Hey! Who's Gonna Sit by You?

The first time I ever witnessed someone get punched in the face, it was over a Weird Al Yankovic tape. The victim? My mom. She got locked in the crossfire between my raging little brother and I over the Dare To Be Stupid album. Fur flew when my brother, Darian, was calmly asked to hand over his new copy and let me tape it. He went so totally absolutely ballistic that his face filled up with blood, his eyes sunk into black holes, and he began to pogo with hate powers. He Q*bert-ed up onto his bed, where he began to violently open and close the window, crashing it downward and upward, shrieking like a Tusken Raider. It was like he was trying to stage a suicidal freak-out just so I would never get that tape!

My mom tried to tackle Darian and calm him, and in his panic he accidentally swung around and punched her in the face. It was maniacal! He was possessed by Al's music. I was possessed by Al's music. My mom was injured by Al's music. In that heated, violent moment, we all momentarily looked like we had those freaky cat eyes that Al had at the end of "Eat It!" The whole family was unraveling because of parody music?

The truth is, Weird Al is actually subversive music. He was planting a very important seed of truth inside kids’ heads. His parodies are grand contributions to eroding the myth swirling around pop stars, fame, TV, and anything else intended to brainwash you. Weird Al's versions are better than the original every time because he makes a boring pop song sound punk and sneery. I loved the song "Dare to be Stupid" before I knew who Devo was. Then I became a huge Devo fan.

So if your kids are into Weird Al, soon they will be excited about punk and all its sub-sects—soon they will be standing in the peripheries. They will feel like outsiders, they will be confused by matters of the state, they will dwell on matters of the heart, they will question popular opinion, and they will rise above.

Last week I saw Weird Al in concert for the first time and, thank you God, the theater was packed. I no longer worry about the future as long as there are this many Weird Al fans out there. And these were not just idle, amused fans clapping to the beat like Protestants—this was a raucous rabble of loud, hollering maniacs!

Every time I turned around to look at the crowd, they all looked crazed from smiling so hard. It was row after row of bugged-out, cheesed-out faces, including my own, which hurt and was all wet from smiling and crying from laughter for two hours nonstop. I glanced at my boyfriend, who usually displays a permanently mad, upside down, heavy metal face, and he was beaming like a tickled baby.

Al doesn't let your ecstasy rest for one second. His band operates like a machine tearing through each act perfectly, with costume changes for every song. Projections of AL TV segments spliced up the band performances, giving them time to switch outfits. These clips cited all the times that Al has been featured in cartoons, TV, movies, and every imaginable type of pop culture slop. And it started to sink in how much Al has penetrated mass consumer consciousness, all while behaving like a snarky leprechaun and making fun of it from within. He is a wily pop astronaut. He is a curly little virus! He is Kim Kardashian's poopy shart shorts, he is Kelly Ripa's panty crust. He's like every celebrity’s coke booger ever—no, he is THE celebrity coke booger, forever!

To put it simply, it just felt really good to be in a crowd of fellow humans and finally feel a little power in this mixed-up, imbalanced world. It felt justifiably right for the tides to turn, allowing us bus-riding, sweatpantsed, everyday folk to point a stick at Avril Lavigne's silly cooter and collectively agree to call it names.

The entire night I screamed a request for Al to please, please sing "Another One Rides the Bus" because I love Queen, but also because that song really captures the weird stress that would feel awkward to admit. "HEY! Who's gonna sit by you?" Everyone feels the same way, there’s a kind of ESP between you and surrounding strangers--you know they are stressin’, you’re stressin’; you’re also micro-wondering about who they are and they are micro-wondering about you, too. It’s a very intimate, awkward, nerdy moment for all peoples.

He didn’t play this at all, but his encore song, “Yoda,” was one of my childhood faves. Most of the night he played a lot of current parodies that I didn’t get because I haven’t really listened to the radio in a few years, but the kids around me and their parents loved it. And then “Yoda” came on, which was from my Weird Al era. I wished that Darian could have been there for it. When not fighting over it, we really used to belt that one at the top of our lungs when we were in short pants.