Keeping it Weird, Al Yankovic Dazzles at Sonoma State

As a kid, I was more than a little influenced by Weird Al Yankovic. I wore colored shades, combat boots, and Hawaiian shirts in high school, and I was obsessed with the idea that you can and should laugh at everything (in that particularly sociopathic teen way of thinking). Taking anything seriously was a sign of weakness — the world only existed for me to point and scoff at it. Then we were in the midst of the post-9/11 malaise, where politics and war and everything else felt like a sick joke. Why wouldn’t we want to step outside of it and protect ourselves from being bamboozled even further?

It was all a little bit stupid, but it’s easy to forget how good Weird Al is at convincing you it’s OK to get goofy with it. He’s not cool. He never was cool. He doesn’t know what cool means.