Benny Bell "Shaving Cream"

It had gotten pretty bad.

My friend Amy Vanneman reminded me of the cautionary tale of Thidwick The Big Hearted Moose.  I certainly didn't want anything living in there.

Literally, with 2 outs in the top of the 9th, during Game 6 of the World Series, I went into the bathroom and plugged in my electric razor for the first time in weeks.

I'm not a huge fan of shaving.  I find it to be a messy hassle, a real drag on the morning routine.

Fortunately, I married a woman who likes a bit of facial hair on me, so I'm okay.

In fact, the last time I was clean shaven---shaved with a straight-edge razor---was my wedding day 8 years ago.

Since then, every week or two I use an electric razor to shave down to a 5 o'clock shadow and then let it grow for another week or two.

This was the longest I'd ever let it get.  I was doing it for the Sox---so I said.

But c'mon, I might as well be truthful, if this year's "thing" was to grow a rat-tail or get a Neil Diamond tattoo or walk around with a ferret dressed as Paul Revere, I wasn't likely to do it.

I like the Red Sox.  But I'm a bigger fan of not shaving.

So after the razor was charged up over night, I sheared my face.

And since then I've let it grow, all over again.

Hear the song on Youtube.

Weird Al Yankovic “Dare To Be Stupid”

Hitting Random on the iTunes playlist . . .

Well, it might be decidedly uncool to say so, but Weird Al Yankovic is really pretty awesome sometimes.

I know why people don’t like him. If you only know the songs that make it to MTV, then Weird Al is like that guy that you work with who tells the same 3 jokes over and over and over again. “Eat It” was a pretty funny revision of Michael Jackson’s song, but like any joke, it only is enjoyable for so many repeated listens.

Thing about Weird Al, is that rewriting lyrics only accounts for about 50 percent of his music. “Like A Surgeon” and “Another One Rides The Bus” and “Fat” account for nearly 100 percent of his radio/video hits, because they're the songs that sell.

But Weird Al writes some pretty funny original material, too. He’s a gifted parody-ist, adept at recreating styles, like the Doors- Devo-, and Talking Heads-style parodies in the music clips below.

And he’s always embraced the video genre, parodying visual styles as well as he does musical styles.

So perhaps it was inevitable that he bring those 2 worlds together, and be part of a parody of music biopics, and all their tropes.

Please enjoy, The Weird Al Story, featuring cameos from Gary Cole, Mary Steenburgen and comedian Patton Oswalt as Dr. Demento!




Indiana Jones parody



Clips from songs mentioned in this post: