
Every other Friday, we reach into our deep freezer and reheat an episode to serve up to you. We're calling these our Reheats. If you have a show you want reheated, send us an email or voice memo at hello@sporkful.com, and include your name, your location, which episode, and why.
Dan sits down with the one and only "Weird Al" Yankovic, the man behind "Eat It," "Fat," "My Bologna," and so many other classic food-related parody songs. What would be his ideal ratio of cookie to white stuff in an Oreo? And which does he prefer, the rye or the kaiser? Plus, Dan takes issue with Al's suggestion in "Eat It" that it doesn't matter whether chicken or pie is boiled or fried. Also in this episode, a concerned 16-year-old in Idaho calls in to ask Dan how to learn to love onions.
This episode originally aired on March 11, 2014, and was produced by Dan Pashman. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Nora Ritchie, and Jared O'Connell. Publishing by Shantel Holder.
Interstitial music in this episode by Black Label Music:
- “Soul Good” by Lance Conrad
Photo courtesy of slgckgc / Flickr licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.
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View Transcript
Dan: Hey everyone, Dan here with another Reheat, and in honor of our 15th anniversary this month, we are pulling especially old episodes out of the darkest recesses of the deep freezer. Last Friday, we released the first ever Sporkful episode, episode number one, along with a classic one on sandwich science with Robert Krulwich.
Today, we're sharing my entire interview with Weird Al from 2014. I was so excited to have Weird Al on the show. I was trying so hard for like two years to get him on the show. Like every three months I would email his manager: Hey, is he free now? How about now? And the manager would say no, right back in a few months, two years.
Finally, he said: Hey, Al's doing a concert up in Northern Westchester. This was like two hours from where I was living. And he says, if you wanna get there early before the show, you can interview him backstage while he's hanging out and waiting for the show to start. I said: I'll be there. And having Weird Al on the show, dissecting so many of his classic songs, it was a special memory.
It felt like maybe the first really big guest, not counting Rachel Maddow and Mark Maron, cause I had worked with him in the past. The first really big guest I got on the Sporkful who I didn't know before. Uh, so it was a big milestone for the show and one of my favorite episodes, and I'm excited to share it with you.
And hey, great news for all the Weird Al fans out there. He's going back on tour this year for tour dates and tickets. Check out weirdal.com/tour. And as always, if there's an episode you want us to defrost and share, drop us a line at hello@sporkful.com. Alright, here's my episode with Weird Al.
Announcer: This is The Sporkful.
Joe: Hi, who's this? This is Joe, calling from Post Falls, Idaho. I'm, uh, I'm 16 years old, and I've got a serious problem with onions.
Dan: Okay, tell me about it.
Joe: Well, ever since I was way younger, I have completely detested onions. I mean, just hated them, but my mom's always been cooking for a bunch of other kids, so it's, um, she doesn't want to cook anything separate without them, so I was always kind of force fed them, and she always said that, you know, you'll like them when you get older, you'll appreciate them when you get older.
And as I started getting older, I started to panic, just thinking, Oh shoot, I still hate onions. And it, you know, it was like one of those things, like, I'm supposed to grow out of this, what's happening here? And my mom's an excellent cook, I mean, she makes this meatloaf with, you know, like, the ketchup on it, and the bacon, and then you slice into it, and it's just these onions, big old onion slices, and it's like, Oh, it just ruins any dish for me, and I've just always hated it.
Dan: How many siblings do you have?
Joe: I've got seven.
Dan: Seven siblings?
Joe: Three sisters and four brothers. So mom cooks on a pretty big scale.
Dan: Where are you in the, in the eight?
Joe: I'm the oldest.
Dan: Okay, oh, I see. Alright. And, and all seven of the other siblings like onions?
Joe: Yeah, mostly. They just find them tolerable. You know, it's like lettuce.
Dan: And is there any format in which you, you like onions a little bit? Or it's just 100 percent no matter what?
