:D
September 17, 2006 9:35 PM   Subscribe

we've all heard the mathowie song.. but now hes got a video too!
posted by petsounds (71 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Oh sweet blue zombie baby Jesus!
posted by loquacious at 9:42 PM on September 17, 2006 [1 favorite]


weird al never quits, does he? he's still funny, though...
posted by twiggy at 9:52 PM on September 17, 2006


All white nerds look alike. Are you sure that is Mathowie? I thought he said he was a wuss and a geek.
posted by Cranberry at 9:53 PM on September 17, 2006


for a while there I denied it. but today--- today I can say with the pride of a man slightly older and maybe wiser than his 15 year old self--- today I can say that Weird Al Yankovic is my hero.

shame is my name. *puffs chest out*
posted by carsonb at 9:53 PM on September 17, 2006


oh man, that was so much better than all the other Nerdcore out there!
posted by Funmonkey1 at 9:57 PM on September 17, 2006


ROTFLOL!

Is it bad that I don't know the original? Familiar tune, but I guess I'm not "down" enough to know the artist.
posted by Leather McWhip at 10:02 PM on September 17, 2006


I love Weird Al.

He was my first concert, when I was nine. I was able to do some radio promos for that same concert on Kidstar, Seattle's local kids radi station.

What? You want some of this?
posted by piratebowling at 10:03 PM on September 17, 2006


The Old Man shows those young punks how it's done. :)
posted by Malor at 10:08 PM on September 17, 2006


sorry- the original chamillionaire video.. and picture of mathowie
posted by petsounds at 10:10 PM on September 17, 2006


This is particularly appropriate here with a Tolkien post right below it.
posted by vacapinta at 10:11 PM on September 17, 2006


It's all about the Pentiums, really.
posted by chimaera at 10:16 PM on September 17, 2006


I always thought Weird Al should do a parody of Blind Faith's "Can't Find My Way Home" with a spin on "Can't Find My Cell Phone" but his people won't call my people.
posted by joe lisboa at 10:24 PM on September 17, 2006


that's fucking brilliant
posted by edgeways at 10:31 PM on September 17, 2006


Oh, man. That's racist as hell.

I don't know who I want to see Weird Al get taken out by first - Bronx Science's class of 2007 or MIT's chapter of the Chocolate City fraternity.
posted by freshwater_pr0n at 10:38 PM on September 17, 2006


Weird Alicious!

His Weirdness' Official Website says that video is going to "World Premeire" on aol.com @ 9:00PM PDT on Monday. And it's on YouTube like two days before? Snork!

Meanwhile, some editing fool with too much time on his hands made a video of WA's Latest Polka Medley using clips from the videos of the songs he's messing with - all sped up to sync with the polka-speed performance. Now THAT is Cool Nerdy.
posted by wendell at 10:46 PM on September 17, 2006


I kept thinking "what, no Segway" - and then at 1.15 in I was not disappointed.
posted by greycap at 10:55 PM on September 17, 2006


Is that Donny Osmond busting a mad move in the background?
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:57 PM on September 17, 2006


meh, weird al gets less funny the older I get. Speaking of nerdcore, I do own a shirt (printed by a mefite)
posted by mathowie at 10:59 PM on September 17, 2006


Definitely Donny.
posted by jmhodges at 11:00 PM on September 17, 2006


Anyone up for a game of "Weird Al parodies that are better than the originals"? I say at least this, Amish Paradise and Fat.
posted by Kwine at 11:46 PM on September 17, 2006


Oh man, I had it under control until "Javascript and Klingon," then I think my ROTFLOLing woke up the neighbors.
posted by brownpau at 11:56 PM on September 17, 2006


Weird Al... I always thought anyone who was going to actually call himself "Weird" needs to be a lot weirder than Weird Al. If he was weird at all it was in that suburban American pop-culture sort of way (cut to sit-com teenage girl saying "That's, like, rilly, rilly weird"). But, as much as I've been unimpressed in the past with Weird Al's shaky attempts at parody, I gotta say I found this pretty funny. Eminem (et al) should be just a wee bit embarassed right now. And what a coup to get Donny Osmond in a cameo appearance! Perfect.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:56 PM on September 17, 2006


Weird Al is the Man.

I composed a long and excessively verbose comment trying to explain how great the guy was, and I realized that it was just simpler to say Weird Al is brilliant. If, at this point you don't get why, nothing I can say will change your mind.

So, yeah. great post. Thanks petsounds.
posted by quin at 12:11 AM on September 18, 2006


...simpler to say Weird Al is brilliant. If, at this point you don't get why, nothing I can say will change your mind.

