#The saga begins how to
#The saga begins series

#The saga begins series

I'm not just nostalgic for 1999's Phantom Menace fever and Al's inspired parody of 'American Pie.' I'm also, coincidentally, nostalgic for the throwback sex comedy American Pie,В which, in one of a series of meaningless/meaningful coincidences littering this entry, was released in, you guessed it, 1999.

Geeks are the mainstream but back in 1999 Phantom Menace still felt like something the Gods had created for the fans. These days, pretty much everything seems custom-made for geeks. Geeks didnвЂ™t have quite the stranglehold on pop culture back then that they do now. IвЂ™m nostalgic for the incredible wave of excitement and anticipation it created, and then the crashing disappointment that followed. I suppose it would be more accurate to say that IвЂ™m nostalgic for The Phantom Menace as a cultural event. Demento-level student of comedy, he had appropriate reverence for The Onion in the 1990s, before it went all corporate and whatnot) and visit my then-editor Stephen Thompson (now NPR music editor and one of the hosts of Pop Culture Happy Hour), and then later that night, when we got to meet Al backstage after seeing him in concert. When Running with Scissors was released, I had an opportunity to leverage to my nascent power as the twenty-three year old head writer of The A.V Club into getting to meet вЂњWeird AlвЂќ Yankovic, first when he stopped by the Onion office to visit a sacred satirical mecca (as a Dr.

It is at this point in the story that the careers of your writer and his subject begin to overlap.

#The saga begins how to

WeвЂ™re up to 1999 in our timeline, when a charismatic hillbilly named 'Slick' Willie Clinton delighted the nation with his cornpone antics, we trembled in fear of the impending technological apocalypse known as Y2K (with the single exception of the singer of вЂњAll About the PentiumsвЂќ) and a silly-talking space frog named Jar Jar Binks taught us all how to laugh. It takes a lot of stamina, patience and endurance just to read that many long, typo-written, self-indulgent articles about one human being, even someone as endlessly fascinating as the king of pop parody. Well, folks, with вЂњThe Saga BeginsвЂќ we have officially made it to our tenth album from American pop parodist вЂњWeird AlвЂќ Yankovic.