Joe: Well, I actually kind of appreciate the really teeny, you know, chopped sweet onions like on a hamburger or something, but I don't think that even really counts, you know.
Dan: Hey, I think that does count, first of all, Joe.
I don't think you should be so hard on yourself. When your mom puts the onions into the meatloaf, does she cook them first or does she put them in raw?
Joe: She puts them in raw.
Dan: Mmm. Joe, I want to say a few things to you. First of all, I sense that you're getting a little bit worried that you may be plagued by this issue for life because you feel like you're 16 and you should be growing out of this by now.
And I don't think you should be so hard on yourself like me. I did not like tomatoes well into my 20s. Now I can't wait for summertime tomato season to roll around and go to the farmer's market and get great tomatoes and I'll slice a big thick slice of tomato and sprinkle salt on it and eat it with a fork and knife like it's a steak.
So give yourself some time, but I, I understand that right now you're in a predicament. You need to, to get through these meals in a way that, that, uh, doesn't inconvenience your mom too much.
Joe: Oh yeah. And my sister's always said, I mean, how do you expect to ever find a wife that's going to cook without onions?
And that's, that, that's a bleak future right there. I mean, I can't, can't imagine that, you know? Yeah.
Dan: I don't think that's going to happen to you, Joe, but, but one thing I will say is that look, you can tell your mom if it's not too much trouble to her. There's a couple things she could do to help you out.
The best would be to cook the onions in advance before putting them into other dishes.
Joe: Really?
Dan: Yes, that will soften them and sweeten them and make their flavor milder. But if she doesn't have time to do that, and I certainly understand if she doesn't, if she even just chops up the onion and then soaks it in cold water for 15 minutes, and then puts it in, that will also help to soften and take out some of the sharpness of the flavor of the onion.
Joe: Right, okay.
Dan: Separately, I want you to take charge a little bit in the kitchen when your mom's not in there trying to do stuff. I want you to move on to caramelization. I want you to Google it, caramelized onions, and I want you to cook onions that way. So, Joe, I want you to try all of these different techniques, and I want you to report back.
Will you report back and tell me how your onion therapy is going?
Joe: I definitely will, Dan.
Dan: Alright, Joe. Well, thanks so much for your call.
Joe: Alright, thanks so much, man.
MUSIC
Dan: This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman, and we're about to challenge your assumptions about consumption and drop a Sporkful of knowledge on you. Because we're obsessively compulsive about eating more awesomely, and because if history has taught us anything, it's that the hosts of food shows need a lot of catchphrases.
Let's go ahead and jump into today's topic for mastication and rumination, which is: Weird Al the Sporkful Interview.
GONG SOUND
Well, friends, I am extremely excited to bring this show to you today. I've been a fan of Weird Al's for a long, long time. He's written so many great songs about food. I had the privilege of sitting down with him in person backstage before a recent concert. Al has his second children's book coming out on June 25th.
It's called My New Teacher and Me. It's available for pre order now. I will link to it at sporkful.com. We talked a bit about the book, but we talked mostly about eating as we do here on the Sporkful, and basically what I wanted to do is to use the, the many, many songs Al's written about food, so many of his parody songs reference food, to use those as sort of chapter headings or jumping off points to talk about the food issues that are referenced in those songs. So that's what we did. It was a great time. And here's the interview.
Dan: Your new children's book is entitled My New Teacher and Me and it really encourages kids to follow their dreams and also in a way to question authority.
I think which is kind of cool. And this is your second children's book I'm curious to hear you compare the creative process between writing one of these books and writing the music that you write
Weird Al: It's, it's a similar process in a way. You know, I I've been writing verse for you know afew decades and it's a form that I'm pretty familiar, with so in a sense it was like writing sort of a long song. A long song that I didn't have to write their music for.
Dan: Right. I want to talk about the book a little more, uh, but I want to kind of connect, try to connect it to your music.
