Catching up with Weird Al

Thanks to my old friend Snedcat, I have an easy post for today, and that's good, because Baby Van Horn seems to be most active in the morning, like her Dad. (Although she's fussy -- so she's also, like her Dad, not a typical "morning person," so far, at least.)

That said, I'm enjoying fatherhood far more than I expected, but today's original post idea, on "Being a Dad" will have to wait for some other time, when I can think and write undisturbed. Suffice it to say for now that, since I am not exactly a "baby person," I am pleasantly astounded at what a fool I am for my baby daughter. I smile every time I see that tiny little girl. That said, I'm grateful to have something I can work on intermittently this morning.

In any event, I remarked some time back that, "I look forward to ... catching up on many years of Weird Al [Yankovic] parodies." A rather lengthy interview of Weird Al by The A.V. Club that Snedcat mentioned recently provides a good opportunity to do just that, as well as to learn more about the artist and the thinking behind some of his parodies, videos of which are interspersed throughout.

From late in the interview comes the following anecdote about the first time Yankovic heard himself on the air:

I was in my bedroom, living at home with my folks, listening to the Dr. Demento Show, as I did every Sunday night, and the song came on. It took me several seconds for my brain to acknowledge it, because I recognized it was my song, but I thought, "How did my tape player get turned on?" and when I put the pieces together and I realized that my song was actually coming out of the speakers and it was on the radio and other people were hearing it too, I think I did some kind of giddy jig around the house, and started screaming my head off. [Laughs.] Like everything you’ve seen in the movies, like in That Thing You Do! where they hear their song on the radio for the first time; pretty much like that. Like running down the street going, "WAHH! I'm on the radio!" [Laughs.]

Quickly scrolling through, I count thirty embedded videos, mostly for songs I have not heard yet. Even if I didn't have other things to do, it would take me a while to go through even this whirlwind tour of the work of that prolific parodist. That's a nice problem to have.

-- CAV