Backblog

Well, I've had a backlog of things I wanted to blog about (a backblog?) and now that it's a snowed-in kind of weekend, may as well finally get around to blogging about it.

I went into the city about a week ago.  Didn't do much of note.  And besides, the main purpose of blogging about my days in the city is plug the review of the latest movie I saw.  So, I went into the city a week ago to catch Black Panther.

Black Panther is awesome, you guys.  I mean, I'm on board for pretty much anything Marvel does at this point, so I knew I was going to like it.  Taking place shortly after the events of Captain America: Civil War, our hero, T'Challa, is returning home to Wakanda to officially be crowned king.

But, the nation of Wakanda is at a crossroads.  Thanks to the country sitting on a massive deposit of vibranium -- the fictional metal that Captain America's shield is made of -- Wakanda is actually the most technologically advanced country in the world.  But, they have chosen to hide this fact for centuries for fear that their technological wonders would fall into the wrong hands.  The wrong hands being our villains, the international arms dealer Ulysses Klaue and soldier of fortune Erik Killmonger.  And it's up to T'Challa, the Black Panther, to protect Wakanda from these threats and best plot a future for Wakanda.

This is a film with a very beautiful supporting cast.  The true scene stealer is Shuri, T'Challa's kid sister and Wakanda's chief scientist.  She's responsible for a lot of Wakanda's technological marvels, and she's the Q to T'Challa's James Bond.  And their sassy brother/sister banter is just perfect.  Also fun is M'Baku, leader of the Jabari tribe, who never pledged loyalty to the throne of Wakanda.  While he is a grim and serious defender of his people, M'Baku also has just enough of a sense of humour to mess with his rivals.

And lets not forget our villain, Killmonger.  It seems with Killmonger, Marvel is on their way to beating their villain problem, as they finally take the time to develop Killmonger and give us motivations for his villainy.  He's a great villain with a plan that's not so evil, when  you see things from his point of view.

So, yeah.  I don't need to tell you to go see it because it's kicking all kinds of butt at the box office.  I give it 3.5 out of 4 Nibs.  Full review on the website.

Oh, and while also in the city, I broke down and bought the first in the latest from Lego in the Marvel Micro Minis collection.  These little tiny Lego kits feature two go-karts piloted by a Marvel hero.  I wound up collecting all of last  year's, and I got the first for this  year's, which is Thor vs. Loki.

I succumbed. As obsessed about in my blog a couple weeks ago, it’s the next batch of Marvel LEGO Karts. It’s Thor vs. Loki.

A post shared by Mark Cappis (@chaosinabox) on Feb 25, 2018 at 3:05pm PST

I like the tiny detailing in these sets.  As you can see in the Thor vs. Loki set, the go-karts are modeled after their helmets.  I went to the dentist back on Thursday, and afterwards I picked up Star Lord vs. Nebula, so of course, their go-karts are modeled after their respective ships in Guardians of the Galaxy.  And then, some highlights from last year's series, Wolverine's is modeled on the Blackbird, Thanos's is modeled on the Infinity Gauntlet, Spider-Man's is based on his infamous Spider-Mobile....  They're just cute.  Kinda makes me nostalgic for the legendary Muppet Babies Happy Meal Toys from the 1980s.

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So, what am I binging these days?  As my morning guy brought up on the air the other day, I've signed up for Netflix, CraveTV, and Amazon Prime Video.  "How do you keep track of everything you're binging?" he asks.  Well, it's tough.  I'll add something to my list, then when i go back to watch it seven months later, it's gone.  So, yeah.  You can probably blame me for the cancellation of Sense8, because that's been high on my list for a while now, but I haven't gotten to it.

Well, the main reason I finally signed up for Amazon Prime was for two of their originals.  First up was The Tick.  Ben Edlund gives us the third TV iteration of his superhero spoof, and this time out, he gives us a semi-serious take on the material.  Don't get me wrong, the Tick is still the Tick, and it still skewers many superhero tropes, but it's got a pretty serious plot going on and gives Arthur some pretty serious issues to deal with.  I kind of wish they stuck with what they were hinting at in the pilot, which was making the Tick the Tyler Durden to Arthur's nameless narrator, but it's still good.  Part 2 of season 1 just dropped, and I'm about halfway through that second half.

After that, the other original that I wanted to check out, American Gods.  I really enjoyed Neil Gaiman's fantasy epic back in the day, and was really looking forward to the TV adaptation, especially since it was brought to the TV screen by Bryan Fuller, who gave me two of my favourite cult classic TV shows, Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies.  When I read the book in the day, and started imagining the intersection of the world of gods and the mortal world, I only expected a slightly heightened version of the real world.  Like the really good episodes of The X-Files.  But Fuller and his crew, they really pushing things far, and the world of gods really does seem dreamlike.  My only complaint.  I was wondering how they were going to get an entire series out of the book, even though the book is pretty dense to begin with.  But at the end of season 1, I realized that Season 1 was pretty much just the first 6 chapters with a whole bunch of filler.  So they'll be able to stretch it out quite a bit.