Um, and you know, your music continues to find audiences with new generations of, as you put it in other interviews, 15 year old boys. Although I think that's kind of selling yourself short. Really with people in their formative years is how I would put it. Um, what I find amazing is that, you know, a lot of the music that I listened to when I was in my formative years, I look back now, it's like a, it's a punchline. Your music, I don't think of that way. And I think that most people don't think of it that way. They, they have a real earnest attachment to it that stays with them. And I think it's especially interesting because you're, so much of your music is ironic and yet there's a very pure and earnest attachment that people have to it.
And I'm curious if you have any theory as to what it is about you or your music that, that makes that connection possible.
Weird Al: I think that, uh, at a certain age, in your formative years, as you put it, uh, you're more open to this kind of humor, this kind of questioning authority, uh, irreverence. Uh, I remember when I was maybe 13 years old, I, uh, was crazy about Mad magazine.
I would go to used bookstores and try to find back issues, and it was really, like, a major driving force of my life. Uh, and I was, I was obsessed with it. And I still enjoy Mad magazine, but not as much as I did when I was that old. And it's kind of telling because, uh, you know, I, I've got a fan base that extended generations, but I think my hardest core fans are, you know, still the formative years people.
In fact, if you ask most, uh, uh, people that are, you know, older, like what their favorite Weird Al album is almost without fail, it's, it's the one that they heard when they were that age. It's like they really made an attachment with them somehow. So there's a nostalgia that happens with my older catalog.
Dan: I have a theory I'd like to run by that sort of connects to your book.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it, which is that so much of childhood and growing up is about learning all these rules and so much about parenting is just teaching all these everything from like, don't eat that you eat this. Don't, don't eat that. Don't cross the street now. Wait till that thing happens.
And, you're constantly having to learn these rules and abide by them, and it makes the world a really confusing and weird place. When you're young, because a lot of the rules don't make sense.
Weird Al: Mm hmm.
Dan: And I think that people who connect, artists and creative people who connect with people in their formative years, depict the world as young people see it. It's a weird, messed up world that doesn't make a lot of sense.
Weird Al: Yeah.
Dan: Like, I mean, I love Maurice Sendak's books.
Weird Al: Sure.
Dan: And I think that that's something that your music and your book both do. I'm curious how you feel about that or if that is something you strive for.
Weird Al: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's not overt. I mean, I'm not, uh, uh, ostensibly trying to, to do that, but I mean, it's, it's all in, in the going towards some kind of, uh, comedic release.
It's a, it's an absurd world, world sometimes. I, and again, you know, the whole questing authority thing, which would, what Mad magazine did so well. I mean, everything from Madison Avenue to, to politicians and saying that these grown ups are not necessarily always telling you guys the truth. And that's an important thing to learn when you're young.
Dan: Right, right. Um, so as we segue from your work to our discussion of food, I have a polka and food related question for you.
Weird Al: Okay.
Dan: I'm sure you're familiar with the classic song, Beer Barrel Polka.
Weird Al: Of course.
Dan: In that it has the lyrics, Roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun. Roll out the barrel, we've got the blues on the run. Zing, boom, tararal. Sing out a song of good cheer. What does terraral mean?
Weird Al: I wasn't sure that it was, I've heard Terrara. Right. And some, some people say Terraral. Okay. You know, it depends on your translation of it. And I'm not sure that what the literal translation of Terrara or Terraral would be, but now that you brought it up, that's something I should look into.
Dan: Do you know what language it was being translated from?
Weird Al: I don't even know that. I feel so bad. I mean, that's like such a, you know, such a seminal Polka piece. I, I think I know a little bit of the background of it.
Dan: Well, don't feel too bad because I did Google this before.
Weird Al: Okay. Well, you can tell me
Dan: that. I didn't, I did not find anything definitive. I mean, I ended up at Yahoo Answers, which is, you know, makes Wikipedia look like the Library of Congress. And, uh, someone there wrote that the song was first sung in the English version from a Polish translation. And this person admitted that it was a guess. 1939, Poland was invaded by Germany and Zing Boom Tararal is related to the sounds of war, i.e. bullets surrounding an unflappable group of people who won't have their life change without celebration
Weird Al: Interesting. You know, my wife is, uh, part polish, so maybe I'll go home and ask her what terreral means. Okay.
