Episode 257 - "Weird Al" Yankovic
Guest:Are we doing this?
Marc:Really?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Marc:What's wrong with me?
Marc:It's time for WTF!
Marc:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maris.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckables?
Marc:What the fucknicks?
Marc:What the fuckanucks?
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:What the fuckanucks?
Marc:I was just up in Vancouver.
Marc:This is Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:I'm recording this hours before the Academy Awards, so don't...
Marc:Don't stick me in your head and expect some commentary on the event because this happened before the event.
Marc:So I don't have that.
Marc:But congratulations to the winner.
Marc:You know what?
Marc:I'm not even going to say that because I don't know what they're going to pick.
Marc:That's ridiculous.
Marc:Should I try to bet what they're going to pick?
Marc:No, I'm not going to do that.
Marc:We did an Oscar thing.
Marc:That's behind us.
Marc:Let's do a couple of check ins.
Marc:First of all.
Marc:Thank you, Vancouver.
Marc:An amazing time.
Marc:Great turnout.
Marc:Great meeting you all.
Marc:Thank you for all the edible and non-edible goods.
Marc:Thank you, a guy named Happy, who gave me the quest for immortality.
Marc:It was a documentary based on some of the...
Marc:the philosophies and writings of Ernest Becker and how that's led to a, a whole new school of, of approaching a social psychology.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:What it, what a great documentary that was.
Marc:And it was nice meeting you and thank you for the, the, the Japa dog.
Marc:Is that what it's called?
Marc:Jappadog?
Marc:I hope that's right and I'm not being racist or some weird thing.
Marc:Had Jappadog.
Marc:It was good.
Marc:It's a hot dog with some seaweed on it, some fried onions, some teriyaki sauce, and wasabi mayo.
Marc:Man.
Marc:I'm not a big hot dog guy, but Jesus, those were great.
Marc:And Vancouver, beautiful city.
Marc:Thanks for coming out.
Marc:That's out of the way.
Marc:I'm going to be in Miami Beach Florida this Thursday.
Marc:That's March 1st at the South Beach Comedy Festival.
Marc:I'll be appearing at one show at the Colony Theater in Miami Beach, in South Beach.
Marc:You can get tickets if you go to Ticketmaster, but also if you go to the South Beach Comedy Festival website.
Marc:So look that up.
Marc:Anyways, yeah, I couldn't just look it up for you.
Marc:What am I, a fucking idiot?
Marc:Jesus, man, how about I prepare?
Marc:How about I just got home and you back off?
Marc:Okay, buddy.
Marc:But I will be at the South Beach Comedy Festival at the Colony Theater, March 1st, 8 p.m.
Marc:show.
Marc:Get tickets for that.
Marc:Please, I need your support.
Marc:That's the wrong way to say it.
Marc:I'd like you to come down because my mother's coming and her boyfriend and her sister and her husband and my cousins and God knows who else.
Marc:And if it's not a good turnout and I just got to perform for my family and about, you know, maybe 50 other people, it's going to be tough.
Marc:for her to continue thinking I'm a success at this point.
Marc:So if you could help me out with that, I'd appreciate it.
Marc:And whatever you think I think about Florida, I love Florida.
Marc:I just never get the feeling that I have a lot of fans there, but you can show who you are if you come out.
Marc:I'll even bring merch.
Marc:All right, after that, March 8th through 10th, I'll be back at Acme in Minneapolis.
Marc:Thrilled about that.
Marc:Love that club.
Marc:March 11th, I'll be at South by Southwest doing a one-on-one live with Jeffrey Tambor.
Marc:Not sure how you get tickets for that.
Marc:I think you need a pass.
Marc:And March 15th, I will be at Gilda's Laugh Fest in Grand Rapids doing a live WTF on the 17th.
Marc:and a stand-up show on the 15th, that live WTF, that should be great.
Marc:That's going to be with Kevin Nealon, Drew Hastings, Tommy Johnigan, Alan Zweibel, and maybe Jim Gaffigan.
Marc:I don't know exactly if he's coming or not.
Marc:And it looks like they have their own website.
Marc:That's laughfestgr.org, and you can get information and tickets there.
Marc:So now I do want to thank Vancouver.
Marc:I love that city.
Marc:I've been going up there a long time.
Marc:And I got to be honest with you, this was the first time in six years that I went into Canada and did not get sent to immigration for a mild interrogation and incredible time suck.
Marc:Man, immigration is a time suck.
Marc:I was flagged up there for no reason at all.
Marc:Some of you know about that.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:Wow!
Marc:I just shit my pants.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop, available at WTFPod.com.
Marc:So thanks to a listener in Canada who hooked me up with some people within the government up there.
Marc:Not in any special way.
Marc:It's just I needed to get unflagged.
Marc:I was flagged because I drove up into Canada.
Marc:I didn't have my working paper straight.
Marc:They sent me back across the border, which made me a suspect.
Marc:So I remained a suspect, even though there was nothing to suspect.
Marc:So somebody hooked me up with a guy at the place and I wrote the guy at the place.
Marc:I said, look, you know, I'm clean.
Marc:There's there's no reason for this to be happening.
Marc:Could you could you do something about it?
Marc:And sure enough, they did.
Marc:And this was the first time it actually happened.
Marc:I went into Canada and a non suspected man.
Marc:No more than any of us are in a random sort of way, but walked right through.
Marc:What an amazing experience.
Marc:Thank you for that.
Marc:Thank you, Vancouver, for the shows.
Marc:The shows were great.
Marc:The live WTF with Bob and David was great.
Marc:We had John Ennis on there.
Marc:Neil Brennan and I worked some stuff out.
Marc:Josie Long from Britain.
Marc:Was on it from the UK.
Marc:But I'll tell you, man, I don't know if I'm getting old.
Marc:And this is one of the good things about getting old is that if you're able to, if you can see past, I don't I don't know how you're aging, what the what what what's what the proportion of bitterness and despair and bleakness.
Marc:I don't know whether that's in you, but I've had that even before.
Marc:Things are starting to shift in my heart and in my mind.
Marc:I think that the success of this show has had a great deal to do with that.
Marc:I think that the stand-up, the quality of stand-up I'm doing and the fact that people are coming out has a lot to do with that.
Marc:Because I was a miserable fuck.
Marc:I'm a much less miserable fuck.
Marc:I guess what I'm telling you...
Marc:is it's interesting to know people for as long as I've known them and then actually see them change, see them get older.
Marc:Like I had Bob Odenkirk up there and Dave Cross, and I'm sitting there at the table with them and watching them try to remember their history, like a couple of older guys trying to put the pieces back together again and remember what was fun and what was good and how things happened.
Marc:And Bob was up there with his daughter, and Dave seems happy.
Marc:And I actually had some sort of weird... I've been having this a lot lately, but I was just...
Marc:It was just inspiring to see Bob Odenkirk as a dad.
Marc:And it was very touching to see Dave seemingly happy, always a little cranky.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:I guess there's part of getting older that's kind of exciting in that when you've known people for over 20 years and they're still around and they seem to be getting better with age, it's thrilling.
Marc:And I'm glad I can see past myself to acknowledge that because I got Al Yankovic on the show today.
Marc:I was thinking about my my childhood.
Marc:Now, I don't I don't talk about it too much.
Marc:I'm sure that many of you assume that there were issues and that there were problems.
Marc:There weren't that big of problems.
Marc:I was not beaten or or attacked or raped or hit.
Marc:That's a couple of those were the same.
Marc:I just was brought up by very selfish people, by very narcissistic people.
Marc:There weren't many boundaries.
Marc:There was not much discipline.
Marc:There was no process.
Marc:I didn't feel like I was being guided in any way, and I had to do a lot of self-parenting because of that, or I had to grow up too quickly or something.
Marc:Because I talked to Al Yankovic.
Marc:I respect what Al does.
Marc:And I think that I talked to him a bit about how he got a lot of his fans when they were like very young and they loved him.
Marc:And it was a very safe way to feel rebellious and have a good time and see things be made fun of.
Marc:But I was trying to think about who I was when I was like 12 years old.
Marc:And as you can imagine, I was a hypersensitive kid that I did not enjoy silliness ever ever.
Marc:And I'm a little sad about that.
Marc:I'm trying to enjoy it more now.
Marc:I'm not so silly, but I try to appreciate silliness a little more.
Marc:I mean, if I could sort of characterize myself as a 12 year old, I mean, we're looking at what year would that have been?
Marc:63, 73, 74, 75, 12 years old.
Marc:What was I doing?
Marc:I was living in a shag carpeted basement.
Marc:that my, uh, my parents had had done for me and my brother, the bedroom of the, the kid who lived next door to my grandmother, I think changed my entire life.
Marc:I was very, he had all this shit on the walls, all these posters, all these artifacts.
Marc:He was very sixties oriented.
Marc:He was like a bearded dude.
Marc:He had Zappa posters.
Marc:He had all this stuff, but I really think that that really played into my darkness, my brooding, uh,
Marc:sense of self at 12 years old.
Marc:I had a picture.
Marc:I had the poster from Easy Rider of Dennis Hopper flipping off the camera.
Marc:I had I had Mountain's second album.
Marc:I had the Beatles second album.
Marc:I had I had my parents.
Marc:I had Creedence Clearwater record and I used to read Mad Magazine.
Marc:So and I was very fascinated with hippies.
Marc:I was fascinated with cigarettes.
Marc:I was fascinated with the possibility of drugs.
