Classic or Dud: Weird Al Yankovic

still keep hoping someone will take the reins and do the billy joel track by track thread. have heard/loved 'goodnight saigon' a million times but apparently have been too...moved by it's story to catch 'spastic like tameless horses' before.

can a mod get the offensive reference three posts ago

we CAN'T have refs to the piano man on this board

didn't know billy joel was on $t0rmfr0nt

plus the cadence of that line is cool,
weeee came in spas tic...like tameless hor ses

i know i know take it to the billy joel thread I'll stop

still keep hoping someone will take the reins and do the billy joel track by track thread. have heard/loved 'goodnight saigon' a million times but apparently have been too...moved by it's story to catch 'spastic like tameless horses' before.

― balls, Thursday, July 17, 2014 5:06 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ballot poll coming someday!

"Goodnight Saigon" was always the song that I would ask my parents to fast-forward through whenever we listened to the Greatest Hits cassette on car trips.

We came in spastic like tameless horses/we left in plastic as numbered corpses

^i keep imagining this as rapped by MC Paul Barman

except he would have said "nameless corpses"

you went to berkeley and took the lamest courses

An acquaintance once tried to tell me that MC Paul Barman was the first rapper to ever use internal rhymes.

Also that it's actually pronounced "MC Par Barman"

lol

That Wikipedia article is pretty appalling. "Gay has come to be a playground synonym for weak, stupid, soft, embarrassing or otherwise undesirable. Therefore it is in no way offensive to use it as an insult, or say a rugby player is playing 'like a giant poofter' on broadcast television."

Love Weird Al but seeing him team up with College Humor just depresses the hell outta me

? which entry are you reading?

nobody in the U.S. is offended by the word spaz, just accept it.

xp

Love Weird Al but seeing him team up with College Humor just depresses the hell outta me

― 龜, Thursday, July 17, 2014 6:36 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the "Tacky" video was done w/ Nerdist and the "Handy" video was put out through Yahoo!'s comedy channel and the "Word Crimes" lyric video was done by a guy who's done some popular animated videos. imo it's pretty brilliant that he's using all these small internet comedy brands to help push his album, if the "Foil" video sucked i'd blame it on College Humor but it's awesome so who cares.

but there's 4 more videos from the album coming out in the next week, so maybe the next one will make me go "for fuck's sake, why did Weird Al have to make a video with Seth MacFarlane" or something

It's more the about the principle than the product, College Humor is up there with Funny or Die as top sites to be avoided

I do agree that it's cool he's figuring out how to leverage his brand though

College Humor is up there with Funny or Die as top sites to be avoided

Both sites are guilty of hosting bad content, but also some great content. Not sure it makes them any different from anything else, really.

like ubuweb, for instance

Johnny Fever owns a College Humor t-shirt, mug

man dayo is gonna lost his shit when the next vid debuts on engrish.com tomorrow

Shut up barrs

Hahahahaha

That Wikipedia article is pretty appalling. "Gay has come to be a playground synonym for weak, stupid, soft, embarrassing or otherwise undesirable. Therefore it is in no way offensive to use it as an insult, or say a rugby player is playing 'like a giant poofter' on broadcast television."

― boney tassel (sic), Thursday, July 17, 2014 6:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if only there were some way to change what a wikipedia article said

also that paris hilton video is pretty amazing, shame about the song

nobody in the U.S. is offended by the word spaz, just accept it.

1. Al doesn't use the word 'spaz' in the song
2. It's the fact of using a neurological condition as a pejorative, not the specific word that's the issue
3. "get over it" is not historically a useful response to using descriptors as slurs

if only there were some way to change what a wikipedia article said

Don't think this was Shakey's point in citing it as backup for "lol stfu spastics".

I'm pretty offended by Al's use of the word "Weird." Is it meant as a perjorative? Isn't he reifying received norms with its usage? Perhaps "Decentered/Problematized Al" would serve as a more useful nomiker.

"what is normal anyway al"

Spastic is simply not an offensive term in the u.s., it does not refer to a specific group of people or medical condition. I'm sorry this is difficult to understand.

Spastic is not a medical term, it is not used to refer to a neurological condition.

IN AMERICA. Where Weird Al is from.

I will not be lectured on the offensiveness of the word spastic by a nation of people who throw cunt and fag around indiscriminately.

Robbie Williams to thread

obsessed with the dolly zoom in the "foil" video

tbf if a british family entertainer used 'cunt' or 'fag' in their act it would be perhaps a little controversial

also his lil spokesmodel gesture towards the mushroom clouds xp

tbf if a british family entertainer used 'cunt' or 'fag' in their act it would be perhaps a little controversial

Right, I get that. It was just exaggerated hardmanning.

Spastic is not a medical term, it is not used to refer to a neurological condition.

What do you call people with CP?

I will not be lectured on the offensiveness of the word spastic by a nation of people who throw cunt and fag around indiscriminately.

What nation?

lol what do you call ppl w/ cp?

We call them people with cerebral palsy ime

lol what do you call ppl w/ cp?

cunts and phags

What do you call people with CP?

rolling teen pop thread?

huge lol

huge fp

"Spastic" is indeed a medical term, referring to a particular type of velocity- and direction-dependent increased tone in the skeletal muscles (seen mostly in the limbs), which is typically produced by a lesion in the corticospinal tract. Many neurological diseases cause some degree of spasticity, from spinal cord injuries to MS to stroke. People with cerebral palsy often have spasticity, but not always. "Spastic cerebral palsy" (often specified as "spastic hemiplegia", "spastic diplegia", etc) distinguishes that type from "ataxic" and "athetoid" CP, in which spasticity is not a feature.

There is no class of patients referred to simply as "spastic" by doctors in North America (and I don't think in the UK either). The word sometimes is used as an adjective to describe a pattern of gait or a form of dysarthria.

/neurologist

I knew the first time I heard Word Crimes that Language Log would have a post up within hours pointing out that the less vs fewer distinction and other "prescriptivist peeves" are not actually poor grammar. It took another couple of listens before it occurred to me that BrE speakers would find "spastic" offensive. Never thought "mouthbreathers" was offensive, how does that work again?

Great song anyway, way easier to take than the original.

"wretched fuckwit"

Not only is spastic completely inoffensive in America, the word "moron" in the song, which nobody has singled out, is inarguably more offensive in America. Nobody actually cares about either as anything more than making an inconsequential point, though, so it's not a big deal.

Is the word "retarded" considered offensive in the USA?