Dan: All right. See if you can find out about that. You can tweet. Tweet me the answer.
Weird Al: Okay. Will do.
MUSIC
Dan: So let's segway full fledged to food here. Uh, you are a vegetarian, have been for about 20 years.
Weird Al: Something like that, yeah.
Dan: And, uh, even went through a vegan period.
Weird Al: Yeah, I mean, I'm, I still consider myself a sort of vegan, I mean, I, I, I, I'm a vegan by a cheat. Uh, on a, you know, cause, you know, you, you, you got the, the cheese pizza on the bus and yeah, yeah, it's hard not to sneak a piece every now and then.
Dan: Right. And I know you've said, I know you've moved away in your songwriting a little bit from the food songs, but I'd like to use some of those songs as jumping off points.
Weird Al: Sure, of course.
Dan: For us to just talk about food. And we'll kind of go, not necessarily in chronological order here. Some of these will be rapid fire.
Okay. We can go in more detail, but let's start at the beginning. My bologna.
MY BOLOGNA SONG
Dan: When you're not trying to rhyme with Sharona, do you say bologna or baloney?
Weird Al: Well, I used to always say baloney. But it's, uh, spelled balogna, and, uh, you know, I certainly worked with Sharona, and because of my song, I have, uh, since then, always said balogna.
Dan: Really? So the song changed you?
Weird Al: The song changed me, yes.
Dan: Alright, well, I looked it up in the dictionary. Either pronunciation is technically acceptable.
Weird Al: Yes! Yes!
Dan: The white stuff.
THE WHITE STUFF SONG
Dan: Do you eat Oreos?
Weird Al: Um, On occasion. I mean, you know, uh, not often. I don't even know. Are they vegan? I'm not sure if the white stuff actually is.
Dan: I think, well, I'm not sure about vegan. My wife was raised in a kosher household. And I know that they took the, uh, I think it was gelatin or whatever pork product used to be in there. So I think they are vegetarian. Okay. But they may not be vegan.
Weird Al: Right. Yeah, you know, on occasion I do, but I can't say it's a current, you know, it's not a big part of my diet.
Dan: When you do eat them, what's your strategy?
Weird Al: Well, you know, a kid will eat the middle of the Oreo first. Right. And save the chocolate cookie outside for last. Uh, myself, um, usually I will either, I'll either put the whole thing in my mouth or I'll eat one of the cookies first and then eat the cream and second cookie second.
Dan: When you do the cream and second cookie, which side is up?
Weird Al: The cream! I'm not a monster.
Dan: Well, I would actually argue the other way, Al. I think you should put the cream side down.
Weird Al: So it's like a surprise, so you don't know, like, what you're getting?
Dan: No, so that the cream is on your tongue, and it accentuates the cream flavor.
Weird Al: Wow. Well, that's another way to look at it.
Dan: See, I aspire to be the Weird Al of food.
Weird Al: Yeah,
Dan: yeah, yeah. It's just as crazy as anything you would sing about.
Weird Al: Yeah. No, that's, I'll have to try that sometime. Okay. That could be a whole different sensation.
Dan: It's big. It's big. What do you think, if you were designing a new Oreo with, with purer ingredients, one that you could eat all the time and feel good about, what ratio would you choose between the cookies and the filling?
Weird Al: Well, I, I think the Quintuple stuff would be good, you know, cause I don't think they've, they've done that yet.
Dan: Yeah, that's true.
Weird Al: In fact, like an entire pack of Oreos, there's only got like two cookies and the rest is just stuff between them. Right.
Dan: That would be pretty amazing. Yeah. I, uh, I stumbled upon some of these sort of, um, fancy bakery imitation Oreos that were really good.
They had a, I would say 1.5 to 1 cookie to filling ratio.
