Poodle Hat

It's been said that artists will truly know they've entered pop culture when Weird Al Yankovic records a parody of their hit. But what does it mean when pop culture is ahead of Weird Al? Take his parody of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way," which Yankovic turns into "Ebay," but his satire is not far removed from the auction website's own advertising campaign of 2003, where people rave about the junk they bought on eBay to the tune of "My Way" ("I did it eBay"). What does this mean? Well, to begin with, that Weird Al's sensibility has been so thoroughly assimilated by mass culture that it's tougher than ever for him to stay ahead of the game, but it also means that he's getting predictable. Even worse for his music, he's getting older and he doesn't have a finger on the pulse of pop culture anymore. Like Bill O'Reilly ranting about how hip-hop will lead to the destruction of America (something he actually did on The O'Reilly Factor the week Poodle Hat was released), offering generalizations about a culture he doesn't understand, Yankovic seems removed from the culture he's commenting upon, picking up on cues he's heard on Clear Channel radio and read in Entertainment Weekly without exploring the music much itself. For instance, "Angry White Boy Polka," his latest installment in his series of polka parody melodies, is undone by his lack of understanding of the subject, in particular how the White Stripes, the Strokes, and the Hives -- none of whom are angry in the slightest -- are the polar opposite of Limp Bizkit, Disturbed, and Papa Roach, and their nü-metal ilk (for that matter, Kid Rock is many things, but he ain't angry). Then, there's his parody of Eminem's "Lose Yourself," for which Marshall Mathers refused to let Alfred Matthew Yankovic make a video -- an event that gave Poodle Hat a lot of press upon its spring 2003 release. It was the first time an artist denied Al the permission to make a video and all the press portrayed it as another time that Mr. Mathers turned stone-cold humorless in the face of a silly joke (it was Triumph the Comic Insult Dog at the VMAs revisited); after hearing Yankovic's "Couch Potato," it's hard not to sympathize with Em, since unlike his other big pop hit parodies, this has nothing to do with the song. Weird Al doesn't pick up on the theme of the song, or the sound of it, or the lyrics to create a parody, he simply picks television at random, as if jokes about American Idol and Survivor will guarantee laughs and airplay. On top of the randomness of the subject, the jokes are simply bad, culminating in a "My Tivo Thinks I'm Gay" joke ripped off from Mike Binder's unspeakably awful HBO series Mind of the Married Man, where it was done better (and if Mike Binder... Read More...