Mongo Nation

Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Weird Al, but were too apathetic to look up on Wikipedia!

By Jeremy Azevedo

If there was any one person that I’ve always wanted to interview, it’d probably be… Hulk Hogan! But since Hulk wasn’t available, my next pick would have to be Weird Al Yankovic. (J/K, Al!) Weird Al was one of my earliest comedy influences, and is one of very few people (if any) that has managed to make a life-long career out of musical comedy.

And so it was with great pleasure that I had the opportunity to talk with Weird Al about everything from his recent “Essential Al” collection and James Blunt being named “one-hit wonder of the decade”, to the number 27 and whether or not Kanye West is a “soft target”. We even spoke briefly about whether or not he’d ever make anther movie like the cult classic “UHF”. (Spoiler: Not only would he, but maybe he already is?) Seriously, if there’s anything you’ve ever wanted to know about Weird Al, we probably cover it in this interview!

Are the songs on the “Internet Leaks” EP indicative of a new distribution model for your more time-sensitive parody songs?

Weird Al: Well, its kind of an experiment, you know? I haven’t really, until recently, taken advantage of the power of the Internet; at least in terms of being able to be more topical. My material, a lot of it, is timely and topical. And it would behoove of me to get it to the marketplace in a timely manner. And certainly the infrastructure exists in portals like iTunes to do that. I just wanted to see, to prove to myself that I could do that. When I did my T.I. parody, whenever it was, last October 2008, I was able to get my parody on and out while the T.I. song was still #1 on the charts. Which was something that I was never able to accomplish under the old model of, you know, write it and record it and then wait around several months until they actually could physically manufacture albums on discs. So its just something I’m playing around with. And as far as the originals this last summer, I had recorded them and I figured, you know, why just let them sit around, gathering dust on a hard drive for another year while I finish the album? Why not just get it out there and let people enjoy it now, and then it’ll be on a CD some time in the future.

For all the “Polkamaniacs” out there…

Plus then you can sell it twice, too.

Weird Al: Well, yeah.

Can you tell us anything about the next album that you’re working on?

Weird Al: Well, not a lot. I mean, 5/12ths of it is already out, and as far as the rest of it, I really tend not give away any secrets or surprises. So it’s not any radical departure from anything I’ve done in the past. It’s more parodies and originals and the kind of humor that you’d expect from a guy like me.

Can we expect a polka medley, then, maybe a song about food, and a song about television?

Weird Al: Ha ha! Well a polka medley almost definitely, for sure. As far as food and television, I try to… I haven’t stopped entirely writing songs about food, but I always think twice before doing it just because I’ve got so many already in my catalogue. It’s sort of like a running joke, so I tryyyyyyyyy not to write songs about food, but I cant promise that I wont.

Tell us about “The Essential Weird Al”. What prompted you to release a greatest hits compilation and how did you choose the songs for it?

Weird Al: I was approached by Sony Legacy to do the collection, and I thought it was a good idea… Number one, because I hadn’t had any hits compilations for about 15 years or so and I thought, you know, it was about time. For the longest time I had sort of a knee-jerk reaction against greatest hits collections because my old label, Scotty Brothers, sort of released one every time they were having a bad financial quarter. Like, “Oh, were having a tough time balancing the books, lets put out another Weird Al compilation.”

Yeah, I feel like there was a period of time were there were two or three comps that came one after the other…

Weird Al: Yeah, it was a little silly. And at that point, I just really had a bad taste in my mouth for the whole thing. But you know, a lot of time has gone by and it just felt like it was a good time for it. My previous box set had gone out of print and there wasn’t any kind of collection of, you know, a definitive sort of “greatest hits” collection out in the market and I thought, well, this really does kinda make sense. And the people at Legacy just couldn’t have been nicer. They let me pick all the songs; they let me jam-pack the CDs, which is something that that I normally cant do, because I have a royalty ceiling. I usually cant put more than 12 songs on the album because otherwise, it eats into the profits and, you know… But they said, “go ahead and fill up the CDs as much as you can and we’ll take care of it”. So I was able to pick what I thought were, you know, 2 ½ hours of my best material over my career. There are obviously some omissions… It was a tough decision because I left off some fairly obvious things like “My Bologna”. Which historically is very important to my career, but I just felt like it wasn’t… If you look at it really critically, it really isn’t, like, one of my best songs, you know? Read the rest of this entry →

Notes from what was quite possibly the single dorkiest trip to Vegas of all time!