Weird Al: Did that work for you?
Dan: That was really nice. Each cookie I would say was like .75.
Weird Al: Uh huh.
Dan: Is adding up to 1. 5 to 1.
Weird Al: There's there's a um a burger chain. I won't mention the name of them, but they make artisanal ding dongs. It's probably actually much better for you than the actual ding dong. But again is the whole nostalgia thing was like it's not the ding dong you grew up with so
Dan: Right Right, yeah, there is something, there's a certain sort of like hyper processed umami thing that happens, you just can't replace.
Weird Al: Exactly, exactly.
MUSIC
Announcer: It's time to open up a can of advertisements.
+++BREAK+++
MUSIC
Dan: Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman, and I have a very big, exciting announcement for you. This past November, I took a group of Sporkful fans, and some others, on a special trip across Italy to eat pasta, to retrace many of the steps I took on my own research trip for my cookbook, and we had so much fun and ate so, so well. We ate spaghetti all'assassina in Bari. We took a cooking class with Silvestro Silvestori in Lecce. We ate with Katie Parla in Rome. And the folks at Culinary Backstreet who organized the tour, they added some stops that I didn't even know about that were new to me that were incredibly delicious and also fascinating.
Point is, it was so great, we're doing it again. This November, we just opened up spots. It's a small group, so space is limited. Bottom line, come eat pasta with me in Italy! For all the details, go to culinarybackstreets.com/sporkful. Now, back to this week's Reheat.
MUSIC
Dan: Moving on, I love Rocky Road.
ROCKY ROAD SONG
Dan: Chocolate's getting old, vanilla just leaves me cold. Do you stand by those lyrics today?
Weird Al: No, I never, you know. Not every lyric that I write is autobiographical. In fact, I like Rocky Road. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I love it. I don't think
Dan: It's not as good of a lyric though, right?
Weird Al: I don't think I've actually had Rocky Road ice cream since 1982 because that's, or 83 song came out.
And as part of the promotion for that song, I had to participate in so many Rocky Road ice cream eating contests that I think I've gotten my lifetime's share of Rocky Road ice cream.
Dan: Right. So, uh, so if you're, if you are more open to chocolate and vanilla than you say, which, would, would, do you have a preference between the two?
Weird Al: It depends how it's made. Like, really good vanilla is great, uh, and really good chocolate is great, so it kind of depends. But between the two, I generally say chocolate, because, uh, I always, as a kid, I know this is not the case now, but as a kid, I always thought that, uh, vanilla was like, It's like plain ice cream.
It's like clear. It's like, it's like ice cream without any flavor. It's like, why would anybody order vanilla? It's like, no flavor.
Dan: Um, do you have a cup or cone preference?
Weird Al: Um, I generally go cone with a sugar cone.
Dan: Why?
Weird Al: Uh, cause, cause it's extra. With a cup, you can't eat the cup, but with a cone, you get a cone.
Dan: Right, right.
Dan: I wanna move on to grapefruit diet.
GRAPEFRUIT DIET SONG
Dan: Do you like grapefruit? Do you eat it?
Weird Al: I do, I eat a particular, I usually only eat it when I'm on a diet because when I'm trying to lose weight, I'll eat like half a red ruby grapefruit every morning for the entire length of the diet.
And I like it, but it, it really kind of, you know, in my brain it now it means like diet. So when I'm not on a diet, I generally don't eat it.
Dan: So was Grapefruit Diet one of the more autobiographical songs?
Weird Al: You know, I think I wrote that song before I ever tried that as a dietary technique. But then I read a book saying, well, it wasn't the Grapefruit Diet book, but it was just saying that grapefruit was a great breakfast if you wanted to try to lose weight. So, and it seemed to work.
Dan: What's your grapefruit eating strategy? Do you use a spoon to scoop out the half?
Weird Al: I do. I actually have a grapefruit spoon somewhere, but I usually don't bother trying to find it. So it's just a matter of digging out each segment and eating segment by segment. And then when it's all done, I take the half grapefruit and I walk over the sink and I squeeze the rest into my mouth.
