{"id":8008,"date":"2022-11-17T03:23:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-17T03:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8008"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:47","slug":"guilty-pleasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8008","title":{"rendered":"GUILTY PLEASURE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today, I confess my guilty pleasure: Anything created by Weird Al Yankovic.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of my great regrets in life is that I was a late comer to the Dr. Demento Show, taping each Sunday night broadcast when I was supposed to be sleeping. So I wasn&#8217;t there for Weird Al&#8217;s radio debut with &#8220;Another One Rides the Bus&#8221;. By the time I had become a &#8220;dementoid&#8221;, Al was already gaining renown in the world of novelty music.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I <i>almost <\/i>got to see Yankovic in concert at the Indiana State Fair in the summer of &#8217;84. He was supposed to open for the Stray Cats (!), but he canceled last minute due to illness. I was bummed.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Throughout my teens and twenties, I bought each Weird Al album the moment it came available. I remember even buying a 33 that I felt like I had to hide from my parents because the B side had a song called &#8220;Nature Trail to Hell (in 3D)&#8221;, a comic imagining of a teen slasher movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I got irritated with people who mispronounced his name. And I pitied those who believed that Yankovic was incapable of producing anything but the parodies he became famous for.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact, my favorite songs were often his originals &#8211;\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li><i>Mr. Frump in the Iron Lung<\/i><\/li>\n\n\n<li><i>One More Minute<\/i><\/li>\n\n\n<li><i>I&#8217;ll Be Mellow When I&#8217;m Dead<\/i><\/li>\n\n\n<li><i>Gonna Buy Me a Condo<\/i><\/li>\n\n\n<li><i>Generic Blues<\/i><\/li>\n\n\n<li><i>Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota<\/i><\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was a true fan. During my college days, I even went through a Hawaiian shirt faze.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All this to say that I have already watched his new biopic movie, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, twice. I haven&#8217;t laughed so hard at a movie for a very long time.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s a public service announcement: I recommend the movie and you can watch it for free on Roku (even if you don&#8217;t have Roku).\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, I confess my guilty pleasure: Anything created by Weird Al Yankovic.\u00a0 One of my great regrets in life is that I was a late comer to the Dr. Demento Show, taping each Sunday night broadcast when I was supposed to be sleeping. So I wasn&#8217;t there for Weird Al&#8217;s radio debut with &#8220;Another One [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8009,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8008\/revisions\/8009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}