Yank Blog

Al added five more dates to his ever-expanding international Straight Outta Lynwood 2007 Tour!

June 2 Westbury, NY Westbury Music Fair
July 6 Cleveland, OH Plain Dealer Pavilion
July 7 Pittsburgh, PA The Amphitheatre at Sandcastle
Sept 8 Idaho Falls, ID Idaho Falls Civic Auditorium
Sept 14 Vancouver, BC River Rock Casino

That’s right, Canadian idiots*, you read that right. Al will be performing in Canada for the first time since 1999!! He’ll also be hitting my personal favorite venue, The Westbury Music Fair, again!! Hooray!!

(* I mean that in the most sincere affectionate way, of course, eh!)

Looks like Weird Al visited his wacky neighbor Tom Green again on his show with Pro Skater Mike Vallely. They sit down, yap about skateboard injuries, have some pie, yap with folks with Australia, etc… you know, the usual. Anyway, visit TomGreen.com and click on “Weird Al and Mike Vallely” on the right-hand side to watch the show.

Two matters of business to handle today.

First, our friends over at Make The Rock Hall “Weird”, the grassroots campaign to get “Weird Al” Yankovic inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, are now offering tour shirts and hoodies for sale.

And, best of all, all proceeds from the sale of the tour shirts will go to the Weird Al Star Fund. The shirts are now offered exclusively at the Star Fund’s Cafepress shop, and like all of our merchandise, the shirts have full approval of Al’s management. So not only do you get a cool and pretty unique piece of Al clothing, but you also get to support two international grassroots fan efforts!

The Rock Hall campaign is still looking for petition volunteers, so if you’re planning of attending any Weird Al concerts this spring or summer, or just looking to get out and meet new Al fans, stop by their website and learn how you can help.

The second matter of business is a challenge issued by Sexy Sexy Joe Lavelle over on the Weird Al Forum. I won’t repost it here, since the formatting wouldn’t work out all that great, but he makes some excellent points. When you read it, I think you’ll agree. And the response has been pretty good so far, but we still have a way to go. We need more volunteers to take the Joe Lavelle Challenge.

Well, the Grammy judges didn’t show a lot of love for Al this year, but YOU can express your deep, stalker-like, affections to your significant other with these Weird Al-inspired Candy Hearts from Weird ALvatars, Inc.

What Al-inspired sweet nothings would YOU like to see etched onto a chalky confection? Personally, I’d like to see this amongst a box of real conversation hearts:

Hot off the presses, more tour dates just announced on WeirdAl.com:

May 2 Glen Allen, VA Innsbruck Pavilion
May 8 Baltimore, MD Ram’s Head Live
July 3 Milwaukee, WI Summerfest
July 5 Detroit, MI Comerica Taste Festival
Aug 30 Pueblo, CO Colorado State Fair
Aug 31 Denver, CO City Lights Pavilion
Sep 3 Sacramento, CA California State Fair

Happy Birthday Nina!

(and a belated Happy Anniversary to Al and Suzanne!)

Good luck at the Grammys tonight!

Today Weird Al Star Fund got notice that the Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce raised the price to sponsor a new star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame to $25,000. We’re waiting on word from the Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce regarding what exactly this means for our nomination for Al.

The price hike came as a surprise to us very late in the game. We had no advance warning. And since this year’s nominations are due in May, this doesn’t give us a lot of time to react. Had we known, we would have had a different game plan over the past 9 months. While we never officially stopped raising money or selling item on our Cafepress shop, you probably noticed we seriously ramped down our sales pitch after we raised $15,000 last May. Therefore we’re pretty much in the same financial situation that we were in last May.

We’re looking at all the options, and I’d love to hear your thoughts too. Meanwhile, we’re still accepting donations at www.weirdalstar.com and we’re still selling lots of great original licensed Al merchandise at www.cafepress.com/weirdalstar, so pick some up now, this way you’re all ready for Al’s upcoming concerts this spring and summer. We’ll try to get up some new merchandise as soon as possible too.

I’ll pass along any further information as soon as I can.

Nerds Rejoice – “Weird Al” talks Grammy noms  -  Rolling Stone magazine brings us a great interview with Al about his recent Grammy nominations.

Here’s some late breaking news from WeirdAl.com:

OVEN FRESH!
Al’s video for "I’ll Sue Ya" is now in rotation on Fuse, and featured on their show "Oven Fresh"! If you’d like to see it stay in rotation, please be sure to vote for it!

Vote early, vote often!

From Weird Al’s MySpace:

Pssssst! Hey! Ya wanna buy a Weird Al ringtone?

My personal favorite is the one actually titled “Ring Tone”.