Dan: Interesting. That's an interesting move right there. That's, um, you don't squeeze it into a glass?
Weird Al: No. No. Then I have to wash the glass. What’s the point of that.
Dan: Um, what is a grapefruit spoon? What does it look like?
Weird Al: It's got a serrated edge. It's like a small, uh, thin spoon that's got kind of a jagged edge on one side. So it helps you cut out the sections better.
Dan: I noticed that a lot of your songs about food, which I understand are not all autobiographical, but, uh, they're written from the point of view of someone who eats a lot of very decadent, very unhealthy food. And I'm sure that there's there's obviously comedic potential in that, so I understand that. But I wonder if, because you're very thoughtful about what you eat, uh, I wonder if you ever use your music to pig out vicariously.
Weird Al: I never really thought of that that way. When I, when I wrote Grapefruit Diet, that was sort of my sequel to Fat in a way, because it's like after, after he becomes morbidly obese, well, I better, better drop a few pounds. So I got to include whatever fat jokes I didn't get the first time around.
Dan: The outtakes.
Weird Al: Right.
Dan: Lasagna.
LASAGNA SONG
Dan: I think that you may have unwittingly agreed with my opinion about lasagna when you wrote that song. Because a lot of lyrics are sort of like: You should eat my lasagna, or if you don't like that, try these other foods. I think that lasagna is a severely overrated food. Uh, I think that it's a ton of work to make it. Separating those strips is a giant pain in the butt.
Weird Al: For the longest time, my road manager, uh, had a thing, and the, and the, the riders, uh, saying that no lasagna backstage, because I don't, I didn't know this, but apparently lasagna is very cheap to make apparently. So a lot of, a lot of promoters like, I'll give him a lasagna.
And then you want to be eating lasagna five times a week. So, you know, I like lasagna, but that was, that was off the rider for a long time.
Dan: Okay, but so, uh, you don't quite share my disdain for it?
Weird Al: For lasagna, I, I like it okay. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's overrated, but I think it's rated just fine.
Dan: I see, I kind of feel like, okay, someone's going to make you lasagna. And their time wouldn't be better spent doing something else for the world.
Weird Al: Like paint my house. Right,
Dan: Exactly. And give me what I think is basically the same thing, which is baked ziti.
Weird Al: Okay, there you go.
Dan:It's the same thing, except it doesn't require the fine detail of the layering of the ingredients, which is so time consuming and tedious.
Weird Al: Right, so make me some baked ziti and give me a back rub.
Dan: Exactly. There you go. Now, which would you rather have, Val? Baked ziti and a back rub, or lasagna?
Weird Al: Well, I'd rather somebody give me a back rub using the baked ziti. That'd feel pretty good.
Dan: Would you rather have a back rub with baked ziti or lasagna?
Weird Al: Oh, That's a tough one. That's really tough. I might go with a lasagna
Dan: Really? Yeah, actually, I guess for a back rub that might be better because you kind of drape the long strands of pasta It's sort of almost like um, a massage towel of sorts.
Weird Al: That's, that's what I was visualizing
Dan: The ziti would all fall off.
Weird Al: Right, right.
Dan: It's not good massage food. I think that's a great point.
MUSIC
Dan: The rye or the kaiser
THE RYE OR THE KAISER SONG
Dan: Do you have a preference between the two? Which would you use in which situation?
Weird Al: Well, uh, rye certainly, if you're doing any kind of, uh, patty melt situation. Uh, I'm kind of a rye fan. I don't have anything against kaiser, but I'm a rye fan from way back.
Dan: Okay, alright. I, I, my wife is a huge rye person, so we always have a lot of rye in our house. But we have a bit of a dispute. Maybe you can actually take sides in this, which I'm sure you're eager to do. Um, I know that it's more convenient to get the bread sliced, let's say you're getting rbread fresh at a bakery. Uh huh. They get the machine, they'll slice it for you.. Okay. The slices are very thin.
