Yank Blog

From the Boston Globe:  White, Nerdy, and Here to Stay

An editorial by James Parker where he looks into the history of Weird Al, dissects his lyrics, and tries to find out the secret to his long-lasting success, especially how his popularity seems to be stronger than ever.

On a brighter note, today you probably caught news of Al on the front page of CNN.com (linking to the same article Yank Blog mentioned yesterday) and also on Yahoo.com where in the Buzz Central section, they have a very nice birthday tribute to Al. Heh heh, cute video made by the host when he was a kid.

If you’re on MySpace and you received an invite to a supposed “Free Airfare and Tickets to a Show in VEGAS!”… Do NOT respond to this! It is not from Al, there is no show in Vegas, and your email will be added to a spam list. You can tell by looking at the invite sender’s profile. It doesn’t go to Al’s MySpace page, but rather a private profile. Al himself just put up a bulletin about it:

Hey everybody,

Apparently there is some creep out there pretending to be me, and he has been spamming my MySpace friends list with offers to see me in Las Vegas if people sign up for a lot of garbage online.

Just to be clear, this is definitely NOT ME. This is an IMPOSTOR, and we are looking into having his MySpace account yanked, after which he will hopefully be flogged and tortured.

I’m very sorry if any of you were inconvenienced by this. Really, I don’t suck.

Thanks,
Al Yankovic

Apparently, Al’s not the only celebrity to be hit by this. Paris Hilton has also been the subject of this scam. Ah, at last she’s back in the news.

Anyway, remember to stay alert whenever you get something online that seems too good to be true, because it usually is.

It’s October 23rd and you know what that means! It’s time to clean out the 1000-year-old corn cob, dismantle your replica of the Twine Ball for the season, and of course, wish your favorite accordion-playing, parody-writing, poodle-wearing singer a very happy birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WEIRD AL!

On this day forty years ago, a young Alfred Matthew Yankovic takes his very first accordion lesson, and the world has been a brighter place ever since. Happy Anniversary Al!

From the Entertainment section of Yahoo News, Revenge of the “Nerdy” for spoof artist Yankovic. I have to say, it brought a smile to my face to read that when Al heard his album had hit No. 10 on the Billboard 200, he literally danced a little jig. That must’ve been a sight to see. I also liked how Al credits online sites like MySpace, YouTube and iTunes and how they have been great for him:

“I’d kind of written off the chance of ever having another hit single, since record labels weren’t really releasing commercial ones,” Yankovic says. “As much as people are griping about the Internet taking sales away from artists, it’s been a huge promotional tool for me.”

Here’s a fun radio interview with the morning news team on Southern Californian radio station KNX1070. They also have the entire interview on their podcast, so you should be able to download it at this address: http://podcast.knx1070.com/knx/41071.mp3

A guy at work sent me this article written by Sam Anderson. It’s perhaps the best article I’ve ever read about Al, and beleive me, I’ve read more than my fair share.

Troubadork

His real medium wasn’t music, it was fame—he was a parasite of ubiquity. Suddenly, he was not just tweaking trite lyrics and catchy melodies, but lampooning the whole overwhelming mythology of pop: the look, the movements, the feeling. “Eat It” (1984) transposed Jackson’s absurd street-fighting fantasies into the harmless world of suburban mealtime; “Like a Surgeon” (1985) imported Madonna’s dirty, quasi-religious writhing into an antiseptic, scrub-colored hospital; and “Fat” (1989) transferred Jackson’s tough-talking bravado onto, well, gigantically fat people.

And I love this quote by Chamillionaire:

Texas rapper Chamillionaire told the Houston Chronicle recently: “It’s one thing to go platinum. Where do you go from there? Then Weird Al calls.”

And Sam Anderson sums it up nicely:

Weird Al’s persona—the genuine, lovable dork—has been bulletproof for 25 years because, I suspect, it’s authentic. [...] He’s not like them, he’s like us. To the millions of us flitting around the edges of hipness, he is our Geek Bard, our Troubadork.

Yes. Yes, he is. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Weird Al makes a heartfelt plea.

(source)

Now the kiddies can display their white and nerdiest as well as the next.  Youth sizes of the hoodies are available!  (source)

And now for some reminders…

Al will be signing autographs this Friday and Saturday at the Spike and Mike festival at La Jolla, California.  You must be 18 or older to attend.

Less than two days left to vote for your favorite artist on AOL’s Face-Off.  As of this writing Al is winning with 64.4% of the votes.

And one week left to submit your video to Yahoo Music’s Get Your Freak On.