Marc:I was masturbating frequently already at 12.
Marc:So I had already grown up.
Marc:I was in my mind.
Marc:I had long hair.
Marc:I had a beard and mustache.
Marc:I had a mini bike, a little teeny mini bike that I used to drive around on.
Marc:But I did get an easy rider helmet when I was like 12 or 13 years old.
Marc:So I was way ahead of the game.
Marc:There was no time for silliness.
Marc:I was just moving towards becoming a a successful fuck up.
Marc:I was looking forward to being able to smoke cigarettes and perhaps a
Marc:You enjoy being angry in public, wearing bell bottoms and throwing peace signs, even though that time had passed.
Marc:All of the comedy that I liked were darker or at least just gritty looking dudes that lived in nightclubs.
Marc:So I never I missed the whole silly thing.
Marc:I was denied a childhood because 60s nostalgia and the crashing wave of the 60s just polluted my consciousness completely.
Marc:And all I was looking forward to was listening to rock and roll, smoking cigarettes and learning about secret things.
Marc:So it was interesting for me to talk to Weird Al because it was out of my wheelhouse, but he's a very pleasant guy.
Marc:Before we get to Weird Al, let me just say that I want to thank John Hogan for letting us use music from his band, The Tokleys.
Marc:That was the music on the Mark and Tom show.
Marc:If you didn't hear that, the myself and Tom Sharpling did a special bonus episode last week.
Marc:I had a great time and people seem to like it, but it's also the music on today's show.
Marc:You can listen to the Tokleys and check out John's other projects at his Tumblr page.
Marc:Nobody wants that dot Tumblr dot com.
Marc:I'm going to get silly.
Marc:I need to learn how to get silly.
Marc:I really do.
Marc:You can get right up on these things.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Hey!
Guest:Yeah, radio professional.
Marc:I'll tell you, man, sometimes I don't... I'm amazed at how many people don't know how to be on a mic.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Well, I mean, they'll be back here, and then they get used to being back here, and then you spend the entire thing...
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you don't want to say like, get on it.
Guest:And then the opposite thing at the award shows where the mics can pick up like noise from like two miles away.
Guest:People like.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You can hear their stomach gurgling, but they ate for lunch.
Marc:So Demento was your guy.
Marc:early on.
Marc:By the way, Weird Al is in the- My Dementor, actually.
Marc:Yeah, your Dementor.
Marc:Weird Al Yankovic is in the Cat Ranch garage here, and you said that this looks like his place.
Marc:Has his operation now become a home business?
Guest:Well, he used to broadcast live out of KMET in Los Angeles, and he was syndicated for a while.
Guest:He's off terrestrial radio now, but he still does drdomeno.com, so he still does his show.
Guest:It's on a subscription basis, but his base of operation is a
Marc:much like this it's I don't think this is garage but it's like a little room that's just like you know full of books on record he's got like a half a million records or something crazy like isn't that weird though because I was thinking about this about kind of I guess you would call it nerd culture but there are certain people in your life because I think you're a little older than me where like those are the guys where you'd go to their house and just going to their house your life would change
Marc:Because you'd look around and you'd be like, holy fuck, what is this stuff?
Guest:Some people would say it's OCD or some kind of mental illness, but somebody like me would go, this is great!
Marc:Exactly, because I had this experience where I went to the symphony, I'd never go to the symphony, then I had this memory of my grandmother's neighbor, because I think some of the original nerds were classical music guys.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because in order to have any sort of active interest in that, you had to have a lot of records.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I mean, I don't know if I haven't been to his house lately, but when I would hang out at his place, literally, and this is before he was married, he would literally have rooms of his house like, this is the 78 room, like everything.
Guest:It was like floor to ceiling, like, you know, 70 RPM record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:This is the jazz wing of the house, you know.
Guest:And that's really, that's how he lives.
Guest:And in his kitchen, instead of having dishes in his cupboard, it was records.
Guest:I'm not even making this up, like, records every conceivable place in his house.
Guest:We ate dinner off of records.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Off of 180-gram records.
Guest:Yeah, and once he got married, he had to adjust a little bit to that.
Guest:He had to get his storage space.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:This stuff has got to go somewhere else.
Marc:You can keep it, but I want the kitchen.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Do you have any compulsive...
Guest:Well, I'm just a hoarder.
Guest:I would have totally been on that show if I hadn't gotten married.
Marc:You can still be on the show.
Guest:No, I could.
Marc:So every hoarder is yet to come.
Guest:That would be a good one.
Guest:I think it'll happen.
Guest:I would qualify.
Guest:I mean, when I got married, my wife immediately threw out about 700 or 800 of my shirts.
Guest:I hate to throw anything away, even shirts.
Guest:I still had shirts that I had in high school.
Guest:Which didn't fit me anymore, but none of them, they fit my wife.
Marc:So she gets to wear these cool retro shirts.
Marc:Did they have things on them though?
Marc:I mean, we're like, cause I keep shirts that I've had for 20, 25 years, but I don't wear them.
Marc:But there's some part of me that thinks like I gotta, as you get older though, I mean, despite the wife, I mean, isn't there part of you that don't you ever sit amongst your shit and say like, what's, what's the point?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, the, the sense of mortality does creep in and you kind of like wonder like, why are you holding onto this stuff?
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, I have a storage locker, which I tweeted about this a year or so ago.
Guest:I had been saving, like, every fan letter I ever had.
Guest:I had literally, like, you know, 30 or 40 boxes of fan letter that I got from the 80s.
Guest:And my wife was like, are you ever going to read this again?
Guest:I was like...
Marc:no but I can't throw it away they're like you know love letters yeah yeah people hand wrote those in their own scrawl I have a hard time throwing I have a woman who's my fan who insists on making me mixed cassette tapes yeah that hand labeled mixed cassette tapes I don't even think I have something I can play them on but there's so much work involved and there's emotion in it you're like it'd be like throwing away something magical there would be a curse that would come on you
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:If you threw that stuff away.
Guest:I don't understand people that have these minimalist existences.
Guest:You see their beautiful modern houses and there's nothing there.
Guest:And I'm thinking, where are the piles?
Guest:Like I've lived in the same house for 10 years.
Guest:I have never not had piles of stuff everywhere.
Guest:I don't understand it either.
Guest:How does that happen?
Marc:Where's your stuff?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, well, we don't keep much stuff.
Marc:Not a book.
Marc:You have one book.
Marc:What do you read a book and throw it away?
Marc:Right.
Marc:I don't understand it.
Marc:It annoys me.
Marc:Those people are too clean.
Marc:They're control freaks.
Marc:I'd rather be a control freak managing a slightly chaotic empire of unread books and toys.
Guest:Yeah, this place reminds me of my place.
Guest:I mean, I think we're compatible spirits in that sense.
Guest:I mean, somebody needs to fix us.
Marc:Yeah, something has to happen.
Marc:I don't know why I can't let it go.
Marc:I used to think like...
Marc:I don't know if there's a vanity to it or narcissism where I think like, well, this is important because it just really comforts me.
Marc:It doesn't serve any other purpose.
Marc:I like knowing it's all there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I feel like if I got rid of it, but also, you know, when you get rid of stuff, you know, as soon as you throw shit away, then like a week later, you're like, oh, now I need that book.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Well, that's the hoarder mentality that he talked to anybody on that show and was like, I might need this someday.
Guest:But they're talking about a waffle iron that doesn't even work.
Exactly.
Marc:but that could be useful sure i mean you might have to make waffles there might be an emergency call for waffles you might need to pretend to make waffles someday yeah that's that show is so disturbing there are certain shows i can't take in because i know that i share a common there's like a part of me like it's just there's something wrong with us yeah no definitely and it's too vulnerable like i don't like there's some shows where i'm like oh just let them be or fix it you know why do we got to walk through this drama i mean some yeah i don't
Guest:And I got it from my folks.
Guest:I mean, we cleared up my parents' house a few years ago, and my dad, I mean, we took movies of it.
Guest:It was scary.
Guest:I mean, he literally saved used garbage bags.
Guest:I mean, we cleaned out.
Guest:So you have that in your family?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know if it's passed down, if it's in the DNA or whatever, but I mean, we couldn't find a single piece of work or anything that I'd written in high school or any kind of stuff from my childhood.
Guest:No childhood drawings, but we had like 100,000 used garbage bags.
Guest:No.
Guest:No evidence of Al being a creative little boy.
Guest:But you can use those bags again, apparently.
Marc:Apparently they used one to get rid of your stuff.
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:Some people say it's about my girlfriend who works in the field of psychology and
Marc:said it's about, you know, sort of walling in.
Marc:It's about emotional insulation.
Marc:Like, you know, you're kind of protecting yourself with this stuff.
Marc:Yeah, I've never been to therapy, so you left a clue me in on what it actually means.
Marc:Well, I don't know, Adam.
Marc:Do you feel that?
Marc:I don't really feel that because I feel like it's more of an extension of me.
Marc:Like, this is what defines me, not like this is what's hiding me from the world.
Guest:I don't think of it as a shield.
Guest:I mean, maybe it is, but that never occurred to me.
Marc:Do you have a disdain or a lack of belief in psychology?
Guest:No, no, I don't.
Guest:I mean, I just, I haven't had the compulsion to do it.
Guest:I mean, I'm a generally happy person, and I figure, yeah, I'm sure there's things wrong with me, but I figure if you're happy, I don't have a need to do it.
