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“Weird Al” Yankovic
The Essential Weird Al Yankovic

Unless you're an obsessive, in which case you've already got 1994's out-of-print box set, this is where to start with one of the most important novelty songsters (not to mention biggest-selling comedy artist) ever. This is a true testament to Weird Al's genius: 38 tracks spread over two discs, split evenly between originals and parodies -- including one polka medley, two 10-minute epics, and immortal Nirvana, Coolio, Dylan, R. Kelly and Chamillionaire spoofs. Also featured are wise observations about junk food, TV reruns, palindromes, and growing up white and nerdy in late-capitalist America. — Chuck Eddy

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Does anybody really like David Cross' standup work? Best known by the larger public — which he is vocal about hating — as a member of HBO's Mr. Show, a sketch show he was on with Bob Odenkirk between 1995 and 1998, and his character Tobias Fünke on the acclaimed sitcom Arrested Development, which ran for three seasons (2003-2006), Cross is indisputably talented. Mr. Show, while spotty, had some great moments (like this), and Tobias Fünke had too many hilarious moments to list. Cross' portrayal is flat-out amazing. But listening to his albums (2002's Shut Up You F*cking Baby!, '04's It's Not Funny and his just-released Bigger and Blackerer), one can't escape the "hipster" vibe that pervades the proceedings. The thing is, Cross' anticommercial mentality and anti-Hollywood persona, as well as his whole take on things like The Blue Collar Comedy Tour (that it's crapola) and American society (idiotic), are views held by the same people he tends to rub the wrong way. It's a real paradox.

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Ke$ha's Animal may well be the most inescapable and game-changing collection of songs to emerge so far in this spanking-new decade. After two and a half months, it's still firmly entrenched in Billboard's Top 15, and recent weeks have seen an extremely entertaining flurry of blogwise chatter about what it all means. Ke$ha's sometimes-co-songwriting ex-punk mom Pebe Sebert is probably most famous for having co-written the country standard "Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You" (done by Dolly Parton, Joe South, Merle Haggard, and others). But Ke$ha herself is more often compared (sometimes by yours truly) to such highly respected non-Nashville artists as Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, L'Trimm, Salt-n-Pepa, Northern State, Megan McCauley, Fan_3, Courtney Love, Scooter, Tommy James and the Shondells, the Dictators, and the Tubes. (Until now, strangely enough, she has not been likened to the Runaways, who quite possibly filled a similar skanky suburban cultural niche circa 1976 but sold fewer records from it; only time will tell whether some enterprising filmmaker will make a Ke$ha biopic in the year 2044.) At any rate, what everybody except total nincompoops acknowledges is that Animal is a really really really funny record. Here's a countdown of its most hilarious moments.

When all is said and done, "Weird Al" Yankovic may well go down in history as the most insightful popular music critic of the past two or three decades. He certainly had the most honest reaction to Nirvana if nothing else, and Kurt Cobain himself considered him a genius for it ("What is this song all about/ Can't figure any lyrics out ... We're so loud and incoherent/ Boy this oughtta bug your parents.") And now, a newly compiled double-disc retrospective called The Essential "Weird Al" Yankovic is making a definitive case for the legacy of his satires. Rhapsody recently talked with Al about the compilation, pop and rock in the '00s, how the music biz neglects nerds, and why R. Kelly is more parody-worthy than Radiohead.

The H1N1 Influenza virus -- popularly known, to the chagrin of the Other White Meat industry, as "swine flu" -- keeps spreading. And with some estimates claiming that it could affect as many as two to three billion people, it's only natural that celebrities will be stricken, along with the rest of us schlubs. (I'm not a doctor, but I play one on this blog.) From the cases reported so far, it looks like swine flu is not immune to irony. CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta got it. Epidemiologist and Huffington Post medical blogger Larry Brilliant, M.D. got it -- just days after agreeing to write an article on the disease, at that. (In addition to all its other evil powers, swine flu also apparently rifles through your email. Maybe they should call it crazy ex-girlfriend flu?) And now, it turns out, Marilyn Manson has gotten it too.

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Almost Christian Acts

Is it just us, or is LMFAO's "I'm in Miami B*tch" a whole lot like the Lonely Island's "I'm on a Boat" -- except not as funny and not, frankly, as funky? But the QWERTY-loving gag-rap duo and their new album, Party Rock, got us thinking about other occasions where funk has been put into the service of humor, unwittingly or no. Featuring tracks from the likes of Blowfly, Too Short, Eddie Murphy, DJ Assault and, uh, Leonard Nimoy, this playlist takes in filthy banter, faux-gangsta boasting, good-natured absurdism and (just for good measure) everyone's favorite dancing-banana meme. Oh, and it's totally NSFW, as though you hadn't figured that out already. Listen to selected tracks below, and get the whole playlist here.

by Chuck Eddy

The funniest albums of 2008 - Ross Johnson’s Make It Stop!, which I blogged about here, and the Boxmasters’ self-titled record, which I blogged about here - have so far been country albums, or at least albums located somewhere on country’s lunatic fringe. That’s also where you’ll find Woodbox Gang’s Drunk as Dragons and Trailer Choir’s Trailer Choir EP, which are both quite the laugh riots themselves. That the former act is signed to Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label, and the latter to Toby Keith’s Show Dog Nashville (how’s that for two political extremes?) only adds to the confusion.

by Chuck Eddy

There are great songs about baseball (Warren Zevon’s “Bill Lee,” for instance) and great songs about art (The Modern Lovers’ “Pablo Picasso,” for example), but how often do they end up on the same album - especially an album that also has a Mott the Hoople cover on it? If you’re not already interested, we clearly don’t live on the same planet, but the album in question is The Boxmasters. And the singer, weirdly, is Billy Bob Thornton.

by Chuck Eddy

It's become this ridiculous cliché in recent years to pretend that "such and such people were the rock stars of their day," whatever that's supposed to mean. Just over the weekend, I saw the claim bestowed upon both early '60s advertising bigwigs (in a New York Times Sunday magazine piece about the TV series Mad Men) and old-time magicians (on Antiques Roadshow). But this morning, when I learned George Carlin had succumbed to heart failure Sunday evening in Santa Monica at the age of 71, the obits reminded me of something -- back in suburban Detroit, in 1974, when I was fresh out of eighth grade at Our Lady of Refuge, this fellow lapsed Catholic seemed to me like a bigger rock star than any rock star I could name, give or take maybe Elton John. And when you think about it, it was guys like Carlin and Cheech and Chong and Richard Pryor whose Watergate-era bullsh*t-detection and post-hippie potty mouths set the stage for what rock music -- or, even more maybe, hip-hop -- would eventually evolve into. So if George Carlin wasn't the rock star of his day, maybe spouting the seven words you can't say on television made him a rap star, at least.

by Chuck Eddy

Ross Johnson, unbeknownst to me before this year, is a Memphis underground legend (he’s worked with everyone from Jon Spencer to Peter Buck, Alex Chilton to Tav Falco) and also a musical laugh riot - at least if you think shuffling up drunken standup routines with crazed '60s soul-garage-punk and rockabilly is a smart mix, which you damn well better. Make It Stop! The Most of Ross Johnson is easily one of the best new albums I’ve heard in 2008.

by Dan Shumate

What a depressing year. The unpopular war in Iraq seems unsalvageable. The U.S. economy is in the crapper. The housing market has fallen into a seemingly bottomless pit. The credit crunch. ... Is this the end of our great empire? Perhaps. But at least there's some comic relief to make your worries subside -- at least for a few moments. Shoo away those feelings of impending doom with our top comedy picks of 2007.