I love a rye bread unsliced so that you can slice the slices thicker than the machine can even do. You get them three quarters of an inch to an inch thick, like a grilled cheese on thick cut rye bread.
Weird Al: Oh, that sounds good.
Dan: Because then you get different strata within the bread. You get a crispy exterior, you get a soft, fluffy interior.
And the other nice thing about getting it unsliced is that you can have different thickness. of slices for different situations. So let's say you want one sandwich, you feel like having it be extra thick or thinner, you can adjust that on a per sandwich basis.
Weird Al: Well, I can understand that, but you know, they say it's the best thing since sliced bread for a reason. Because sliced bread is awesome.
Dan: I don't agree. I think it's overrated. I think that the worst thing since sliced bread could be sliced bread.
Weird Al: That might be true as well. I don't know. I mean, obviously if you're looking for an extra large slice of rye bread, sliced bread wouldn't be your option. But I'd say in like 87 percent of the cases, sliced bread works just fine for me.
Dan: Okay. Alright. I mean, I'll respectfully disagree.
Weird Al: I mean, I don't know how respectful you're being right now, actually.
Dan: I guess I can't disagree with what works best for you, because you know that better than I do. But I would, I would encourage people to get bread unsliced. The other thing is that when you get it unsliced, it stays fresh for longer.
I'll put the whole loaf in the freezer, take it out, you can barely let it defrost a tiny bit, saw off a frozen slice, then let that defrost, and it will, and it will, cause you're exposing less of the bread to air.
Weird Al: That sounds like a lot of work. I think you just, you get a slice, then you eat it very quickly.
Dan: In one of your more recent songs, Whatever You Like, you name, check a lot of cheap foods and among other cheap goods
WHATEVER YOU LIKE SONG
Dan: What are some of your guilty pleasures? Food. Guilty pleasure.
Weird Al: Oh, I love tater tots. Those are amazing. Uh, I've always loved those. Um, I never went through my ramen stays in college so much. I mean, it's okay, but not one of my faves.
Uh, you know what I love is like the cheap, cheap macaroni and cheese.
Dan: Do you add anything to it or do anything to it different from the box instructions?
Weird Al: I, I, you know, I'm a, I'm a rule follower, so I pretty much follow the box instructions. You know, I'm one of these kind of cooks that, you know, uh, it's, it's all got to be scientific.
Like, I'm not like, Oh, put a little of this and a little of that. Well, exactly how, how many grains of salt did exactly, yeah.
Dan: What happened to questioning authority, Al?
Weird Al: Well, you know, I'm, I go the different way in the kitchen.
Dan: So, so it's okay to upend, uh, society's, uh, cruel conventions except in the kitchen.
Weird Al: That's exactly right,
Dan: All right, now we're getting into the big guns here. Eat It.
EAT IT SONG
Dan: Have some more chicken, have some more pie. It doesn't matter if boiled or fried. I have to take issue with that lyric. I think it does matter.
Weird Al: If the pie is fried.
Dan: Well, I mean fried pie, you must have had, have you had fried pie?
Weird Al: I don't think I have.
Dan: Oh, it's so good.
Weird Al: Really? Well, anything fried. Anything fried on a stick.
Dan: Right. Exactly. You know, and boiled pie is not going to be very good. So that one is an easy one. I mean, boiled chicken versus fried chicken also.
Weird Al: Well, I think the protagonist, uh, in this, this song is just saying like, I don't care if it's boiled or fried. It is your obligation to eat this. Whether it tastes good or not.
Dan: But in that lyric, do boiled and fried apply both to the chicken and the pie?
Weird Al: Uh, it's whatever you want it to be. I left it, uh, vague on purpose so you can put your own meaning onto it.
Dan: Okay, okay. Fat.
