Sandy Supposes....

Word Crimes

         

PROMPT:Music Monday! Have you ever read a musician's biography, or seen a movie based on his or her life? Share your thoughts on it.

         No , I've never read or viewed the biography of a musician's life,so I got busy and did some research. I was curious about Weird Al Yankovic. I admire his creativity and humour. His song parodies are fun and memorable.

         Okay, Weird Al entered this world October 23, 1959 in Downey, California. Hey, he and I are contemporaries. Unlike me, he is an only child. I must admit I've always aspired to be a pianist or a guitarist,but alas, I am not musically inclined. The most I can do is lip-sync or sing with a squawk. His weirdness chose to perform with an accordion.

         The Al is derived from his given name, Alfred. He picked up the nickname Weird Al from his fellow students at school. Over the years, he's worked as a radio jockey, a writer, a singer, and a producer. He is famous for his satire and parodies of popular hit songs. He retains the original music and completely re-writes the lyrics with a different theme or concept. He claims that he draws inspiration from Mad magazine, Monty Python, and Shel Silverstein . Two of his hits have been based upon MichaelJackson's songs; Beat It and Bad which he re-configured into Eat It and Fat.

         Weird Al is also a children's book author. The titles are When I Grow Up and My New Teacher and Me. He refers to himself as a nerd.

         One of his newest parodies is about the need to use proper grammar and spelling. He sets his 'lesson' to the tune for Blurred Lines. It's titled Word Crimes,and here is a sampling of his lines. " If you can't write in the proper way, if you don't know how to conjugate, gonna familiarize you with the nomenclature. I think it's a good time to learn some grammar,now did I stammer, work on that grammar. I thought you got it through your skull, about what's figurative or literal. I hate these word crimes. It's quite apparent, you're grammar errant, you're incoherent." He also sings, " Are words not letters? Get it together. You should never write words using numbers." Yeah, you tell us Weird Al!