Guest:Right, why do we gotta, you know, bring that stuff up?
Guest:Right.
Marc:I seem to have repressed it just fine.
Guest:Yes, my repression's working great.
Marc:I'm digging this.
Marc:If I'm in denial, it's working for me.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Do you have an issue with that?
Yes.
Marc:I didn't realize this, but this is your home state.
Marc:It is.
Marc:That's odd.
Marc:Why is that odd?
Marc:Well, it's odd for me only because I'm coming to you like, when you started, when my bologna came out, I guess I mistakenly was probably, I was at the cusp of defining myself somehow.
Marc:Like, you know, I was starting to wear pins and buttons and I wasn't nerdy, but I, you know, I remember enjoying the thing.
Marc:But for some reason, I over the years, I just associated you with some Midwestern thing.
Guest:I think it is the accordion.
Guest:Well, it might be also Frankie Yankovic, who was America's polka king.
Guest:It was based in Cleveland.
Guest:But as far as I could tell, no blood relation.
Guest:In fact, that's probably the reason that my parents decided to give me accordion lessons, because like the accordion was associated with the name Yankovic.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So a lot of people just assume that I was his son or his nephew or whatever.
Marc:Well, I think it was just the polka thing came from there.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, there was not polka happening in California.
Guest:Which was why Dr. Domeno thought it was such a novelty when I started sending him tapes like this kid in L.A.
Guest:with an accordion, like it did not fit the mold.
Marc:When you first got the accordion, though, wasn't there part of you?
Marc:I mean, who were your musical heroes at that time?
Marc:Weren't you a little pissed off?
Marc:I mean, I have to imagine being saddled with an accordion or a clarinet or a bassoon, but the accordion at least has a little more range.
Guest:I was too young to know any better.
Guest:I mean, I was like six or seven years old when I started taking lessons, so I wasn't really into Led Zeppelin at the time.
Guest:It was sort of like, you know, I was very gullible.
Guest:I'm like, oh, thanks, Mom.
Guest:Thanks, Dad.
Guest:This will be great.
Guest:I'll be the life of the party.
Guest:That's what an accordion's supposed to be.
Guest:You're a one-man band.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You'll never be lonely with an accordion.
Marc:That was the pitch, huh?
Marc:It was it, yeah.
Marc:But you're really fucking good at it.
Marc:Well, thanks.
Marc:I mean, when did you become a virtuoso accordion player?
Guest:Well, you know, I'm not a virtuoso.
Guest:I play competently.
Guest:I see, like, 13-year-old boys on YouTube that play better than I do, you know?
Guest:Latino kids?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, really, but seriously, to be like a virtuoso, you have to be practicing 8 to 12 hours a day.
Guest:It has to be your whole life, and that's not me.
Guest:I rarely play the accordion when I'm not on the road, actually.
Marc:I kind of have this weird fascination and love of conjunto music.
Marc:I love Mexican conjunto music with that polka beat.
Marc:I love that kind of sound.
Marc:I like it.
Guest:I'm trying to remember the name of this movie.
Guest:Patton Oswalt gave me a copy of this movie.
Guest:That means only two people know about it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's like I think it's a Colombian movie, but it's the wildest thing.
Guest:It's like eight mile, but with accordion players.
Guest:It's like like the accordion was like infused with the spirit of the devil.
Guest:And this guy was like a like an insanely good accordion player.
Guest:And he'd go around like like doing basically rap battles except with an accordion.
Guest:It was awesome.
Guest:I wish I could remember the name of it.
Marc:The last time I saw you were in, what, Toronto or Vancouver?
Guest:Where was it?
Guest:Yeah, the, no, Montreal.
Guest:Montreal.
Marc:Okay, Montreal.
Marc:And, you know, my girlfriend's a vegetarian, and we sought out a vegetarian restaurant, and there you were with your wife and child.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Having vegetarian food.
Marc:And, again, then my entire weird, like, I have a problem when I do this show and when I interview people that I only know as media personalities.
Marc:I just associate you with, I don't know what I thought, but when I saw you with no glasses in the vegetarian restaurant, I'm like, oh my God, Weird Al's like this earthy kind of almost hippie nerd guy.
Marc:I made a character judgment in that.
Marc:How long have you been a vegetarian?
Guest:This is about 92.
Guest:And what was the impulse?
Guest:A friend of mine gave me a book, Diet for a New America, the John Robbins book.
Guest:And, you know, I...
Guest:I was already a little predisposed to it because I'd kind of given up red meat and all that, but it made a really compelling argument from a health and a sociopolitical and an ethical reason, and it just kind of convinced me.
Guest:And you okay with it?
Guest:I mean, you like being a vegetarian?
Guest:Yeah, you know, it gets me out of a lot of uncomfortable situations.
Guest:Like if I'm in a foreign country, they say, try our fried rattlesnake.
Guest:Like, oh, I wish I could, but oh, no, vegetarian, sorry.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Here's some vegetables.
Marc:Here you go.
Marc:This is what we saute with the rattlesnake.
Marc:I try to be a vegetarian a couple of times.
Marc:It's just too much beans involved, too much soy involved.
Guest:I actually lie.
Guest:I don't miss it.
Guest:I thought I'd really crave turkey at Thanksgiving.
Guest:I don't so much.
Guest:I used to be more of a hardcore vegan, like no dairy products or eggs.
Guest:Were you an asshole about it?
Guest:No, no, that was the thing.
Guest:I never tried to impose myself to be like, oh, you're going to eat that?
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:No, it was always a very personal thing.
Guest:But I've kind of backed off on that.
Guest:I'm still vegetarian, but I'll cheat on the cheese a lot.
Guest:My wife used to be vegetarian.
Guest:And then when she became pregnant, something in her body chemistry changed.
Guest:We'd be walking down the street and she'd see a billboard for prime rib and she'd start salivating.
Guest:Like, what?
Guest:Baby needs meat.
Guest:Baby needs meat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So she's not vegetarian.
Guest:Well, she's still vegetarian, except she eats meat all the time.
Guest:And how about the kid?
Guest:You know, my daughter is eight years old, and we didn't want to impose any kind of dietary thing on her because, you know, we got from, like, Matt Stone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:From what I'm told, you know, he was raised in a household where they had to eat healthy all the time, and it was, like, you know, literally and figuratively rammed down his throat.
Guest:I mean, he had to always, like, eat really healthy food.
Guest:So I've been told that now he rebels and he just, like, eats garbage food all the time.
Marc:And that's why we have South Park, because his parents made him eat.
Guest:But I didn't want my daughter to, like, rebel against the other person.
Guest:Basically, she knows that, you know, I'm vegetarian and we try to eat healthy, but we never really – we try to help her make her understand.
Marc:Does she like meat, though?
Marc:Because some kids who are brought up by vegetarians, they develop a sort of distaste for it.
Guest:Well, she used to – a few years ago, I mean, my wife brought her to some, like, Korean restaurant, and my daughter was like –
Guest:Oh, do I get to eat the eyeballs out of the fish?
Guest:I'm like, do I eat that?
Guest:She's like going nuts with it.
Guest:But now she's such an animal lover now.
Guest:She's like the total Zen nature girl animal lover.
Guest:And she's kind of connected the fact that meat comes from animals.
Guest:And now she's she actually became a vegetarian just pretty much on her own.
Marc:Oh, well, that's nice.
Marc:Are you going to are you going to force an instrument on her?
Guest:She took some piano lessons, and she didn't really take to it quite so much, and I didn't want to be like, you know, the draconian, like, you must have, yeah.
Marc:Have you given her an accordion, like a little squeeze box?
Guest:She's got all the instruments around the house she could possibly want to mess with.
Guest:My drummer gave her a little miniature drum set.
Guest:We've got keyboards all over the house.
Guest:And not that she's not musical, but her talent is more that she's a great artist.
Guest:She's actually quite a good artist.
Guest:In fact, there's a local greeting card company that's already asked if she would do a line of greeting
Marc:cars because she's got like really cute little eight year old girl art and now you have to get her an agent and a lawyer and someone's gonna have to negotiate for her so when you were a kid so six years old you're straddled with this accordion I mean was there I mean how did the other kids respond was there were you an ostracized kid
Guest:I noticed pretty early on that nobody wanted to be in a band with me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was like, come on, it'll be great.
Guest:I don't think so.
Marc:But did you ever impress them with your wizardry around contemporary music?
Marc:Is that where the seeds of what you do started?
Guest:that was more like when i entered adolescence i mean when i was 12 13 years old i would play along with uh my elton john albums and things like that uh and my college uh dorm uh you know it was kind of cool i brought my accordion to college and i was that's where i got the name weird al because like who does that yeah but at the same time my people were kind of like in a rock and i want one of my best friends joel miller played i met my freshman year and he'd bring us bongos and we'd jam out in the in the dorm room and uh started playing the college coffee houses and that's when i first started doing doing my live uh live appearances
Marc:So when you do Coffee Houses, though, I mean, at that time, I can't imagine what that sort of looked like because, I mean, I have to put you in some sort of comedically outside of giving you the sort of legacy of Alan Sherman and Tom Lehrer and musical parody people.
Marc:I mean, you sort of created this own zone for yourself that is sort of an awkward embracing kind of like, you know, look at me kind of thing.
Yeah.
Marc:That takes a lot of courage to do that.
Marc:So you must have been sort of, I can't imagine what playing a coffee house is weird out early on must have been.
Guest:Well, you stood out pretty quickly, you know, playing the accordion.
