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Chris Knight's avatar

Well, I’m now a liar and worse.

A little over ten years since I vowed that I would never, EVER do it, I am indeed selling my much-loved Yoda hand puppet signed by “Weird Al” Yankovic.

It’s really out of my hands (no pun intended).  For reasons which I don’t care to disclose publicly, some financial resources have come to be required.  That’s just the way things are right now.

So last night the listing for “1980 Star Wars Yoda Hand Puppet Signed By “Weird Al” Yankovic went live on eBay.

Mom bought me the puppet in 1980, a few months after The Empire Strikes Back came out in theaters.  I was six years old and distinctly remember that night at the toy store.  Long story short this puppet – which has maintained PERFCT condition despite the years and miles traveled – went with me to a book signing ...

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This is already the scariest thing I’ve seen all month… and it’s only October 2nd.  A terrible, terrible line has been crossed.  Advanced technology really is taking us to places that, not to put too fine a point on it, are unnatural to the extreme.

Andy Baio at Waxy.org has applied artificial intelligence to a lot of songs – which are mostly parodies of other artists – by “Weird Al” Yankovic.  Baio’s intent with this dubious exercise is to see what would happen if the original artists performed Al’s parodies themselves.

In other words, Baio has Michael Jackson’s voice singing Yankovic’s “Eat It”.  Among others.

Let Mr. Baio indict himse… I mean, explain himself:

In the parallel universe of last year’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,
Dr. Demento encourages a young Al Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe) to move
away from song parodies and start writing original songs of his

...
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The man is responsible for a lot of well known songs.  One of the local stations played “Sundown” around lunch today.  There are a few others he did too.

But the main subject of this post is about one that’s especially dear to me.

I was almost two and a half years old when Gordon Lightfoot released his haunting ballad “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald”.  The song came out several months after the loss of the largest ship on the Great Lakes in a fierce November storm.  It was featured on Lightfoot’s album Summertime Dream as well as getting a single release.

Dad bought the 8-track of Summertime Dream.  And his favorite song from it must have been “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald”.  I know this because I heard it so many times that it got impressed in my young memory.  That song is the earliest one ...

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Not too much to report this evening.  It was a fairly busy day on the job.  Peer support certainly does not lack for drama!

I didn’t know what to post tonight until I read some sad news.  Bill Fries passed away a few days ago at the age of 94.  He was an ad executive who started acting in his own commercials as the
character he created, C.W. McCall. Then he decided to have his fictional
character become a singer and he sang about life as a trucker.

So he
was an executive pretending to be an actor who was pretending to be a
singer who was pretending to be a trucker. That’s a lot of mileage out
of one character!

In memory of Bill Fries aka C.W. McCall, and in honor of all the one-hit wonders of the Seventies, here is “Convoy”:

...

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Day 27 of writing a blog post each day during Lent!  It’s now well past the halfway mark.  It’s also significant because 27 is my lucky number.  I appropriated it from “Weird Al” Yankovic but strangely enough 27 has shown up a LOT in my life.

Today, I did nothing.  Couldn’t get to work ‘cuz the dog and I were both under the weather (I had no idea fried chicken could carry cholera, or that’s what it felt like).  So I don’t have much to offer but since we’ve mentioned Weird Al, here’s one of his greatest ever music videos: “Amish Paradise”!

Speaking of “Weird Al” Yankovic, next month he kicks off his “The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculous Self-Indulgent Ill-Advised Vanity Tour”.  And best friend Ed has secured us some tickets.  This tour will be like the previous vanity tour: no straight-up song parodies, mostly the lesser-known songs from ...

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Have been thinking of this song a lot lately.  Maybe because my birthday is coming this week, and everything that comes with being older.  I’m reminded of all that has come before, and all of the people who have gone on.  The lyrics are so filled with meaning.  I don’t know the religious beliefs of DeVotchKa but the words really resonate with me:

Hold your grandmother’s Bible to your breast

Gonna put it to the test

You wanted to be blessed…

 Maybe it also has something to do with how the song was used in the commercial for Gears of War 2.  And that game came out in a really trying period for me.  I thought the song was beautiful.  It has become an anthem in my mind, when I think back to certain things that have happened in my life.

So here it is, one of my ...

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Two and a half days later and Rush Limbaugh‘s absence from the airwaves continues to haunt.  I tried calculating how many hours I listened to him over the years, and couldn’t do it.  From summer of 1992 until I started college at Elon three years, I was listening to him at least nine hours a week.  In the past few years I sort-of rediscovered him and listened as much as possible.  There was none like him before, nobody compared when he was with us, and it is doubtful that anyone will ever really succeed him.

It wasn’t just his brilliant commentary, it was also the hysterically funny comedy that was a huge part of Limbaugh’s show.  Especially the song parodies.  Most of them came courtesy of a chap named Paul Shanklin.  There were a few others also.  I remember one guy who was in the Bay Area.  Another was ...

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Today is December 30th.  And there is a major radio station nearby that is still playing wall to wall Christmas music.  My supervisor told me that they don’t stop until New Year’s Day.

At first I thought that was a little overkill.  Something that I touched upon in a post from last year.  I still believe that starting up the Christmas season earlier and earlier makes the entire year go by much too fast.

But while listening to the music while dining out last night (I still think that “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time” by Paul McCartney sounds too much like the theme from A Clockwork Orange), it gradually dawned on me: that letting the songs play on after Christmas Day, is truly honoring the holiday and everything about it.

And the more I ponder it, the more I like it.  There is something just very right...

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Awright, we could all use some laughter right now, no matter who you are.  And in the past few days I’ve come across some really good videos worth sharing.

First there’s this parody of “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, performed by Guns N Helmets featuring Axl Rose Grogu aka “Baby Yoda”:

And then there is this fine piece of work: heavy metal guitar accompanying televangelist Kenneth Copeland (who has always been pretty creepy to me):

...

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