I waited three years for this. I know that makes me a big nerd, and I realize that I'm probably about twice the age of Weird Al Yankovic's target audience, but he did such a darn good job with his last album, Running with Scissors, that I couldn't wait to hear him skewer some of the latest musical trends on his next album.

There was quite a gap between the King of Parody's last album and the current one (inexplicably titled Poodle Hat). I'm not sure if he needed to take some time off, or if he was just having a tough time coming up with parody ideas in the wake of all of the "underground" song parodies that can be found floating around on the Internet these days (many of which are mistakenly attributed to Weird Al). Perhaps it just took him a while to get permission from the artists/composers responsible for the songs that he wanted to lampoon - a policy he's implemented ever since that whole mishap with Coolio over "Amish Paradise". Whatever the case, new material from Weird Al has finally arrived, and that's always a reason for socially challenged nerds and frat boys the world over to rejoice. (I'll leave you to figure out which of those categories I belong to.)

Finally having this thing in my hands, I can definitely see that a few of my predictions were correct - he made sure to poke fun at the whole boy band/teenybopper pop craze, and he also took a well-timed pot-shot at the glut of angst-ridden nu-metal and pop-punk bands currently overpopulating the music scene. I didn't realize how prominent rap and hip-hop had become in the public eye, though, and Weird Al has managed to spoof two well-known urban hits as well. He even manages to do justice to another classic rock tune in the process, and even pull of one of his best "style parodies" yet.

Unfortunately, the record as a whole isn't quite the "geek-gasm" that I had expected (sorry to steal your new favorite phrase, tjolims, but I couldn't resist). There are still those few trouble spots that are bound to show up on any Weird Al record - the originals. Poodle Hat definitely has its hilarious moments, but the combination of some unexpectedly immature subject matter with a few song ideas that are just plain lame and lose most of their replay value within the first two minutes makes this a record where you'll be tempted to skip around and just play all of the parodies and the polka for your friends. Which is really too bad - Weird Al's originals were clever for the most part last time out. But the parodies, as always, still make it worthwhile, even if he didn't really take on any songs that I liked this time around. (Sometimes lame songs make for the best parodies.)

Couch Potato
It's fitting that the album's lead track takes on an artist who we've seen everywhere over the past few years, like it or not. "Lose Yourself", which Eminem wrote and recorded for his film 8 Mile, is skillfully reworked into yet another anthem on one of Weird Al's favorite subjects - TV. This is all really nothing new if you've heard the MC Hammer send-up "Can't Watch This", but it's hilarious to hear him copy Eminem's flow almost syllable for syllable, occasionally even using a few of the same words when they fit his purposes (such as naming the network "Lifetime" where the word "lifetime" actually shows up in the original), and tell the tale of a guy who will watch anything on the tube, regardless of whether it has a plot or any redeeming value. As always, he makes a lot of pop culture references that might not make sense in a few years, knowing how long TV shows survive these days, but it's still great that he manages to mock such things as Reality TV, endless spinoffs of the same show, and the crazy devices people come up with to ensure that we'll spend even more time watching TV (listen for a hilarious remark about an assumption TiVo makes after a sitcom he decides to watch just once). It's too bad that Eminem had to be a punk and tell Al he couldn't do a video for this song - but hey, at least he sanctioned the recording. (How big of him.)

Hardware Store
The first of the originals shows up here, right on schedule. It's got a classic, overproduced pop style to it than only Weird Al would dare use, with all manner of sawing and clanging going on in the background. It seemed like a pretty lame song at first - so some guy's excited because they're opening up a new hardware store in his neighborhood. Big whoop. The ridiculous build-up of voices in the chorus is mildly amusing, but the song doesn't really hit its stride until the bridge, where Al rattles off the names of all sorts of tools and appliances (some of which you would hope have never really been invented) at such a crazy pace that it would tie most rappers' tongues in a knot. Yeah, this'll be a fun one to learn to sing along with.

Trash Day
I can't think of any song more deserving to get a classic whipping, Weird Al style, than Nelly's lewd and purposefully misspelled faux-rap hit "Hot in Herre". I mean, the likelihood of you being able to say "It's getting hot in here" these days without someone singing the song back to you is about as high as your likelihood a few years ago of saying the word "ironic" without someone retorting, "Don't you think?" It's not surprising that Weird Al's version which talks about a trash-infested house that's "Getting rotten here, you better hold your nose" comes off as being a far more intelligent venture than the original. The song is best appreciated if the original has been torturing you for months on end; I had never heard it before, and now I wish I hadn't gone to the trouble of hearing it (I downloaded it for the sake of comparison). Taken on its own, the song is pretty disgusting, and you definitely shouldn't listen while eating, but it's also a good little jab at husbands and bachelors alike who somehow manage to live in such conditions. (We all know that sly social commentary makes the best humor.) As with the Eminem parody, the best thing about "Trash Day" is how Weird Al copies - or even improves upon - the flow of the original song with his zany lyrics. He even takes the meaningless "uh, uh"s and "yeah"s and so forth in a song like this and hijacks them for his own comedic purposes. You have to appreciate his attention to detail even when the subject matter goes south.