Marc:Is that where you knew, were you trying to be funny?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, for the most part.
Guest:I mean, you know, I learned that early on.
Guest:It's like if you want to be serious, playing the accordion, you wind up doing Italian weddings, basically.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I wanted to take it the other direction.
Guest:And, you know, we did things like, I did a lot of cover versions.
Guest:I did covers of Tom Lehrer songs and things like that.
Guest:And we did a thing early on where I did a medley of every song ever written in the history of the world.
Guest:So over 20 minutes, we'd segue from, like, the theme from The Odd Couple to 2001, also Sproxera's Hooster.
Guest:You know, we'd just, like, do random things.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And people were amused because this was in the context.
Guest:Like, this is the mid-'70s and a college coffeehouse.
Guest:And for an hour, people would be getting up with their acoustic guitars doing Dan Fogelberg songs.
Guest:Yeah, the worst.
Guest:And then I come out with the accordion and bongos, and we just knock people over.
Guest:Yeah, and they love it.
Guest:So who gave you the name Weird Al?
Guest:Was there a person?
Guest:I think there was a guy in my freshman dorms who started calling me Weird Al.
Guest:And not maliciously, just like I kind of was weird at the time, I suppose.
Guest:And it just kind of stuck.
Guest:And the next year, I started doing college radio, and we needed an air name to go on the air.
Guest:And Weird Al, that seems to work.
Guest:And what were you studying?
Guest:What was the plan B?
Guest:Well, at the time it was the plan A. I was getting my degree in architecture, which I actually got.
Guest:I went through all four years, got my degree, and I have never used it once.
Guest:You don't even use a compass or a protractor at all?
Guest:No rulers?
Guest:No.
Guest:That was back before CAD.
Guest:That was the old T-square days.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:This is ancient history.
Guest:So you have not found yourself on rolling plans and saying, this is where this is going to be.
Guest:You know, I've written out the plans for my remodeled bathroom and a few things like that, and that can still print very neatly.
Guest:I've got the architectural printing that they drill into you.
Guest:Oh, you got that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's not a bad thing.
Marc:No, that's not worth four years of college.
Marc:Yeah, hell yeah.
Marc:So now were your parents sort of like, I don't know, Al, with this music thing?
Guest:You know, the cool thing about my folks is that they never pressured me at all in terms of a career.
Guest:Because my dad, you know, my dad was like a street crossing guard.
Guest:He did like, you know, whatever.
Guest:We didn't live, you know, we were like lower middle class.
Guest:We had everything we needed, but we didn't have any luxuries or any aspirations.
Guest:We basically were just kind of like, you know, hanging out and, you know, living our lives.
Guest:And he was always about do whatever makes you happy because that's the only true sign of success is figuring out what makes you happy and doing that for a living.
Guest:So, I mean, I know I was very, very grounded.
Guest:It's not like I ran off to L.A.
Guest:because I want to be a star.
Marc:You know, you don't seem like to have that weird menacing darkness.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't have a compulsion to be famous or whatever.
Guest:It was just sort of like I love music.
Guest:I love comedy.
Guest:And let's see if I can do this for a living.
Guest:Did you listen to Zappa?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Were you a hero of mine?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really?
Marc:So you're a Zappa guy.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So you like you have all 90 records now, however many there are.
Marc:i've got quite a few though quite a few and what was it about him that because i feel that you're you're sort of um you're you pay a lot of attention to music you work with very good musicians and and you know even though you're doing something funny you do it you know perfectly so there must is a lot of attention paid to that and i think zappa was all about that he seems very compulsive as well i mean you know he a lot well a genius musician and very prolific i mean you mentioned he's got so many albums um and
Guest:Just a really warped sense of humor.
Guest:So that really attracted me to have that much musicianship and attention to detail and still be completely whacked in the head.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So that was sort of like a vessel.
Guest:Like, you know, you saw that it was possible.
Guest:Did you ever meet him?
Guest:I did, actually.
Guest:I met him when I was working in my day job at Westwood One in Culver City, like right out of college.
Guest:And he was being interviewed by Dr. Demento.
Guest:And I went up to him and had him sign my tattered copy of Freak Out.
Guest:And he told me at the time that his son, Dweezil, who was then 13, was a fan of Another One Rides the Bus.
Guest:So he actually got my autograph for Dweezil.
Guest:I was like, Frank Savage getting my autograph?
Guest:This is crazy.
Marc:So you had that single out, which was what?
Marc:Your third or fourth single?
Marc:That was like my second single.
Marc:That was like 1980s.
Guest:And you were still working a sort of weird assistant job?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, because I didn't pay the rent getting airplay on the Dr. Demento show.
Guest:I mean, I was working basically in the mailroom.
Guest:So you were working for Dr. Demento?
Marc:Well, I was working for his radio syndication company.
Marc:Now, how did that, because I know there's a story behind your relationship starting.
Marc:I mean, what was the evolution of that?
Guest:It was basically me just sending him unsolicited tapes in the mail.
Guest:I would record songs in my bedroom with my accordion on a little cassette tape, mail it in, and he started playing them on the radio, and they became popular, and he invited me to the station, hang out, answer phones, so we just kind of took it from there.
Guest:What kind of guy is he?
Guest:He's a really cool guy.
Guest:I mean, he's, you know, he's also a hoarder.
Guest:He hoards records.
Guest:I mean, that's his, you know, his whole life.
Guest:I mean, he's really focused.
Guest:He's got a master's degree.
Guest:I'm going to get this wrong, like in blues music or something like that.
Guest:But he's a very smart, learned guy who knows a lot about music colleges.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And he did very soft spoken.
Guest:He chooses his words carefully.
Marc:And his following was sort of weird because I mean, I know who he is.
Marc:But again, like for me, comedically, for some reason, the comics that resonated with me were always talking about, you know, dark, you know, human nature things.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I needed comedy to resolve emotional issues.
Marc:I was never one to just have a fun time.
Marc:So it always seemed to me that there's a certain silliness that you bring to what you do and also to what he was sort of embracing, which was that we can have fun and we can sing and wear silly hats.
Marc:The people that like you and the people that like him, there's a specific type of person.
Marc:You seem to be, it's not just a nerd hero, but I have to assume that most of your success when it first happened, that they were pretty young fans, weren't they?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When I was starting?
Marc:Yeah, I would think so.
Marc:Like the fan letters that you have from the 80s.
Marc:I mean, they've got to be like 15-year-olds, right?
Guest:Half of them were from 12-year-old boys, actually.
Guest:And my demographic has, I think, expanded over the years to the point where now at my live shows, it's toddlers to geriatrics.
Guest:It's a really wide demographic.
Guest:But again, when I first started out, I did seem to notice it was primarily male and primarily a really small segment.
Guest:It was around 12 years old.
Marc:And did you ever think about what it was about, you know, what you were doing that appealed to them or why it, like, freed them or why they thought it was funny?
Guest:I didn't analyze it too much.
Guest:I mean, I always just wrote what I thought was funny.
Guest:And back then, you know, I like to think my humor has matured a little bit more.
Guest:I mean, I don't write, you know, so many songs about food.
Guest:I mean, I had some songs on my first album, which I can't say that I'm proud of.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:Well, there's one song called Got a Boogie, which was supposed to be a disco song.
Guest:And the big, hilarious payoff is got a boogie on my finger and I can't shake it off.
Guest:So I doubt that I would write something quite that juvenile in 2011.
Guest:But when I was 17 years old, that was hilarious.
Marc:It's just I think there's something about I think you're one of the original nerds having a good time.
Guest:Yeah, because a lot of the stuff that I write is fairly dark and twisted, but it doesn't come from a dark place.
Guest:I'm generally happy in my life, and I've just got kind of an offbeat sense of humor, I guess.
Marc:But the fact that you're shameless and peculiar is a unique thing.
Guest:I could have been shameless and peculiar, Al.
Guest:That was an option.
Marc:Yeah, it's not as catchy.
Marc:But, you know, because I think when kids feel like there's an awkwardness that certainly young boys go through where they just can't fit in and they don't know how to talk to chicks.
Marc:It's just like everything's weird.
Guest:And to see somebody like you just sort of celebrating the weirdness.
Guest:Well, that's the whole thing.
Guest:It was like owning the weirdness and not being afraid of it and flying the freak flag high and to kind of show all the nerds and weirdos out there that it gets better.
Guest:Yeah, so you did have an agenda.
Marc:It's a noble agenda.
Marc:No, thank you, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, for freeing the nerds from your self-bondage.
Marc:Who were your guys when you were growing up musically?
Guest:I mean, who were the outside of Zappa?
Guest:Outside of Zappa?
Guest:Well, a lot of people I heard on the Demento show, and we mentioned some of the people already, Tom Lahren, Spike Jonze, Alan Sherman, Stan Freeberg, another big hero of mine.
Guest:Shel Silverstein.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Marc:Those are great songs.
Marc:Those are great.
Marc:I mean, and they're smart.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you never thought about doing stand-up or just doing anything like that?
Guest:That takes a whole different kind of mentality.
Guest:I mean, that's a whole different skill set.
Guest:I probably could give it enough time and effort, but I felt more comfortable with the music because it felt safer to me.
Guest:Because if people didn't think I was funny, you could still enjoy the music.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And a lot of the songs, I'm familiar more with your song parodies, but Deep Weird Al fans know all your songs.
Marc:And you wrote a lot of stuff, a lot of original music.