Damn, quin, that's too bad: I like it when people try to change my mind. Perhaps you could've enlightened me a bit, help me to see something crucial that I've missed. But no, "Weird Al is brilliant" isn't doing it...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:19 AM on September 18, 2006


Some people don't like Al. (Yes, we're on a second name basis.) I can live with that. But he is the most prolific and successful musical parodist we have, so respeck! Maybe makey-funny-of-pop music's not for you, grownups. I'd still chuck panties at him.

Hope the new album has more to it than Poodle Hat did. I personally go all squishy over his pastiches... wish he'd keep those up.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:42 AM on September 18, 2006


I am perhaps misunderstanding the entire nature of the MetaFilter experience, but shouldn't this have been in MetaTalk?
posted by cgc373 at 12:59 AM on September 18, 2006


"meh" would be the sound a nerd makes when poked.
posted by srboisvert at 1:02 AM on September 18, 2006 [1 favorite]


Thanks, petsounds, for the hookup.
**resisting line that rhymes with "shook up"**
Seven-nine-seven haiku.
posted by bonobo at 1:09 AM on September 18, 2006


Since we're linking videos from Al's new record, check out the one for Don't Download This Song. I dare say it's funnier than the linked video (but as you might guess, along the same 'geek' comedy lines).
posted by Effigy2000 at 1:24 AM on September 18, 2006




Today, I'm officially an old man. I haven't heard any of the song he's parodied on the new album.
posted by Gary at 2:49 AM on September 18, 2006



Wait second, mathowie is white?
posted by fluffycreature at 3:21 AM on September 18, 2006


There is a Seth Green cameo too.

I love Weird Al. We used to get in trouble for playing a tape at recess that had Another One Rides the Bus on it. (I think the song that got us in trouble was the shhh-aving cream song). We were such rebels in the 5th grade...
posted by gminks at 3:28 AM on September 18, 2006


This is heads and shoulders over It's All About The Pentiums from.. uh.. a couple albums ago.
posted by Plutor at 3:39 AM on September 18, 2006


weretable and the undead chairs: hilarious, man! I needed that.
posted by malthas at 4:27 AM on September 18, 2006


I don't like Weird Al.
Or at least try not to.
And I'm not doing well.
posted by NinjaTadpole at 4:40 AM on September 18, 2006


NinjaTadpole, you've expressed what I was trying to express, with far fewer syllables. I should try haiku.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:02 AM on September 18, 2006


frantically locates the "inadvertant haiku" alarm
posted by NinjaTadpole at 5:10 AM on September 18, 2006


Thanks, weretable and the undead chairs (and malthas for calling my attention to it)—that's pure genius. Warsaw was raw!
posted by languagehat at 5:32 AM on September 18, 2006


Weird Al is the only artist I can think of who can equal Madonna.

In terms of longevity only really, Madonna's polkas suck ass.
posted by DragonBoy at 6:28 AM on September 18, 2006 [1 favorite]


I am perhaps misunderstanding the entire nature of the MetaFilter experience, but shouldn't this have been in MetaTalk?

No. If the song link weren't incidental, or if the video actually was about mathowie, then you'd have something. As it is, the only part that could be banned to the grey is the joke. You...are aware that this isn't really a video about mathowie, right?

Because people are allowed to invoke His Name on the front page. Truly.
posted by cortex at 6:31 AM on September 18, 2006


Madonna's polkas suck ass.

That was only back in the wild and wooly Sex days. There's much less ass-sucking now that she's a proper fake-English mom.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:37 AM on September 18, 2006


I dunno, cortex - I think someone could do a split-screen of Mathowie on his recumbent bicycle and Al on the Segway... at least they both have helmets on.
posted by anthill at 6:44 AM on September 18, 2006


cortex writes "Because people are allowed to invoke His Name on the front page."

Only if you know if Matt could have used 2400 in his lifetime and why.
posted by elpapacito at 6:54 AM on September 18, 2006


I always thought anyone who was going to actually call himself "Weird" needs to be a lot weirder than Weird Al.

It's the Rock Principle: the more frequently a song mentions Rock, the less likely it is to do so. Weird Al, in so naming himself, proved that he was too self-conscious of his purported weirdness to be truly, deeply weird. He's no Christian Hellion Glover, in that respect.

But he chose the moniker in a more gentle time—he was just a boy with an accordian and a cover of "My Sharona", about bolgna, mailed in to one Dr. Demento on cassette. It was, against any reasonable baseline, an arguably weird thing to be doing. So consider it truth in advertsing: he is kind of weird.

I like it when people try to change my mind. Perhaps you could've enlightened me a bit, help me to see something crucial that I've missed.