Then I flipped over to CraveTV.  They have the first three season of Game of Thrones now, but instead of giving that a shot, I decided to go with The Handmaid's Tale.  I read The Handmaid's Tale at around the same time I read American Gods, and it stuck with me.  It's interesting comparing the two TV series.  Season 1 of The Handmaid's Tale pretty much is an adaptation of the book, but they flesh out several supporting characters and add new subplots and expand the universe in such a way that it never feels like filler.  And I loved its use of music.

Perhaps my most unexpected binge, though, was I discovered that Amazon Prime has New Captain Scarlett.  I'd been curious about this cartoon when it premiered back in 2005, but it never made it out of the UK.  Legendary TV producer Gerry Anderson produced this reboot of one of his classic Supermarionation shows from the 1960s, and it wound up being his final production.

For those who've never heard of Captain Scarlett, or the 1960s original, Captain Scarlett and the Mysterons, this is our story.  Earth is under attack by an alien race known as the Mysterons.  The Mysterons chief weapon is their complete mastery of matter.  Once they destroy something, they can rebuild it and take control of it.  Once they kill someone, they can resurrect that person as an agent completely loyal to the Mysteron cause.

Leading the fight against the Mysterons:  Spectrum, a SHIELD-like organization.  They even have a flying commander centre, Cloudbase (Skybase in the reboot), hovering at 40,000 feet above the Earth's surface.  They have secret caches of weapons all across the globe.  Their top agents have a code name based on a colour.  And they even have their own fighter squadron, the Angels, where all the pilots are women.

Our hero, Captain Scarlett.  Scarlett was one of the first to fall at the hands of the Mysterons.  Somehow, his consciousness survived the Mysteron resurrection process.  He was able to break free of Mysteron control and rejoin the side of good.  But the Mysterons left him with a gift.  As a side effect of the resurrection process, Captain Scarlett is now blessed with "retro-metabolism," a Wolverine-style healing factor.  Rendering him practically indestructible, Scarlett's suicidal tactics have made him Spectrum's top agent, and a dangerous enemy to the Mysterons.

The show itself is really good.  The animation..not so much.  It was early 2000s CGI, when motion capture was the hot new toy.  They used a lot of motion capture on New Captain Scarlett.  As such, while the body movement are very lifelike and realistic...the rest of the animation, not so much.  Picture The Polar Express on a straight-to-video budget and now you're getting it.

But now it's on to the next binge.  The new season of Voltron just hit Netflix, as did their latest big sci-fi series, Altered Carbon.  Jessica Jones: Season 2 drops this Thursday.

And once that`s all done, I might finally get to Sense8.

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And we have a new Weird Al song!

For those who don't know, Hamilton is the hottest thing to hit Broadway in years.  It's a biography of the American founding father Alexander Hamilton, told primarily through hip hop music, and with a racially diverse cast.  It has been dominating American pop culture, and made a superstar of its writer and original cast member, Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Miranda produced a project called The Hamilton Mix Tape and it's follow-up, "Hamildrops," in which he gets well-known artists to cover songs from the show.  Miranda has also become good friends with one of his musical influences as a child, "Weird Al" Yankovic, so it wasn't long before Weird Al participated in this project.

And what did Weird Al do?  The Hamilton Polka, which is a polka medley of songs from the show.


Even though Weird Al hasn't cut a full album since 2014's Mandatory Fun, he's been pretty active musically over the past year.  A couple of months ago, he participated in the project Dr. Demento Covered in Punk.  Dr. Demento is the legendary radio announcer whose syndicated show focusing on comedy and novelty songs discovered Weird Al.  For Dr. Demento Covered in Punk, Dr. Demento got some of his favourite punk bands to cover novelty songs, and his favourite comedy bands to cover punk songs.  Weird Al contributed a cover of the Ramone's Beat on the Brat.  It's a pretty straight cover until Weird Al comes in with that accordion. 

And then, Weird Al also did the theme song for this past summer's Captain Underpants movie.  I've never ready the original children's books, but apparently, Weird Al is frequently mentioned as an idol of our main characters. 

So, yeah.  I should swing by iTunes and drop the 99 cents for all these songs. 

And that's about all I wanted to rant about, so I'm now all caught up on my backblog. 

The Good Ol' Days of Weird Al Videos

With Mandatory Fun being his first #1 album on the Billboard charts, and his recent "8 Videos in 8 Days" campaign causing a viral sensation, there's no doubt that it's a good time to be a Weird Al fan.  And the good news just keeps coming, with the news this morning that UHF is finally getting a Blu-Ray release this November!

It's kind of funny...a year ago, I read an interview with Weird Al where he'd been told by the studio that owns UHF that they had no plans to release it on Blu-Ray because everything's going to streaming video now.  What a difference a #1 album on the Billboard charts makes!  Well, to be fair, the studio that owns UHF -- MGM -- isn't putting out the Blu-Ray.  It's being put out by Shout! Factory, which has really done a good job putting out cult classic films on Blu-Ray recently.  And they are Weird Al friendly, having put out The Weird Al Show: The Complete Series a few years ago.

But that's not all!  Shout! Factory also announced they'll be releasing The Compleat Al on DVD at the same time.  The Compleat Al was a TV movie that Weird Al starred in in the mid-80s.  It was a mockumentary, chronicling his rise to fame.  Weird Al has used clips of it in his Al Music specials, and I've seen bits and pieces on YouTube, but I've never seen the whole thing.  So the Weird Al completest in me is glad that this is finally coming to DVD.  It was released on VHS back in the day, but it's been out of print since the early 1990s. 

