Even Worse

Fat--What can be said? This is not as good as "Eat It," but has the distinction of being the only song that can claim to be the "second by the same artist that Al has covered." To date, he has yet to send up anyone other than Michael Jackson on more than one song. Rather surprising, considering the plethora of parodiable songs over the years.

Stuck In A Closet With Vanna White--This is way to long, and could be lost without significant loss to the album as a whole. Typical surrealism for an Al original.

(This Song's Just) Six Words Long--Absolutely died laughing the first time I heard this. It is a dead-on slap in the face of the Quiet Beatle, and the lyrics are not much more inane than the original they cover...in fact, they sound like the thoughts that must have been running through the writer's head when he penned it.

You Make Me--This gets even weirder than the second song, and sets the stage for all the originals on the album with its insane lyrics and hyperactive pace.

I Think I'm A Clone Now--I've never heard the original this satirizes but what would be the point? Like "Like a Surgeon," there is no way the original could be as good (I've often found this to be the case with Al).

Lasagna--Parody of "Labamba," which was stupid in and of itself, but it's good to hear the accordian again.

Melanie--This song could have been so much better, with an average of one funny line in an entire four-line section and a very drawn-out ending. For my money, the best Weird Al song about unrequited/lost love is "You Don't Love Me Anymore," which piles on the insanity and also keeps a straight face with much better results than this one. Look upon this as practice.

Alimony--Hands down one of his best parodies, a perfect slap at whiny divorced women who take their exes to the cleaners in such a way. Okay, not always the case, but its still a funny song; lighten up, will ya?

Velvet Elvis--I could have sworn this was a Police rip-off, but now I see it's just "in their style." Anyway, it isn't very good, and when I burned this CD for myself I left it (and the next song) off.

Twister--I told you, I left it off.

The Good Old Days--People should know by now that Al's sense of humor is very sick when he lets it be. Bashing a nice guy's head in is typical, and while it is not his best "sick" song ("Christmas at Ground Zero" has to take that prize) it is still quite funny. Face it, folks, death and physical pain are really funny in the proper context (Mel Brooks once said "Tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when YOU walk into an open sewer and die"), and Al has the ability to capture that. Sometimes even physical pain on one's self can be hilarious, believe me, but better when it's someone else. In any case, a dose of sick humor to close out an album is good for the soul.

Buy this album, but don't get mad if every song after the third one sounds grossly substandard by comparison (he must have put "Fat" first so it wouldn't encounter that fate).

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"Fat", sending up Michael Jackson's "Bad" and is about someone very on the portly side, who's got "more chins than Chinatown" and who "takes up seven rows in a movie theatre." Some of the material seems like a reconstruction fat jokes that have been told in junior or high schools.

"Stuck In A Closet With Vanna White" is a guitar rocker with weird dreams told to a psychiatrist. It's bizarre, not too funny.

"(This Song's Just) Six Words Long" sends up George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You", dwelling on the simplicity of the song and not too substantial verses. When Al sings "I never wrote the lyrics", he is right. George was doing a cover of a Rudy Clark song, so despite Al's poking fun, it isn't the Quiet One's fault. Hey, it did get to #1.

"You Make Me" is a quick-tempo new wave Cars or Devo-like song, with alternating levels of weirdness. "you make me wanna write dozen book reports then pack myself in styrofoam", "you make me wanna make a model of the Eiffel Tower out of Belgian waffles",
"you make me wanna do my laundry in the dark, and use a recommended bleach." Weird but surreal.

Then comes a send-ups of one of two Tommy James covers that went to #1 in 1987. "I Think I'm A Clone Now" is about having oneself duplicated. "I guess you could say I'm beside myself." and being born "without a father and a mother, just a test tube and a womb with a view" are some of the clever lyrics here.

"Lasagna" is a send-up of "La Bamba", which was covered by Los Lobos, and is a food song done in a silly Italian accent. "You want a some-a lasagna magnifico/or-a maybe spaghetti/Hey you suppa's a ready/now where-a you go/mama mia bambino/samatta you?" Silly and fun.

"Melanie", about the girl of his dreams refuses to go out with him, mimics a Bangles-type sound. "Are you still mad I gave a mohawk to your cat?" Yeah, that's probably it, Al. And maybe because this song isn't too funny.

"Alimony" is Tommy James cover number two: "Mony Mony" The horrible woman to whom he owes the title noun not only took his nest egg but also his nest, and also "Alimony (my house)/Alimony (my car)/Alimony (my shoes)/Alimony (and my toothbrush)" Instead of "yeah yeah yeah", it's "debt debt debt" There's a close replication of Steve Stevens' squealing guitar too.

"Velvet Elvis" replicates the Police's early dub-reggae sound even down to the "yo-oh" while "Twister," about the Milton-Bradley game, mimics the Beastie Boys white-boy rap.

"Good Old Days" is a quiet and sentimental acoustic song about his childhood and an idyllic small town life, whose humorous bits are spoiled when he thinks its funny to bash in a nice man's head or torture rats with hacksaws. And he sings the refrain "those were the good old days"? Funny is one thing, but this veers towards sickness.

The formula is starting to wear thin. The send-ups and original songs are fine, but the decline that began with Polka Party is more pronounced here due to the lack of freshness. One of his polka medleys could've saved this, actually. It isn't till two albums later, with Off The Deep End, that he regains his touch.

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