Weird Al operates in two major aesthetic modes, both relatively unrespected by mainstream musical audiences:

1. Novelty Parody
2. Novelty Original

(1) gets, if not respect exaclty, at least glimmers of fawning attention. It's the nature of parody that, if your timing is right, your mockery can be seen as a knife twisting in the gut of the original; or, depending on the two songs, your parody may even be simply more listenable than the original. However, it is still a Novelty Tune. There is a distinct sort of distaste observable among a lot of Serious Music Fans for music that is unabashedly silly.

So while your average non-fan might listen to Weird Al in 3D and get a laugh out of "Eat It" or the classic rock polka, they won't be putting it on a party, because it's Joke Music, not Real Music.

(2) is even sketchier territory—music that is explicitly silly and which does not even offer the guiding hand of a templated pre-existing song by which the cautious listener can find familiar ground.

Weird Al is famous for his work in (1), and not so much for that in (2), which I think conveys the degree to which novelty music is distrusted by the general listening audience—some of Al's more fantastically clever and well-constructed works are those that are done to original tunes rather than shoehorned into the confining template of some existing pop song.

Where Weird Al excels is in his timeliness and the consistent and clean execution of his music. He has a very strong technical head for the parodies he produces, and knows what to write about and when to release a song. He is in a sense brilliant the same way that Madonna and Justin Timberlake and Paris Hilton are brilliant—he has Timing and he has Instinct. The difference is, he wears his sense of humor on his sleeve, which makes me less likely to think he's a complete twat, but also makes it impossible to take him seriously. And nothing bolsters a pop star like being taken seriously; he's shot himself in the foot, there.

Weird Al is the most visible, likeable, market-savvy unforgivable uncool nerd on the scene. He's famous because, aside from his musical acumen, he's had the guts and the smarts to persist in a market that isn't friendly to parody and novelty as mainstays. You see a similar mix of fame and obscurity among other novelty acts, though no one has I think had anything like Weird Al's success in the last twenty years. Novelty songs seem to be natural One Hit Wonder makers—everybody and their brother may think a given parody is hilarious, but folks don't go out and Buy The Album.

This is not a knock against general music audiences. Any specific aesthetic, any specific style, has fans and detractors and large masses that can't be bothered either way. The particular musical and lyrical and production characteristics are all that really vary from one case to another, and you could say that what is popular across the widest audience is the style with the best compromise of such features.

What is, I think, frustrating to most wizened fans of Weird Al or Spike Jonez or even (and this is a whole other argument) They Might Be Giants, is the fact that the unpopular characteristic of this whole area is having a warm sense of humor. That it is seemingly an unaccountable faux pas to laugh at music, and unpopular to pay any serious attention to the musical/lyrical/whathaveyou merits of a piece of music simply because it is funny and should therefore be dismissed as anything but funny, is frustrating beyond belief.
posted by cortex at 6:59 AM on September 18, 2006 [17 favorites]


Oh, weretable... I am a better man and Dylan fan for having seen that.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:01 AM on September 18, 2006


cortex, I wish I could favorite that gem twice.
posted by Plutor at 7:53 AM on September 18, 2006


Ding Dong, man, Ding Dong. Ding Dong, yo.
posted by ColdChef at 7:59 AM on September 18, 2006


Lovely stuff. How much permission does Al get before he does a parody, or does he just rely on fair use laws? I remember Coolio was very upset with Amish Paradise.

I always thought anyone who was going to actually call himself "Weird" needs to be a lot weirder than Weird Al.

You may be more interested in his brother, Conservative Al.
posted by riotgrrl69 at 8:02 AM on September 18, 2006


Christian Crispin
bolgna bologna

And a dozen less conspicuous others. Too much writing with not enough caffeine.

posted by cortex at 8:31 AM on September 18, 2006


I always thought anyone who was going to actually call himself "Weird" needs to be a lot weirder than Weird Al.

And Dr. Demento isn't really that crazy. Most "weird" people are too self-aware and serious to make a good parody song.

While I don't always laugh, I'm very glad that Weird Al is still out there doing this.
posted by Bookhouse at 8:38 AM on September 18, 2006


joe lisboa, we are in the same boat. I always thought Al could easily convert Switchfoot's "Dare You to Move" into a bovine protest anthem: "Dare you to Moo."