But all this Weird Al video goodness has me spoiled.  Thanks to YouTube and other streaming video services, every "Weird Al" Yankovic music video ever made is now at my fingertips.  Not like the good ol' days, when you'd have to watch Much Music for hours on end, just praying that they might show one of his videos.  But if you were lucky, one of Weird Al's TV specials might come along, and you could tape it, and finally have all the Weird Al videos for your very own.  Going through my old shoebox of VHS tapes, I see that I have several such specials recorded.

The first one I find is The "Weird Al" Yankovic Music Video Collection.  This was a 1-hour TV special that Weird Al did for MuchMusic in 1999, to promote the release of Running With Scissors.  For this hour, they played nothing but Weird Al's videos, and new comedy sketches of him making mischief in and around Toronto.  At his official website at the time, Weird Al explained why he did this instead of another Al Music special.  Turns out MuchMusic was starting to get nervous about the Al Music specials.  With Weird Al's trademark fake interviews, and mocking commentaries of music videos, MuchMusic started worrying that they'd get in trouble with one of the artists.  So, the "Weird Al" Yankovic Music Video Collection was the compromise that Weird Al and MuchMusic came up with.

But then, there were the Al Music specials.  Those were pure gold.  Weird Al did three in the 1990s:  in 1992 to promote Off the Deep End, in '93 for Alapaloza, and '96 with Bad Hair Day.  It was pure magic when I saw that first one.  It was the spring of 1992.  It was Track & Field Day at school, so, the gym-hating, nonathletic kid that I was, I was "sick at home."  I was flipping around the channels, stumbled upon Much, and there was Weird Al!  And...he was like a VJ!  And...he was making fun of the videos!  Of course I wound up watching the whole thing.  I wish I still had that one on VHS.  He did a bit on the differences between the USA and Canada.  Back in the 1990s, the exchange rate between Canadian and American money was pretty consistent:  $1 CAD = $0.70 USD.  So, while outlining the differences, he holds up a loonie and says, "In the USA, a loonie is only worth 70 cents.  But here in Canada, it's a whole dollar!" 

I do, however, have the second one, Al Music 2.  A co-worker gave a copy a few years ago.  With Jurassic Park being Weird Al's lead single, and the Dinosaur World Tour having just stopped in Toronto, about the last half-hour of the special was Weird Al messing about at the Dinosaur World Tour.  For those who don't remember, the Dinosaur World Tour was this massive traveling dinosaur museum that showcased a bunch of new fossil finds from China and the Canadian Arctic.  It opened in the summer of 1993, and Edmonton was its first stop.  I went.  I loved it.  And that was the extra fun of Al Music 2, as I watched Weird Al mess around with exhibits that I myself had seen just a few months earlier!

And then a fun little blip was, in the late-1990s, MuchMusic did a couple of specials called Laff-a-Thon.  As we know, it's become custom for a stand-up comic to add a song to their comedy albums to get some airplay, and then a music video to get some exposure on the music video shows.  So, MuchMusic did the Laff-a-Thon where they had a marathon of all these comedic music videos.  For the first one, there was controversy.  They kept hyping that they were going to play a Weird Al video.  Weird Al came on to introduce it, but the bit was, they then did not play a Weird Al video.  Annoyed, Weird Al introduced a second video, promising that this time it would be one of his.  But it wasn't.  For the third time, a very angry Weird Al introduced the video, and it was finally one of his.  However, the fans weren't happy with this.  And later in the special, a very downbeat VJ came on and said, "Because of all the complaints just got over playing just one Weird Al video, here now are 3 Weird Al videos back-to-back."  When they did the second Laff-a-Thon a year later, they dedicated an hour in the middle of it to nothin' but Weird Al.

But for me, it all began way before any of this.  For those who may not recall, back when MuchMusic still played music videos, one of their daily programs was called Spotlight, where, for a half-hour straight, they'd play nothing but Weird Al videos.  When my family first got cable, it seemed to be on everyday just as I got home from school.  One snowy spring day in 1990, I came home from school, flopped down on the couch, started leafing through the TV guide, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.  Today's Spotlight artist was..."Weird Al" Yankovic.  But damn it!  I missed the first 10 minutes!  But that was OK.  Back then, I quickly discovered that MuchMusic repeated a lot of their programming 4 hours later.  So, 4 hours later, after supper and my homework was done, I took control of the TV, popped a blank tape in the VCR, and hit "record" when Spotlight began.

I'll never forget the first line of VJ Dan Gallagher's introduction:  "'Weird Al' Yankovic!  The man has made a living...looking like George Fox."  For those who don't know, George Fox is a Canadian country music singer who was big in the late-1980s.  At around this time, he had just done a big TV special on CBC and...yeah.  When George Fox wore glasses, he was the spitting image of 1980s Weird Al.  I remember seeing George Fox's picture on the cover of TV Guide and thinking, "Is George Fox Weird Al's real name?"