Marc:About half the stuff is original, yeah.
Marc:And which one were the big hits that were original?
Marc:None of them.
Guest:No mainstream hits.
Guest:I mean, the fans, certainly with the hardcore fans, there are a lot of favorites.
Guest:But yeah, I've never had a top 40 hit with an original song.
Guest:And this is sort of a pet peeve because I'd like to think that, you know, I've been doing this for a long time and I should be able to have something that's not a direct parody of something else.
Guest:But those always seem to be what people want to hear from me.
Marc:Well, it's also, I think that the rebelliousness of it, because I was trying to put it in the context of how I see what comedy does.
Marc:And I think that to attack, in a way, mainstream music is important.
Marc:I mean, do you feel that?
Marc:I mean, do you think that there's a ridiculousness to how the music business works, what's shoved down our throat, and to sort of attack that on its own terms?
Marc:It is a very family-friendly bit of satire and rebelliousness.
Guest:Yeah, but that is part of the mission statement because, you know, there is a lot of pretentiousness that pervades the music industry.
Guest:And, you know, I think part of what my job is is to kind of like let people know, hey, it's just rock and roll, just music.
Guest:Like, don't be so serious about it.
Guest:And don't be so brainwashed by it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That just because it's a hit doesn't mean it's great.
Marc:And by taking on Nirvana or even Michael Jackson, that you can find a core of ridiculousness to the pageantry that is mainstream rock music.
Marc:Which is a business of it.
Guest:Yeah, which is one of the reasons why the polka medleys work so well is because it kind of defangs every single thing because it breaks it down to make people really listen to the lyrics of these songs that they're adoring and idolizing.
Guest:And like, oh, those are the lyrics?
Guest:That's what I'm like so wrapped up about it.
Marc:Well, that's, it's hilarious because it's just sort of like, because the music that you're putting behind is actually funner and better that people get sort of like, you know, hypnotized by the music.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:And you work with such, you know, amazing musicians.
Marc:You've been with the same guys forever, right?
Guest:Yeah, I got very lucky.
Guest:I mean, you know, how'd you meet them?
Guest:My drummer I met actually on the Dr. DeMena show on September 14th, 1980.
Guest:And I know that date because that was the day that we did Another One Rides the Bus.
Guest:I met him like a few minutes before we actually played that song live on the Dr. DeMena show.
Guest:And that live performance was the master tape, and it still is to this day.
Guest:And I went to college, and I was hearing it was a big hit.
Guest:And I kept in contact with my drummer, John Bermuda Schwartz.
Guest:And I said, hey, we should put a band together and do this for real.
Guest:And was there any movement from record companies pushing you?
Guest:At that time, not really.
Guest:I mean, again, you know, record companies, publishers, nobody was like really, you know, impressed by Airplane and the Dr. Domeno Show.
Guest:And even if they were, I mean, what I did was considered novelty music, which is sort of derogatory in that it implies one hit wonder like, yeah, maybe you'll have a wacky disco duck kind of hit or whatever, and then nobody will ever hear from you again.
Marc:And that's that's the amazing thing is that your music, you know, if even if it is novelty music, a lot of that stuff is sort of like kind of condemned to, you know, morning radio play.
Marc:Like, you know, it's a little bit of this.
Guest:Remember this one?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The streak.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which is why when I was sort of an outlier in that MTV started about the same time that I did and they needed material because they just started this, you know, 24 hour network and they didn't have a lot of music videos.
Guest:So my first music videos got a lot of play, even though they were.
Guest:kind of bad, but they just needed material for the pipeline.
Guest:But all videos were bad.
Marc:But I mean, but you, because you were satirizing, I mean, you got some skills as a filmmaker, right?
Guest:I developed it over the years.
Guest:I mean, I didn't direct my first videos and I was pretty green, but I kind of learned on the job.
Marc:And did you, you found, did you find, like, I know that a lot of people respect your videos.
Marc:So did you, how many videos did you direct yourself?
Guest:I started directing in the early 90s.
Guest:I haven't counted, but everything, all the live action videos from like 1992, 93.
Guest:And you did other people's videos?
Guest:I've done a few.
Guest:I directed for The Black Crows, Hanson, Ben Folds, John Spencer Blue's Explosion, a few people like that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:They reached out to you?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So that was great.
Guest:They were fantastic.
Guest:How are those guys doing, I wonder?
Guest:I haven't heard from them in a while.
Guest:I ran to Russell Simmons at a rehearsal hall about a year ago.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:It's interesting.
Marc:It always saddens me when I see the way the music business works.
Marc:Because if you look at the Black Crows, John Spencer Blues Exposion was really doing that kind of hot-rotted modern blues before they were.
Marc:And they didn't really kind of, like, get the full arc of the young girls loving them.
Guest:You never know what's going to pop.
Guest:But, yeah, they were amazing.
Guest:And they were just so fun to work with shooting a video with them.
Marc:What's the other guy's name?
Marc:Judah Bauer?
Guest:Is that the other guy?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's good.
Guest:He's good.
Marc:Yeah, I've hung out with those guys once or twice.
Marc:Do you have any contempt towards the music business in general?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Marc:I mean, more of sadness.
Yeah.
Marc:That's sort of like a chronic sadness.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:A light vibration.
Guest:Mostly because there is no music business anymore.
Guest:It's like very quickly just dissolving.
Guest:It's vanishing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Man, I mean, I should probably stop complaining because I complained once that my new album, even though it's my highest charting album, is one of my worst selling albums because people just are not buying albums anymore.
Guest:Is it the live one?
Guest:No, it's Alpocalypse.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's a top 10 album.
Guest:It's my biggest charting album.
Guest:It's from this.
Marc:I just watched the DVD, but that's a live performance, right?
Guest:That is a live performance, yeah.
Marc:But the live shows, when did you start amplifying the live shows to such amazing spectacles?
Guest:Was it always like that?
Guest:It grew over the years.
Guest:I mean, it's become a big multimedia thing.
Guest:When I first started out, it was basically just me and my band on stage playing live.
Guest:And then we started, I think the first thing we did was, my first single after I got signed to a record deal was Ricky, which was me doing as Ricky Ricardo doing a duet with a woman doing Lucille Ball.
Marc:Is that the first time you shaved your mustache off?
Guest:For a long time, yeah.
Guest:And we couldn't really perform that live because we weren't traveling with a woman who did the voice of Lucille Ball.
Guest:So we had to basically play our music video on an 8mm projector on a screen on stage.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was the start of it.
Guest:Then the next year was Eat It and I had to bring out the zippered Eat It jacket.
Guest:And over the years it just became more and more about costumes and production value.
Guest:It's like an amusement park for people now.
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:I've got more costume changers than Lady Gaga at this point.
Guest:It's pretty crazy.
Marc:And that's the other thing about the kind of eternal flame of what your craft does is that, you know, if there's somebody to attack, you can attack them.
Marc:I mean, in your way.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So you're always bringing in a new kind of ship full of 15-year-old boys.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We're like, fuck Lady Gaga and Weird Al's Fun.
Guest:Well, it's kind of, I mean, my albums are sort of, every album's a comeback because I go a few years between albums, and every time I put on an album, it's like a new generation discovers me, which is cool.
Guest:Like, there's a whole new crop of 15-year-olds that go, oh, Alpocalypse, oh.
Guest:oh, he's got other albums too.
Guest:And they go back.
Guest:Then the whole catalog starts selling again.
Guest:You see that happen?
Guest:Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Marc:And now, what does the audience look like at a Weird Al show now?
Marc:They're all Japanese.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Marc:No.
Marc:That means something.
Marc:You're big in Japan.
Marc:It means it's over here and you can retire in Japan.
Guest:No, I mean, like I said, it's a very diverse audience, demographically at least.
Guest:I mean, it's like, you know, you got your teenage, you got your college age.
Marc:What is the male to female ratio in general?
Guest:It's...
Guest:Probably slightly more male, but not like it was in the 80s.
Guest:It's become a real family thing because my humor is, even though it's a little twisted, it's pretty clean so you can feel fairly safe bringing your family to it.
Guest:And as a result, parents and grandparents and kids all come along together and they all enjoy the show on a different level.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:I mean, I can't even imagine that.
Marc:Like, if I go into a room to perform comedy, I see kids, I'm like, oh, I'm going to change their life.
Marc:This is going to be, someone made a mistake here.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:But you never have to feel that.
Marc:No.
Marc:Oh, that's sweet.
Marc:You're a sweet guy.
Guest:Look at that.
Guest:Oh, thanks, Mark.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, when did you get LASIK surgery?
Marc:I have to assume.
Guest:Oh, 1998.
Guest:And it working?
Guest:Do you love it?
Guest:You know, I do.
Guest:You know, my eyes continue to change.
Guest:So I still wear a very low prescription glasses when I'm driving or when I go to the movies.
Guest:But in general, you see, the thing is with these glasses, I see better from like 10 feet to infinity.
Guest:But within 10 feet, I see better without the glasses.
Marc:So and like because I can't like I I'm scared of it and you weren't scared of it or you were for a long time.
Guest:Well, it was a little scary because, I mean, especially back when I did it, I mean, I think it's even better now.
Guest:They don't literally have to cut your eyeball, from what I understand, but when I went, they did.
Guest:And they do this whole two-hour orientation where they tell you exactly what they're going to do.
Guest:I mean, and it was kind of scary because at this point, we're going to numb you, and then we're going to slice the top of your eyeball.
