Warning: This article contains descriptions of self-harm.
“Weird Al” Yankovic is currently traveling the continent with his “Bigger & Weirder” tour, playing hits like “Amish Paradise” to stadium-sized crowds full of Hawaiian shirt-clad fans.
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Since the show requires the legendary song parodist to undergo a number of costume changes, each concert fills the excess time with clips from Yankovic’s long career, including scenes from movies like UHF and The Naked Gun, sketches from his short-lived children’s show and even archival “interviews” with music icons like Paul McCartney.
The highlight reels also feature memorable pop-culture references to Al from shows like Jeopardy! and Family Guy — the latter memorably used “Eat It” in the least family-friendly context imaginable.
Having been to a recent show, I can personally attest that one of the biggest applause breaks of the night wasn’t for Yankovic himself, but rather, for the appearance of Hank and Bobby Hill.
The clip, from Season Two’s “The Son That Got Away,” finds Bobby defending himself to his father after getting in trouble for changing the words to “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” in music class. “I just sang a song parody dad, like ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic,” Bobby argues.
“Bobby, Al Yankovic blew his brains out in the late ‘80s after people stopped buying his records, he’s not worth getting into trouble over,” an exasperated Hank replies.
While “Weird Al” is still very much alive, some fans have pointed out that the joke here is likely that Hank was thinking of another novelty record hitmaker, Dickie Goodman.
Goodman pioneered the “break-in” record, which combined recorded dialogue with snippets of popular songs. For example, his 1956 War of the Worlds parody, “The Flying Saucer,” was a faux news report about an alien invasion peppered with clips of Elvis Presley and Fats Domino.
His biggest hit, 1975’s “Mr. Jaws,” told the story of Steven Spielberg’s hit movie Jaws, but with excerpts from songs by artists like James Taylor and War filling in the narrative gaps. While this may sound a little odd today, at the time, it sold a million copies and earned a gold record.
Unfortunately, Goodman’s attempt to recreate that success with another Spielberg parody, “Hey E.T.” didn’t do nearly as well. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1989, hence Hank’s confusion.
Since the King of the Hill scene is included in Yankovic’s current tour, clearly the “My Bologna” singer wasn’t bothered by it. Plus, he previously clarified that he found the joke to be “funny” adding, “although I did have to explain to a few people that I’m not quite dead yet.” He also noted that Mike Judge is a “nice guy” and “a big fan of UHF.”
