SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 20, 2021] Weird Accordion to Al [Vanity Edtion]
This book came to my work and I said, Hey I have this! And then I said, but my cover is orange. What gives?
And then I saw that Rabin, inspired by Al’s Ill-Advised Vanity tour expanded this book. Or actually, since there is very little information about these books, perhaps he wrote them at the same time and released a shorter and longer version. But why would he do that?
The first 366 pages are the same but, (and here’s the thing that messed with my head) they are not exactly the same. Now, I didn’t read the same text in both books and compare them (that would be really insane). But I did flip through the book comparing paragraph and chapter breaks. The text appears to be the same in both books. BUT, the paragraphs are not! For reasons that I don’t understand, in book 1 some pages end with paragraph F, but in book 2, with the same exact text, the page now ends with paragraph E. Like the spacing of a period threw off all of the justification (Users of Word will know what I’m talking about).
So I’m assuming that both books are the same.
And then the new stuff was added to Book 2 (or taken out of Book 1, whatever).
Starting on page 368 we move on to Other Stuff.
Rabin begins talking about Al’s TV and movie work.
The Compleat Al was a mockumentary that came out after his 4th album. It’s a fun twisted look at what Al’s was life up to that point.
This visual feast was a catalyst of sorts for him to make UHF, a feature length film. That tanked. Even though it has great parodies of movies, a (silly) underdog story and features Michael Richards (Kramer!) before he was Kramer (so no one knew who he was). Plus, it’s opening weekend was up against Tim Burton’s Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Lethal Weapon 2. Tough competition, indeed.
Almost ten years later, Al was allowed to make a children’s show. The Weird Al Show was a dark and twisted children’s show. It was weird like Pee Wee’s Playhouse, but was probably more for the adults of the children than the children themselves. It’s very funny and very dark. But like many shows that have been cancelled quickly, it was not beloved by the network and was even shown out of order.
Rabin summarizes every episode and how each one had a “lesson” (which the network insisted he had to have in each one).
Them he moves on to Comedy Bang! Bang! which Al joined on episode 91. He replaced Reggie Watts as Scott Aukerman’s musical sidekick. He mentions every guest and what the “story” is.
As Rabin was finishing up this book, Al announced his Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour. And Rabin decided that he was going to follow Al around for five shows, like he was following Phish. It’s a pretty funny story with some really touching moments.
Leave a Reply