Party at the Leper Colony
Speaking of the subject matter going south... this is probably the worst offender of any Weird Al song in recent memory. I could tell from the title that this was going to be a lame song (get it... lame? Ha! I kill me!) For some reason, Weird Al has decided to plague us with an original tune based around a series of puns involving sick people's bodies falling apart during a social dance. The music is decidedly upbeat - the sax-laden 50's-style rock tune is a purposefully demented choice for a string of bad jokes such as "she cried her eyes out, literally", and a leprous guy floating in the Jacuzzi named "Stu". I can appreciate humor like this when it's told in a few brief jokes, but I don't really want to hear a three-and-a-half minute song about it. And people who have leprosy or some other disease that degrades the body (or who have relatives in such a situation) will probably find this one especially tasteless.

Angry White Boy Polka
Here's the track I was waiting for - the polka number on every Weird Al CD is where you get the most bang for your buck, because it's where he always manages to make a shish kabob out of a string of popular songs that were played out over the preceding years. Much like his "Alternative Polka" from a few years back, he's decided to focus on a particular musical trend, namely bands fronted by frustrated Caucasian males whose ex-girlfriends did them wrong and whose parents repeatedly sent them to their rooms with no supper. It's always hilarious to hear how he copies the phrasing and sometimes the instrumental melodies of each song as he rapidly shifts from one lyric to the next, whether it's the frenetic stop-start sputtering of System of a Down's "Chop Suey!", or the unintelligible guttural noises that Disturbed has become infamous for in songs like "The Sickness". He even morphs his polka style into swing when he takes on The Strokes"s "Last Nite". I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed with this one because he never got around to mocking Linkin Park (I like 'em, but come on, they should've been the first rap-rock act on the hitlist), and I didn't know roughly half the songs that were featured here. But it was an unexpected and pleasant surprise to hear P.O.D.'s "Youth of the Nation" work its way into the mix (even though the members of P.O.D. aren't white boys, nor are they terribly angry - go figure). As I've said before, you know you've arrived when Weird Al makes fun of one of your songs.

Wanna B Ur Lovr
This is another track that I usually skip - it's a slow, sexy bass-laden groove in which Weird Al lampoons Prince and Barry White and probably a few others whose influences I'm not recognizing. He's trying to be slick and hit on a girl, but over the course of the song, he manages to spit out every bad pick-up line in the book. Some of them are pretty funny, though we've all heard most of them before, and the idea gets rather old after a few minutes, so it's unfortunate that the song drags out past the six minute mark. While I know that pick-up in general lines are rather immature, I think it really hurts Weird Al's image to throw in lines like "My love for you's like diarrhea, I just can't keep it in" and "I hope I'm not being forward, but do you mind if I chew on your butt?" Once again, I did not need to hear that. Weird Al is perfectly capable of being funny without resorting to bathroom humor. Still, he gets in a few good ones such as "How'd you get through security, 'cause baby, you're the bomb!", and I love the reggae-style breakdown near the end where he repeats the line "Girl, you must be Jamaican, because Jamaican me crazy."

A Complicated Song
Next in line to receive a well-timed kick in the pants is teenage poseur Avril Lavigne, with her oh-so-not-punk song "Complicated". Weird Al has done some ingenious things with annoying pop songs in the past, though the title made it appear this time that he was having trouble coming up with a truly clever parody. That's partially true. He had three different ideas for a parody here, and he probably realized that none of them would have remained funny once they reached the second chorus, so he decided to morph all three of them into one song. Part of the fun of this one is how each verse sets the listener up for the chorus, which you know is going to involve something unfortunate happening to al that ends in "-ated". I don't want to give too much away, though I should point out that the first chorus is rather disgusting (more unnecessary bathroom humor), and the second and third are just absurd enough that I'm not sure whether to laugh or cringe. It's still amusing, but I think he could have done a better job, or perhaps picked another song such as "Sk8er Boi" (now that would have made for a great parody).

Why Does This Always Happen to Me?
More clever social commentary shows up here in the form of a piano-driven song (with none other than Ben Folds tickling the ivories) that very nearly tricked me into thinking Weird Al might have actually written a serious song for the first half-minute or so. Again, I don't want to spoil too much of it for you, because it's a pretty funny idea for a song, but let's just say it revolves around Al being the most insensitive and self-centered person that ever walked the planet. This one's pretty funny, just because it's so audacious and yet we all know somebody like that, but it starts to fall apart when it reaches the final verse and things turn violent. By that point, the joke has already been revealed, and that particular instance of it just doesn't strike me as humorous. But Ben Folds does a great job, and I'd like to see more "artist collaborations" like this in the future.

