“Joel Miller, you’ve just found the marble in the oatmeal. You’re a lucky, lucky, lucky little boy. You know why? You get to drink from… THE FIREHOSE!” —Michael Richards, UHFFor a generation that came of age in the 1980s, the music and videos of “Weird Al” Yankovic—and to a much smaller, but still significant extent, the 1989 comedy UHF—were a gateway to absurdist comedy, gently bridging the gap between kid-friendly silliness and jokes that are much further afield. A child weaned on Police Academy sequels or, say, the appalling robot pimp in 1984’s The Ice Pirates could have no trouble giggling at song parodies like “Eat It” or “I Lost On Jeopardy,” but might come to appreciate, however unconsciously, Yankovic’s songcraft or the peculiar places his lyrics could go. There’s nothing estranging about Weird Al’s sensibility in the least, yet there ...
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