FAT SONG
Dan: In Fat, Ham on, Ham on whole wheat. All right. In the fat video when you sing that lyric, you take a, you sort of start to take a bite out of a ham sandwich and then there's a cut and then you kind of toss it. You don't really see you taking a bite. I believe that video was shot before you became a vegetarian. Was it a real ham sandwich and did you take a bite of it?
Weird Al: That's an excellent question. I honestly don't remember. Uh, I'm, I'm sure I took a bite of it. Um, Yeah, I mean, I have to method act, uh, and it very well could have been a ham on whole wheat. Uh, let's say that it was.
Dan: Okay. All right. We'll go with that. All right. But, but in theory, at that point in your life, you would have.
Weird Al: I could have. I could have feasibly been actually eating a ham on whole wheat.
Dan: Well, Weird Al Yankovic. The new Children's book is My New Teacher In Me. It comes out June 25th. It's available for pre-order right now. I will link to it at sporkful.com. Al's also on tour until early August. Find his tour dates and more at weirdal.com. Al I’ve been a huge fan of music for so long. That's been a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.
Weird Al: Thank you so much.
MUSIC
Joe: Hello.
Dan: Joe, it's Dan Pashman from the Sporkful. How you doing?
Joe: Pretty good, buddy. How's it going?
Dan: Good. Now, at the start of this show, listeners heard our last conversation, which actually was recorded about three months ago. Now, here we are on the present day, and I'm calling to check up on you. How are you doing with the onions?
Joe: Actually, just great. Um, I actually, I had the meatloaf again last night. And, uh, we tried soaking the onions, and, um, it worked great. It was so much better. I actually, uh, I had seconds, and it was great.
Dan: So, soaking the onions in the cold water really helped?
Joe: Yeah, it took the, the nasty, kind of, skunky onion, onion taste out of it.
Dan: Alright, great. Have you done any other experiments?
Joe: Yeah, actually, uh, a couple weeks ago, my mom said she was making chicken on the grill, and they usually have caramelized onions with that. And I said, oh, great, this is just what Dan wanted me to do. She made this, these great chicken breasts, um, smothered them with this cheese sauce and bacon, grilled.
It was, oh, so good. And, uh, half of my chicken breast, I put the caramelized onions on it. And it was great. It was completely fantastic. And I ate it leftover again a couple nights later.
Dan: Wow, so this is a big breakthrough here. You know, a few months ago, Joe, you were worried about living a life alone, no wife, no onions, no nothing. And now, you know, now you're well on your way.
Joe: Yeah, it's been a huge help.
Dan: And, and, uh, what does your mom have to say about all this?
Joe: She's actually been treating it kind of like a joke. She thought it was pretty funny that I had to call into a radio station. You know, to talk about onions. But, um, she's, she's been helping out a lot, actually.
She's, um, she's kind of been enjoying it. She's, you know, flipping it, flipping it into food that, um, we usually don’t have it in. She made mashed potatoes a few weeks ago. And, uh, I, halfway through, I said, you put onions in this, didn't you? And she said, Yeah, she did. She was making onions into the mashed potatoes.
Dan: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, Joe, I'm so glad to hear, uh, that you're on, uh, on the path to onion righteousness. Uh, keep up the good work out there in Idaho.
Joe: All right. Hey, and I just listened to your episode that you did with, um, Ian and Mike from How to Do Everything. That was pretty awesome, um, they're like my second favorite podcast, so, um,
Dan: Do I need to ask what your first is?
Joe: Definitely you. I definitely fall on your side of the sandwich controversy, I think they're going way too far with that.
Dan: Well, I appreciate you saying that. I will make sure that Ian and Mike hear that you said that, Joe, thanks so much for your call. Take care.
Joe: Alright, thanks Dan.
Dan: The team that produces the Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer Emma Morgan Stern and senior producer Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell.
The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive producers are Nora Ritchie and Colin Anderson. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app. It has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? Then there's interviews with A list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app. All rolled into one right now. Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the Sirius XM app by going to Sirius XM.com/Sporkful. Until next time I'm Dan Pashman.