By Jeremy Azevedo

If you watched “The Hangover“ last year, your perception of what goes on in Vegas probably involves lots of drinking, drugs, gambling and strippers. And that’s generally accurate any other time but this.

Early January is the one time of year in which Vegas invites all the world’s nerds to come stay at their world class, tacky hotels and check out the latest technology at the annual Consumer Electronic Show (or CES for short). Thursday through Sunday, truckloads of dorks ship in from all corners of the Earth to stare slack-jawed at remarkable new inventions like 3D televisions and USB powered, internet-enabled personal massagers. It’s basically like being at Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida, except when you are walking back to your room, someone offers to sell you cocaine.

It smells like a Radio Shack in here.

I had the very fortuitous opportunity to attend the show this year, and although I spent most of the time slaving a camera around for someone else’s amusement like a human pack-mule, I did have a chance to see some of the wonders that the show had to offer. One of the first things that really jumped out at me was the Intel’s “Infoscape Wall”. Basically it’s an enormous, scrolling news feed for the largely illiterate people of the future. Instead of reading links and clicking on the stories you want to read about, you touch the picture of the man with the beard or the nice lady with the blonde hair and receive a Cliffs Notes version of the coinciding story.

Next we had a look at 3D televisions, which I was surprised to find were both awesome and reasonably priced. In fact, it’s been said that they won’t be any more or less than a standard high-def TV, which is great news for gamers and sports fans. Now I don’t watch sports much myself, but I think that a 3D television could have a hand in changing that if what I saw was any indication. Especially boxing and football, which look about ten times more brutal when you factor in the added context of depth to the impact on human flesh. Nasty stuff. The Avatar game in 3D was even better, so good in fact that I would actually play it if I had a 3D television. I would even play shitty Wii Carnival Games on this if that’s all there was, that’s how awesome the 3D is.

3D television is approximately THIS awesome in person! Whoa!

Now I know that your first question in regards to this is probably going to be about porno in 3D, and the answer is “I don’t know”. I didn’t see any. If you weren’t a virgin, you could probably imagine what it would look like though. What I can tell you though, is that if you’ve ever seen a porn star up close in real life, you’d know that all the 3D, HD high-res camera tricks couldn’t possibly make the chicks look any less beat. Trust me, you’re better off sticking (uh huh-huh, huh!) to your collection of vintage 1990s VHS tapes. Read the rest of this entry →

All the funniest crappy videos from 2009!

By The Internet

Each week, we select the top five absolute weirdest videos any of us have ever seen, and post them here for your viewing pleasure. But this week, we’ll be doing something a bit different!

2009 has been a banner year for funny videos from 1987, which have been dubbed (poorly) from VHS, uploaded to YouTube, and then raped and pillaged by sites like yours truly! Today, we’ll be taking a look at some of our favorites, those select few videos that made us laugh out loud in real life (LOL IRL). Try not to shit your pants laughing, you goons!

Dinosaurs say “Hey”

Jurassic Park: Secretly a comedy?

Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video

If this doesn’t make you want to (not) visit, nothing will.

Snakes on a Plane Hilariously Bad TV Overdub

Is the TV edit actually better than the original?

Gimme Dat Christian Side Hug

Words cannot describe the unintentional hilarity contained within this video.

Here Comes Mr. Meatloaf!

Alf probably wishes he had never left Melmac…

Read the rest of this entry →

Take your Avatar obsession to the next level with these books, games and toys.

