So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.
Not any specific one, but I was a huge fan of Frank Jacobs, I guess he wrote the plurality of the song parodies for MAD, Sam Hart, a few others, but that was also where I was first exposed to the art form of song parodies.
I was able to come up with a couple articles for the magazine, I was able to solicit help from a bunch of my friends to contribute pieces: Patton Oswalt, Seth Green, Emo Phillips, Chris Hardwick, John Hodgman, and more. It's very much a "Weird Al" themed issue, so I'd like to think that there's a lot of "Weird Al" flavor throughout but I think it'd be generous really to call me an editor.
I like to think that I've gotten better at what I do. I spend more time and pay more attention to detail album after album. But pretty much it's stayed the same.
What kind of morons do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?
Like, I have had moments, which I think most people have, where you'll be watching TV, and it'll be interrupted by some tragic event, and you'll actually find yourself thinking, 'I don't want to hear about this train being derailed! What happened to 'The Flintstones'?'
I have very mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I’m concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career. On the other hand, I can get all the Metallica songs I want for FREE! WOW!