Anyway, I taped that episode of Spotlight and damn near wore out the tape watching it over and over and over again.  And now, for you, I will recreate the line-up of that episode Spotlight.  After Mr. Gallagher's introduction, we got...

I Love Rocky Road



Eat It



Like a Surgeon



Living With a Hernia



Fat



An old interview clip of Weird Al in the MuchMusic studios plugging UHF, thus ending the show with....

UHF

     

"Tomorrow on Spotlight...10,000 Maniacs."  

Time for Mandatory Fun!

It's that wonderful time that comes around every 3 or 4  years...the time when those three little words are uttered that bring me so much joy.

Mark's getting laid!  New Weird Al!

"Weird Al" Yankovic is out today with his brand new album, Mandatory Fun.  There's already been a lot of pre-release hype around this album, mainly due to the fact that this marks the end of Weird Al's record contract.  Some interpreted that to mean that Weird Al is retiring, but he's disputed that in many interviews already.  If anything, he's one of the artists who think that the end of the traditional record contract is right around the corner, and everything's going digital from here on out.  Weird Al has been grumbling for a while now that he'll be going to an all-digital distribution model.  It'll allow him to be more timely and topical with his parodies.  And besides, his main competition these days are the billions of parodies that pop up on YouTube shortly after a song becomes a hit, while he's sitting around, twiddling his thumbs, amassing an album's worth of material.

Of course I pre-ordered the album on Amazon.  I rarely pre-order stuff months in advance, but a new Weird Al album is one of those exceptions.  I even paid the extra shipping to have it delivered the day it comes out.  So, since it comes out today, you'll understand my confusion when I got the alert from Amazon last Wednesday that it had shipped.  "I'm not going to get it early, am I?"

And sure enough, look what the friendly UPS guy delivered on Friday.




Needless to say, I was excited.  I texted my friends right away to share the good news.  "Dude!  Now rip it and leak it to the Internet!" one of my friends joked.  Although, as I started going through the tracks and sharing some of the lyrics with my friend, he changed his tune to, "Umm...I was just kidding.  But if you do want to rip it and send it to me...."  But nope.  I decided not to ruin the surprise for the world.

That being said, I did have the entire weekend to sit down, listen to it, and pick it apart.  So now that it's the official release date, time to share my thoughts on Mandatory Fun!

The end of Weird Al?

The Weird Al fandom lit up this past week when, while on the road, Weird Al gave an interview in which he revealed that his next album will probably be his last. 

Don't worry, Weird Al's not going to go away completely.  He just points out that the Internet is starting to make his act a lot harder.  By the time he gets an album together, there's already been hundreds of parodies of the songs he's parodying all over YouTube.  So, he's got one album left on his current contract, and once that's done, he'll probably give up on traditional albums and just head to digital distribution.

To be fair, though, Weird Al has been saying this for some time, as to how his job is getting more difficult.  As he said in 2006, back when his album Straight Outta Lynwood came out, it's not like the old days of the 1980s, when he'd just pick whatever artist was currently in heavy rotation on MTV.  With the further fragmenting of music genres, it's tough to choose which artist to go by.




Weird Al started getting serious about digital distribution back in 2006.  When his "not allowed to be released legally" single You're Pitiful (a parody of James Blunt's You're BeautifulI) couldn't be released, he made it a free download at his website, and it promptly went viral. Thinking there might be something to this digital distribution, he made his big experiment in the fall of 2008 with Whatever You Like, a parody of Whatever You Like by T.I.  Within 2 weeks, Weird Al got T.I.'s permission, had the song written and recorded, and out online while the original was still at #1.




The experiment was successful enough that the next year he released the digital EP Internet Leaks.  As Weird Al pointed out, he tends to record the original songs on his albums first, and then record the parodies closer to the album's release so he can parody something current.  So, he figured, why not release all the original songs while waiting to figure out what to parody?  And that's what he did.




Internet Leaks wound up being half of his 2011 album Alpocalypse.  So, yeah.  Weird Al's revelation that his next album may be his last is nothing too Earth-shattering.  He's just been working towards it for the past few years.  As we've seen from the multitude of parody videos flooding YouTube, that's just the medium for parodies these days.  Only makes sense that Weird Al is going to get on board.

The Coming of the Alpocalypse!

This is it!  The big day is here!  "Weird Al" Yankovic's new album, Alpocalypse, comes out today!  Stupid Canada Post strike...I pre-ordered my copy on Amazon.ca a month ago!  Who knows when the hell it's going to arrive now?

Oh, well.  At least Weird Al has me covered.  He released the video for his lead single, Perform This Way, yesterday!  As you may recall, 'tis a parody of Lady Gaga's Born This Way.

My thoughts...meh.  As I kinda blogged when he first leaked Perform This Way to the Internet, there's a whole feeling of, "I'm parodying this because I have to," to this, and as such, it just feels like it's lacking...something.  Maybe it's because Lady Gaga is too easy a target, making the jokes seem too easy.  I don't know.  It's good, but I don't think it's one of Weird Al's best.

I've watched this a few times, now, and I'm starting to wonder if Weird Al had his head digitally superimposed on a woman's body.  There's just some scenes in there where his bangs float over his forehead in a weird way, and the head just doesn't seem proportioned to the body.  