Guest:Peel it back.
Guest:And you're thinking, oh, that doesn't sound pleasant at all.
Guest:And I got to tell you the story just because it was the weirdest thing because I knew that they were peeling back the top of my eyeball to do this laser surgery.
Guest:And they did it on live television, by the way, because this is the cheap side of me.
Guest:They told me they'd do it for free if they let Channel 11 cover it on the on the daytime news.
Marc:So weird Al getting his eyeball peeled back.
Guest:Live on television.
Guest:Isn't that like a cup of liquid, though?
Marc:I mean, isn't there liquid in there that could come out, like ocular fluid?
Marc:Eye junk?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:I assumed that they knew what they were doing, so I was just kind of trusting them.
Guest:You just went and you rolled with it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, so what happened?
Guest:After the operation, you know, the operation went fine, and I could immediately read the whole eye chart.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:But I'm sitting there in the waiting room waiting for my ride to pick me up and drive me home because you're not supposed to, you know, drive because you just had eye surgery.
Guest:And I was reading a magazine or something, and I blinked.
Guest:And what they didn't tell me was that after the surgery, they put a soft contact lens on your eyes to kind of protect the scar.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:They didn't tell me that.
Marc:But with no power to it.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It was just a protective thing.
Guest:And so I blinked, and this contact lens pops out of my eye and lands on my cheek.
Guest:And I flip out.
Guest:Ah, my cornea!
Guest:My cornea fell out!
Guest:Ah!
Guest:And people are running in.
Guest:They're like, oh, no, it's a contact lens.
Guest:I was freaking, I thought my eye was falling apart.
Guest:Weird Al freaks out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, shit.
Marc:Where's that song?
Marc:I know.
Marc:That's a horrible fucking story.
Marc:Because that moment of fear, when you have real fear, it's awful.
Marc:Because you just don't know what's going to come out of you.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:When your eye is on your cheek, what do you do?
Marc:What do you do?
Marc:You were still in the doctor's.
Marc:I'm going to need that.
Marc:That's my eyeball.
Marc:But you're still in the doctor's office?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I'm in the waiting room.
Guest:People are looking at me like, what?
Marc:Did they get that on the daytime TV?
Guest:No, no, they were gone.
Guest:The cameras were packed up at that point.
Marc:Now, I have to, like, what's happened culturally has to be amazingly exciting for you.
Marc:The culture has seemed to turn a corner towards weird owl land.
Marc:Like, I mean, culturally, the nerd paradigm seems to be somewhat dominant in youth culture.
Marc:And I have to assume...
Guest:uh that recently you've there's sort of a rebirth of what you do did you have you felt that you know i yeah uh and it was i have to say it wasn't calculated at all it wasn't like you know i mean because i've been you know a hardcore nerd you know from the beginning but i i did seem to notice uh when i did white and nerdy which was like five years ago uh that seemed to be riding the crest of of of nerd culture at the time i mean it was like it was really in in everywhere you looked
Guest:And it really was part of the zeitgeist to that point.
Guest:And again, that wasn't something that I was consciously trying to tap into it, but it just really was fortuitous that it all happened at the same time.
Marc:Well, yeah, because I talked to a lot of guys in here, dudes like Tom Lennon, Chris Hardwick, my partner who I work with, were huge Weird Al fans when they were kids.
Marc:And do you feel like you've been embraced or welcomed back in?
Marc:Or do you have a sense of like, oh, I'm a veteran.
Marc:I'm the...
Marc:I'm a legend.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:It's like I'm a novelty dinosaur.
Guest:And for somebody that wasn't supposed to have a career at all, it's kind of nice that I've been able to hang around for as long as I have.
Guest:And if I have any kind of influence or inspiration for the younger comics, I hate to call them the younger comics, but for the people that came after me, that's amazing to me.
Guest:Do you see anybody doing what you're doing, though?
Guest:I don't see anybody doing it.
Guest:Well, on YouTube, there's 100 million people doing song parodies, but probably not at the level that I've been doing it.
Marc:And what do you think the difference is in terms of why you were able to be so successful at it?
Guest:It's a lot of hard work and surrounding myself with very talented people.
Guest:We talked about my band.
Guest:I mean, they're amazing, and that's been great to have.
Guest:And just tenacity.
Guest:I mean, I just don't give up.
Guest:And do you guys ever just jam?
Marc:Are there other musicians you hang out with?
Marc:Who are some of the people that in your career have surprised you when they've come up and said, I love what you do?
Guest:Yeah, it really surprised me the people that have said that they're fans.
Guest:I mean, I've become friends with people like Ben Folds, and I got to direct his video as well.
Guest:And just people even who knew I existed.
Guest:I mean, in 1984, when I first started out, I met Paul McCartney at a...
Guest:And, you know, I just don't eat it.
Guest:I mean, I was just like, you know, just starting out.
Guest:And I weaseled my way up to him in this party because I just thought, oh, this is my chance to meet a beetle.
Guest:And he knew who I was.
Guest:He turned to Linda and said, honey, it's Weird Al.
Guest:I'm like, what?
Guest:No, my brain cannot handle this.
Marc:It was crazy.
Marc:But when you approach those situations, was there any sense of like, you know, I just do these funny songs.
Marc:You're a Beatle.
Marc:Or were you just sort of like, hey, I'm here.
Guest:I didn't even want, I didn't think he'd know who I was.
Guest:I just thought I was like some guy at the party like this.
Guest:I just want to let you know that I love you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he knew who I was.
Guest:And he was like, then people are taking pictures of us together.
Guest:And it's like, this is the best day of my life.
Guest:Did you get to talk to him?
Guest:For like a minute, it was like the party for his movie, Give My Regards to Broad Street.
Guest:So he was very busy and being involved with a lot of other people.
Guest:I actually got to direct Paul McCartney a couple years ago in a short film called Weird Al's Brain in 3D.
Guest:It was like a theme attraction for the Orange County Fair.
Guest:And he was nice enough to, at Coachella, he made a few minutes for me to film him doing a little bit for the movie.
Guest:So I can now say, if I do nothing else in life, I have directed Paul McCartney.
Guest:Well, that's great.
Guest:Was he your favorite Beatle?
Guest:I'd have to say so, yeah.
Guest:You're not a Lennon guy.
Guest:See, I'm a Lennon guy.
Marc:See, that's a fundamental difference between us.
Guest:I love them all, but I have to defer to Paul.
Marc:When it comes to technology and this stuff, because you seem to be working on a lot of platforms.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:There's many platforms.
Marc:Gotta move the units.
Marc:Yeah, move the units anyway.
Marc:It's getting tricky to move the units now because people get so many units for nothing if you're not careful.
Marc:How do you protect your units?
Guest:You know, I don't worry about my units.
Guest:People can abuse my units if they want to.
Marc:Oh, I was open to unit abuse.
Marc:I knew it.
Marc:But how savvy are you with that stuff and how much like, you know, something like that Orange County Fair thing?
Marc:Is that your brainchild or your approach or something like that?
Guest:That was something that the CEO of the fair wanted to do something with, because they always did very well with me at the Orange County Fair.
Guest:They'd sell out, have huge record-breaking crowds, and they said, we want to take it to the next step.
Guest:And my manager and I brainstormed the idea of doing this Al's Brain Pavilion where it's like a 3D movie and you learn about the human brain.
Guest:So that was just like a nice, fun project that we did.
Guest:So it was educational.
Guest:Yeah, it was educational and fun.
Guest:And I got to have Tom Lennon and Patton and Tim and Eric and Paul McCartney and my mother-in-law all making cameo appearances in this cool little video.
Marc:Now, are you friends with Tim and Eric in an active way?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I don't see them all the time, but we stay in touch.
Guest:What do you think of what they do?
Guest:I love what they do.
Guest:I actually asked to be on.
Guest:What happened was I saw an interview with Tim and Eric where they were talking about.
Guest:And this is back when they're doing Tom Goes to the Mayor.
Guest:And they were saying, like, we don't get a lot of celebrities on the show because, like, you know, they don't ask.
Guest:Like, you have to ask?
Guest:Well, I'll ask, sure.
Guest:I'd like to be on the show.
Guest:And I approached Bob Odenkirk, who's sort of their mentor, and said, yeah, if Tim and Eric ever want to have me in any of their things, let me know.
Guest:And they said, we got this new character called Uncle Muscles.
Guest:And if you're interested, I said, whatever it is, I'm there.
Guest:And I'm amazed.
Guest:A lot of people recognize me from the Tim and Eric show.
Guest:And people either love the show or hate the show.
Guest:There's no middle ground whatsoever.
Marc:with them is like... Well, you know, I sort of, they won't come on the show because they don't like talking, I think they're tired of talking about their process.
Marc:And because it's so unique, and how do you question that?
Marc:I mean, with Tim and Eric, you're sort of like, where did this come from?
Guest:Where do your ideas come from?
Marc:Like, where do you answer that?
Marc:The weird thing about it, and it's sort of similar with Zappa and sort of similar with people who do this kind of... They create a universe, and somehow or another it's just working.
Marc:And it seems to automatically reference the history of television, the history of weirdness, commercial culture, and freak culture, all in just... It's effortless.
Marc:And the truth of the matter is, I can't imagine that they're thinking about creating all these layers intellectually.
Marc:It just happens because of their humor.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But...
Marc:You have to fucking respect it because you're watching something that it's not going to happen anywhere else.
Marc:No.
