the Pharrell Williams video it parodies, which is charmingly entertaining but not as inventive photographically. You can watch the 2 videos playing side by side here. There's also a video at the WaPo link with background on the making of "Tacky," where we learn that the room we see in that freeze frame is also in "The Big Lebowski."

Last night, I dreamed I needed to get around in a strange hotel with an unusual, confusing elevator. I said "The hotel had a weird elevator... a weird al-evator."

"Church was every Sunday and sleepovers were forbidden, as was anything even remotely risque."

"Yankovic remembers an issue of TV Guide arriving at the house that contained a photograph of an actress in a bikini. Mary took out a felt pen to fill out the suit. Did he ever do drugs? No. Because his parents told him not to."

From "Was ‘Weird Al’ the real star all along?/After nearly 40 years of parodying celebrities, the accordion-playing nerd has become a legend in his own right"(WaPo).

I've kind of been ignoring these new Weird Al things because I don't know the underlying music anymore...

... but here's his latest, "First World Problems:



And... it's apparent your grammar's errant:



ADDED: Did you know that Coolio apologized?

When I asked people what I should ask Coolio, the most common question I got, the thing most people seem to want to know: Do you still have beef with Weird Al?

Fuck no, man, I let that go so long ago. Let me say this: I apologized to Weird Al a long time ago and I was wrong. Y’all remember that, everybody out there who reads this shit. Real men and real people should be able to admit when they’re wrong and I was wrong, bro. Come on, who the fuck am I, bro? He did parodies of Michael Jackson, he did parodies of all kinds of people and I took offense to it because I was being cocky and shit and being stupid and I was wrong and I should’ve embraced that shit and went with it. I listened to it a couple years after that and it’s actually funny as shit. It’s one of those things where I made a wrong call and nobody stopped me. That’s one thing I’m still upset about—my management at the time. Somebody should’ve stopped me from making that statement because it was dumb. And I think it hurt me a little bit. It made me seem stupid.

In case you missed it, all those many years ago, here's Weird Al's "Amish Paradise," and here's Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise."

"Things I Learned in My Twenty-Four Hour Althouse Comment Withdrawal."

From betamax3000 (at 12 midnight):

• the Shakes -- they Get Real Bad;

• Twenty-Four Hours is A Long Period of Time When You Deny Yourself;

• the Baby Spiders are Real;

• I Love the Commenters: Read All the Posts, All Day, Tongue Bound, and Realized in Retrospect that -- Perhaps -- I Occasionally Suck Too Much Oxygen From the Room;

• Still Don't Quite Get Central Time;

• the Scientology "No Fear' Paradigm Crosses Neuropaths with Cruel Neutrality: when I get it Down to Four Paragraphs I Will Thrust it Sideways Into a Thread about Gabe Kaplan;

• it -- Technically -- is Not a Burning Sensation.

I do not discount the role of  El Pollo Raylan's summoning: "Beta come back!" — which took us to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind.

Lem sighed relief:

I think I can say tonight that we are in Betamax debt. From now on it will be possible to risk loosing wifi knowing that it is a survivable non-event thanks to the courage and determination of one man. and his name is Betamax.

And:

Still Don't Quite Get Central Time;

Its like Althouse politics, I think.

That's exactly right. And then betamax3000 said:

At the Metaphorical Althouse Denny's I want More hash Browns and Non-Dairy Creamer: I am building a Mountain.

And I say: This means something. This is important.



Loose the WiFi!

"A new reality TV show has revealed the underworld of the seemingly modest Amish community of Pennsylvania..."

"...  complete with prostitutes, blackmail and assault rifles."

The Discovery Channel's 'Amish Mafia' follows Lebanon Levi and his fellow thugs as they attempt to maintain order in the insular religious community of Lancaster, beneath the veil of the supposedly idyllic lifestyles.

Sounds like a fictional comedy show... and I feel like I've seen this before in a Weird Al video. (Video after the jump.)

CNN tried to extract a colorful quote about debate prep from Paul Ryan

Interviewed about his debate prep, Ryan said "I do a lot of reading, that's what I've always done -- briefings and reading," which CNN duly quotes. Then it's on to hunting. How does he prepare for deer hunting? The interviewer has background info from a friend of Ryan's:

The friend said that before Ryan goes hunting he washes his clothes in unscented detergent, takes a shower with unscented soap and sprays unscented material on his boots -- all steps that hunters are known to take generally, but Ryan takes it to a completely different level.

"If you're into archery and bow hunting, that's the way to do it and be successful. I like the strategy of bow hunting and it takes a lot of preparation and I do take it seriously because I am much more successful if I do things properly and prepare the right way," Ryan said.

"I have always just believed that if you're going to do something, do it well."

He's invited to connect this to debate prep (presumably with the hope that he'll say something more colorful than I read a lot):

"This stage is kind of new for me and I'm taking it very seriously," he replied. "I'm just doing my homework and studying the issues and I'll know he'll come and attack us. The problem he has is he has Barack Obama's record to run on."

I think he just mostly said I read a lot again. Nice try CNN. Maybe go interview a friend of Ryan's about Ryan's pre-Biden shower routine. Any relevant aromatherapy? Any "material" sprayed on his shoes? Unscented... scented... Maybe Ryan could stink it up and thereby trick his prey into screwing his face into a disgusted sneer of some kind. We the viewers have television — not the once-dreamed-of smellovision — so the ruse would go undetected. Suddenly, Biden's nice-guy image erodes.

Actually, some of us are still dreaming:



"In the future we will be picking our political leaders at least partially based on their smell," says Weird Al.

Weird Al was born this way.

And as for Lady Gaga, maybe she was born that way.

ADDED: The link on "that way," above, was wrong. Try it now! It's funny.