I admit it, my life is full of guilty pleasures. One of them is "Weird Al" Yankovic, which is why I placed an advance order with Amazon.com when I found out that his film UHF was coming out on DVD. As I watch this film tonight for the first time in a few years, I can honestly say that it is one of dumbest movies I've ever seen -- yet I can't help but laugh my ass off. I think my two favorite parts of the film are the sketches for "Gandhi II: The Revenge" and "Conan the Librarian." What it does say to me is that I've still retained some stupidity and appreciation of that stupidity from my youth. I've often said that I'm not growing up, my toys are just getting more expensive. And I guess I still have those devil-may-care moments every now & then, the impish kind of screw-with-the-world attitude that keeps everyone else on their toes and amuses me. It makes me feel better about growing older because it makes me feel like I won't end up culturally like my parents, who seem to have been born at the age of 45 -- I still can't believe it that my father has all of his Beatles records and that both of my parents actually used to listen to rock music religiously since neither of them have listened to anything more rousing or cutting-edge than show tunes in the past 20 years. I'll be the cool dad who listens to rock 'n' roll and enjoys stupid films and knows "what the 411 is" -- if they still even have directory assistance by the time I'm a father.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I consider satire to be the highest form of humor because you actually have to know the material being made fun of in order to really get the joke, and they're usually ripping on something old, timeless and famous. During the scene in Zoolander when Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson were jumping up and down and hooting and making ape noises at the iMac, I was the only person in the entire theatre laughing -- probably because I was the only one who'd seen 2001: A Space Odyssey and understood the reference. That's probably one of the reasons why I think Weird Al is brilliant in his own way, most likely because I know most of the stuff he's making fun of. Of course, there's something to be said for slapstick humor...

On to more pressing topics -- the ever-present music rant. Here's where I unload about Kelly Osbourne again. First of all, I can't understand why she had to cover Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach." Her father's the self-proclaimed Fucking Prince Of Darkness! He couldn't have whipped up a nice little ditty for her to record? Second of all, she can't sing worth a damn, which leads those of us in the public not willing to swallow what's being handed to us by the entertainment companies to believe that the studio version of the album was either not done by her or it was so heavily processed to make her sound good. When she cancels all of her live performances on various talk shows and the MTV Movie Awards mysteriously develops sound problems just for her performance, something seems a bit awry. Then she actually performed at a concert for KIIS-FM here in Los Angeles, and I have on pretty good authority that she sucked. A lot. I'm still waiting for the backlash against the Osbournes, when people finally say enough is enough and seeing basically the same episode -- they all swear a lot, Ozzy stumbles around, the kids are brats and scream a lot, Ozzy screams at the kids, Ozzy looks like an idiot because of all the drugs he's done, we all try to understand just what the hell he's saying -- over and over again becomes tiresome to the general public.

"Now, for those of you just joining us, today we're teaching poodles how to fly..."