Weird Al knows our soft spots

A few years ago, when I was a reporter at an alternative weekly in upstate New York, I landed the interview of a lifetime. After weeks of e-mails, phone calls and faxes, after a serious duration of schedule-juggling and agent-schmoozing, I finally had individual, personal, one-on-one-time (well, as personal as a long-distance telephone service can get) with the Man himself. I interviewed Weird Al Yankovic.\nIt was perhaps the most nervous I have ever been as a working journalist (even more than when, for the Health pages, I was doing first-person account of a trip to the proctologist). And why shouldn't I have been shaking in my size 12s? Weird Al is nothing less than a living legend, an icon who spans genres and generations, styles and societies. He's a person who has often been a cultural weathervane, telling the masses which way the winds of cool and hip are blowing.\nOK, yeah, you can kindly stop laughing now.\nPerhaps -- PERHAPS -- I might have overstated Weird Al's importance. A little bit. Maybe. But my overall point -- that Weird Al Yankovic's impact on American pop culture should not be underestimated -- remains steadfast. It would be impossible to name another musical act, whether it be serious artists (like the Rolling Stones, U2 or George Clinton) or a comedy act designed to make people laugh (like Limp Bizkit or Nelly), who, in the course of his or her career, has shown proficiency in virtually all the styles of modern music.\nEven though he's goofing, Al and his band know how to play. And yes, I have seen them live. They're actually pretty good. They know how to spoof everything from metal to '50s doo-wop, hip hop to lounge-lizard jazz, the Kinks to Coolio and Michael Jackson to Metallica. And, lest we forget, the man knows how to thrown down some serious polka.\nWeird Al has been lurking through the popular music universe since 1979, when he recorded his first parody, "My Bologna," a goof of the Knack's "My Sharona." And, just two weeks ago, he issued Poodle Hat, his 11th full-length release. The disc has been in the news because, apparently, Eminem is such a respected and revered artist of the highest caliber that he refused to give his OK to a Weird Al video spoofing Eminem's "Lose Yourself," an Oscar-winning song that we all know is the greatest musical statement since "Hey Jude" and should be played on endless repeat on the next unmanned space module designed to search for and greet intelligent life on Pluto.\nDuring the intervening quarter century, Al has consistently kept the pop music world on its collective toes by poking and prodding at the songs we love, the songs that we believe are the best humanity has to offer at the present time. Weird Al keeps everyone in the music industry -- and all of us who absorb what that industry belches out -- honest by occasionally reminding us that the stuff we think is so wonderful, the stuff we believe we cannot live without, isn't all that important in the grand scheme of the cosmos.\nWe Weird Al fans all have our favorite Al tracks. Some favor the pure parody of "Like a Surgeon" or "Pretty Fly for a Rabbi," while others prefer Al's original creations, like the family-road-trip epic "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota." \nMy personal favorite is "One More Minute," an Al original that spoofs 1950s and '60s male vocal group ballads. In it, the protagonist expounds on all the icky and horrible things he would rather do than spend one more minute with his hated ex. It features one of my favorite lyrics of all time: "I'd rather clean all the bathrooms in Grand Central Station with my tongue / Than spend one more minute with you."\nIt's lines like that that made me nervous when I talked to Weird Al Yankovic. Because, way deep down, I've been there. We've all been there. Al knows our soft spot.