Oh, well.  I can still pass the time waiting for this Canada Post strike to end.  As previously announced, all of the songs on Weird Al's digital EP Internet Leaks were all the original songs on this new album.  Since I bought Internet Leaks when it first came out in 2009, I at least already own half of the album.  

Here's my favourite from the Internet Leaks  collection, and thus one of my favourites from Alpocalypse, and that's this little ditty called Skipper Dan:

Pathos from a Weird Al song. Whoda thunkit?

And lastly, it's just not a Weird Al album without a polka medley.  The new album has actually been streaming since last week, so the fan-made music videos are starting to pop up online.  Ladies and gents, here's Polka Face:





Now let's get this damn postal strike settled so my CD will arrive in the mail!

The Alpocalypse Parodies

Just a little over a week to go before Weird Al's new album Alpocalypse comes out!  My copy is pre-ordered on Amazon.ca, and I can hardly wait for it arrive!

Anyway, starting to get a few comments on the blog telling me what songs Weird Al parodies on his new album.  Seeing as to how it's now part of the track listing on Amazon.ca and iTunes, I may as well share.

1)  Perform this Way - As previously revealed on YouTube a couple months ago, a parody of Born This Way from Lady Gaga.

3)  TMZ - From the title, it's obviously going to be about the gossip-sharing website.  It's going to be a parody of You Belong With Me from Taylor Swift.

5)  Polka Face - The polka medley.  I won't go into the list, but some of the songs in it are Poker Face, Womanizer, I Kissed a Girl, Fireflies, Need You Now and Justin Beiber's Baby.

7)  Party in the CIA - Riffing on Party in the USA from Miley Cyrus.  Weird Al's first parody of a Disney kid!

9)  Another Tattoo - Spoofing Nothin' On You by B.o.B. featuring Bruno Mars.  Hmmm...this is the only one where I`m not familiar with the original, so let`s try to find it on YouTube:







11)  Whatever You Like - Part of the Internet Leaks collection, parodying Whatever You Like from T.I.

Alpocalypse Track Listing!

The countdown continues to Weird Al's new album, Alpocalypse, and I'm buzzing with the excitement that only a new Weird Al album can bring.  Just perusing the Internets, and I'm finding that the track listing to Alpocalypse has been released!

Ah, looking over this track listing, I'm taken back to my childhood, leafing through my brother's Columbia Record House catalogues, reading the track listings for all those Weird Al albums and wondering what the songs were about.  "Is this a parody of that?"  "That song's got a strange title...I wonder what it's about."  "Man, I wish Mom and Dad would raise my allowance so I can actually buy these and find out!" 

Now, a lot of these songs will look familiar.  And that's because, as Weird Al has been saying for a while now, all the songs from his 2009 digital EP Internet Leaks are on this album.  So, the album is, like, 50% new material, and 50% 2-year old songs. 

So let's take a look here!

1)  Perform This Way - His aforementioned (and already blogged-about-by-me) parody of Lady Gaga's Born This Way.

2)  CNR - Part of Internet Leaks, his White Stripes-style song about acting legend Charles Nelson Riley.

3)  TMZ - No idea if this is an original or a parody, but will obviously be about the gossip-mongering website.

4)  Skipper Dan - My favourite from the Internet Leaks collection, about a gifted young actor and the only gig he can get:  working on the Disneyland Jungle Cruise ride.

5)  Polka Face - With a title like that, this is obviously the requisite polka medley.

6)  Craigslist - The first one released as part of the Internet Leaks collection, his Doors-tribute about the classified ad website.

7)  Party in the CIA - Many Weird Al sites are already agreeing that this is most likely a parody of Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus.

8)  Ringtone - Also from the Internet Leaks collection, all about annoying ringtones.

9) Another Tattoo - And now the confusion of my youth.  Parody or original?  I have no idea. 

10)  If That Isn't Love - One thing Weird Al does is twisted love songs, so I'm guessing this is an original.

11)  Whatever You Like - The only parody on the Internet Leaks collection, a parody of T.I.'s Whatever You Like.  Given the economic downturn, our singer can now only afford to by his girlfriend "whatever she likes" down at the Dollar Store.  (Fun trivia fact:  the only Weird Al parody that has the same name as the original.) 

12)  Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me - Based on the title, we know what the joke is.  But again, parody or original?  I'm not sure.

Oh, and also revealed that, following the model of his last album Straight Outta Lynwood, the album will come with a DVD, featuring animated music videos for 10 of the 12 songs on the album!  The only ones not getting music videos are Perform This Way and Polka Face. 

June 22!  Now available for pre-order on Amazon! 

The New Weird Al Album!!

Wow, what a difference a day makes!

As I reported back on Thursday, there was a bit of a kerfuffle between "Weird Al" Yankovic and Lady Gaga.  In case you don't want to go back and click on that entry, here's the Coles Notes.  Weird Al had an idea for a parody of Born This Way, Lady Gaga made him write and produce the whole song before signing off on it...and then she said no.  Weird Al was grumpy that all his hard work had been for naught and was getting ready to release it as a free download.