Marc:And it's not necessarily about big laughs or anything.
Marc:It's almost, it has, it goes deeper and you're not, you can't even figure out where it's going.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it has an effect on you if you've been alive and watched television at any point in your life.
Yeah.
Marc:So now the touring thing now, when you travel, would you bring a full, is there a full truck of costumes?
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:It's a traveling circus, man.
Guest:We got a couple of buses and a couple of trucks, which is one of the reasons why it's hard for us to tour outside of North America.
Guest:Because, you know, if you're flying the fat suit and the computer servers overseas.
Marc:How do you do that so quickly in terms of costume changes with the fat suit?
Marc:Because it doesn't have to be molded into your skin or you've got it.
Guest:Well, when they do it for the video, it's like a four-hour process.
Guest:But for the live show, it's just a little bit man behind the curtain here ruining the magic for you.
Guest:Let's ruin some magic.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:It's latex appliances that are attached to the glasses that I wear, and there's a Velcro strip in the back.
Guest:So I can change into the fat suit in about a minute and a half.
Okay.
Marc:So now, was there a table, kind of almost a corporate discussion about how are we going to do this?
Marc:Let's plan this out.
Marc:Did you have to sit and figure out a system?
Marc:Did you have to, like, practice it in front of a few other people?
Guest:For the fat suit in particular?
Marc:Yeah, for the fat suit in particular.
Guest:Well, we had to figure out a way to do it because when I wrote the song and we did the video, we never thought, now, how are we going to do this live on stage?
Guest:So we had to basically go to a special effects house.
Guest:Kevin Yeager designed the fat suit, and he also designed the mask that I wear, and he's an amazing, amazing guy.
Marc:So is it so most of the that's like in terms of units, the one thing that the one unit they can't take away from you is live performing.
Marc:And that's really become, I think, interesting to me is that merchandise and live performing is really a big part of the business.
Guest:That's a huge.
Guest:Well, that is that is the business now.
Guest:I mean, I often say that, you know, when I started out, you would basically play live to sell records.
Guest:And now it's you, you know, make records so that you can play live.
Guest:And how accessible are you after a show?
Guest:Do you go out and say hi?
Guest:I do.
Guest:Not always.
Guest:You shouldn't feel entitled for a personal visit with me if you go to a show because I don't do usually a meet and greet after casinos or fairs or if basically I'm sick or have something I have to be doing.
Guest:But whenever I can, I do do a meet and greet after the show.
Marc:It's weird because there's not much condescension to your spirit.
Marc:I mean, because, you know, you speak about, you know, playing state fairs.
Marc:And I think for most performers, the idea of playing a state fair would be horrendous.
Guest:You know, it's not a hip gig, but it's a great gig.
Guest:I mean, you know, it's some of the biggest shows I've ever played have been at state fairs.
Guest:I mean, it's like Woodstock sometimes.
Guest:They'd be literally 15,000 people.
Guest:You can't see the end of the crowd.
Guest:And they're all having a great time.
Guest:And it pays well.
Guest:And you have to smell corn dogs while you're playing.
Guest:But other than that, I mean, it's pretty cool.
Marc:And it's family.
Marc:Yeah, I find that completely commendable.
Marc:And it almost makes me uncomfortable because I think that, you know, I don't know if I'm a snob, but I certainly operate in a world of show business that is that is specific.
Marc:And and I don't have a family and I never really considered.
Marc:I don't even know that I consider myself an entertainer for the first 10 years of my career.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like the idea that, like, you know, I'm a comedian.
Marc:I've got things to say.
Marc:It wasn't like, you know, I'm here to make people happy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm bringing joy to the world.
Marc:No, I'm working some shit out.
Marc:But I think that from your very nature, from your very core, that you seem to want to provide a good time for all ages.
Guest:Yeah, that's kind of what I'm trying to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's my job description.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there's some songs that, you know, I play maybe not because it's my favorite song, but it's because like, oh, this will make people happy.
Guest:And it doesn't bother you.
Guest:You're not like, here we go.
Marc:Let's play Eat It Again.
Guest:I mean, I've literally played some of my songs over a thousand times on stage, but it doesn't really get old because as long as people are having a good time, I mean, you know.
Guest:I'll tell you, those things got to be tight now, though, Al.
Guest:Oh, I tell you.
Guest:But, you know, the odd thing is I will still forget words, even like, you know, 30 years later, like I'll be in the middle of Yoda and think, what's the next line?
Guest:And that's a very Yoda thing to think.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Line, what's next?
Guest:Next line, right.
Guest:Get the syntax right.
Guest:Do you do Japan and that kind of stuff?
Guest:We've never done a full-on tour of Japan.
Guest:The last time I played Japan was, well, not even played Japan.
Guest:I was there in 1984 when Ito was a big hit.
Guest:And I think YouTube might have just yanked this off my account.
Guest:But look online.
Guest:It's Weird Al in Japan, 1984.
Guest:It's one of the most surrealistic experiences of my life.
Guest:I was on this TV show.
Guest:I don't remember the name of it, but they billed it as the Saturday Night Live of Japan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was there singing eat it phonetically in half English, half Japanese.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And while I'm singing, there's a chorus line of dancing sumo wrestlers.
Guest:There's a guy that gets wheeled out on a gurney in a giant lobster outfit and demands that I eat him.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It was very lost in translation.
Guest:When I saw that movie, I thought, oh, yeah, I'm Bill Murray here.
Guest:Well, yeah, Saturday Night Live is very different there.
Guest:This does not compute at all.
Marc:But because of the nature of popular music and the global sort of range of it, I mean, you probably draw everywhere.
Marc:I mean, it's not like people are going to go like, it's too American or it's too, we don't get it.
Guest:I mean, those songs are everywhere.
Guest:Well, that's nice about the internet because you no longer have to be...
Guest:It doesn't matter if your product is actually in the stores in Uganda because they can hear you on the internet there.
Guest:So I've got pockets of fans in parts of the world that I didn't even know existed.
Guest:And you're not married that long, right?
Marc:About 10 years.
Marc:So you got married later in life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What kind of groupies does Al Yankovic have?
Guest:You know, I bulk erased that entire part of my memory.
Guest:Have you really?
Guest:No.
No.
Guest:Well, I mean, seriously.
Guest:I dated for a while.
Guest:I mean, you know, I didn't get groupies per se.
Guest:I mean, I, you know, I did date fans because I know that's a nice place to start.
Guest:People that actually like you.
Guest:I married a fan and that didn't work out.
Guest:And now I'm dating a fan.
Marc:What's in place there is they have a very deep understanding that may not have anything to do with you of you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:A fan.
Marc:Like, I know you.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You perhaps don't.
Yeah.
Guest:You perhaps don't.
Marc:And then you try to shake the idea they have of you, and then, no, no, that's not the owl.
Guest:You're not the, I've got a different owl in my brain.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I'm honoring that owl in my mind.
Marc:So you better become him.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah, they're hard to get out of.
Marc:Transition, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, they're hard to get out of the house.
Marc:So...
Marc:But like in general, have you had stalkery, groupie kind of?
Guest:I had a, gosh, I probably shouldn't even be talking about it, but I had a stalker that lived in a different part of the country that would send me a creepy letter every single day.
Guest:And the letters would sometimes get to be 30, 40 pages long, handwritten.
Guest:A woman?
Guest:A woman, yeah.
Guest:And it was obviously the only thing she did in her life was write me letters.
Guest:And on the back it said, this is letter number 712.
Guest:Why haven't you written back yet?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:That kind of thing, you know.
Marc:And did they just trickle away, or was there legal action?
Guest:No, after a while, they just stopped, you know.
Guest:Were you saddened by that?
Guest:I was like, where's my stalker?
Guest:Was there a moment?
Guest:What's wrong?
Guest:What did I do?
Guest:Is there something I said?
Guest:You can tell me.
Guest:I hope she's okay.
Guest:It was the kind of thing.
Guest:It was very Charlie Madison.
Guest:It was like...
Guest:When you put this lyric into your music, was that a direct message to me?
Guest:That kind of thing.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, man, that's always a little jarring to have the fan stalker that you know is in her own world.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But luckily, she didn't live in L.A., and she didn't have any money, so it's not like I would be worried that she'd be behind me in line at the supermarket.
Guest:And you never engaged.
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:You knew better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you ever engage in chat boards or anything?
No.
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:I mean, I read pretty much every at mention on Twitter.
Guest:I try to, like, be aware of what fans are saying, but I don't usually involve myself because then it's a slippery slope.
Guest:Then it's like, well, you responded to that person.
Guest:Why didn't you respond to me?
Guest:Yeah, fuck you.
Guest:And then that's only four tweets away from Al Yankovic's a douchebag.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then that guy gets traction with his tweet, what did Al do?
Guest:And then it's out of your hand.
Guest:So I just remain this omniscient being, just looking down.
Guest:That's good.
Marc:That's probably better off.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, I mean, you have had tragedy in your life recently, and I know it was fairly public.
Marc:And how do you sort of, with your parents, how do you bounce back from that?
Guest:It's a slow process.
Guest:I mean, you know, my parents passed away five years, 2004, seven years ago.
Guest:This was not that recent.
Guest:And it was like a horrible situation.
Guest:I mean, what happened?
Guest:Oh, gosh, we're going there.
Guest:It's always hard for me to relive my parents' death because it was the singular most traumatic thing that ever happened to me, and I still feel the pain to this day.
Guest:The shock was worn off for the most part, but it's a pain that I still carry with me.