Ode to a Superhero
Classic songs call for classic parodies. Remember how Weird Al used "American Pie" to sum up The Phantom Menace on the last album? Well, he's done it again, this time abusing Billy Joel"s "Piano Man" to tell the story of Spider-Man. Complete with the lively piano, harmonica and accordion (Al's band came ready-made with that last instrument!) of the original, Al doesn't miss a beat here as he gives a pretty good play-by-play of the movie, including a few clever hints at the movie's main catch phrase and the obvious setup for a sequel. While I can't say how flattered most artists are when hearing a Weird Al version of their song, I think I can safely say that Billy Joel would find this to be a fitting homage.

Bob
Out of all of the "style parodies" I've heard Weird Al do so far, this one's definitely my favorite. Weird Al keeps the harmonica on board and rounds up a raucous classic rock band for a spot-on impression of old-school Bob Dylan. Here Weird Al manages to thrill all of the language fanatics in the audience by using a very clever linguistic device to dictate the song's otherwise nonsensical lyrics. See, this is intelligent humor, and I wish Al could have kept up to such a standard on a few of the preceding songs instead of relying on scatological references and morbid descriptions of death and mutilation to get us to laugh.

Ebay
Here's another moment of true genius - I'm sure there will be a lot of angry teenagers in the world when they hear this one. Al takes on the Backstreet Boys, specifically their most obnoxious and omnipresent song "I Want It That Way", and turns it into a fine bit of commentary on a technological craze that's swept the nation - the buying and selling of items no one would ever need on Ebay. The gentle acoustic guitars and mushy beat are spot-on with the original, as expected, and while Al's nasally voice can't really compete with the overexposed heartthrobs who first sang this song, it's hilarious to hear how he managed to cover every single vocal track In the entire song - you can almost imagine a group of five curly-haired guys with Hawaiian shirts singing their hearts out while the girls swoon and faint in front of them. He manages to name off a lot of useless stuff, as well as getting in a few remarks about the rude things people do in attempts to outbid one another, but I'll have to admit that I was disappointed when he missed the opportunity to make reference to some of the more bizarre things people have attempted to sell on Ebay - like kidneys and stuff, but oh well, it's still an instant classic that makes fun of a song that so many people love but no one can really make any sense of. (It's true, have you ever sat down and analyzed the lyrics to "I Want It That Way"?)

Genius in France
Anyone who made it all the way through "Albuquerque" on the last record would probably know that general sonic and lyrical mayhem is to be expected at the end of a Weird Al disc. "Albuquerque" was funny just for its sheer ridiculousness, even though the music got repetitive, and here, the reverse is sort of true. Weird Al has decided to pay tribute to one of his musical heroes, Frank Zappa, and Frank's son Dweezil Zappa actually participates in the lampooning. Keeping the same silly musical mood, Al and his makeshift band manage to run through a bizarre array of musical styles as he repeatedly drives the point home that he's a total moron, but the people in France think he's brilliant. One has to wonder if he's purposefully taking a pot-shot at France due to their lack of cooperation in recent world affairs, or whether he just chose them at random and got lucky, but either way, I guess the implication that the French aren't very smart or socially graceful people is going to be met with a lot of hearty "Amen"s on this side of the Pacific. Still, the joke gets really old after a few minutes, and the song is almost nine minutes long. Fans of Frank Zappa's style will probably love it, and devoted Weird Al fans will appreciate it for its avant-garde weirdness, but I plan on skipping this one most of the time (even if I do love the line about not even being welcome at the Star Trek convention).

There's supposed to be some bonus material on the CD as well, including another (likely inexplicable) video/documentary type thing and a few "bonus mixes" (which appear to be instrumentals and alternate takes of some of the original songs - pointless, if you ask me). That's icing on the cake, and likely left to hardcore fans. I still consider myself a casual fan, even though I thought Running with Scissors was close to pure genius, and I'll probably listen before I buy next time around just to make sure the subject matter hasn't gotten "even worse".

Despite my misgivings, though, I'd say Poodle Hat is a worthwhile buy if you can see yourself listening to any number of the funnier tracks more than just once or twice. It'll be interesting to see if the digital age and the advent of file-sharing makes or breaks Al's career, since "novelty" music is very tempting to stuff to download and listen to once for laughs, and then dismiss. If you really are a fan of Weird Al's stuff and you know you're gonna keep it around to listen to again and again, then please show your support and buy the album. Otherwise he might just have to write a song about you, set to the tune of one of your favorite songs, on the next disc, if he ever gets around to recording one at all.

ALBUM WORTH:
Couch Potato $2
Hardware Store $1
Trash Day $1.50
Party at the Leper Colony -$.50
Angry White Boy Polka $1
Wanna B Ur Lovr -$.50
A Complicated Song $.50
Why Does This Always Happen to Me? $1
Ode to a Superhero $1.50
Bob $1.50
Ebay $2
Genius in France $.50
TOTAL: $11.50

Weird Al's Band is:
"Weird Al" Yankovic: Lead vocals, keyboards, accordion
Jim West: Guitars, banjo, background vocals
Steve Jay: Bass, background vocals
Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz: Drums, percussion, background vocals

Website: http://www.weirdal.com

Great Music to Play While: Sitting on your lazy butt and watching all the TV you ever wanted.

Recommended: Yes