Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.
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Weird Al is awesome. He’s the king of all nerds! I’ve been a fan of his since I was ten years old and I first heard “Eat It”!
Before TMZ, before Internet Snark, and before George Stroumboulopoulos, Weird Al made it okay to make fun of celebrities. Mister Yankovic poked fun at pop culture, and made it okay for the geeks of the earth to laugh at the ridiculous nature of much of the “popular” groups growing up.
I finally got to see Al for the first time in concert last September, and my wife and I stayed after the concert for a chance to meet him. Unsurprisingly, even after a show where he easily gave it his all (and this was after a year of touring), he was gracious and very pleasant. He signed our tickets to the show (dammit, I should have had him sign my White & Nerdy hoodie!), he even read our tickets so that he could call my wife and I by name and thank us for coming to the show.
I’ve met a handful of “famous” people in my life, and I can honestly say that was the only time I’ve ever gotten star struck. The only thing that sucks about Al, is that as I’ve gotten older, I don’t listen to the new music that is being released, so I don’t recognize the songs he has parodied anymore.
That said, if you have the opportunity, go see Al in concert. It’s totally worth it, and I wish I’d done it years ago. Don’t forget to hang around after the show, because he always will visit fans who wait patiently.
Weird Al and Tragically Hip are the two acts I’d most like to see in concert. Everyone else I could take or leave. Have never been much of a concert goer, but I hear they’re both amazing live.
Al himself seems like an extraordinarily humble guy, for being Nerd King. I suppose that comes with the territory — how big-headed can you be when your main audience is a bunch of dorks and social rejects like us?
I suppose I shouldn’t tell you that there was a Tragically Hip concert here a couple of weeks ago, and our department got free box tickets to the show, but I didn’t go because I don’t care for the ‘Hip?
I enjoy concerts, and I’ve gone to a number of them – Tool (twice), Pantera, Slayer, Opeth, Weird Al, Cradle of Filth, Sonata Arctica, Stratovarius, Audioslave, Def Leppard (twice – ugh!), and… uh, Petra (yeah, yeah, I know).
Tool, Opeth, Pantera and Weird Al were the best, not necessarily in that order. As for Al, my wife made the comment that you know he’s a good guy when even TMZ, on which he’s apparently appeared a few times, can’t make fun of him.