But then, on Thursday afternoon, the whole story came out.  Turns out Lady Gaga...never heard Weird Al's parody.  Her manager was the one who said "She wants to hear the whole thing first," and her manager was the one who ultimately said, "No."  Once Weird Al posted the song online and told his story, Lady Gaga finally heard the parody, loved it, and officially gave it her thumbs up!

So that means, Weird Al's new album is on track!  A release date of June 21 has been announced, and Weird Al has revealed the name of his next album!

Get ready for...the Alpocalypse!

Oh, and if you don't want to wait until June 21, you can buy his Lady Gaga parody, Perform This Way, on iTunes TODAY!! 

Weird Al Don't Get As Much Respect Anymore

Most people who know me will tell you that I'm one of the biggest "Weird Al" Yankovic fanboys in the world.  Therefore, there's three little words that always gets me tingling:  new Weird Al.

Today, on YouTube, Weird Al posted a brand new parody...a spoof of Lady Gaga's Born This Way which he retitled I Perform This Way.  Weird Al also added the disclaimer that this song will NOT be on his new album. 








As the story goes, Weird Al wanted to get Lady Gaga's approval for the parody. Weird Al doesn't need to get approval, he just does because he's a nice guy like that. However, rather than just a description of the song or a copy of the lyrics, Lady Gaga insisted on hearing the song fully produced before signing off on it. So Weird Al did. And then she said no.

So, Weird Al's being miffed stems from the fact that he poured a lot of hard work into this, and he doesn't want all his hard work to go for naught because of it. Never mind that now he's looking for a new song to parody to be the lead single on his new album. So, he's posting the song to YouTube, and he'll be making it a free download at his official website in the weeks ahead.

Why am I sitting here rehashing this tale? Just go to Weird Al's official blog, and read the tale in his own words.

Sadly, though, this is starting to become par for the course for Weird Al. Let's flash back to five years ago. Pretty much the same thing happened. The lead single was going to be You're Pitiful, a parody of James Blunt's You're Beautiful. But, James Blunt's record company stepped in at the last minute and forbade it's release, fearing that the parody would damage Blunt's image. Blunt himself was cool with it. So, Weird Al made it a free download at his website...where you can still download it today!





Or heck, back in 2003, with Weird Al's album Poodle Hat. The lead single was Couch Potato, a spoof of Eminem's Lose Yourself. While Eminem reluctantly agreed to the parody, Eminem vetoed the music video. Eminem's argument was that he already mocks himself though his "Slim Shady" persona, so no one else has to. But still, with music videos still being the biggest part of Weird Al's exposure, it was a devastating blow ot Poodle Hat's sales.





Weird Al just doesn't get the same respect he once did. Once upon a time, about 20 years ago, when Weird Al did a parody of your song, it was taken as a badge of honor...achievement unlocked...a sign that you had made it! Now, though, it's starting to be seen as embarrassment...a dark spot...a chip in the original aritst's carefully constructed image.

As for my thoughts on the song...meh. It's not one of Weird Al's stronger parodies. Even in his original blog entry, Weird Al talks about making it kinda because everyone expected him to.

Oh, well. When You're Pitiful was barred from release, Weird Al came back and did the much more kick-ass White n' Nerdy. So I'm sure whatever replacement Weird Al cooks up will be better.

Weird Al on Vinyl

So, I'm visiting my parents for the long weekend. As boredom begins to set in, I find myself in front of the computer...my Dad's computer, to be specific. A few years back, my siblings and I put our money together and we got our Dad one of these USB turntables...you know, a record player that you plug into your computer, so you can convert your record collection into MP3s.

As I sit here, my gaze wanders over to this USB turntable, and I figure I'll take advantage of this opportunity to listen to my only "Weird Al" Yankovic record. As you know, I'm a gigantic Weird Al fanboy. I have cassettes, I have CDs, I've got digital albums, and finding Weird Al on vinyl is a bit of a sacred quest for me. In every thrift shop and garage sale I visit, I sift through the vinyl looking for, say, Dare to Be Stupid. So far, I only have one Weird Al record, and it was fate that dropped it in my lap.

So, around 12 or 13 years ago, I was a carefree college student at Augustana University. I was renowned on campus...I was Captian Hot Stuff, Mr. #1 DJ on the campus radio station. I was one of the few announcers who actually did show prep. I would always show up at the staton one hour before my show, and spend some time going through the campus radio station's music collection.

The music library was a mess, to say the least. One wall was floor to ceiling of nothing but radio samplers. "Radio samplers" are special compliation albums that record labels send out to radio stations, containing most of the singles being released that month. The other three walls were nothing but albums, sent out by aspiring artists hoping for that first big break. It was all one, disorganized, chaotic pile. Many a station manager was hired on the promise of getting it organized, and many a station manager went mad and walked away from the station after a month of attempted organizing.

There was also another room in the station with a massive wooden cabinet. Inside that cabinet, was the station's record collection. I'd go through the records when I was feeling very adventurous. Usually, it wasn't worth it, as the station's record players were very hit-and-miss. Some nights they worked, others, they didn't. Some times, the fates aligned perfectly, like when I found the Star Wars soundtrack in that cabinet and was able the Cantina Song on vinyl. That was a good show.