Maybe we should double-team his people.
posted by whatnot at 9:18 AM on September 18, 2006


But he's a doctor, right? Please don't tell me he's not a practicing MD!!!
posted by crunchland at 9:18 AM on September 18, 2006


And then there's Doctor Fox... and Doctor Dre... are their degrees applied for by a cheque in the post, too?!?!?!?
posted by greycap at 10:15 AM on September 18, 2006


Doctor Octopus, it should be noted, is legitimately degreed. Strangelove as well, I presume, though god knows what goes on in those German schools.
posted by cortex at 10:23 AM on September 18, 2006


(Weird Al would approve of this derail.) cortex, also note the earned degrees of Drs. Doom, Strange, and (I believe) Fate. However, I'd like to call your attention to the oddities of Messrs. Fantastic and Freeze, both of whom possess doctorates and yet claim only the title "Mister" in their monikers. What's the motivation?
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:03 AM on September 18, 2006


In this thread, I feel I am allowed to say this:

In the Ridin' Dirty video, he says she's holding a Playstation controller, but it's cleary an (original sized) XBox controller!
posted by bDiddy at 11:23 AM on September 18, 2006 [1 favorite]


also note the earned degrees of Drs. Doom, Strange, and (I believe) Fate.

Don't forget Dr. Venture and the other Dr. Venture and the other other Dr. Venture.

However, I'd like to call your attention to the oddities of Messrs. Fantastic and Freeze, both of whom possess doctorates and yet claim only the title "Mister" in their monikers.

Perhaps their last teaching assignments, even if they were so brief that they don't appear in any official records, were at the University of Virginia, where profs traditionally go by Mr. so as not to put on airs over Mr. Jefferson.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:20 PM on September 18, 2006



In the Ridin' Dirty video, he says she's holding a Playstation controller, but it's cleary an (original sized) XBox controller!


mb you're just too white and nerdy white and nerdy
posted by petsounds at 1:55 PM on September 18, 2006


In the Ridin' Dirty video, he says she's holding a Playstation controller, but it's cleary an (original sized) XBox controller!

In the unrated version he finds some rhymes for xbox. I can't recall what they were though.
posted by srboisvert at 2:00 PM on September 18, 2006


now, could someone please get this effing song out of my head? It's been bouncing around in there all day.
posted by crunchland at 2:26 PM on September 18, 2006


I can't figure out if art is imitating life here or vice versa.

Personally, the video cassette at the end (I won't spoil it for anyone) sells this video for me.
posted by tommasz at 2:41 PM on September 18, 2006


Maybe makey-funny-of-pop music's not for you, grownups.

Rhubarb. Makey-funny-of-pop-music is fine if it's FUNNY. Mr Al goes for the Captain Obvious punchline almost every time.

That said - I did like "eat it" when I was, um, pre-pubescent.
posted by Sparx at 2:55 PM on September 18, 2006


That that said - I haven't seen the link -stupid workfilters. It could be his best work in decades and I would be none the wiser.
posted by Sparx at 2:58 PM on September 18, 2006


I am SO white and nerdy, that I had to do some Googling to figure out what the parody was.

Awesome.
posted by sdrawkcab at 3:01 PM on September 18, 2006


Okay, cortex, you're full-on correct about the MetaTalk misread I made way upthread. This goofy video is everywhere today.
posted by cgc373 at 6:25 PM on September 18, 2006


This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner RIAA because its content was used without permission

Boo!

Here's the Weird Al song over the video it parodies.
posted by eddydamascene at 7:11 PM on September 18, 2006


Taken down before I got home. Poo. But I heard it via eddydamascene's link. Cheers.

I think one of the most annoying things about Mr Yankovic is that he repeats both verse and chorus. It's a parody, you can come up with some more lyrics.


Also, Weretable and his/her unlifed furniture, thank you so very, very much.
posted by Sparx at 4:07 AM on September 19, 2006


I'm with Sparx - Weird Al hasn't really been funny to me since about third grade, because he always goes for the super obvious easy jokes. I also really don't get the "Weird Al = supreme nerd" thing - Aren't nerds supposed to be smart? Is it just the accordian thing? Comparisons to Spike Jones don't do it for me, because Spike, well, was FUNNY.

Bonus Dr. discussion rebuttal:
Dr. Strange was actually a successful and arrogant surgeon before he trained with the ancient one - not some pantywaist Ph.D! And for my money, Mr. Show's Monster Parties: Fact or Fiction? is the world's best look at Dr. Demento-related stuff.
posted by sluggo at 6:03 AM on September 19, 2006


So, do you suppose this was a marketing ploy to generate buzz for the new album? Release the video on the internet, only to pull it after a day of exposure on all the big aggregators like digg and mefi? Or am I just being cynical?
posted by crunchland at 7:01 AM on September 19, 2006


Rehosted

A musical group hasn't really arrived until they've had a song parodied by Al. After his 20+ year career, he's still tapped in to current musical and cultural trends, enough to parody them smartly. At 50, his flow is as tight as ever and he's time and time again proven himself able to adapt to each wave of music after being written off by the haters.

He's also the most friendly and personable celebrity you'll ever meet.
posted by Durhey at 4:18 PM on September 19, 2006


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