Guest:I was on the road, and I got a phone call from my wife in tears telling me, and I thought at the time, you know, she called up in tears, and I thought, oh, our bird died.
Guest:Oh, this is horrible.
Guest:And it turned out my parents both had passed away because of the flu being closed in their house, and they had the fireplace going, so they both died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And it was...
Guest:It was obviously horrible, and I could barely function, but I figured I had the responsibility.
Guest:I had a show that night.
Guest:I was in the middle of the tour.
Guest:I had a small army of people depending on me, so I kind of put my blinders on, and I went into denial mode, and I basically went on stage every single night,
Guest:did the full show, acted like everything was just fine.
Guest:But afterwards, no meet and greets, no nothing.
Guest:I just went and collapsed and just was a sobbing mess.
Guest:But I mean, in a way, it kind of got me through it because I needed denial at that point because it was just too much for me to accept.
Guest:Yeah, I can't imagine.
Guest:And I was able to kind of like put for a couple hours every night to have just a break from the horror of my situation.
Marc:Yeah, and over time, that's amazing that you were able to do the shows.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And were you able to just walk in and tunnel vision and just go?
Guest:Well, I tried to, but every now and then I'd have a lyric talking about my mother or whatever, and then I'd be like, oh.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I can't imagine.
Marc:Yeah, it was horrible.
Marc:And it's interesting because in stand-up, there's no way for you to necessarily creatively process that.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, you just because it's not what you do.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But the outlet of just being able to do the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Got you away from it.
Guest:And, you know, I've heard from so many people over the years that my music has gotten them through a very hard, you know, dry time of their life.
Guest:I thought, well, maybe it'll do the same for me.
Guest:And in a way, it did.
Guest:And here's the thing.
Guest:I never wanted.
Guest:I always knew intellectually that someday my parents were going to pass away.
Guest:Right.
Guest:To deal with it.
Guest:But I never thought it would be like out of the blue.
Guest:And at the same time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Too much.
Guest:Mind-blowing.
Guest:Also, I thought I'd be able to deal with my grief very privately, but instead it became like a worldwide news story.
Guest:I didn't want people walking on eggshells around me.
Guest:I didn't want people treating me differently.
Guest:I was doing a comedy show every night.
Guest:I didn't want people going there and feeling sorry for me.
Marc:So literally the news broke, and the following couple of shows, everyone knew.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think the first night, the only people that knew were, I don't even know if my crew knew, I think maybe the guys in my band knew, but then it became like a headline on CNN.
Guest:So at that point, like everybody knew.
Guest:And did you find that like when you walked out on stage, you were like, hmm.
Guest:Actually, no.
Guest:I mean, we had a slide that we showed before the show started saying that tonight's performance is in honor of my parents.
Guest:And it was sort of like dealing with the 800-pound gorilla and getting it out there.
Guest:And at that point, we did the show as normal.
Guest:And the outpouring of support from the fans was just unbelievable.
Guest:I mean, I didn't ever think I'd want to share my grief with people, but it really was cathartic and it was nice to know that people had my back.
Marc:That's very powerful, and it's very sweet that you were able to have that.
Marc:That the honesty, whether you wanted it to be there or not, about the tragedy was out, and these people were caring, and that's beautiful.
Marc:Well, I'm sorry that happened, but it sounds like you really dealt with it.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Did you find yourself like pissed off at news organizations?
Marc:I mean, isn't it weird to be a public person?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, the thing I was most upset was was they couldn't wait for us.
Guest:I mean, you know, everybody like, so what's your statement?
Guest:Like my statement?
Guest:Like, what do you how do you think I'm feeling?
Guest:You know, you.
Guest:And they couldn't wait because it's in the news cycle.
Guest:So it's like they talked to my parents' neighbors in Fallbrook, which they barely even knew.
Guest:And like, so what do you think about this?
Guest:And like, they're getting all their information from people that didn't know anything.
Guest:And all this misinformation is out there.
Guest:Yeah, I hear all those relatives live together in a commune.
Guest:Like, what?
Guest:Really?
Guest:And everything was wrong.
Guest:And finally, I had to put like an official statement on my website, just basically correcting all the misinformation and kind of just putting it out there.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:And and that was good to do, too.
Guest:But it just kind of it was upsetting to me that they couldn't wait like 48 hours for me to process my grief to the point where I could like, you know, have a cohesive thought.
Marc:It's fucking it's so unbelievable to me that the kind of like predatory nature.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Of a news cycle that like they have so little and there's so much airtime to fill that they have no respect for personal boundaries.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Even around something that's tragic and should be handled delicately.
Marc:And just because you're a celebrity, they're just like, yeah, let's go into the house.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I'm sorry you had to go through that.
Guest:So what's the tour schedule now?
Guest:I'm done.
Guest:We just started talking about general periods of time.
Guest:I'm probably not going out on the road until sometime April-ish at this point.
Guest:Are there new songs in the making?
Guest:Not right now, but that's several months away, so I'll probably start working on the next album.
Guest:What do you do?
Marc:Do you force yourself to assess and listen to popular music for hooks?
Marc:What is it that attracts you to a song outside of the culture of celebrity or the popularity?
Guest:It's hard to define.
Guest:A song that is a good candidate for parody, generally it will have some kind of hook or something that makes it jump out.
Guest:But I generally look at what's been number one on the Billboard charts and try to figure out any variations on a theme.
Guest:And it's more about that, the mainstream popularity and can I think of an idea for it?
Guest:Because there's a lot of songs that would be good candidates, but it feels like a force.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it has to be organic and you have to engage in that.
Guest:Which is why it's nice that I only put out albums every few years, because there are some parody writers that work for radio syndication services, and they have to crank out a parody three times a week, and that kind of will water down your creativity.
Marc:Yeah, but see, that also speaks to the amazing musicianship of what you do, because those things are such shit, and you can hear that they're just directly ripping off the licks, and that there's no real process to it.
Marc:But with technology, people can churn out shit so quickly.
Marc:What do you listen to now?
Marc:I mean, if you're in your car...
Marc:I'll just turn on the local LA radio station.
Marc:You do that too?
Marc:I listen to public radio usually.
Marc:If I'm on my iPod, someone just gave me the vinyl reissue of John Coltrane's Giant Step on these 180-gram.
Marc:I'm not at vinyl free, but the guy's like, this is 180-gram vinyl, 45 RPM.
Marc:It's the way it's supposed to be heard.
Marc:I'm like, okay, all right.
Marc:I'll rip an MP3 from it, thanks.
Yeah.
Marc:But no, but then you put it on and you just see it spinning and you're like, wow, this is the way it's supposed to be heard.
Guest:I listen to all my music on Edison wax cylinders.
Guest:That's the only thing.
Guest:Anything else is a sellout.
Guest:That I hand crank holding a stopwatch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Dude, you're not a vinyl guy though?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I appreciate vinyl, and I'm not an audiophile.
Guest:I think my ears have been deadened to the point where I can't really hear those kind of really minute improvements in sound quality.
Guest:So I prefer not to hear pops and ticks and surface noise.
Guest:The only thing I miss about the LPs is the covers, because I like the artwork.
Marc:Yeah, you miss people being able to clean pot on the Weird Al cover.
Marc:On the first Weird Al album.
Guest:Oh, yes.
Marc:Memories.
Marc:So what is your particular nerdism?
Marc:I mean, what are you obsessed with in general?
Guest:Oh, I don't have any hobbies so much outside of my career.
Guest:I mean, I surf the Internet more than a healthy person should.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just love knowing what's going on.
Guest:Twitter is a big vice of mine.
Guest:Isn't that amazing?
Guest:And other than that, just generic music and comedy stuff.
Guest:Did you tweet that you were coming over here?
Marc:I didn't, but when this is live... I think you should maybe wait until we put it up.
Marc:That was my plan.
Marc:You're one of the smart ones, Ed, because there's a little bit of a... I got a pipeline here, and then what happens is I become the asshole.
Marc:You tweet it.
Marc:Just got back from Aaron's, and then for the next month, people are like, when's Weird Al?
Marc:You said Weird Al is coming.
Guest:A lot of people are tweeting like, when are you going to do Mark's podcast?
Marc:It's going to happen.
Marc:I've been telling people it's going to happen, and now it happened.
Marc:Here you go.
Marc:I think it went good.
Guest:Me?
Marc:You?
Marc:We good?
Guest:I think we're good, probably.
Marc:Well, thanks, Al.
Marc:Thanks for coming.
Guest:My pleasure.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's the end of our show.
Marc:Boomer.
Marc:People want to know if you're a cat or something I'm making up or my producer.
Marc:Boomy.
Marc:Boomy.
Marc:God damn it, man.
Marc:I think he likes Jessica better than me.
Marc:I think that I've lost a cat.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:I appreciate you listening to the WTF.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:You can get merchandise here.
Marc:You can kick in a few shekels.
Marc:You can get information on all the apps.
Marc:I've got the episode guide so you know who has been on the show and how you can get that episode.
Marc:You know, the premium app is only a few bucks, and it'll get you access on a streaming level to every episode we've ever done.
Marc:We're eagerly awaiting our DVDs with the first 100 episodes.
Marc:And Just Coffee at WTFPod.com, JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:Oh, I already did that.
Marc:I'm not going to do it again.
Marc:Please come see me in Miami on Thursday, March 1st at the Colony Theater.
Marc:Please don't leave me alone with my mother.