On this one night, I wasn't going through the record cabinet, but my eye was drawn towards a plastic tub. In one attempt to get things organized, a former station manager had put all the 45s in a plastic tub. I'd put on a long song, the phone lines were quiet that night, so I reached into the tub. And I pulled out....

the 45 of I Lost on Jeopardy.





My jaw dropped. I tired to play it, but it was a "miss" night for the station's record players. Now, when I first started at the campus station, the station manager once lamented how all the good albums are stolen as soon as they come in, so I swore that I would never swipe an album for the station.

However, my inner fanboy wouldn't stay silent. Needless to say, that 45 came home with me that night.

I wasn't able to listen to it until I got home and was able to fire up Dad's record player. The record sleeve said the b-side was supposed to be I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead, but it wasn't. It's just I Lost on Jeopardy on both sides.

And as I sit here, listening to it, I can't help but smile. Vinyl sounds good. It does seem to be a richer sound. And all the pops and hisses of an old record seem to add character.

I love reading how vinyl is currently experiencing a brief resurgance. I read the statistic the other day that 2009 was the best selling year for records since 1991. There's even some records I wouldn't mind getting. The soundtrack for Watchmen was released on vinyl...it's already been announced that the soundtrack for Iron Man 2 is going to be released on vinyl.

Weird Al is currently in the studio, working on his next album. Here's hoping he'll release his next one on vinyl, so my quest will be a little bit easier.

Weird Al: Movie Director

Yay!

My hero, "Weird Al" Yankovic, just announced his next project! He's directing a movie!

Well, it's a TV movie for the Cartoon Network, but still...a movie!

Weird Al says that he just signed a big production deal with the Cartoon Network to produce stuff...TV shows, cartoons, movies, and such forth. And figured that a TV movie would be the best place to start.

Weird Al is writing and directing it, and will give himself a small role. Weird Al mentions that the Cartoon Network wanted a young protagonist, so the main character is a teenager.

No word yet on a plot or what it's about, but Weird Al says that it's not a sequel to UHF and it's not a documentary about Winston Churchill.

Weird Al says that he goes on tour this summer, and the earliest he could probably start filming it is this fall.

No word yet on when it'll air on the Cartoon Network.

Here's Weird Al's official blog, where he shares what little details he can.

The Latest on Weird Al

Alright, I've been away from a computer for two weeks, so let's get to it. A lot happened in the world of "Weird Al" Yankovic while I was gone.

First up, the fifth and final song from his Internet Leaks project was released. It's a cute little ditty about a problem of the modern age, called Ringtone.



I like this one. This is some old-school Weird Al, from the guitar solo to the arrangements. This would be right at home on UHF, despite the timely subject matter.

And that's not all!

While I was gone, Weird Al announced the release date of his next album! Sad news, it's not a new album. It's going to the long-awaited Greatest Hits vol. 3. It's called The Essential "Weird Al" Yankovic and drops on Oct. 27.

Thing is, this is a 2-disc CD with 38 SONGS on it! In the past, Weird Al could only fit 12 songs onto a greatest hits album. As he explained it once on his website, he still has to pay royalties to the original artists for his parodies. And when he did greatest hits albums in the past, he'd eventually reach a point where royalties paid out to the artists became more than the royalties he'd get, and thus the album become unprofitable. But, his new record label figured out a way around that, hence the massive number of songs.

Anyway, here's the official announcement on Weird Al's blog, where you can see the album artwork and the complete track listing.

Weird Al's Latest: CNR!

Alright, the summer of "Weird Al" Yankvoic continues! His new song was released today. It's a loving homage to both The White Stripes and Charles Nelson Reilly entitled CNR:



I really like this one. The sad thing is, though, you don't get the joke until someone clues you in that Charles Nelson Reilly was a flamboyant effeminate television personality and actor back in the 1970s. I'm already seeing the comments, "Who the heck is Charles Nelson Reilly?"

But once you get it, it's funny as hell.

NEW WEIRD AL SONG!!

Hey! Back on Tuesday, "Weird Al" Yankovic released his latest song! Here it is...a little ditty called Skipper Dan.



As with all others in his "Internet Leaks" project, it's already available at iTunes and many other MP3 retailers.

My thoughts on this one? This one is more "funny/sad" than "funny/ha ha." It's always weird to get some pathos out of a Weird Al tune. But it's got a great beat that just kind of gets stuck in your head.

I like it...but don't love it.

WEIRD AL'S NEW SONG!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, "Weird Al" Yankovic has released a new song!

A loving homage to the Doors called...Craigslist.



Some notes about the music video: it was directed by Liam Lynch, who directed such fine films as Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny and Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic. Weird Al says it was an incredibly low budget affair, filmed completely in Lynch's garage.

This is the second in Weird Al's new project called "Internet Leaks." Weird Al is going to be releasing 5 songs online over the next few months...this is the second. The first was his TI parody Whatever You Like which came out back in the fall.

It goes on sale tomorrow everywhere were MP3s are sold!

The Latest on My Heroes!

My heroes are hard ato work, producing new stuff, so let's update you on what's going on.

