Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
Today, dumped on the ever-growing “Nice things, and why we can’t have them” pile: Weird Al Yankovic has said that he’s put a pause on plans for a Smithsonian exhibit focused on his career, amidst the chaos and drama currently encircling the national set of museums. Specifically, Yankovic told Vulture this week that he’d been planning to donate a number of pieces of memoribilia to the Smithsonian—including the orange Hawaiian shirt he wore for the bulk of his cult-classic comedy film UHF—for a planned exhibit about his work, but, “I’m putting that on hold because, as you may have heard, the Smithsonian is going through some changes right now, and I’m waiting until the dust settles.”
On the one hand, there’s something perversely funny about the idea of Donald Trump’s recently emboldened culture cops having to go through and evaluate all of Yankovic’s various accordions and lyrics to try to decide if there’s something subversive buried inside “Your Horoscope For Today” or “Hardware Store.” (“We regret to inform you that ‘Everything You Know Is Wrong’ doesn’t align with President Trump’s views of history”—although he’d probably get a surface-level kick out of “Frank’s 2000-Inch TV.”) The upshot is that visitors to the Smithsonian—Yankovic doesn’t indicate which of the organization’s various museums was planning the exhibit, although National History feels like a decent candidate—will now have to live without getting to enjoy Yankovic’s wonderfully oddball impact on the national conversation.
Elsewhere in the profile, Yankovic reiterates previous comments suggesting that 2014’s Mandatory Fun will probably be his final album. (“I decided to quit when I hit No. 1 on the charts and my record deal was over. I thought, ‘Well, this is a good mic drop, and I’m kind of tired of having to top myself.'”) He also addresses the occasional calls for him to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, taking a typically Yankovic-ian chill attitude to the whole thing:
The Rock Hall is going to do what they’re going to do. They’re obviously expanding the boundaries of what constitutes rock and roll when they make their decisions. If they’re going to ever pick a comedic entry, I’d like to think I’d be considered for that. If they pick another accordion-playing parody writer ahead of me, I’d be upset. I don’t lose any sleep over having not been nominated. Right now, there are millions of people saying, “Why isn’t he in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?” And I’d prefer that to having millions of people saying, “Who let that jerk in there?”
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