If there’s one thing that you can count on with blockbuster movies these days it’s merch, and lot’s of it. Avatar cost something like 200 million American Dollars to make, so you can bet that there will be an Avatar logo on everything from pencils to adult diapers. But how do you know what’s good and what isn’t? The short answer is: You don’t. But I do! And after reading this short guide, you will too.

Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora

If you’ve ever read Max Brooks’ popular “Zombie Survival Guide”, then you’ll find the format of this book somewhat familiar. Basically it’s a tourist guide for soldiers planning to come to Pandora, subjugate its people, and take its natural resources. In order to do so, it’s important that they first have an understanding of the planet’s plant and animal life, native cultures and ecosystems. If you enjoyed Avatar half as much as I did, you’ll really enjoy getting into all the backstory and detail that went into ten years worth of pre-production.

The Art of Avatar: James Cameron’s Epic Adventure

For those that enjoyed Avatar more as a technical achievement, this book may be more your style. It’s relatively short, but it’s got some great artwork and sketches that detail the evolution of many of the creatures, characters and landscapes that you’ve seen in the finished product. If you’ve seen any of the “Lord of the Rings” art books from a few years back, this is very much like those. It’s even got a lengthy intro by Peter Jackson himself, as a matter of coincidence. Read the rest of this entry →

We take a look at some of the sexiest, most influential women ever to be chased around by a guy in a Halloween mask.

By Jeremy Azevedo

Say what you will about Rob Zombie, but the dude knows his horror. More specifically, he knows his scream queens, as evidenced by the cast of Halloween II.  Now some of you (or more specifically, those of you that wear your underwear on the outside of your pants and are required by law to wear a helmet when riding in a car) may be wondering what is a “scream queen”?

Well, it’s funny that you should ask, because not only am I going to tell you what a scream queen is, I’m also going to provide you with examples.

A scream queen is an actress that is known for appearing in horror movies with a certain amount of regularity. That’s pretty much it. There are many different kinds of scream queens, ranging from the innocent “last girl” to the victim, the horny teen and even sometimes the aggressor. But the one thing that they all have in common is that at some point in whichever movie they appear in, there will be a scene in which they run around screaming while someone is trying to stab or bludgeon them or whatever. Hence the name, “scream queen”. Simple enough?

Now that the definitions are out of the way, following is a list of our favorite scream queens from horror movies past and present:

Scout Taylor-Compton

Of course you’ll recognize Scout from Mr. Zombie’s recent Halloween remakes, playing the part of victim du jour, Laurie Strode. In playing the part of the “last girl”, Scout has great potential to keep working in the genre. The reasons for this are twofold: One, the last girl is generally the star of the movie. Because they are typically cute in that sort of way that allows them to play a teenager well into their thirties, “last girl” archetypes like Scout can potentially keep this role going for years to come. Second, she doesn’t take off her top, which separates her from the “horny teen” character role that usually gets killed in the first third of every horror movie. This isn’t really an ideal role to have because eventually, audiences get tired of seeing the same chick’s tits over and over and they move on to the next thing. I have a feeling that we’ll be seeing a lot more of Scout in the near future, especially since she’s going to be playing Lita Ford in “The Runaways”, which is obviously not a horror film but is still totally awesome.

Sarah Michellle Gellar

Not only was she Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but SMG (as I like to call her) has also starred in numerous horror films, most notably “Scream 2″, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “The Grudge”. She also played Daphne in the “Scooby Doo” movies, but I don’t think those films technically count as horror films because the ghosts always turn out to be a carnie or a creepy professor or something like that in the end.

Asia Argento

The daughter of famed Italian horror/suspense director Dario Argento, Asia Argento is the prototype for the “Suicide Girls” generation of scream queens to follow in her footsteps. With dark hair, tattoos, a propensity for nudity and a near constant sneer, Asia is instantly recognizable to American horror fans despite the fact that most of her films are in Italian. Read the rest of this entry →