First up, Kevin Smith. Smith got a bad reputation in the comic book world, what with his 3-year delay between issues 3 and 4 of Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil that Men Do. But, Smith has been slowly working his way back into writing comics. He swore, after that Spider-Man/Black Cat fiasco, that we would take a new approach to writing comics. And that is, if the story arc is going to run for x issues, he'll sit down and write all x issues and fire them off to the publisher. No more of this, "Writing one issue per month" crap. that way, if an issue runs late, he can deflect the blame to the artist.

That's how he wrote his return to comics, the 3-issue miniseries Batman: Cacophony, which ran December-March and is due out in trade paperback form this fall. And, based on that, DC is giving him another crack at the Dark Knight.

Smith's next maxi-series for DC is Batman: The Widening Gyre. This 12-issue series will chronicle Batman training a new hero to patrol the streets of Gotham. And here's what Smith is doing to incorporate his trademark tardiness. The 12-issue series will be published in 2, 6-issue books. The first six issues (aka "Book I") come out, he takes a six month break, and then the final six issues (akak "Book II")come out. He says he already has those first six issues completed and sent off to DC.

But here's where things get tricky. During that six month break, he's going to start writing a bi-monthly comic about this new hero that Batman has trained.

But that's not all!

Smith goes on to recount how, after he finished setting this up with DC, he got a call from the comic book publisher Dynamite Entertainment. Turns out Dynamite just got the comic rights to the Green Horent, and how would Smith like to write the first arc in their Green Hornet book?

Smith said, "Sure!" Smith's Green Hornet arc is going to be largely based on his unproduced screenplay, back when he signed on to write and direct it and then chickened out because Jersey Girl tanked.

So, there you have it. Smith is back in comics.

And, my other hero, "Weird Al" Yankovic. On his Twitter feed, Weird Al has just announced that he's finished recording all the original, non-parody songs for his next album! Now, is he going to put them in the vault for six months while he works on parodies, like he usually does?

Nope!

He's going to release them digitally (e.g. on iTunes) next month.

Aggregator!

Nothing really fancy in this blog entry...just some news that's been bubbling up inside me that I need to share.

First up, news on my hero, "Weird Al" Yankovic! This is, perhaps, a little bit out of left field, but it is very cool.

A few weeks ago, Weird Al posted on his Twitter feed a picture of himself with Rob Zombie and Malcolm McDowell. A few hours later, the Weird Al websites had it figured out.

Weird Al has a cameo in Zombie's upcoming slasher film, Halloween 2!

Zombie officially confirmed it on his MySpace page earlier this week. The set-up: Malcolm McDowell is back as Dr. Samuel Loomis, the psychiatrist who seeks to rehabilitate Michael Myers. He's like the Van Helsing to Michael Myers' Dracula. Anyway, in #2, Loomis has written a book about his encounters with Michael Myers, and goes onto a talk to show to pimp it. And who else is on that talk show? Weird Al!

Wow. Who knew that Zombie is a Weird Al fan? Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 is due out Halloween this year.

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It's a proud Pixar tradition to have an animated short film in front of their feature films. Pixar's latest, Up, comes out at the end of May, and they have announced the details on the short film that'll be in front of Up.

Partly Cloudy seeks to answer that age-old question about cartoons: if storks bring babies, where do the storks get the babies?

The answer: storks get them from clouds, who sculpt babies out of clouds.

What happens when a stork and a tempermental cloud get into a fight? Find out in...Partly Cloudy.

Partly Cloudy was written and directed by Peter Sohn, a Pixar animator and storyboard artist who worked on Finding Nemo, the Incredibles and Ratatouille.

The Finest Things in Life: Weird Al and Batman

WOO!

We're getting a new "Weird Al" Yankovic single next week!

All throughout his last tour, Weird Al would say that, with his next album, he was considering persuing alternate forms of distribution. His idea was that he could release his parodies to iTunes as soon as they're ready, so that way they're still fresh and current and not a year behind by the time his full album comes out.

Well, Weird Al announced on his MySpace page that he's ready to give this a shot. He just finished recording the first parody for his new album, and he's releasing it as a single on Tuesday! October 7! It'll be available on iTunes exclusivly for the first 2 weeks, and then be released to all other website where you can buy MP3s.

Weird Al isn't saying yet what his parody is called or what it's a parody of...just that it's a parody of a song "that was recently #1...it may even still be #1."

We'll know what it is on Tuesday.

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And hey! The biggest movie of the summer is coming out on DVD in time for Christmas!

The Dark Knight will be unleashed on DVD on December 9. There'll be three version: single disc, 2-disc special edition, and 2-disc Blu-Ray edition. The breakdown is like this.

Single Disc
Just the movie. No bonus features.

2-disc Special Edition
- The movie
- the documentary Gotham Uncovered: Creation of a Scene
- The Dark Knight IMAX Scenes, where you can watch all the scenes filmed in IMAX in their proper aspet ratio.
- 6 episodes of the fake news program Gotham Tonight
- movie poster galleries and behind-the-scenes photographs.
- a digital copy of the film.

2-disc Blu-Ray Edition
Everything mentioned above, plus....
- Batman Tech: the Incredible Gadgest and Tools featurette
- Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of the Dark Knight featurette
- MORE galleries, such as concept art and the Joker's cards
- the trailers and TV spots

So, yeah! If you're feeling like getting me a Blu-Ray player for Christmas, this'll make a nifty first title.